Читать книгу Michelle Reid Collection - Michelle Reid - Страница 25

LEAVING Los Aminos behind, they began another twenty miles or so of driving before they would reach their destination. As the car ate up the miles so the scenery changed, from sprawling plains into rolling hills at first, then eventually into a more rugged terrain, where the hills took on the shape of forest-covered mountains.

The quality of the road they were travelling on changed also, narrowing to little more than a single car width as it wound them upwards on a steep climb that hugged a mountain face on one side and left sheer drops into deep ravines exposed on the other.

‘How much further?’ Caroline asked, beginning to feel as if they had been climbing for ever.

‘The next valley,’ Luiz replied. And his tension was back, in the clenched jawbone, the white-knuckled hands gripping the steering wheel.

He didn’t want to come here, she silently reiterated. He didn’t want to be this person who had to meet with people who were already programmed to hate and resent him.

And there was a hint of ill-omen in the way the air on the mountain suddenly turned colder, raising goosebumps on her arms she rubbed at with a small shiver.

Instantly Luiz touched a switch that changed the air conditioning from cold to warm. ‘You should have brought a sweater,’ he said.

‘If I’d known where we were coming, perhaps I might have thought of that myself,’ she smiled ruefully.

‘There’s a car rug on the back seat if you—’

‘I’m fine,’ she softly assured him, wishing she could say the same about Luiz. But he was far from fine, she observed worriedly. For the higher they climbed the more tense he became.

‘You could always make the grand gesture and pass everything over to your half-brother then just walk away,’ she gently suggested.

His dark head shook. ‘That isn’t an option,’ he stated.

‘Because you feel he owes you for the years you had nothing while he had everything?’ she posed.

‘Because it just isn’t an option,’ he repeated in a tight voice that warned her that she was prodding what was really a very dangerous animal, the way he was feeling right now.

On a sigh, she took the hint, and fell silent. They were driving between the tall peaks of two mountains now, still hugging the side of one while the other stood guard in the distance. And really, Caroline observed, if they didn’t reach the valley soon then the only place left for them to go would be off the side of the mountain, because surely they couldn’t climb any higher?

Then—without warning—it finally happened. They rounded a deep bend, suddenly found themselves driving through a split in the mountain—and there it was.

The most beautiful place Caroline had ever seen in her entire life.

‘Oh, Luiz,’ she breathed, while he seemed to freeze for a couple of taut seconds, before bringing the car to a stop.

After that they both sat there and just stared in breathless awe at what had opened up in front of them.

The Valle de los Angeles…It could not possibly be anything else, Caroline decided. And they’d caught it at probably one of its most perfect moments, with the late sun pouring fire down its lush green slopes to brush everything on the wide valley bottom with a touch of sheer magic.

Directly below them blushing white-painted buildings stood clustered around a tiny church sitting in the centre of the village square. From there, and running parallel with the valley, snaked a gentle stream with a narrow dirt road running beside it through line upon line of what looked like fruit trees planted in uniform rows.

And there, standing out like the place from which all fairytales were conceived, stood a white-walled, red-roofed castle, complete with battlements and cylindrical towers, and even a drawbridge beneath which the stream ran while the dirt road stopped in front of it.

‘This is perfection,’ Caroline whispered.

Luiz stiffened sharply, as if the sound of her voice had woken him from a daze. But he said not a word—not a single word. He just put the car into gear and set them moving again—with a whole new level of tension sizzling around him that kept Caroline’s tongue still.

Going down into the valley was not as hair-raising as it had been climbing up to it. Instead of teeth-tingling sheer drops on one side they were zigzagging down through a series of carefully cultivated terraces that spread out on either side of them. It was all so lush and green and obviously fertile that it was no surprise to find herself recognising just about every fruit-bearing shrub and plant imaginable growing here.

The road eventually brought them out in the valley bottom, just behind the village. Driving through the village itself was another experience entirely. People were out, strolling or just chatting to their neighbours, while dogs barked around the feet of playing children. It was like entering another world. Nothing about the place seemed quite real. Not the dark-eyed, dark-haired simply dressed people or their immaculate white homes with their brightly coloured painted doors and shutters.

And the sense of unreality deepened when everyone went still and stared as they drove by.

Oh, my, Caroline thought, they know who we are! Or at least, she amended that, they know who Luiz is. And she felt the hairs on the back of her neck began to tingle as she watched them stare curiously in through the sun-tinted car windows at Luiz’s stern dark profile.

‘Do I start referring to you as el conde now?’ she asked in a shaky attempt to lighten the tension.

‘Try the Vazquez bastard,’ Luiz gritted.

And that was the point when she began to lose her patience with him, because while Luiz was busy seeing himself as the Vazquez bastard, he was blinding himself to what these people were seeing when they looked at him.

They were seeing the lean, dark, arrogant profile of one of their own. They were seeing their own black silk hair and olive-tinted skin and dark brown eyes that stated, quite plainly, Here is one of us. Their expressions were not deriding or hostile, or even vaguely contemptuous, they were simply curious.

If anything, it was the glances she received that brought other forces to the fore. For what was she to these people? She was a pale-skinned, blonde-haired utter stranger, with eyes the colour of amethysts. Nothing even remotely familiar about the way she looked to them.

When the road opened up into the village square, with the sweet little church in its centre, the people all jumped to attention—except for one young man, who ran across the square then into the church. Mere seconds later, a priest in his simple black robes appeared in the opening. Very tall, very thin, and with a shock of white hair framing his lined face, he watched them pass by with a solemn shrewdness that made Caroline’s insides tingle.

‘Is this the church where we are expected to marry?’ she asked in a choked little voice.

‘Yes,’ Luiz replied.

‘Then don’t you think we should have stopped and at least passed the time of day with the priest?’ It was censure and anxiety rolled into one question, because she didn’t want to offend these people, and she was sure that once Luiz had got over whatever it was that was slowly killing him he wouldn’t want to think that he had offended anyone either.

Luiz shook his head. Not once did he let his eyes divert from the way ahead as he grimly kept them moving across the square and through the next gauntlet of curious spectators.

He didn’t even relax when they left the village and began to pass between the neatly tended fruit groves. Orange groves, lemon groves, peach and apricot groves. ‘How can a place like this be bankrupt?’ she questioned on a fresh bout of awe. It was all so rich in everything that life could offer.

‘Through the extravagances of its previous owners,’ Luiz informed her cynically.

He had to mean his own father. ‘Nobody owns something like this,’ Caroline objected. ‘They are merely guardians, whose responsibility it is to take care of it all during their term of office. And if they can’t see what an honour and a privilege that has to be, then they deserve to lose custody.’

‘Spoken like a true lady to the manor born,’ Luiz derided. ‘Maybe I should just cut my unworthy losses and sign it all over to you.’

‘And you can mock me all you like, el conde,’ she sniped right back, ‘But if you can’t grasp the concept of what I am saying then maybe you should do just that.’

‘Lecture over?’ Luiz clipped.

‘Yes,’ she sighed, wondering wearily why she bothered to take him on like this. The man was impervious to anything anyone said that didn’t suit his own view of things! ‘I’ve finished.’

‘Good,’ he murmured. ‘Because I think we’ve arrived, and I am beginning to feel like hell…’

As surprise admissions went, that one really managed to strike at the heart of her. She turned in her seat, saw how pale he had gone, saw how clenched his face muscles were and automatically looked where he was looking—and felt everything inside her shudder to a resounding halt.

For while they had been sniping at each other they had come to the end of the fruit groves and driven over the drawbridge, beneath a wide archway cut into the whitewashed wall that surrounded what she supposed must be the castle’s private enclave.

She had never, ever seen anything quite like it. From up on the mountain it had all looked pretty stunning, but from down here, on the valley bottom and this close up, the castle was nothing short of enchanting, with its whitewashed walls blushing in the dying sunlight.

It was all so outstandingly—dramatically—beautiful. Even the formally laid out gardens they were now passing through took the breath away. The driveway opened up into a wide cobbled courtyard with a statue of Neptune spouting water into a circular pool, guarding the huge arched entrance into the castle itself.

Luiz stopped the car. Without a word they climbed out, then just stood gazing around.

‘It’s a folly,’ Caroline murmured softly.

‘Hmm?’ Luiz’s dark head swung round to frown a blank look at her.

‘The castle,’ she explained. ‘It’s not what it appears to be.’

‘What makes you say that?’ He seemed to have a struggle to get his voice to work, but once he had spoken some of that awful strain eased from his face.

‘Look around you,’ she invited. ‘There is absolutely no reason for anyone to build a fortified castle down here in the valley. The mountains themselves are the only protection needed down here. If you’d wanted to protect what was yours, you would have built up there, where we came in through the pass in the mountain. This…’ she gave a nod of her head towards the castle ‘…was built to satisfy someone’s eccentric ego. A folly,’ she repeated, looking frontward again. ‘But a beautiful folly…’

And if his family were guilty of bankrupting themselves due to their personal extravagances, she added silently, then at least it had not been at the expense of their exquisite home.

Luiz’s home now, she extended, looking across the top of the car at this man who was such a complicated mix of so many different cultures that it was no wonder he kept most of his real self hidden—he probably didn’t know who he actually was himself!

‘We’re being watched,’ Luiz murmured.

‘Mmm,’ Caroline replied. ‘I know.’ She had felt the eyes piercing her flesh from behind leaded glass windows from the moment they climbed out of the car. ‘So, what do you want to do now?’ she asked. ‘Bang on the door and claim ownership? Or do we take the more civilised approach and wait until we are invited in?’

But even as she put the two lightly mocking suggestions to him the great door behind Neptune was drawing open. Her heart skipped a beat. On the other side of the car she heard Luiz’s feet scrape against gravel. Without thinking twice about it, she walked around the car and went to stand beside him.

As she did so a man appeared in the doorway, small, thin and quite old, his expressionless face giving no hint as to whether they were to be made welcome or simply grudgingly allowed to enter the castle’s hallowed inner sanctum.

‘It looks like it’s showtime,’ Caroline said softly.

‘Looks like it,’ Luiz agreed, and although he reached out to catch hold of her hand, as if he needed to feel her presence for moral support, she was relieved to see that the implacable Luiz Vazquez was back in place again and the other, tense and uncomfortable one had been firmly shut away.

Together they walked around the fountain and up to the door. With a slight bow of his dark head, the man murmured, ‘Welcome Señor—Señorita,’ with absolutely no inflexion in his voice whatsoever. ‘If you would kindly come this way?’

The man stepped to one side in an invitation for them to precede him inside, and as the door closed quietly behind them they found themselves standing in a vast hallway built of oak and stone, with an eight-foot-wide solid stone stairway as its main feature. The rough plastered walls were painted in a soft peach colour, adding warmth to what could quite easily appear coldly inhospitable.

Caroline felt her tummy muscles begin to flutter. Beside her, Luiz’s fingers tightened their grip on hers. He was used to big reception halls. He was used to standing in beautiful surroundings. But this was different. This was his past meeting head-on with his present. Even she, who had always known the place where her roots were planted, was acutely aware of how significant this moment must be for him.

Yet his voice was smooth and as calm as still water when he turned to speak to the old man. ‘And you are?’ he enquired, sounding every inch the noble Conde. Considering what she knew he was feeling inside, Caroline was proud of him.

‘Pedro, sir. I am the butler here,’ the old man replied—and there was respect in his tone. He for one wasn’t condemning Luiz for being the Vazquez bastard. ‘Please,’ he invited. ‘If you will follow me…’

He began leading them across a polished stone floor past two suits of armour that were guarding the stairs. There were artefacts scattered about this hall that made Caroline’s head whirl as it went into professional mode.

Maybe Luiz knew it. ‘Enough soul here for you?’ he questioned lazily.

‘Interesting,’ she shot back with a smile, then moved a little closer to his side when Pedro opened a pair of huge wooden doors and bowed them politely inside.

‘Señor Luiz Vazquez and Señorita Newbury,’ he announced, to whoever was waiting for them. And Caroline hadn’t missed the fact that the butler had not referred to Luiz as el conde once since they had arrived.

If Luiz noticed the omission, he didn’t show it. His expression was relaxed, his grip on Caroline’s hand secure, and his stride was as graceful as always as he strode into what turned out to be a beautifully appointed drawing room, with a huge stone fireplace that almost filled one wall—where a woman stood, awaiting their arrival.

Black-haired, black-eyed, slender and petite, she was wearing a silver grey silk suit that was as steely-looking as the expression she was wearing on her face as she stared directly at Luiz, while he stared coldly back.

For a long, dreadful moment after Pedro had quietly retired, closing the door behind him, nobody uttered a single word while these two main protagonists studied each other, and Caroline stood witnessing it happen without taking a single breath.

Then, ‘Welcome,’ the woman said. ‘Tı´a Consuela,’ Luiz replied stiltedly.

Caroline hid the urge to frown. Tı´a? she was thinking. Why was Luiz referring to this woman as his aunt? Surely if she was anything to him then she was some kind of stepmother?

‘You look like your father,’ the woman observed.

‘And you have a look of my mother—though you look in much better health than she did when I saw her last.’

Incisive, cold enough to freeze the blood, it was also a puzzle solved for Caroline. This woman was Luiz’s mother’s sister. It was no wonder his grip was suddenly biting into her fingers. What had gone on here thirty-odd years ago?

Feuds and fortunes, he’d said, she recalled suddenly. And she began to get a sense of what had probably happened, most of it revolving round two sisters, one man, and all of—this…

The slight hint of pallor had touched the other woman’s face. But her eyes did not waver. ‘Serena was a romantic fool, Luiz,’ she responded. ‘You will not make me feel guilty for picking up what she so stupidly trampled upon.’

At which point Caroline did actually wince, as her fingers were crushed almost to the bone. Fearing that Luiz was about to do something violent, she burst into speech. ‘Introduce me, Luiz,’ she prompted lightly.

For a second she thought he was going to ignore her, then he complied, tersely. ‘Caroline, this is my mother’s sister and my father’s widow, Consuela de Vazquez,’

‘Hello.’ She winged a bright smile across the room towards his stiff-faced aunt. ‘I’m so excited about coming here. The castle is so beautiful, isn’t it? But I don’t think it’s as old as it would like to be,’ she said, knowing she was babbling like a fluffy blonde idiot, but she didn’t care so long as she could overlay the cold hostility threading through the other two. ‘It wants to be eleventh century, but I would hazard a guess at only sixteenth century.’

‘Seventeenth,’ another voice intruded. ‘In a fit of pique, when his biggest rival for the hand of a certain lady won the lady’s heart because of the size of his home, our ancestor came home here to the valley and built himself his own impressive structure—then married the lady’s younger sister. History has a habit of repeating itself in this family—as you will soon learn, I predict.’

Caroline had frozen where she stood, the voice familiar enough to send her floundering in a sea of confusion as a tall, dark, very attractive man appeared from way down at the other end of the long drawing room.

He paused and smiled at her stunned expression, and—completely ignoring Luiz—went on in that same light, self-assured way which had repelled Caroline so much the first time she’d met him.

‘Felipe de Vazquez,’ he announced himself. ‘At your service, Miss Newbury.’ It was the man from the lift in Luiz’s hotel in Marbella. ‘We never did get around to introducing ourselves, did we?’ he added with a lazy smile.

‘Señor,’ she acknowledged. And it was only entrenched good manners that made her accept his outstretched hand.

His fingers closed around hers, cool and smooth and infinitely polite. ‘Felipe, please…’ he invited. ‘We are going to be related very soon, after all…’

Instinctively her other hand tightened in Luiz’s and she moved a small fraction closer to him.

It was strange in its own way, but as she found herself making comparisons between Luiz’s bone-crushing grip on one of her hands and his half-brother’s light clasp, on the other, she knew which grip she felt safer with. But then she was remembering the last time she’d met the man, and the suspicion she’d had then that if she’d tried to break away his grip would have tightened painfully—a sensation that was attacking her again right now.

‘Felipe,’ she acknowledged politely, and used the moment to slip her hand free and place it flat on Luiz’s chest. It was such an obvious declaration of intimacy that no one, not even Luiz, missed that fact. ‘Luiz, isn’t this a coincidence?’ She smiled, keeping her tone light with effort. ‘I met your half-brother in the hotel only the other evening, and had no idea he was related to you.’

‘Yes,’ Luiz drawled. ‘What a coincidence.’

It was too soft, too smooth, too lazy to be nice. She knew Luiz, knew the way he worked, the angrier he got the quieter he became.

Did Felipe recognise that? she wondered, when his dark eyes eventually moved to clash with his long lost halfbrother’s eyes. ‘So we meet at last.’ Felipe smiled ruefully.

At last? The words hit Caroline like a punch to her solar plexus. Because surely if she had first seen Felipe at the hotel then Luiz must have known he was there?

Obviously not, she concluded, when Luiz replied dryly, ‘Not before time, maybe.’

The atmosphere suddenly became very complicated as a confusion of rather unpredictable emotions went skittering around all three of them.

There was ice—a lot of ice. There was curiosity. There was mutual antagonism born from an instant burst of sibling rivalry where both men carefully judged the weight of the other.

She wasn’t sure which one of them actually came out on top in that short silent battle, but she certainly knew which one of them held the position of power—no matter what the mental outcome.

‘Welcome home, Luiz.’ With a slightly wry smile that told her Felipe was acknowledging the same thing, he conceded the higher ground to his half-brother. ‘May your next twenty years be more fortuitous than your first twenty…’

It was such an openly cruel thing to say that even his mother released a gasp. So did Caroline, her fingers curling tensely into Luiz’s shirt in sheer reflex, as if she was trying to soothe the savage beast before it leapt into action.

But Luiz, to everyone’s surprise, laughed. ‘Let’s certainly hope so,’ he agreed. ‘Or this place could be in deep trouble—as we all know.’

Tit for tat. Cut and thrust. Luiz had won that round. And he hadn’t finished, not by a long shot. ‘Which reminds me,’ he went on in the brisk cool voice of a true business tycoon, ‘I have a lot I need to get through here before our wedding takes place next week. So can we start with a tour of the place, before I settle down to some good old-fashioned household accounting…?’