Red Lotus (2 page)

, with a smile, "it is best to put it down to the climate you are forced to endure on your own island and leave it at that!"

Felicity smiled, aware of a lessening of tension now that the conversation had returned to a lighter vein yet still vaguely troubled by what appeared to have been an unfortunate reference to her cousin's death.

"You certainly can't complain about a lack of sunshine here," she observed, looking down on the sun-drenched sea as they circled the Isleta with its lighthouse standing up clear and white beneath them and the serrated coastline edged with the lacy foam of breaking waves. "Everything seems so warm and bright and so utterly, utterly peaceful!"

"The Fortunate Isles!" he acknowledged with the hint of reservation in his tone, a dryness which she had not quite expected in a man who had just confessed that he was coming home. "You will love or hate them in proportion to whether they are generous or unkind to you, but you will never be able to forget them. Of that I am sure."

Just as I will never be able to forget you, Felicity thought, because you have stamped your charm on this, our first, meeting. And surely we will meet again!

The suggestion had the sudden power to quicken her heart-beats, to send the colour into her cheeks and cover her with k momentary confusion. She was not easily impressed by people and certainly not too quickly overwhelmed by a surface charm, but this man's magnetism had held her from the start. He had an air about him that commanded attention, and fate, or circumstances, or whatever ordained these things, had drawn them together even before they would have met in the ordinary way.

She remembered suddenly that she did not know his name, but thrust the idea from her mind that the omission had been deliberate on his part. There was no real reason why he should trouble to introduce himself, except perhaps that her uncle and he were near neighbours. Which meant that they must inevitably meet again.

The plane was coming down to land. Beneath them, rows and rows of mountains encrusted the land, like deep wrinkles on an ancient face, and all along the shore and straggling up the hillsides behind the port gay red, green and saffron rooftops glittered beckoningly in the sun.

It was the sea, however, which still held the greatest fascination for Felicity as she sat back to fasten her seat-belt and wait for the moment of final impact. It was the bluest sea she had ever seen; a tranquil sea, undisturbed by the least hint of tempest, where dolphins played and flying fish skimmed endlessly, a sea over which it seemed a storm could never break.

When they stood up she realized for the first time how tall her companion was. He had to stoop his dark head as they went out to the gangway, and he turned immediately to help her down the steps.

The warmth and brightness of the sun met them like a benediction. It was February, and Felicity had left London shrouded in fog, with not even a suggestion of spring in the air, and at Madrid there had been nothing to be seen for rain. The high ridges of the Guadarrama had been entirely obscured and the plane had been guided out by radar, so that now they seemed to be in a different world.

"This is glorious!" she exclaimed. "I'm ill equipped, I'm afraid, for so much sunshine!"

He glanced down at her warm travelling coat and the neat suit beneath it.

"You will not need these again for a very long time," he smiled

Their progress across the airstrip towards the dazzlingly bright administrative buildings began to take on a small retinue of attendant officials, which immediately suggested that her companion might be someone of importance and a well-known traveller on Iberia Airlines. They were escorted beyond the sun into a dim, cool hall where the sunlight filtered through slatted shutters, and for a moment Felicity hesitated, blinking uncertainly in the green light before she could adjust her eyes to the change.

There were other travellers in the hall, but, since there was no customs barrier on the islands, there did not seem to be the same chaos among them as she had noticed at London and Madrid. People met here and chatted leisurely while they waited for their flight numbers to go up, some to hop from island to island on pleasure or business, others to cross the world or return to Spain, which was still the motherland. There was a great deal of talk and ready laughter. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, and it was not long before Felicity's companion was seen and

recognized. She saw him frown as a small man in a brown lounge suit and wide-brimmed hat came swiftly towards them.

The man spoke rapidly in Spanish; Felicity had been attempting to master the language ever since she had accepted her uncle's invitation, but she found it difficult to follow the swift flow of the present conversation. She was aware that her companion was far from pleased by the interruption, however, and would have swept the garrulous little man aside if it had not been for an inbred Spanish politeness which demanded patience and at least a show of courtesy. She heard the word "Marquesa" several times, rolled caressingly on the little man's tongue, as if it gave him incredible pleasure each time he uttered it, and she supposed that he must be talking about some titled acquaintance, someone, perhaps, with whom he had done business.

Felicity was quite sure now that he was a business man. His little black eyes shone when he mentioned "a settlement," and he seemed in no way taken aback when her companion suggested that they might continue their discussion in some more convenient place.

He glanced at Felicity for the first time, saw that she was English, and bowed.

"So many pardons!" he murmured awkwardly. "But the Marques and I have not met for some time—"

"Rafael!" a smooth voice said behind, them. "Can I extricate you from your embarrassment?"

A tall, beautifully-groomed girl was standing in the entrance to the hall, the bright glare of sunshine behind her. Everything about her was smooth and cool, from the shining, severely-parted hair beneath the shady hat-brim to the elegant shoes which encased her long, slim feet. Her dark eyes were keenly alert as they met Felicity's and ever so slightly amused.

"You have already done so, Elena." The frown had not yet left her companion's brow as he watched the little man in the brown suit move away to rejoin the noisy group he had left at the far side of the wide hall, and Felicity found herself wondering what had disturbed him so much. He seemed to hesitate, too, before he introduced the tall girl in the doorway. "May I present. the Senorita Elena

Cabenza de Navarro?" he said. "Elena, I would like you to meet Miss Felicity Stanmore."

"You are English?" The tall girl turned to Felicity with a frankly interested smile. "You have come perhaps for a holiday on Gran Canaria?" she suggested.

She appeared to have accepted the fact that Felicity and her companion were no more than casual acquaintances of the journey from Spain and looked amused by the situation rather than anything else. Felicity had liked her at first glance, but now she was not so sure. Senorita Elena Cabenza de Navarro suddenly made her think of a very elegant cat about to play with a slightly-uncertain mouse.

"I have come to stay for a while," she heard herself saying guardedly. "I am going on to Tenerife."

The dark eyes opened wide. They were almost black.

"But this is most interesting!" Elena Cabenza exclaimed with a sidelong glance at the frowning man by her side. "Are you taking Miss Stanmore home, Rafael?"

"Miss Stanmore is going to San Lozaro." His mouth was suddenly grim. "She is the niece of Robert Hallam."

A flicker of amazement crossed the dark eyes looking into his, and Elena turned back towards Felicity.

"How strange," she commented, "that you should meet Rafael on your journey to San Lozaro."

"Not at all," Rafael said dryly. "We merely flew out from Madrid on the same plane."

"A coincidence, nevertheless!" Elena favoured him with a strangely-mocking smile as she turned away. "Give my tenderest regards to dear Isabella, won't you, as soon as you get home?" she added.

Felicity felt strangely and inexplicably ill at ease. The encounter in the sunlit doorway had been brief, but in some odd sort of way it had tarnished the brightness of her first contact with the islands. The whole atmosphere of Grand Canary had seemed so happy and free from strife that even an imagined undercurrent of dissension seemed dark by contrast.

"Perhaps I should enquire about my connection for Tenerife," she suggested hurriedly. "I should not like to miss it, especially as I am being met."

"We have plenty of time," her companion told her

leisurely. "The plane from La Laguna is not yet in. You will allow me to find you something to eat?"

"I feel that I have taken up too much of your time already," Felicity said. "You may have other friends to meet."

"None that I care greatly about at the moment." The dark eyes were suddenly, intently on hers, willing her not to refuse the invitation. "It would give me great pleasure if you would allow me to help you. We have perhaps an hour to wait. These delays, I'm afraid, happen on the islands, much as they are to be deplored. Time does not mean so much here as it does in Europe."

She felt that he did not deplore this delay and flushed at the revelation, yet there was no reason why she should not accept his generously-offered hospitality.

"It's very kind of you," she said as he led the way across the hall to the glass doors of the restaurant.

"Now, perhaps, I ought to introduce myself," he suggested as they sat down at one of the smaller tables for two, where they would not be disturbed. "Since we are going to be neighbours, almost, that will be quite in order."

She felt that he was laughing at her now, gently, teasingly, aware of her reticence about speaking to a stranger and a Spaniard to boot. She took the card he offered her with a small smile at her own foolishness. Of course, there was nothing odd or secretive about him!

The card announced, in small black letters in a formal, businesslike way, that he was the Marques de Barrios and that he had an office on the Avenida Alfonso XIII in the central district of Santa Cruz.

More than a little surprised by the revelation, she sat looking down at the card, remembering the little man in the brown suit and his frequent references to the "Marquesa," remembering, too, Elena de Navarro's small, amused smile and her parting request to be remembered to "dear Isabella," who was evidently waiting on Tenerife for Rafael de Barrios' return. A sister, or a mother, or even a wife?

She looked up at the man sitting across the table from her and knew that Rafael de Barrios did not intend to enlighten her about his household at that moment.

"And now you must let me introduce you to Spanish

food," he suggested. "You will be eating quite a lot of it when you reach San Lozaro. Unless," he added quickly, "you mean to make drastic changes in the running of your uncle's household?"

Felicity shook her head.

"I haven't come with the intention of changing anything," she said. "I don't even know what my uncle expects me to do, apart from looking after the younger members of the family and perhaps teaching them something of the English way of life. I certainly don't mean to sweep everything before me, like the proverbial new broom!" she ended with a smile.

He smiled in return as he handed her the menu. "Perhaps that is just as well," he agreed, "when there

are other people, apart from your uncle, to consider." Felicity looked up from the printed sheet with a frank

question in her eyes.

"I'm afraid I know disgracefully little about San Lozaro," she confessed. "Who else is there to consider once I get there, Don Rafael?"

He looked surprised.

"I should have thought you would have heard of Philip Arnold," he said in a voice which could not quite conceal his dislike of the man.

"No," Felicity answered. "Should I have known about him? It is an English name."

"Mr. Arnold is very English. Shall we say almost aggressively so?" His smile was dry and curiously watchful. "I am surprised that you have not heard of him. He has been part of your uncle's establishment for many years."

"Uncle Robert did mention an agent," Felicity agreed. "Someone who has done a great deal of work on the plantations, but I imagined that he was a Spaniard."

Her companion's smile was openly cynical now.

"Who else could there be at San Low() but the Admirable Arnold?" he said. "No Spaniard would ever work as he has done—for so little return."

Once again Felicity felt uncomfortable under the direct regard of the dark, smiling eyes which seemed to reveal and yet to conceal so much. Don Rafael, Marques de Barrios, was at no great pains to hide the fact that he found her a most agreeable companion, but in the course of their conversation since he had discovered her identity

and her destination, she had become increasingly aware of secrecy, of a reserve that went deeper than the natural reticence between two strangers meeting casually, as they had done.

Yet surely there could be nothing personal about it, she decided, although she could feel it there, as a background, to everything they said and did. Elena Cabenza de Navarro's smile, half veiled, wholly cynical, had been part of it, and Don Rafael's own disinclination to continue the conversation with the little Guanche in the hall had added a furtiveness to it which she neither liked nor could reasonably understand.