A Cottage in Spain Read online

  “Yes?” She gazed at him, mystified. “What would you do with another cottage?”

  “Keep it empty,” he told her crisply. “I’ll pay whatever rent you ask and also pay Anna, so that you may be sure the place is clean and aired.”

  Linda bent her head over the sprig of jasmine. “You value your solitude rather high, don’t you, Mr. Frensham ... or should it be Dr. Frensham?”

  “Mister will do.” His accents were still sharp and aloof, “I happen to be engaged on something that several archaeological societies consider highly important. Normal neighbors wouldn’t bother me, but the type that rent a place as a holiday bungalow are likely to be anything but normal. In any case, they might ruin your furniture as well as my peace. You’d gain by it.”

  “I suppose I would. Too bad I have to turn you down.” Those very grey eyes narrowed. “Hell,” he said, “don’t say you’ve let it already!”

  “No, I haven’t. But I’m staying here myself for about a month, with a friend.”

  A dent appeared at the corner of the well-cut mouth. “Not another woman?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Sweetly, she added, “She’s very beautiful—far better to look at than those masks in your room; after all, they’re dead, aren’t they?”

  He ignored her final remark. “Have you been to Spain before?”

  “No.” Oddly, she knew what he was going to suggest, and something within her hardened. “Possibly, Mr. Frensham, we shan’t tour the country this time; we may remain right here at the cottage. But we aren’t likely to encroach upon your privacy, and we’re English enough to prefer going to bed before midnight. Perhaps you should revise your estimate of women; we’re not all giggling daughters and predatory mothers.”

  “No, but most of you are a nuisance,” he said. Then: “That isn’t meant as rudeness—merely as an expression of opinion. The Englishwoman is far more likeable in England than she is abroad.”

  “How long is it since you sported with Englishwomen in their own country?” she was stung to demand.

  He gave her a tight and not very agreeable smile, “A year or two. I speak from memory.” He shrugged. “If you’re determined to stay I can do nothing about it. I’d like your promise, though, that when you go you’ll allow me to rent the cottage until I leave Montelisa.”

  “Fair enough,” she said.

  “Thanks. So long.”

  “Happy digging,” she answered, and turned away.

  The morning was still soft and brilliant, but somehow less enjoyable. She dropped the wilting jasmine, went into the house, changed into a swimsuit and wrap and found her way down the roughly hewn steps to the beach. She swam in the cobalt waters of the Mediterranean and thought how annoying it was that the only Englishman she had met in Spain should be a big brute to whom women were negligible unless they happened to have lived a few thousand years ago; and at that, he was doubtless far more interested in their bone structure and adornments than in whatever they ought have possessed in the way of intellect. What a man!

  The swim was soothing and at this hour of the day it was deserted. She could not lie long in the sun because her skin was unused to it, but she found a little shade under a palm, and sat watching the waves and an old tramp steamer some way out which was making for Barcelona. When eventually she climbed up again to the road, it was to find a donkey cart pulled in not far from her own gate, the driver curled up inside it upon a heap of sacks. Siesta, for which everything stops in Spain!

  Linda changed into a white pique frock. The villa was still so new to her that she couldn’t help taking a fresh look at the pictures and fine ornaments, at the carved wooden boxes and tapestry stools, at the four-posters in the bedrooms and the wrought-iron grilles which enclosed the balconies outside the upper windows. The lawyer had shown her an inventory of the contents of the cottage, an endless list of good, if not rare, furnishings, which her aunt had collected with care and affection. No doubt he had been tacitly informing her that the goods went with the house and were not to be taken away, but that did not detract from her pleasure in them. For the time being they were her own.

  In an inlaid workbox she found a piece of half-finished petitpoint. The design was typically Spanish: the head and shoulders of a woman wearing a mantilla and combs against a background of pink-throated camellias. Hesitantly, almost reverently, Linda worked a little of the pattern, and she was delighted to discover that her own stitches did not shame her when compared with exquisite neatness of her aunt’s.

  She heard Anna in the kitchen and put the work away. Had the donkey cart moved off? she wondered. It would be easy to find out. She crossed to the door and walked down the path to the gate. And there she witnessed an edifying spectacle.

  A young man stood over the donkey cart, a lithe young god with thick black curly hair, a full white silk shirt and tighthipped black trousers. His profile was a miracle of regularity, his skin a fine dark olive, and his teeth flashed in a smile that would surely catch at any woman’s heart. He reached over the side of the cart and poked at the sleeping driver. There was no response. He used a little more force, with a similar result. His shoulders lifted and. he murmured something unintelligible. The next moment he had prodded the donkeys and got them to move. He laughed and stood back.

  “Adios, amigo,” he called to the jolting cart, and immediately swung around.

  “Should you have done that?” asked Linda, somewhat startled.

  The donkey cart, apparently, had already slipped from his mind as it had slipped from his vision. His glance clung, passed over her face and the soft brown hair, the slim, white-clad shoulders. It had a hot, embracing quality which brought precipitate color to her cheeks.

  “The Inglesa,” he murmured. “Sweet as a grape. I come to see you. I am almost your cousin, senorita. We shared that wicked Tia Natalia.”

  “Oh,” she said rather faintly. “So you’re Sebastian!”

  He couldn’t be more than twenty-eight, but his eyes had a world of experience in their depths; they also held laughter such as Linda had never before seen in a man’s eyes. One would have said he was among the favored, yet Aunt Natalie had not even mentioned him in her will. She opened the gate.

  He came on to the path and formally clicked his heels. “I am charmed to make your acquaintance, senorita. You are going to like me, yes?”

  “I hope so.”

  “You will see me every day,” he stated calmly, “and I shall make you fall in love with me.”

  “Now wait a minute,” she said nervously. “I’m glad to know you, of course, but I haven’t planned to fall in love during my holiday. Will you come in?” He really was handsome, this young Spaniard, and as he moved at her side and entered the house with her he had a way with him that, in spite of herself, she found new and exciting. Even in ordinary speech his voice was low and caressing, and it was really disconcerting to meet that bright dark gaze which seemed to say so much that his lips left unspoken. Against all the rules of her conservative upbringing, Linda liked him.

  In the sitting-room he raised his head and called, “Anna! I am here for lunch!”

  Linda had no time to remind him that he had not been invited, before the old woman poked her head round the door, beaming.

  “Claro! You are the man in this house, Don Sebastian!”

  He turned humorously to Linda. “She flatters me. I am the younger son and have empty pockets. And you, senorita—you are both beautiful and rich!”

  “Oh, no. Not beautiful, and certainly not rich. My father has a bookshop in England; it keeps us, but not in luxuries.”

  “But you have this house and a settlement to go with it. They tell me,” he did not specify who “they” might be, “that you will not accept this inheritance, but I cannot believe that.” He stood regarding her, his head on one side. “Just a little, you are like Tia Natalia. She, too, had the firm little English chin, the direct blue eyes.” Ruefully, he added, “I loved her very much but sometimes made her angry. She did not care f
or my friends.”

  Linda was sitting now, and enjoying this young man who was so utterly courteous and quite unafraid of her opinion. “Your girl friends?”

  He looked almost shocked. “What would my aunt know of such things? True, she was opposed to my father’s plan that I marry Juanita Romero, but so was I. Juanita had much money, but there are some things,” again the shrug and a merry half-wink, “which even money will not obliterate. Tia Natalia called her uneducated because she could not speak English.

  While he told her about some of the old families in Montelisa, Sebastian went to a cabinet which Linda had not yet dared to open, and took out a stone jar and glasses. He poured manzanilla which had come from his father’s wineshop, and assured her, with only half the truth, that it had no power to intoxicate. He sat down in a chair quite close to hers and rested upon her that brilliant glance.

  “You are staying with us for some weeks, verdad?”

  “A month, I think. I’m not sure.” It struck her that she had told Anna only this morning. “How did you know?” He gave her a knowledgeable smile. “One hears these things. Will it vex you if I visit you every day?”

  “But why should you?”

  He answered her with another question. “Has it not occurred to you as extraordinary that this Tia Natalia of ours should have cared for me very much but left her house and money to you?”

  “Yes. I wondered if she was perhaps furious with you at the time she made her will. Maybe she always meant to alter it.”

  He shook his head decisively. “Only a week before she died the senora and I talked about this. In appearance and ways I am as her husband was—Alonzo de Meriaga. You, pequena Linda, have as I have said a likeness to your aunt, and she knew it. She wished me to marry you.”

  “Good heavens!” said Linda soberly.

  “You see,” with the typical, nonchalant smile, “she was happily married—and she wanted the same for me, and for you.” A pause, and his voice altered, lowering a shade and becoming just slightly urgent. “Is it so impossible? I am not asking for your verdict, but I wish very much that you would think it over.”

  By now, what with the manzanilla, Sebastian’s overwhelmingly warm presence and his broad hint at a proposal, Linda was feeling rather subnormal. This kind of thing just didn’t happen. Half an hour ago she hadn’t even seen Sebastian de Meriaga, and here he was, ready to fall on one knee and declare his heart was hers!

  “It’s humiliating,” she declared crossly. “I wish Aunt Natalie hadn’t left me the beastly house.”

  He jumped up quickly. “But, no, senorita! You are not to be angry about it. I have known of you so long—since you were a chica of fifteen. So often you have been described to me. The honey-brown hair, the eyes which already make me foolish at the heart, the quick English voice. You English are so unmoved and unbelieving, but Tia Natalia was one of you. On her last visit to England when you were BO young, she decided this marriage for you and me. She would have brought you back then, and had us married when you were seventeen. Did you know that?”

  “I did not!”

  His laugh at her was charming. “You are lovely in anger and—may I say it?—you stir the pulses. The hot cheeks show you are shy, and shyness in a woman is adorable. But there was one thing Tia Natalia overlooked. Me, I have seen your photograph and been reminded of you constantly; I knew she intended to give you this house on certain conditions, because she wanted you to give your life to Spain as she did, and to live in Montelisa, where all our family are now settled.” With a certain pride, he continued, “She was sure that I would have no difficulty in loving you and persuading you to marry me. However,” Sebastian spread his hands, “she has had to leave you in ignorance of this little plot, or perhaps you might not have come to the villa even once! I understand, senorita. Much though I have restrained myself in this talk with you, I have been too hasty.”

  Linda wouldn’t have called his behavior restrained, but then she didn’t know him under other circumstances. With relief she saw that he had finished his drink and meant to leave the subject. Even though one or two questions popped into her mind, she was resolved not to reopen it. When Anna said lunch was ready she got up so quickly that her brain whirled.

  It was a happy little meal, obviously prepared to appeal to the masculine palate. It seemed that Anna had ideas, too. She shuffled in and out in espadrilles, smoothed her voluminous black frock as she listened, grinning, to Sebastian’s pleasantries, and when coffee was brought she quietly but ostentatiously closed the door after her. She had lived long enough with an Englishwoman to know that the English reserve is as dampening as a duenna.

  Sebastian was obviously a gay young man. That he had had his peccadilloes Linda didn’t doubt at all, but with her he meant to be correct. She must meet his parents and his brothers, he said, and perhaps she would go with a party to the corrida.

  “Oh, no!” she exclaimed in horror.

  He laughed gently; he always laughed. “What is wrong with the bullfight? In England you hunt your stag and your fox. And I have seen American films in which human beings fight each other unmercifully.”

  “Well, I don’t like those, either.”

  “Very well. No corrida. We shall dance and sing instead, and I will show you all you have missed in Barcelona. Too many English live on the Costa Brava without assimilating the spirit of the country. My aunt had many such friends, and they will come to see you.”

  Involuntarily, she asked, “Do you know the man who lives next door?”

  Sebastian looked at her quickly. “Yes, we have met. He buys his wine from our bodega. He is not like the tourists.

  Hi; speaks good Spanish and remembers all he hears. But I would say his work is dull, stuff!”

  Linda thought so, too, but for some reason it seemed effrontery in Sebastian to voice such an opinion. After all, he had admitted that all he did himself was to help in his father’s wine store occasionally. She found herself saying, “There aren’t half a dozen people in the world who could (Jo what he does. He’s terribly clever and quite famous.”

  “He is also arrogant as only the English can be arrogant. We of Spain have our nobility, our pride, our aristocracy, but we are not cold and contemptuous.”

  “You seem to know him rather well,” she said interestedly.

  “Myself,” replied Sebastian, drawing his lips together, “I know him hardly at all. But I was walking nearby when a young gitano was teasing a dog he had found on the plaza. This ... this Frensham set the dog free and actually threw the gipsy into the fountain!”

  Linda did not show her delight, but she said, “Did he get away with it?”

  “What could one do? He stalked off as if he were the overlord of Montelisa! No,” he ended, as if it were his considered judgment, “I do not like him. There is something uncomfortable about a man who will do such a thing as if it is in the course of duty, without speaking or even smiling.”

  Linda, however, felt the incident slightly humanized her tall neighbor. It didn’t actually make him any more likeable because she had known, instinctively, that that was the kind of man he was and she didn’t need an illustration to prove it. But it did demonstrate that he could emerge quite forcibly into the present-day world. The fact was, she supposed, that he had a certain amount of this Ancient Araby business to get through in a given time; he simply had to keep at it.

  At four o’clock Sebastian looked at his watch. “For a first visit I have been with you too long,” he said, bowing to her. “Perhaps you will allow me to present you to my mother tomorrow?”

  “Not tomorrow,” she said hastily. “Let’s leave it for a few days, until my friend arrives. Sebastian, is there such a thing as a taxi in Montelisa?”

  “No, but I will take you anywhere you wish to go. We have a family car.”

  She explained that in three days’ time Maxine Odell had to be met at the station in Barcelona. “I think,” Linda added tactfully, “she would prefer that I meet her alone.” He
took her hand between his and patted it reassuringly, while his eyes glinted boyishly. “I will take you and pretend to be a chauffeur. Do not argue. It is done!”

  When at last he had gone Linda felt quite spent. Her wrist was warm where his lips had pressed and the whole house seemed permeated by the aroma of the long, khaki-colored cigarettes he smoked. He was so alien, so overpoweringly polite and flattering that she couldn’t help a vague breathless excitement, even though part of her mind warned her that his very charm emanated from the knowledge that he was confident of getting his own way.

  Aunt Natalie, apparently, had loved him without being blind to his faults. She had known that with the villa in his possession he would have lived a riotous bachelor life and eventually been caught by some girl who tossed her curls a little higher than the rest. And she had wanted better than that for him.

  Which brought Linda to the queer intention behind the will of the old Senora de Meriaga. Sebastian, she was sure, had spoken the truth. Aunt Natalie did wish them to marry, and to that end she had reminded her nephew again and again of the existence of her niece in England. Because he was the product of a nation to whom the marriage of convenience appears desirable, Sebastian had eagerly agreed to please his aunt. Linda remembered reading somewhere that there is nothing the well-bred young Spaniard likes better than to have an agreeable marriage arranged for him; his passions will do the rest. She almost wished she had fallen in love with him at first sight!

  She turned towards the sounds made by Anna, moving about in the dining room. Lovingly, the servant was emptying Sebastian’s ashtray and collecting the couple of glasses he had used.

  “He has the grace of the conquistadores, has he not?” she murmured. “He is so much more brave and handsome than his brothers, who are married and settled at the bodega and in the vineyards. The old senora had no time for them, but for Don Sebastian she was always available. They were like mother and son, yet the young man has much affection also for his own mother. I tell him yesterday that he must come properly dressed, in a suit, but no, he says, the Inglesa will not expect a business man; and as usual he was right. There is no man like him in all Montelisa!”