The Flesh and the Devil (6 page)

         
Dona Luisa nodded without lifting her gaze from her own
fingers, wreathed tightly round the base of the cup. Please God, she thought,
she would never know all the secrets that he kept from her - she knew too many
already for her peace - and let him never learn of the letter she had sent to
Madrid, without a signature, telling the Duque de Medina de las Torres that a
bride had been found for Valenzuela.

CHAPTER 2

         
Juana was alone as she entered the Duquesa' s apartments,
and for the first few moments that was all she cared about; if she had had to
endure Tia's censorious eyes and busy tongue for much longer, she thought, she
might have screamed aloud. But Dona Luisa, without seeming to take more than
half her attention from whatever it was that was preoccupying her thoughts, had
adroitly delivered Tia into the care of one of her ladies while she herself
retired.

         
Juana's hands went to her temples to ease the tightly
strained - back hair which was exacerbating a growing headache; the frame that
held her hair in these artificial ringlets felt like an iron bar across the top
of her head. She stood still, trying to order her confused thoughts. But when
she lifted her head her mind still felt blank and shocked. Too many impressions
had forced their way into her mind, and she felt as though she had been cast up
out of a buffeting sea on to a strange shore.

         
As she gazed about her, the high, shadowy spaces made her
feel dwarfed and insignificant, as she had felt when she had been confronted by
the red - headed man with the scarred face; her thoughts winced angrily away
from the unwanted memory as she set out to explore the Duquesa de Valenzuela' s
rooms. Her fingers traced the embossed flowers, gold and white, that ran in
ordered riot beneath the glaze of the tiled walls. The coolness here was almost
visible, a bluish haze that hung in the air; in every room there was a
desolation that told her these apartments had not been used for years. They had
tried to dispel the atmosphere by setting flowers everywhere, but the scented
white drifts looked like snow, fragile and transient; she half expected to find
the bedchamber hung with cobwebs, so powerful was the sense of emptiness.

         
On the threshold she paused, literally deprived of breath
by the luxury that met her eyes: hangings of crimson and gold and white, the
walls and celling painted in dazzling colours, one whole wall lined with
mirrors in which reflections swam as if through greenish water. She saw herself
staring palely from the doorway, as motionless as a doll in her blue gown.

         
The sound of hurrying footsteps made her turn, and a voice
said, 'Senorita!'

         
'Michaela! How do you come to be here?' Impulsively, Juana
hugged her maid. 'I did not know what had become of you when we left the
carriage.'

         
'I did not trust those men with your baggage, senorita, and
if I had it would not be unloaded yet! And I thought the Zuccaro men were lazy!
Have you done all your greetings?'

         
The Moorish girl's bright, inquisitive eyes held a shadow
of anxiety.

         
'Not all of them. I am not permitted yet to see the Duque
himself — it seems he is prostrate with joy at the thought of seeing me and
will not rise from his bed until tomorrow. They say that I may see him then.

         
'That is all to the good, then, is it not? No need to rush
upon trouble.'

         
Juana smiled reluctantly. Michaela was shrewd and
realistic, and would never spend time in lamenting what could not be altered.
In Juana's place, she would probably salve the loss of the man she loved by
beginning the search for another man she could love as well as the last. She
had been her maid since Juana was eight, when Miguel had bought the scrawny
ten-year-old from her foster - lamer, who ran a travelling fair. His compassion
had been excited by the idea of rescuing the little Moor from a life of
inevitable depravity, and Michaela had never bothered to tell him that his
noble gesture had come several months too late. She had forgotten more about
the squalid side of life than her little mistress had ever known, and now she
was partly amused, partly irritated to see Juana taking the little matter of a
husband so seriously. Juana stood to gain what Michaela valued much more —
wealth and pretty clothes, and the freedom of a married woman instead of the
almost nunlike seclusion of a spinster — and if she found that she disliked her
husband, a lover would be easy enough to find. It irked her that Juana should
have considered sacrificing so fine a prospect for both of them simply because
of Senor Jaime and his handsome face. The gentle courtesy that fascinated Juana
struck Michaela as boring.

         
'Every hour lost makes my position weaker. I meant to see
him at once, explain to him — I might have got leave to go home again before my
luggage was even unloaded! Now — ' Juana bit her lip.

         
'Now, senorita, you must not be too hasty. It is unfair to
condemn a man you have not seen. He may be as handsome as Senor Jaime, for all
you know.'

         
Juana's lip curled. 'If that were so, he would have been
married long ago. And that is another thing — why is he a bachelor so late? My
father was content to think it was because he is sickly, but so are the King's
own children. The Infante was betrothed in the same year that he died, was he
not? And he was not fifteen.'

         
'And his bride made haste to marry his father,' Michaela
concluded cynically, 'and became Queen of Spain even though she could not have
a young husband. You should learn from her, senorita; she is a wise woman.'

         
'You talk like Senor de Castaneda. Do they think I shall
change my mind if they keep me waiting long enough, and give me toys to divert
me? Look at this place! Are they trying to get a show of consent by lodging me
here?'

         
'Senorita, be calm.' A spark of genuine worry lit
Michaela's eyes. 'You have not had any real sleep since we left Navarre — I
know, I have heard you weeping, but it will do no good to grieve! Even if you
were to be at home this minute, Senor Jaime would be lost to you. You swore
that you would never trust him or any man when he failed you, remember. So why
not accept this fine marriage with the Duque? You will torment yourself to
death else.'

         
'Could you take a husband, loving someone else? Even though
he loved you less than you loved him?'

         
Michaela was briefly silent, then she shrugged. 'My kind of
love is not so pure as yours, senorita. I love as long as I take pleasure in it
— after that, I love someone else. It is natural.'

         
Juana went white. 'Are you saying that Jaime — that Senor
Jaime fell in love with someone else?'

         
'No — ' the maid's gaze shifted — 'only that you should not
think too much of what is past. Senor Jaime loved you, everyone knew that, but
it takes a brave man to steal his bride and defy the whole world in marrying
her.'

         
'Yes, I cannot blame him for that.' Juana's tone was
bitter. 'I know I should not have asked it of him, but how else was I to
prevent . . . all this?' She gestured jerkily around her. 'I was so sure he
would come — I waited all night, and in the morning my father came and found me
in the garden.' She shivered. 'If only he had not made me tell him the truth,
and then told Senor de Castaneda, I think I could have endured even that.'

         
'He told
him
?' Michaela sounded startled.
'Everything?'

         
'Everything of consequence — that I would have run away
rather than marry his precious nephew, and failed before the attempt began; but
if there were anything else, he would delight in taunting me with that, too.
But nothing he can say will force me to marry his nephew against my will — I
had rather end my days as a nun,' she finished stormily.

         
Michaela shrugged and was silent, recognizing the signs of
her mistress's unpredictable temper with a pang of surprise. For the past three
days Juana had been haughtily silent, frozen by grief into an unnatural
composure that had been far more worrying than any tantrum; now, it seemed, the
numbness of shock was fading. She set about soothing her mistress, as she had
in times of disaster since Juana was a child, knowing that this, like the lime
three years ago when Senora de Atrelanos had died, was no tine to try to laugh
away her grief. Working gently, she unlaced Juana's gown and released her from
her hampering petticoats, unpinned her long black hair and removed the frame.

         
A long sigh escaped Juana as she huddled her slim body into
the softness of a silk robe. Her flesh felt bruised from the unyielding
stiffness of the stomacher, the sheer weight of the gown that she had worn for
so many hours in the sweltering confines of the carriage. As Michaela started
to sponge the stickiness from her skin with cool water — not so soft as the
water of the streams in Navarre

         
— her brain began to relax, her thoughts at first slowing,
then ceasing their frantic circling.

         
Michaela took up a brush and began to smooth her mistress's
thickly curling, blue-black mane. Its lack of smoothness was a constant
irritation to Dona Beatriz, and normally the curls would have been heavily
oiled and combed to demure sleekness, but this morning de Castaneda had
demanded such an early start that there had not been time. The gentle brushing
was indescribably soothing, and after a little Juana's eyelids fluttered and
fell, and some of the tenseness went from her.