The Flesh and the Devil (91 page)

        
'Your
uncle
!'
 
It was a ragged little gasp of distress mingled with scorn, and the
green eyes hardened slightly.

         
'My father's brother. Sir Gabriel Stanford. In England, as
in Spain, the eldest son inherits the most wealth; the younger ones little or
nothing. My father inherited nothing, but now it seems, I am passably rich.'

         
'You mean you are . . . you did not lie to him? I thought.
. .' Her hand went to her brow in a bewildered little gesture. 'You used that
name in Villenos, with Elena! It is not your real one!'

         
He started to speak, then checked himself; a telltale
muscle was jumping in his cheek as he spoke, but he said in a tightly
controlled voice, 'You must rate my intelligence low if
 
you think I would marry you under a false
name. You have no grounds there if you have been hoping to have it set aside by
those means. We are man and wife in all honesty, I have taken care for that.'

         
Juana's thoughts went back to that unreal marriage ceremony
in the convent near Valenzuela and remembered it as a mime play because she had
not heard a word that was spoken. She had only recognized his Christian name
amid the blur of Latin, and the memories it had evoked had made her tremble,
even before the priest. She said dazedly, inadequately,

         
'I did not know.'

         
'Even mercenaries tell the truth sometimes,' was the dry
response, but the demand did not fade from his eyes even though he spoke
lightly. 'It seems that my uncle's will merely told the lawyers that I had been
heard of in Spain, and gave them a year to find me; I think he hoped that his
daughter would have the estate if they had so little time, and I do not blame
him. The term of the search expired nearly four months since, but Senor Oliver
could not get a passage back to England because of the blockade – he said he told
you of that on the way here,' he added with a glimmer of irony.

         
Juana shook her head. 'I did not pay him any heed. He said
that he was searching for an English baron, and I did riot dream that it could
be you! He wanted to see you because you spoke his language, and because you
ought have had some news of his lost Englishman --'

         
'Not a baron,' he corrected, 'a baronet.'

         
She shrugged impatiently. 'Oh, what is the difference?'

         
'Very little - suffice it to say that in England I rank a
little above a servant and have wealth enough for any but a greedy man's needs,
have had it for a year and past. I had no need to marry a rich wife to make my
fortune,' he finished deliberately.

         
Juana winced as though he had struck her, turning away to
avoid the searching look in his eyes that seemed to pierce through all the
barriers she had painstakingly erected against him. Her lips trembling, she
managed to say, 'I see. So now you have no further use for me. I may stay here
if I will, then?'

         
He had risen, propping himself upright against the door so
as to favour his injured Leg, his outstretched hand resting on the bare wood
just above her shoulder. The power of his presence was so overwhelming that all
at once she was as paralysed as she had been at first, feeling tiny and
helpless, transfixed by his very nearness. Her breath coming unevenly, she
stared doggedly at the hand so close to her face; the long, strong fingers that
had always seemed so incongruously elegant for those of a man who was no more
than a servant, tapering and aristocratic against the dirty, unplaned wood. She
was almost choking with the need to scream at him, to strike him; anything that
would break thedominion that he was asserting as he stood unmoving and
apparently unmoved, watching her.

         
'I toldyou that your father would take you back if you
chose to go to him, yet instead you went to find the captain of the
San
Martin
 
when I could not, and
persuaded the lawyer to come back with you to talk to me.' There was a subtle
probe in every evenly-enunciated word. 'Will you tell me why?'

        
She shook her head mutely, shrinking back involuntarily as
he moved. Yet he did not touch her; instead he stood with his arms outspread in
an echo of his earlier pose, but this time she was pinned between his hands,
trapped against the door without his stir to hold her. She heard him make a
sound of what she thought was pure exasperation, and then he said harshly, 'Was
it because of this?' and wrenched her forward into his arms.

         
The anger in his voice did not prepare her for the almost
feverish desperation of his kiss, a blind, seeking ferocity that overbore every
message from her brain. Juana felt herself yield without volition, her lips parting
in answering hunger as he held her closer, locking her body to his in wordless,
hurting demand. For an instant she tried to say something against his mouth,
but it was only for an instant, and then her arms closed round him, her nails
digging into his back as if he were a rock and a tempest were threatening to
tear her from him. His response left her breathless.

         
Once she had been afraid of
 
being torn apart by his unleashed strength, but now she no longer cared
if she were.

         
His arms did not slacken as he lifted his head, but his
voice sounded feverishly taut; she could feel a frightening tension in every
sinew of his body, in the thunderous race of his blood and the beat of his
heart: still regular, still seemingly unhurried, it seemed to beat through her
with shattering, hammering force.

         
'I shall keep you with me for the same reason that you came
back.' She could hardly hear him, although his lips brushed hers as he spoke.
'God help us both if it was pity.'

         
'No.' She could say no more, and at that moment nothing
more needed to be said.

         
Later, aeons later when the long storm of passion had
abated and she lay against his shoulder while he stroked the tumbled hair back
from her face, Tristan said in a murmur made toneless by drowsiness,

         
'I thought that you would never learn to face me without
flinching when I made love to you, or —' his fingertips brushed her fluttering
lashes — 'without closing your eyes.'

         
Juana smiled dreamily. 'I learned long ago, I think, but at
first I was too afraid of you to understand it. Even when you said you wanted
me, you made it plain that "you despised me and all I stood for.'

         
'Indeed?' He sounded faintly quizzical. 'Yet your eyesight
was sharp enough to make you shrink from the very sight of my face. What made
you think I was so different from the rest who wanted you at sight? Even
Bartolome — and even Eugenio.'

         
'I did not shrink from you because of your face. It was
because. . . .' She spoke almost tentatively, testing the truth of each word as
she uttered,'. . . because you made me so uncertain of myself. I thought I
loved Jaime when I came to the castillo. I had braved my father to run away
with him and failed, yet when I saw you —' She shrugged, her slight shoulders
moving in his gesture. 'I was afraid of what you made me feel, and I hated you
for it, because it was more than what I wanted to feel for any man; more than I
knew I
should
 
feel for any man —'

         
'Let alone a servants,' he prompted dryly, and she nodded.

         
'Yes, there was that. And because you were part of the plot
to have me married to Bartolome, I told myself that what I felt was hatred. I
knew that when you first took me it was only to secure me for him, and - what I
felt -frightened me.' Her dark eyes searched his face; he was studying hers so
intently that he hardly seemed to have heard her words. 'Felipe, why did you-?'

         
To keep you there,' he answered almost absently. 'At first
I thought I could relish having a Duquesa for a mistress, but then when I found
I did not want to share you it was almost too late, and poor Bartolome paid the
price for my greed as much as his; I have no excuse for that.' A fleeting
bitterness touched his voice, and Juona asked stumblingly, clinging closer to
soften the question,

         
'Felipe, did you really only let Bartolome drown? Or did
you drown him?'

        
The heavy lids veiled his eyes, but his voice did not alter.
'On
my
 
oath, he fell and I let
him drown — though before God, if I had not known what he did to your little
blackamoor when he took her for you and known that his diseases would kill the
poor wretch more slowly and painfully than the wine, I might have rescued him
even then. Will you believe it?'

         
'Yes.' She gave a long sigh-'But when you told me that you
had no faith, I thought that no matter what you swore by, it
 
could never bind you because you did not
believe in the power of an oath.'

         
His fingers twined in her hair, tugging gently so that her
face was tilted to his. 'I have some honour,' he replied deliberately; 'enough
to keep an oath for the sake of others' faith in what I swear by — you took our
marriage vows more

         
lightly than I, when you broke yours and left me.'

         
She quivered with remembered pain. 'I had cause,' she said
softly.

         
At once his hold tightened, pressing her head into the
hollow of his shoulder, his voice insistent, compelling. 'Tell
 
me why you ran away, Juana.'

         
'I was so hurt by what you said to me that I did not dare
stay in case you should guess it; I was sure then that you had only
 
married me to humble me because I had abused
you. You never showed any feeling for me but contempt.'