AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her companion cleared her throat brusquely. ‘When we understood what had been happening here,’ she continued evasively, ‘we sent him to boarding school. No, we did not redeem ourselves even then. But he was brilliant at school. In every field, he excelled. He could have done anything, become anyone he wanted to be, and little by little we began to take notice of him.’
‘What happened?’ Sarah encouraged.
‘When he was a child he drew on walls when Lucia wouldn’t give him paper. There was never a time when Rafael did not paint,’ she confided grimly. ‘I believe it was a form of escape for him. We gave him no love and no place in the family and we attempted too late to make him one of us. We failed. We could give him nothing that he wanted but his freedom and that he took for himself. He refused to enter the business world. He defied all of us. I learnt…’ the old lady’s voice was dragging with exhaustion now ‘…that it is only with love that Rafael can be held or contained. That is the only tie he will acknowledge and we had not created that tie.’
That assessment had an intimate personal reality for Sarah and it hit her hard. After a long pause, she whispered tightly, ‘You understand him,’ but Rafael’s grandmother did not hear her. Dona Isabel had drifted off to sleep.
The British nurse was waiting outside. Sarah apologised for over-tiring her patient. ‘Dona Isabel dictates the length of her own visiting hours,’ Alice said wryly. ‘I wouldn’t dare to interfere without good reason.’
Sarah asked where the studio was and discovered that it was in the grounds. The sprinklers on the velvet-smooth lawns were at rest in the heat of midday. Sarah had a ten-minute walk up a gradually steepening slope of terraces before she reached the encircling belt of acacia trees that bounded the formal gardens. She sheltered briefly within their dappled shadows. From there she could see the stone-built studio with its red-tiled roof. The path that ran to the open door was a mere track through long grass and wild flowers. As she approached she could hear the twins chattering.
Several doors opened off the cool, tiled hall. The studio lay to the left, a spacious extension of the original room with floor to ceiling glass at one end. The facing wall was hung with numerous paintings. The twins were down on their knees fingerpainting on a giant sheet of paper. Rafael was suggesting colours with all the enthusiasm of someone privileged to be sharing in the creation of a major work of art. One of his gifts, she recognised, was an entirely unstudied genius for handling children…and one particularly stupid woman, who loved him. Last night, Rafael had made surrender torturingly and unforgivably sweet. With time and the kind of encouragement she was giving him, how much more damage might he do?
But watching those three dark heads meeting in such unity, she finally understood that Rafael would not be deliberately guilty of anything which might hurt the twins. The children would come first. He had said that from the start. He had also mentioned the sacrifices they would both have to make. And she was one of those sacrifices, wasn’t she?
She was an unavoidably necessary component of Rafael’s determination to give his children the secure and uneventful childhood that he himself had been denied. And making love to her, she appreciated on a wave of anguished hurt, was just one more practical part of that ambition. Rafael was a very highly sexed male. And he had made a very moral decision. Either he satisfied his needs within marriage or he indulged in a series of affairs. Sneaking around was most definitely not Rafael, nor would such behaviour add to a happy home environment for his children.
She was looking at a reformed rake, handcuffed by conscience to the marital bed. And all that storm and passion expended on her imaginary trail of lovers meant not a thing. It certainly didn’t mean that he was jealous or that he was reacting with resentment against the events that had separated them, thereby enabling her to indulge in what he clearly envisaged as a voracious appetite for other men. When you didn’t really want someone, you became hyper-critical and dwelt on their flaws. Rafael had seized on her supposed scarlet past with a purpose—it gave him a vent for his frustration. He was feeling trapped and like a wild animal he clawed when you put him in a cage.
Ben saw her first. ‘Mummy!’ he scrambled up, waving rainbow-coloured hands. ‘We had breakfast with Daddy and he’s teaching us to swim.’
‘We saw fish in a river,’ Gilly put in.
‘We climbed a tree and a wall…a great big wall,’ Ben boasted.
Gilly pirouetted. ‘Daddy says I’ll be even more pretty tomorrow if I stop telling people how pretty I am.’ Clearly she hadn’t quite grasped the message yet.
‘Go and wash your hands now.’ Rafael sprang gracefully upright, the worn soft fabric of his jeans flexing indecently taut over his lean, hard flanks.
‘You’ve had a very busy morning,’ Sarah remarked.
‘They wanted to awaken you. It was by my instruction that you were left in peace.’ He was maddeningly attuned to her most petty inner resentments.
‘I met your grandmother this morning,’ she said hurriedly.
Rafael wiped long fingers clean on a rag. ‘What did you think of her?’
‘How serious is her illness?’
‘She had a stroke after Felipe’s death but with therapy and determination she would be able to use a wheelchair,’ he explained. ‘However, she has lost her interest in life and the longer she lies in that bed the less chance there is that she will ever leave it again.’
‘She seems to be fond of you,’ she commented.
‘Do you think so? I would say she respects me.’ His wide, passionate mouth had a wry curve. ‘She lives too much in the past now. Fallen idols and grief have become her sustenance. What did you talk about? Let me guess—Toni? I have often regretted not meeting my late uncle. So much perfection in one human being is rare.’
‘You’re not very sympathetic, are you?’
He laughed uproariously. ‘Abuela would choke on sympathy!’ With amusement dying out of his eyes, he looked incredibly attractive. ‘Toni was an obsession with her. She had no time for her other children. She takes precious little interest in the surviving four.’
‘Four?’ Sarah questioned.
‘She neglected to mention my trio of aunts?’ He smiled. ‘Females stand pretty low on Abuela’s scale of importance.’
‘Ramon doesn’t do much better.’
‘She despises weakness.’
‘Strong people tend to,’ Sarah said less evenly. ‘You have no time for him either.’
‘He is a fool.’ Rafael was carelessly indifferent. ‘Lucia is not even faithful to him.’
‘At least he’s loyal.’
‘So is a dog. Lucia has no need of a pet. To love without return is a form of degradation,’ he breathed contemptuously. ‘And in the name of that love Ramon has done much to be ashamed of.’
She could feel the colour draining sharply from her cheeks.
His dark eyes were intent upon her. ‘About last night—’
‘Oh, let’s not have a post-mortem,’ she interrupted.
‘I stayed here,’ he continued in defiance of her dismissal. ‘I shouldn’t have lost my temper. If I upset you, I’m sorry.’
He didn’t look sorry, she thought unhappily. He looked more like someone trying to look sorry. It was called papering over the cracks. That was what he was doing. In the future there would be many similar episodes if she stayed. Compromise. Give and take. Charades and civil dishonesty were part and parcel of that. Rafael was not the most likely choice for a diplomatic career but possibly time and practice would improve him.
‘Forget it,’ she said flatly.
‘It won’t happen again,’ he assured her impressively.
‘Of course it will,’ she contradicted helplessly.
‘Why do you have to make this so difficult?’
‘Because you’re talking nonsense,’ she muttered. ‘You’re no good at pretending!’
Unmistakable bitterness hardened his bone-structure. ‘As to that, you may one day be surprised.’
r /> ‘I doubt it.’
‘I want us to be a family,’ he emphasised harshly. ‘It is very important that you should be happy here at Alcazar.’
With every word he confirmed her suspicions about his own feelings. In no way was she wanted for herself. Without the children, she had no value whatsoever. ‘I’ll do my best to sparkle,’ she said sarcastically.
His mouth compressed. ‘Sometimes, I could slap you!’
‘That would be most conducive to my happiness.’
