Dancing in the Shadows (7 page)

‘Why are you not eating?' He spoke like a father addressing a much-loved but tiresome daughter. His eyes were kindly and concerned.

‘I am not hungry.' Dorcas looked squarely at him. She thought she had never liked anyone more, except of course, Carlos. To please him she would eat up every spoonful of her dessert. But oh! how pleased she would be when the meal was over and she could go to her room. She needed to come to terms with
her
thoughts.

The level of the wine carafe was considerably lower; the coffee cups were empty. At last she could say: ‘I am rather tired. Will you excuse me, please?'

Enrique Ruiz smiled, and once again his smile was almost a hug. ‘
Yes
,
niña
. Your eyes grow small in your head. Goodnight. Sleep well, my dear.'

‘Shall I come with you?' said Rose Ruiz.

It didn't seem an odd notion for the señora to accompany her to her room and perhaps tuck her in bed. Nevertheless, Dorcas said in a sleepy voice: ‘Please do not trouble. I can find my own way.'

‘As you wish. Goodnight, Dorcas.'

‘Goodnight señora, señor.' Before she could add his name, Carlos had risen from his chair and his hand was supporting her elbow.

‘I will see you to your room.'

The moment they were on the other side of the dining-room door, he said: ‘Even as tired as you are, a breath of air will prove beneficial before you turn in. Come out into the garden for just a little while.'

There was an element of self-punishment in saying yes, but Dorcas did not have the will to turn down the invitation.

In the blue-mink sky, every star had come out of hiding. She stroked her bare arms and said, because she felt the need to fill the dangerous silence with meaningless chatter,
‘How
delicious to feel so warm so late in the evening. At home I would have had to cover up my arms, muffle up even.'

Carlos's eyes regarded her indulgently. ‘Chatter if you like. If it makes you feel less nervous of me.'

‘Why should I feel nervous of you?'

‘Oh Dorcas, that look. You put your head on one side. So. It looks very chic and provocative, but it's not that at all. You do it when you are uncertain, not quite in command of the situation. I am beginning to understand you a little. I thought that endearing naivety was deliberately contrived. Only it isn't, is it Dorcas?'

‘Since you know it all . . .' She was going to say, ‘there is little more I can add, and as I really am tired, I'll say goodnight.'

Carlos's: ‘I know what you are going to say,' cut her off.

‘Then please tell me.'

‘You can hardly keep your eyes open. You want to go to your bed and sleep for a week.' The stiffening of her body told him that in essence he'd got it right. ‘Do you always run away from things that—' Slight pause—‘perplex you?'

Run away? Did she? Because she lacked the courage to follow up her impulses.

‘Why are you so jumpy? Is it me, or are you always like this when you are alone with a man? We aren't all alike, you know.'

‘What's
that supposed to mean?'

‘It means I can't make up my mind about you. You've either had a disastrous experience . . . or no experience at all.'

‘I'm not going to challenge you to guess which,' she said huskily.

‘See what I mean? That's either a provocative response, or a naive one.'

He put his hand up and combed his fingers through his hair in a sort of reflex action that accentuated his puzzlement and made him look oddly vulnerable. She knew an overriding impulse to raise her own hand and allow it to follow the course his had taken.

And then she wasn't thinking it, she was in the process of doing it. His hand was there to ambush hers, trapping her fingers against his cheek as he eased her forward. Not to kiss her; to hold her. It was a nursery embrace, tender as any he could have given his tiny niece. Yet little Rosita's spine would not have tingled at the encounter. Rosita might have felt safe and warm though, and let her head drop . . . just so . . . against his broad chest.

‘You're not playing this one fair.'

He didn't need to tell her that. Even as he held her so lightly, she could sense his inner struggle not to crush her close. It was delicious to feel safe in his arms—knowing she wasn't.

In bed, just before sleep put in its drowsy claim, her mind drifted on bitter-sweet thought. It was this sort of madness Rose Ruiz,
so
kindly intentioned, had warned her off. There was no permanent place in Carlos's life for her. She was risking her heart for his temporary amusement. Perhaps this new dalliance would make him resist the pressures for a while longer, but in the end the interests of the family business would come first and Carlos would accept his . . . the word that boomeranged to mind mocked her . . . fate.

The days passed, one melting sweetly into the next, without turning up any event of great significance. To her surprise, Dorcas found she had made a friend in Rose Ruiz. Although she often looked at her with tucks in her forehead, on the whole she seemed glad of the company Dorcas provided.

The dressing was removed from her leg. A physiotherapist was engaged and Dorcas dutifully did the exercises she was given. She made certain that she only went in the swimming pool when she was confident of not being seen. She was conscious of the ugliness of the scar, which seemed to be taking its time in fading. For this reason she never wore shorts or short skirts, but settled for jeans and sun-tops during the day, and every evening she blessed fashion for long skirts and trouser suits.

One lunchtime as Dorcas was enjoying her garlic flavoured, fried baby eels seasoned with hot peppers, Rose Ruiz announced without warning: ‘The Rocas are dining with us this
evening.'

The hotness searing her throat was because of the peppers, Dorcas told herself. She was glad she was going to meet Isabel Roca, if only to appease her morbid curiosity!

She dressed for the event with a chill, premonitory excitement, selecting her prettiest dress, a fine silky lawn in an ethereal shade of green. The beauty of the dress was in the generously full sleeves, caught in lavishly embroidered wristbands. The fragile green of the dress enhanced her hair to a silken fairness, but it stole the colour from her cheeks. Perhaps it was not a good choice at that. It made her look younger and more vulnerable than her twenty-two years.

A knock sounded on her door and in answer to her: ‘
Adelante
,' the man who was never far from her thoughts entered her room.

She was startled. She had thought it would be Teresa or one of the other maids. It was the first time Carlos had been to her room. In a strict Spanish household, it was slightly improper.

‘I've come to fetch you. Are you ready?'

‘Almost. Will I do?' she asked impulsively.

He smiled at her need to ask for his assurance. ‘You look charming.' Simply said with sincerity. More touching than the most extravagant compliment. ‘Although—a little pale.'

‘I have still to colour my lips.'

She
picked up her lipstick, but before she could apply it to her mouth, he planted a kiss there.

‘That was a very arrogant thing to do,' she protested.

‘I am an arrogant Spaniard. You, in keeping with most English women, are not naturally subservient, but I will make allowances. Ah . . . the effect is achieved. But I will never know whether it was my kiss, or temper that has brought the colour to your cheeks.'

Dorcas could not think of a thing to say to that.

‘Come.' He propelled her by the arm. ‘Let us go. Our guests will be arriving at any moment and it will be discourteous if we are not with my parents to greet them.'

They walked down the stairs. From their baroque frames, the long-dead Ruizs looked down on Dorcas, their painted features impervious to the state of her mind. Not so the man at her side. Carlos knew, not only how to, but that he had tied her emotions in knots. The effects of this most recent emotional skirmish with him coalesced with her anticipatory dread at meeting Isabel Roca.

‘You look like a little girl in mortal trepidation of her first grown-up party,' Carlos said perceptively.

‘I wish you hadn't said that. I was hoping it didn't show. I wore green then.'

‘When?'

‘At
my first grown-up party. I can remember it all so clearly. I wouldn't let go of my brother Michael's hand. He became very annoyed.'

‘I would have found your shyness rather touching.'

‘Not if you were several years older and didn't want a small nuisance around, upsetting your plans and cramping your style.'

‘I am several years older.' He stopped walking and automatically so did she. ‘You
are
a small nuisance and you
have
upset my plans. As for the other . . .'

She wondered if he knew what ‘cramping the style' meant.

Once again he demonstrated that uncanny and disturbing quality to read her mind. ‘My mother is English. Had you forgotten? I have visited England, staying with my English relatives, often enough to have picked up the idiom. And so I repeat, as for the other, that too. You have most decidedly cramped my style. In all fairness, perhaps not you, but the circumstances of your enforced stay. You have not fully recovered from your ordeal. Not only did your leg sustain injuries, but your emotions have been badly shaken up. It does not help that you are alone, in a strange country. All these things combine to create a false picture. Propinquity, gratitude, both have chameleon qualities that are all too easy to mistake. It will be better when you are not so alone, when your brother arrives.'

‘M-my
brother?' Dorcas, who had never stuttered in her life, did so now. ‘Michael's on holiday s-somewhere in France. Why should he come here?' Nothing he could have said could have deflated her more.

‘Why do you look so surprised? You know we are trying to locate your brother.'

‘I thought you'd given up. Obviously he isn't proving easy to find and . . .'

‘You must think I give up very easily.' His tone was both remonstrative and teasing, and of the two it was the latter which disturbed her most.

‘It's not that at all. I wasn't questioning your persistency. I'm quite sure that whatever you set your mind to is accomplished with . . .' Her voice finished on a high, incomplete note.

‘Ruthless determination?' he suggested, supplying a possible ending. ‘Or would “by fair means or foul” be more what you had in mind?'

‘No it would not,' she replied with spirit. ‘I don't hold such a low opinion of you.'

His breath released slowly. ‘I'm pleased to hear it,' he said on a bland smile.

Dorcas wished she had something to smile about. She hoped Carlos never managed to trace her brother. She didn't want Michael here.

CHAPTER FOUR

They had lingered too long. The Señores
de
Roca had already arrived by the time Dorcas and Carlos stepped down into the hall.

Dorcas was barely aware of the grey-haired
caballero
and his comely spouse. This, even though her eyes had to skip past them to reach Isabel who was being warmly greeted by Rose Ruiz. All her impatience achieved was a second glimpse of Isabel's back. As if her memory needed refreshing of that impossibly tiny waist and tightly drawn-back, black hair. Rose Ruiz's watchful eyes met Dorcas's over the top of Isabel's head. Dorcas hadn't realized how tiny Isabel was. She was like a doll.

And then Isabel was swinging away and approaching Carlos in a rustle of stiff crimson silk. She held up a pale, untouched-by-the-sun cheek for his kiss. Not coquettishly, but with the warmth that exists between friends of long-standing.

She turned, slowly. And Dorcas braced up to looking at the most beautiful girl she had ever seen. Her long lashed, black eyes and doll features could take the severe hairstyle; the delicate china complexion looked good above the crimson silk that scooped and contoured her body in the most dramatic way. Dorcas's
throat
lumped. She couldn't think what Carlos was waiting for. Why didn't he pick Isabel up and rush her to the altar before someone else did?

‘So you are Dorcas,' Isabel said, tilting her chin and letting the delight and pleasure flow freely from the bright sincerity of her eyes. She was, apparently, as sweet as she looked. ‘I've heard so much about you. And yet you are not at all as I expected.'

Dorcas could have returned that compliment—because it was said in a complimentary sense—neither was Isabel as she expected, despite Rose Ruiz's cautionary words.

‘I thought you would be—oh, I don't know—hard and sophisticated. It is not enough to travel on your own, which shows much enterprise, but to have the nerve to do what you did for Feli and Rosita. You risked your own life! I'm quite in awe of you. I should have gone to pieces.'

‘You wouldn't,' Dorcas said generously. ‘In similar circumstances, you would have done just the same. It was an intuitive reaction. A lucky one too. I'm not brave, and I rarely jump the right way.'

Rose Ruiz entered the conversation. ‘Dorcas is a modest heroine.' Her voice was warm with pride. ‘Later, you two girls can talk all you want to. Right now, Isabel, I want to introduce Dorcas to your mama and papa. As
you
know, Dorcas, don Alfonso and doña Maria are the dearest of all our friends.'

Don Alfonso was very correct, very Spanish in his bearing, but not in a way that Dorcas found intimidating. The timidity she always felt when meeting a new face melted under his kindly influence. He spoke to her in English and Dorcas returned the compliment by trying out her Spanish on him. When she said: ‘
Encantada
,' she truly meant that she was delighted to meet him.

His señora, her dark eyes reflecting his like a second thought, was dressed in the sombre drama of the unrelieved black which Latin ladies of her age group still favoured. It was too harsh for her. Dorcas couldn't help thinking that a less severe silver grey would have been a kinder choice.