Meeting in Madrid (19 page)

‘Cathy,’ he said, ‘is that you?’

‘Yes.’

She brushed against the floss-silk tree as she moved towards him, and a scatter of pale pink blossom fell at her feet. Jaime did not move. He stood looking down at her as if he were seeing her for the first time, with the wedding
mantilla
on her shoulders and the scatter of petals falling all about her, and for one blinding moment she thought that he was about to kiss her again. She could almost feel the touch of his lips on her mouth, but instead he put his hands gently on her shoulders, turning her to face the light.

‘Don’t take this too much to heart,’ he said. ‘Lucia did not mean to be unkind. Sometimes I think she is obsessed with material things, and the ruby meant a great deal to her. All the same, I will not permit her to repeat her accusations.’ His mouth hardened as he continued to look down into her distressed eyes. ‘She is not always discreet in the things she says, but soon we will clear up the mystery of the ruby. Ramon has gone in search of Manuel, although he has not yet found him. If he is the culprit he will be punished.’

A deep feeling of revulsion stirred in Catherine’s heart.

‘Poor Manuel,’ she found herself saying. ‘What will happen to him?’

Jaime stiffened.

‘If he is guilty he will not complain when he is justly punished.’

‘You’ll hand him over to the police?’

‘Not if we recover the ruby.’

‘I—suppose that’s fair enough.’

She knew that he would have his own way of dealing with the situation. It would be swift and effective, and it would break Manuel’s heart. He would be dismissed for ever from the place he loved, from the
hacienda
where he had, been born and worked for most of his life, and he would never be able to come back. He loved Soria and the Madrozas, who had been his family ever since he could remember.

Slowly Jaime let his hands fall from her shoulders.

‘You do not believe in a just retribution?’ he asked almost coldly. ‘But what other means have I to administer the estate? I depend on loyalty and honesty more than anything else. When my employees are dishonest they destroy themselves, and me. I have never met with it before in a servant.’

But once, long ago, the girl you loved proved disloyal, Catherine thought, and you have never been able to forget. Never in all these years! Slowly she slipped the
mantilla
from her shoulders.

‘I must take this up to Teresa. I left it at Orotava and Alex brought it back,’ she explained, remembering how the soft folds of the wedding
mantilla
had brushed against his cheek as they danced and how he had kissed her afterwards, a kiss she would remember for ever, one kiss which he had given lightly and had now forgotten. ‘What is
fiesta
without a kiss!’ he had said as he set her free.

Shaken by the memory, she watched as he ran the folds of the
mantilla
through his fingers.

‘It is Madroza history,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘All the Madroza brides have worn it for three generations, except Lucia. I believe she was married in Madrid in a fashionable hat.’ He passed the
mantilla
back to her as they reached the house. ‘I suppose it does belong to Teresa.’

Lucia and Alex were still talking in the
sal
o
n
and he went in to greet their unexpected guest while Catherine went slowly up the staircase in search of her pupil. Teresa would be glad to know that the
mantilla
was safely back at Soria.

She paused at the head of the stairs, wondering if Teresa had finished her self-appointed task of searching all the rooms for the missing jewel, but there was no sound anywhere on the upper floor. Teresa had either abandoned her search or had searched to no avail.

At the door of her own room she paused again, deciding to return the
mantilla
before she changed, but when she looked into Teresa’s room it was empty.

Carefully she spread the
mantilla
out on the bed, touching it gently for the last time before she turned away. One day another bride would wear it, possibly Teresa herself.

The door of her own room was not quite closed, blown open by the wind straying in through the long casement from the garden, and her hand was on the knob when she heard the first sobbing breath. Pushing the door wide, she went in to find Teresa lying full length on her bed, her face buried in the lace coverlet, her hand clenched on the fine lawn handkerchief she had used to stem the first flood of her tears.

‘Teresa, what’s happened?’ Catherine crossed swiftly to the bed. ‘Why are you crying? Can you tell me and can I do anything to help?’

There was no immediate response. Teresa stiffened where she lay, but she did not turn to look at her.

‘You can’t do anything,’ she muttered into the counterpane. ‘You can’t! Not now.’

‘Teresa!’ Catherine attempted to put her hands on her shoulders, easing her round. ‘Please look at me and tell me what you are trying to say.’

As if she were dragging herself from some deep pit of despair, Teresa sat up and turned towards her. Her face looked strangely distorted, her eyes swollen with tears.

‘Is it about the ruby?’ Catherine asked, her heart thumping in her breast.

For a, moment it seemed as if Teresa could not answer her. Her lips moved as if she might speak, but no words came, and then she looked quickly across the room, pointing with a trembling hand to the dressing-chest against the wall.

It was suddenly so still that they could hear the sound of voices from the
salon
below, and Catherine moved away from the bed. The second drawer of the dressing-chest had been pulled open. It was where she kept her underwear and for a moment she wondered why the fact should distress Teresa so much. And then, instinctively, she knew.

A whole lifetime seemed to pass as she crossed the polished floor, and then she was looking down into the open drawer at the ruby, lying like a spot of blood on the white garments she had folded away so carefully only a few days ago. It glittered like an evil eye, something so malevolent that she could not even touch it.

Teresa was still sitting on the bed, waiting, but Catherine could not bring herself to speak. A host of warring emotions were struggling in her heart—horror and pain and anguish, coupled with anger and, finally, despair. Whoever had hidden the ruby in her drawer was determined that she should be accused of theft with ample evidence to support the charge.

For a moment she could not believe that anyone at Soria would do such a thing, even Lucia, who disliked her so much, but the evidence of treachery was there before her eyes in the shape of the blood-red ruby lying in the drawer.

Slowly she turned to the crumpled figure on the bed, trying to clear her mind of everything but the simple facts.

‘Teresa, when did you find this?’ she asked in a voice which she hardly recognised as her own.

‘Half an hour ago. I had searched all the other rooms, you see.’ The misery in Teresa’s eyes deepened. ‘Say you didn’t do it,’ she begged. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you were sent away! You have made me happy here in so short a time. I could never face Soria as it was before you came.’

Catherine went to sit on the bed beside her.

‘You have every right to think me guilty,’ she said. ‘Do you?’

Teresa raised distressed eyes to hers.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe you would do such a thing. I think someone put it there to trap you so that Jaime would send you away at once. He would not be lenient if he thought you were a thief.’

‘I realise that.’

Catherine was remembering the words Jaime had used in the garden less than an hour ago. ‘I depend on loyalty and honesty more than anything else. When my employees are dishonest they destroy themselves, and me.’ He would be harsh in his judgment once that dishonesty was proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, and here in her bedroom lay the irrefutable proof. She could not look at the ruby again, lying there like a stain on the white garments, nor for a moment could she think what to do.

‘We must accuse Lucia,’ Teresa said coldly. ‘Of course it is her doing. She does not like you because she is jealous of you, just as she hated me from the beginning when she married my father. She did not want to have a daughter of my age, even a stepdaughter. You must realise how vain Lucia is. She knows that she is not beautiful and she wishes to dominate in other ways. Being indispensable to Jaime at Soria is one of them. If you had not been so young and pretty you could have stayed here for ever, for all Lucia cared.’

The unbridled hatred in the young voice was suddenly frightening.

‘Teresa,’ Catherine said slowly, ‘had you any hand in this? Did you perhaps find the, ruby elsewhere?’

Teresa jumped to her feet.

‘How could I do such a thing?’ she exclaimed. ‘I would not involve you to get my own back on Lucia, even if we could prove she did it. I love you, Cathy! I’ve always wanted someone like you to—to talk to and confide in. Yes, I hate Lucia, but it is because she made me despise her, always taking away the things that belonged to my mother and destroying them or shutting them in a cupboard out of sight. I
wanted
to love her at first, but it became impossible. It was Lucia who had me sent away to the convent so that she might have complete power here at the
hacienda
.’ She pressed the sodden handkerchief to her eyes. ‘When my father died she even tried to keep me away from his funeral. She told me I could pray better for his soul at the convent. But Jaime would not have it. He had become master at Soria and so I came home, as I wanted to do. But now it will all be changed. You will be sent away and I will be alone again.’

‘Alex is downstairs,’ Catherine said automatically. ‘She came to return your
mantilla,
which I’d left at the bungalow. I’ve put it on your bed.’

She seemed to be speaking in a dream where nothing was real and she was moving like an automaton. Teresa’s theory that Lucia had deliberately placed the ruby in the drawer, or had it put there by someone else, could be no more than conjecture, and how to prove it if she had was quite another matter. Of course, Lucia would refute the suggestion, pouring scorn on it in the cold, deliberate way she had, and Jaime would believe her.

Why not? She was his sister-in-law, a member of his family, and he had known her for a very long time. Far longer than he had known Catherine, yet to her it seemed a lifetime since she had stepped off the plane at Madrid and found him waiting there, the proud, detached Spaniard with the looks of a
conquistador
even in the conventional city suit he had worn.

She tried to thrust the memory away, but it would not go. It was all tangled up now with so many other memories and with the inevitable love which she could no longer deny.

A kind of desperation took hold of her as she looked back at Teresa.

‘What am I going to do?’ she cried. ‘I can’t let this happen to me!’

Teresa crossed to the dressing-chest to stare down at the ruby.

‘I don’t think I would ever want it after this,’ she said, ‘even though it did belong to my mother. Lucia has— tarnished it.’

She picked up the stone to lay it beneath the mirror where it winked back at them in glittering derision. Catherine put her hand out, suddenly able to touch it. Putting it into the pocket of her dress, she turned towards the door.

‘What are you going to do?’ Teresa asked excitedly.

‘I’m going to take it to Don Jaime. I’m going to prove to—everyone that I’m not a thief.’

Brave words, she had to admit, her throat choked with tears, but how to establish her innocence was quite another matter.

‘Come down when you’re ready,’ she said to Teresa, the calmness of desperation in her voice. ‘You’ll have to wash your face and tidy your hair. Lucia has invited Alex to
merietta.
They’ll be half-way through by now.’

The thought of hot drinking chocolate and sticky pastries nauseated her, but she would go through with the polite social ritual as much for Alex’s sake as for Jaime’s. She could not create a scene in front of a visitor, or the servants for that matter. She would go to Jaime when Alex had left and he was finally alone in his study going through the mail she had sorted for him that morning. The work they had done together would be over, too, she thought painfully. Everything would be at an end.

Alex was rising to go when she reached the
sal
o
n.
‘Come and see me soon,’ she said, searching Catherine’s pale face. ‘Very soon,’ she added beneath her breath as Lucia preceded her to the door.

Teresa was coming slowly down the stairs.

‘Where have you been?’ her stepmother demanded.

Teresa raised sullen eyes to hers.

‘Looking for the ruby,’ she answered, fixing her with a hostile stare.

But that was all. She did not say that she had found the missing jewel and Lucia did not ask.

Jaime went with Alex to her car and his sister-in-law turned towards the staircase.

‘You will have to ring for more chocolate,’ she told them. ‘It must be quite cold by now.’

‘Do you want anything to drink?’ Teresa asked, lifting the silver chocolate-jug with an unhappy look in her eyes. ‘I’ll ring for Sisa.’

‘Please don’t! I couldn’t eat anything.’ Catherine’s fingers had fastened over the gem in her pocket and it seemed to scorch her. ‘Order some for yourself.’

‘I’m not thirsty.’ Teresa paced restlessly about the room. ‘I wish Ramon would come home. There will be more rain—Teide is covered in cloud again. Manuel should be seeing to the irrigation, but Ramon will do it for him.’

‘Ramon has gone to look for Manuel,’ Catherine explained.