A Cottage in Spain Read online

  “Who ... who are you?” she whispered. He was so outrageously big, so menacing.

  “That’s my question,” he said curtly, glancing with extreme distaste over her white nylon frock and the little white hat. “Who gave you permission to roam around the house?”

  “Permission!” Linda was recovering; her red lips tightened and her small chin jutted. “I like that. You clutter the place with beastly heads and dirty bits of pottery—I presume they are yours!—and have the nerve to get angry when someone else happens upon them.”

  “When I want visitors,” he said, wedging a handkerchief under the precious skull, “I’ll invite them. I came here to work, not to be beset by a horde of giggling young women and their predatory mothers. I suggest you get into your car, and go.”

  Linda had never before known that she could blaze. She knew now. “How dare you speak to me like that! And how do you come to be established here, anyway? If some fool of an agent has leased you the cottage he had no right to do so, and I revoke it, from this minute! You can pack up your ... your specimens and leave at once. And you can have your rent back, too!”

  “Look here,” he said, his voice dangerously calm, “I’ve had enough of this. I haven’t rented the house—merely moved in. I came here a fortnight ago, for four months, and I intend to stay. If the Garnett-Smiths also promised the place to you, it’s too bad—because I got here first, and I don’t care for house companions.”

  “Garnett-Smiths?” she echoed. “What are you talking about?”

  She saw him straighten and shove his hands into the pockets of his slacks, met a penetrating grey gaze and realized, with something of a shock, that in a hawklike, unsmiling fashion he was extremely handsome ... and wholly unlikeable. A bar of sunshine slanted across his high cheekbones but apparently caused him no discomfort. His eyes had accustomed themselves to the sun where it was much more violent. His tan was obviously permanent.

  “What is your name?” he asked tersely.

  “Linda Braden.” It sounded tame, and made her angrier. “Who are the Garnett-Smiths?”

  He was suddenly exasperated. “If you don’t know them you have even less right in this house than I supposed. They’re friends of mine who happen to own cottages here and there all over the world. They knew I’d be needing quiet accommodation somewhere on the Mediterranean coastline, and offered me this. So far, it has seemed ideal.” This last was spoken with an inflection which Linda could not help but comprehend.

  “I’m sorry,” she said flatly, “but you’ve mistaken the cottage.”

  “Don’t be absurd. I’ve been here before as their guest.”

  She went cold. “But my aunt lived here. It belonged to her. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Senora de Meriaga?”

  He picked up a pipe from the desk and looked into the blackened bowl. “Your mistake, Miss Braden,” he said. “You belong next door—the last house on the road.”

  She fought a losing battle with mortification. “Isn’t this the last house? It looked it.”

  “There’s another beyond the row of pines. You can’t see it too well from the front, but you can from this window. Look out there.”

  She looked, saw a distant whiteness beyond the feathery branches of the pines. Her cheeks were hot, but something about him made her defiant rather than apologetic.

  “That cottage must be similar to this outside; I’ve seen a photograph. I’m sorry,” she added, that firm little chin tilted upwards, “but it was easy to make such a mistake. I won’t trouble you again.”

  She went into the living-room and he followed, presumably to ensure that she left the premises. At the door she hesitated, and nodded back at the room he used as a study. “Is that your work?” she queried curiously,

  “It is,” he answered uncommunicatively.

  “Archaeology?”

  He nodded. “Stuffy, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. It might be interesting, but I should think it makes you feel about as big as a pin-head—handling ancient things, I mean. I wouldn’t care for it.”

  “Of course not.”

  She bridled. “What do you mean, ‘of course not’?”

  His glance flickered over her once more, comprehensive and analytical. “You remind me of the parties of tourists who come to our diggings in North Arabia. Give them a piece of colored clay from your pocket and they pretend to be in heaven. I can never understand why such women bother to use their birdbrains. They obviously depend upon the fact of being feminine to get what they want.”

  She hardened a little. “Don’t you like feminine women?”

  “Like them?” He ruminated indifferently. “One admires their pretty little figures in pretty little frocks; some of them,” an almost imperceptible pause, “even have sweet faces and voices. But there’s no lasting quality in them.”

  “I dare say,” she told him, a trifle tartly, “that things have to last three or four thousand years before you’d have any respect for them.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” he agreed carelessly. “There’s nothing so transient, it seems, as the modern wife. Think you can find your way?”

  “Yes, thank you,” she replied briefly, and went out.

  The scene with that man rather spoiled Linda’s first view of the cottage which had been her aunt’s. She did see that the exterior had much in common with that of the house next door, though the door of this house was respectably in one piece and the wrought-iron knocker had to be used before it was opened.

  The interior, though, was vaguely disappointing, particularly when she remembered the light and color in that other sitting room. Yet this fine furniture, the paintings which looked as though they might be valuable, the Aubusson carpet on a parquet floor, and the beautifully carved piano which must have been two hundred years old, were somehow too much what she had expected. How would that man’s dark copper head go against these pale blue walls, she wondered. It had been stark and strong against the white.

  Anna was anxiously explanatory. In her fluid but not very exact English, learned, she announced with pride, from the old senora herself, she answered Linda’s questions. She was one of those ageless women with leathery cheeks and beady eyes, but she had a pleasant way with her and made a pot of splendid coffee.

  The two bedrooms, she pointed out, gave exquisite view of the mountains. She lovingly fingered the carved upright of a four-poster. “Always you would sleep well in this bed, senorita, and in the mornings I would bring coffee with my own hands, and later the panecillos with good butter. There is a fine bath which I will show you, and it is no more than two minutes down through the trees to the beach. The old senora has said many times that the senorita is bella, and would find some affection for this cottage. Always she tell me that you will surely stay.”

  “I wish I could.”

  The house grew on one. It had the charm of an ageing, beautiful woman; which, come to think of it, was what Aunt Natalie had been. Over the piano hung a portrait of the young Natalie Braden who had sung in all the Continental capitals and met her fate, in the person of Alonzo de Meriaga, in her dressing-room at Madrid. A lovely person, with swathes of hair the color of Linda’s, and graceful hands which thousands of men had kissed. This cottage had never known Alonzo but it was impregnated with her aunt’s personality. The graciousness was relieved here and there by eccentricity. Surely no other woman would have covered the backs of the fine tapestry chairs with hefty English antimacassars of a bygone age! Nor could anyone but Aunt Natalie have chosen standard lamps that imitated London lamp-posts!

  Linda was almost afraid to go into, the garden, because she knew that there is nothing so potent to draw at the heart as flowers and trees in one’s very own plot. So she looked out from the patio, saw the oleanders and camellias, the myrtle hedge clipped down in places so that a thin line of indigo sea could be seen on a curving horizon, and told Anna that she would have to come again before leaving for England.

  “But the senorita is here for two weeks, i
s it not?” demanded the servant urgently.

  “Two weeks altogether—yes.”

  “For one week, at least, you must live here. You owe it to the memory of your aunt.”

  Linda hadn’t thought of it that way. On the whole, she admitted, she had considered the cottage as more of a liability than an asset because it was forcing her to make a difficult decision. She stood there silently, thinking that she still had nearly a year before the cottage would be sold, and she might be able to snaffle a further fortnight later in the year, for a visit to Spain. She didn’t have to crowd the next, eight or nine days with sightseeing. And it had been sweet of Aunt Natalie to remember her niece with affection.

  Anna put in softly, “It is a happy house, senorita, and there are friends of the old senora’s who would like to meet you. May I order food?”

  Linda gave her a quick smile. “Not for today, but I believe I will come tomorrow for two or three days. I’d love to get to know this place.”

  * * *

  She sat in a basket chair in the patio and drank some more of Anna’s coffee with sandwiches. The Catalonian pines rustled, birds twittered and a gentle fragrance drifted over from the opening camellias. A heavenly spot. At any rate, it might be, if...

  She got up and went into the house to find the servant. “Anna,” she asked hesitantly, “who is the man who lives next door?”

  “Ah.” The old woman brightened, as if glad to be reminded that she had omitted this delectable piece of gossip. “He also is English, senorita, and his servants, a husband and wife who are friends of mine, tell me he is someone famous. Perhaps the name is familiar—Dr. Philip Frensham?”

  Linda echoed the name to herself. “Yes, I remember. He led an expedition about a year ago. He finds buried cities.”

  “So?” Anna was mystified but willing to believe. “He is a man who likes best to be alone. They say,” confidentially and with a shrug, “that he does not like women, but can such a thing be true of any man?”

  “Not of a Spaniard, certainly!”

  “The senorita knows other Englishmen like that?” asked the incredulous Anna.

  “Not personally, but I’ve heard of them. They’re demons for work and regard women as the mere trimmings of life; themselves, they don’t care for trimmings.” She smiled. “Oh, well, I shan’t be here long enough to bother with neighbors, and if I were, I’d keep clear of this Philip Frensham.”

  “So I hope,” said Anna vigorously, shuffling her felt slippers. “The senorita should find a man who is simpatico ... one who will serenade and laugh with her, one who will leap into her heart and make it warm with passion.”

  Linda raised her brows. “You’re poetic, Anna.”

  “No, I am a woman, an old one who still believes in romance. From what I hear there is no romance in this cold Englishman!”

  She was probably right, thought Linda. ‘The man was too aloof from his fellows to be quite human.

  After which she forgot Philip Frensham and his skulls and pottery unearthed in North Arabia. She didn’t even think of him as her taxi swept her past the other villa which was so much like her aunt’s; because her mind, at that moment, was filled with the blissful knowledge that she was to come back tomorrow with her luggage.

  In Barcelona she immediately sent a telegram to her father and a letter which would follow Miss Dean to Valencia. Then she telephoned the lawyer and received his blessing, packed her suitcases and hatbox and, just as it was getting dark, walked out into the friendly Rambla and found a cafe where the more modern young Spaniards gathered to talk, laugh and sing.

  The habit of siesta in Spain has the natural consequence of keeping the people up very late. Dinner was never served anywhere before nine-thirty, and quite often lasted till eleven, and noises in the streets lasted well into the small hours, sometimes even till dawn. But Linda was young and resilient; lack of sleep made no mark upon her.

  Next morning she paid her bill and ordered a taxi, but in a country where time is gaily disregarded there is never any hurry, so that the mail was delivered before she left the hotel. Among it there was a brief note from her father and an epistle even shorter from John.

  A sudden anxiety made her open John’s letter first; he had never written before while she was on holiday. She read halfway down the page of neat script and went back foggily to the beginning. A couple of sentences stood out: “You haven’t realized how things have been going between Maxine and me, so perhaps this decision of hers to join you in Spain will come as a shock. Please, Linda, be nice to her and help her to have a good time, so that she’ll come back fresh and eager to be married.” Lower down, he assured her that Miss Woodham and her sister were doing a wonderful job, and that he himself would now have ample time for the shop and the accounts.

  Dazedly, Linda took in the date of Maxine’s arrival at Barcelona, but she couldn’t take in the fact of it. She and Maxine Odell had almost nothing in common, and if Maxine was making John unhappy ... Linda drew a deep breath. She knew, suddenly and infallibly, that John was depending on her far more than his letter suggested; she did hope he wasn’t expecting a miracle. Maxine was beautiful and rich and self-willed; she liked gay times but she was also clever. There must be something behind this unexpected departure for Spain. What, exactly?

  Linda had no brainwave. She only knew that her pleasure in the cottage was dimmed, even though it now appeared she could live there rather longer than she had anticipated. The fact was, she wasn’t keen on sharing it with Maxine.

  She folded the letter and went outside to her taxi. As it rocketed away towards Montelisa she wondered what third unpleasantness was in store. Yes, third. Because that big brown man with the lowering brows above cool grey eyes had certainly been the first!

  CHAPTER TWO

  THIS morning the cottage was gay with flowers which had been arranged without artifice. A bird sang in the roses that climbed halfway over the roof and a delicious smell of hot spiced buns stole from the kitchen. In the bedroom Linda unpacked one of her cases, pausing every few minutes to lean from the window and stare at the sea, or at the delightfully untidy village which clustered down there about a plaza which was edged on one side by the ocean itself. From what she could see of the road above the pines, it wound down with graceful negligence, overhung here by an ancient cypress and there by a thicket of wild olive. After the noise and dash of Barcelona, Montelisa was incredibly peaceful.

  Linda knew her father would have loved this place as much as she did. He and a crony of his always went to the same Cornish village for their summer vacation, and it was lovely to dream of giving the two of them a holiday here, where there were mountains and a rocky shore, gardens and orchards, and the volatile Spanish into the bargain. Pity it must be only a dream.

  She had to be sensible about this, because this time next year the cottage would be sold, and she would again be just a bookshop assistant who had been lucky enough to live for a few weeks in Catalonia. There was the possibility, of course, of persuading her father to spend the fortnight he allowed himself here at the cottage. It had even occurred to her, rather vaguely, that John and Maxine might be glad to come here for their honeymoon. There was nothing, really, to prevent her lending the house to any of the family friends who might fancy a trip to Spain. Might as well make the most of the year.

  Inevitably, now that her thoughts had again touched Maxine, they returned to her. Strange that Maxine herself had not written to advise of her arrival date and time. It looked as if the plan were hurried and perfunctory, which wasn’t a bit like John; but Maxine was accustomed to having her own way, and it had probably been a relief to him that she had chosen to stay with his sister. She might so easily have set her mind upon a month alone in Paris.

  When Linda went downstairs Anna wanted to know if she had to ask for orders regarding the menus, or to go ahead and concoct them herself.

  Linda smiled. “For me, you may cook what you like—but not too much of it! When my friend comes, we shall see.
She’ll have to have the nicest bedroom in the house, Anna.”

  “Both bedrooms are pleasant,” said the servant, her bony old chin stubborn, “but the house is yours and you must have the chief room. This friend of yours will be welcome, naturally.”

  There seemed to Linda to be a doubt implicit in the woman’s words, but possibly Anna had been accustomed to having complete charge of Aunt Natalie and cherished ideas of transferring the same amount of attention to Linda. She might dote on Maxine; people did.

  Linda ate one of the spiced buns, drank a cup of surprisingly good tea and wandered out into the sunshine. At noon, she decided, she would go down for a swim and take her time about it. Presumably, Anna was in the habit of n la and of preparing lunch at the outlandish hour of three as they did in Barcelona, but it wouldn’t matter. Tins was Spain, wasn’t it? While Linda lived here she would do as the Spanish did—or almost!

  She found a path that ended at a narrow wooden gate in a fence of trellis-work over which climbed a riot of jasmine. She picked a spray, and so potent was its fragrance that she began to hum a little tune; till a movement on the other side of the trellis caught her eye. She went quiet and turned about.

  “Oh, Miss Braden!”

  He came into the open on the path, with the gate between them. His skin, she noticed with unaccountable annoyance, was only a shade paler than the dark copper hair, and he was even bigger and cooler than she remembered him. You’d think, she spared a moment to reflect, that a man with such coloring would possess a natural joy and violence.

  “Good morning,” she said with reserve.

  “I saw you from my workroom window and thought this as good a time as any to have a word with you. The fact is,” he came uncompromisingly to the point, “I’d like to rent your cottage for three months.”