Dancing in the Shadows (11 page)

Irrationally, stupidly and irrevocably the tender moment was lost to her because she didn't know how to hold it. Who but Dorcas would draw attention to the popularity of one man to another; who but Dorcas would turn the conversation in just this way?

‘Michael seems to be making a hit with the ladies.'

That look of boyish softness ebbed from Carlos's features leaving his face cardboard stiff. ‘So it would appear.'

Rose Ruiz and Feli had now joined Isabel and her mama and all four were hinged on Michael's every word. Carlos resentful of Michael's moment of social triumph? Carlos jealous? Could be. Bringing to mind what don Alfonso had said, Dorcas realized that Carlos was of an age to compete. And yet, looking at Carlos, Dorcas wouldn't have said he envied her brother's gregarious personality, but that he saw through it. She thought it would be nearer the mark to say that Carlos was a shrewder judge of character than the others.

* * *

Next
day, Feli, Jaime and Rosita left for home, after extracting a promise from Dorcas that she would not leave Spain without visiting them. The wording shocked her senses. Did they know she was mentally packing her suitcase, that she needed but the slightest push to send her on her way?

* * *

A house is all the quieter for having known a child. How sorely the
pequeña
was missed. Dorcas had not realized how fully Rosita had occupied both her hands and her thoughts until she went, leaving her mind free to worry about Michael again.

He went out most evenings and although Dorcas tossed out delicate enquiries, Michael maintained a mysterious silence about his activities. Although she fretted over this, she was not her brother's keeper and she was powerless to do anything. She only hoped that whoever was responsible for the gleam in her brother's eye was mature enough to know that Michael was a lot of a knave in his dealings with women. Thrilled and flattered the girl of the moment might be, but she could get ready to blow on her fingers. And consider herself lucky if she escaped with only a mild scorching!

One blessing, it seemed to have got through
to
Michael that she wanted nothing from the Ruizs beyond the hospitality they were so generously extending. All was blissfully silent on that subject.

One evening as they were all seated round the table—yet another occasion when the Rocas were dinner guests—don Enrique brought a special bottle of wine up from the cellar.

‘Today is by way of being a celebration,' he said.

Dorcas's unguarded eye flew from Isabel to Carlos. For an agonized moment she thought that Carlos might have spoken for Isabel and she wondered how she could possibly raise her glass to their future happiness.

The sparkling liquid was poured into crystal glasses with air and colour twist stems. Dorcas lifted hers, marvelling that she could act normally when the meaning was about to be snuffed from her life; when she was breaking up inside because her tenderest and most passionate feelings had been given to a man who had no use for them. She swallowed, and composed herself for the señor's announcement.

Surprisingly, his kindly eyes rested on her. ‘Dorcas has dispensed with the services of the physiotherapist who has been attending her. Perhaps as an old man I shouldn't notice such things, but today also, Dorcas discarded her long skirts and I have been happy to observe
that
her skin is not as terribly scarred as she once feared it might be. Isn't that worth drinking to?'

Giving Dorcas a boisterous wink, Michael said: ‘From the way she's been hiding her legs, you wouldn't think they'd stop a fella's eyes as dead as a duck full of buckshot.'

Dorcas gasped. It was a remark better fitted to a bawdry pub atmosphere than a genteel home setting.

‘A fella?' puzzled Isabel. ‘A man,
sí
? But stop his eyes as dead as what did you say? This I do not understand.'

‘What it means,' Carlos explained with a remarkably straight face, ‘is that Dorcas has got nice legs.'

Dorcas blushed. Relief mingled with her laughter. She was still wallowing in the rich feeling of reprieve because the señor had not announced his son's engagement to Isabel, when Michael swayed to his feet.

His eyes were as bright as those of a child's who is sitting on a tight secret. His mood was devil-may-care. Ebullient. With a sinking heart Dorcas realized he'd had more to drink than was good for him.

Lifting his glass with a flourish that was almost theatrical, he toasted: ‘My sister! The unappreciated light of my life. She may not have the brilliance of the sun, but she has the constancy of the moon. If ill-fortune had not struck, this quality would have carried her to
the
stardom she so coveted.'

Dorcas flung to her feet. ‘My brother has had too much to drink,' she claimed. ‘He doesn't know what he's saying.'

She tried to damp down her anger and frustration, but it was too late. Don Enrique was looking at her through puzzled eyes. Later he would sift. His immediate concern was to make his guests feel at ease and soothe the English girl his family owed so much to—perhaps more than he realized. He loved this child and could so easily slot her into the place of a second daughter.

‘You must not distress yourself,' he instructed Dorcas, reaching across the table to pat her hand.

Michael sat down, flushed, smiling, sending his sister a look of sharp mischief that heightened the colour in her cheeks.

This time the new protest forming in her throat was stemmed by Carlos's disconcerting gaze. She
knew
she had protested too much already. If she'd kept quiet, Michael's treachery might have been taken for drunken ramblings. Her vehemence had given his words meaning.

‘If you will excuse me, please, I would like to go to my room.' She spoke now with about as much force as a spent match.

It was Carlos who assisted her to the door, opened it for her and followed her out. His hand claimed her elbow and he steered her
away
from the stairs leading to the sanctuary of her room, and drew her towards the terrace.

The night air was cool, but his voice was warm and understanding.

‘It's all right. I'm not going to question you. I know.'

As Dorcas digested this, the only sound was a metallic rustling of leaves. It was a monochromatic setting. Light from the villa made patterns on the floor. Carlos's dinner jacket merged with the night. The shadows that stole the green from her dress and coloured it moonlight, etched his features in black and ivory relief.

The smile he gave her, so sweetly comforting and kindly intentioned, in peaceful harmony with the surroundings, was the one perfected by man down the centuries. Dorcas was too starched with pride to smile back.

‘What do you know?' she said stiffly, wishing she could let his gentleness and caring influence the mood, yet not being able to find one spark of response in her entire system.

‘I know that you were a dancer. That the injury to your leg finished your career.'

‘Michael was wrong. I couldn't have got to the top.'

‘Modestly and predictably answered.'

‘No. Honestly answered. I quit while I was in front. Just now when you said you knew, you did mean you knew before this evening?'

He seemed reluctant to answer that. A
secret
glimmered in his eye. Contemplation chose not to shadow it with a lie. ‘Yes. I've known quite a while.'

‘Michael had already told you? That exhibition just now was for nothing!'

‘Michael didn't tell me.'

‘No? Then who did?'

‘Don't you know?'

The concern in his eyes brought the tears rushing to hers. She gritted her teeth and said: ‘If I knew I wouldn't be asking.'

‘You told me yourself.'

‘Why don't I remember telling you?'

‘It was while you were in hospital.'

‘Ah . . .yes!'

‘Why do you say “Ah . . . yes!' in just that way?'

‘Because it has bothered me a lot. I've kept feeling there was something I should remember, but couldn't. There's a lot about my first week in hospital that I don't remember.'

‘What do you remember?'

‘The nearness of you. Nothing concrete. Impressions of things. Nice things. You held my hand. There were just the two of us in this small, shadowy world and . . .'

‘Go on.'

‘I can't. That's what always happens. The memory starts to come, but never does, and I'm left tantalizingly in the air.'

‘You said nothing to bring a blush to your
cheeks.'

‘May I be the judge of that?'

‘Your main concern was that we shouldn't feel guilty or indebted to you. After making sure that Feli and Rosita were all right, that was your first thought. It didn't seem to occur to you to ask if you were going to be all right. Your only thought of self was a certain preoccupation with the loss of a pair of ballet shoes. You were—are—so terribly prickly. So afraid that we might dare to want to reward you. Shame on you, Dorcas West! Did you really think we could use you and then cast you carelessly to one side?'

With heightening anxiety, Dorcas searched his gaze. Had she made a terrible mistake in thinking he was attracted to her? In his eyes did she see, flitting across the tender teasing, gratitude and pity? The two emotions she wanted none of!

Her thoughts made her angry. Her anger was directed against herself. Why couldn't she take it at face value? Why this insatiable need to probe? Carlos was right. She was prickly. And prone to suspicion. The voices in her head shouted louder than the voice in her heart which was telling her that no one who was only pretending affection could be so convincing. The very real danger was, if she didn't listen to that solitary small voice, if she continued to be suspicious of his every word and on guard when he demonstrated affection,
she
could well be throwing away something that was dear and precious for something that didn't exist.

‘I never said a proper thank you for your kindness to me while I was in hospital.' Her voice was husky.

He said, ‘I got more out of it than I gave.' Yet his lips did not move. His eyes said it for him.

How could anyone with her training—she had been taught expression through movement in Ballet School—doubt his sincerity? Ballet is a story told without words. ‘I love you', ‘I hate you', ‘Come', ‘Go', can be expressed with a flexed hand, the eyes, the stiffness or suppleness of the body.

Yet if Dorcas had never had a ballet lesson in her life, she would have understood the message his eyes were conveying.

‘Dorcas. A few days ago I told you I had to go away on a business trip. It has been brought forward. I have to go tomorrow. My reaction on being told was that I did not want to leave you at this particular moment. I thought the timing was bad. Now I think perhaps the timing is not so bad. My absence will give you time to reflect. When I return I am going to ask you a question. You know what that question is. Think about it while I am away. Have your answer prepared for when I return.'

CHAPTER SIX

Usually, Dorcas had no difficulty in getting her hair to go the way she wanted it. But this morning, when she particularly wanted to be early for breakfast, it refused to be combed into submission and took ten frustrating minutes before it went right. By the time she ventured downstairs, she had an idea that Carlos would have left on his business trip.

Certainly there was no sign of him as Rose Ruiz greeted her from the breakfast table. ‘Good morning, Dorcas. Did you sleep well?'

‘Good morning, señora. I should say I slept too well, judging by the clock.'

‘But that is good. Perhaps something has happened to make you feel more relaxed. I have my own theory on how to guarantee sound sleep.'

‘And what is that, señora?' Dorcas dutifully asked.

‘A clear conscience, child. Doing what I know in my heart is right, even though, as is often the case, it is not always the thing my heart would wish.'

‘Life can be exceedingly difficult,' Dorcas said, sighing in full agreement.

‘I think that is part of the pattern. Life is a testing ground. It sets up a series of problems and it is how we acquit ourselves that writes
the
final report.'

Blade-slim in her denim-blue sundress, Dorcas protectively clutched her midriff. She saw the breakfast setting, the white tablecloth, the coffee pot now being lifted in Rose Ruiz's capable hand; the dainty cup, appropriately patterned with a rose border, being handed to her. Another movement alerted her senses and drew her gaze beyond the sphere of breakfast rolls and preserves, to the sun-warmed stones of the terrace wall richly draped in its carelessly flung shawl of bougainvillaea. Or, more specifically, to the man standing there.

Aware of being under the microscope of Rose Ruiz's scrutiny, Dorcas modified her smile. ‘Hello, Carlos,' she told the approaching figure.

Rose Ruiz's chin swung round in surprise. ‘Carlos! What are you still doing here? I thought you'd gone.'

‘Without saying goodbye to you, Mother,' he reproved, a trifle disingenuously Dorcas thought.

Neither was Rose Ruiz taken in. ‘I should have known,' she said drily. Then with warmth: ‘Goodbye, Carlos. Take care.'

Straightening up from kissing his mother's delicately flushed cheek, Carlos revealed the true reason for his delayed departure. ‘Walk with me to the car, Dorcas. I want to talk to you.'

Dorcas got to her feet. The texture of her
composure
wasn't as smooth as she would have wished as she accompanied Carlos down the terrace steps.

Barely were they out of earshot when he said: ‘I should have left an hour ago, but I deliberately waited to see you. I thought you were never going to wake up.'

‘You should have sent someone to rouse me.'