Meeting in Madrid Read online

  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 salon. ‘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.

  Teresa’s eyes sharpened. ‘I do not think he will find him,’ she said. ‘Not if Lucia has sent him away. That would be the end as far as Manuel was concerned.’

  Catherine heard the car door slam and the sound of the engine as Alex drove away, and in the ensuing silence she felt very much alone. ‘Come and see me soon,’ Alex had said, as if she already knew there was trouble in the air.

  Jaime came slowly back along the terrace, entering the hall by the patio door, but he did not cross to the salon where they were waiting. Instead, he went straight to the study, closing the door firmly against intrusion.

  Catherine hesitated only for a fraction of a second while the ruby seemed to burn its way through her flesh.

  ‘Will you go now?’ Teresa asked.

  She nodded, crossing the polished floor with a deliberation she found difficult to sustain as she knocked on the study door.

  ‘Adelante!’

  She paused to draw breath before she turned the painted knob and went in.

/>   Jaime was seated at his desk with the neat piles of letters set out before him, ready to begin an evening’s work which would last till the dinner gong sounded at ten o’clock. He looked up in vague surprise at her approach.

  ‘Ah, Cathy!’ he said. ‘Thank you for tidying up in here. It is twice as easy to get to grips with everything now.’

  She stood looking at him, stunned by what she had to say, although she knew that it must be said quickly. Withdrawing her hand from her pocket, she placed the ruby on the desk between them.

  ‘I didn’t take it,’ she said, ‘but you’re not going to believe me.’

  He looked at the ruby as if he had never seen it before.

  ‘I didn’t take it,’ she repeated, thinking how futile her protestation must sound.

  He took a long time to answer.

  ‘Do you know who did?’ he asked carefully, at last, his tone coldly impersonal as he looked back into her distressed eyes.

  Catherine hesitated.

  ‘I don’t know for certain.’

  ‘But you suspect someone? Someone in my household, perhaps?’

  ‘Oh, Jaime!’ She felt all her defences crumbling before his proud concern for his family name. ‘I’m not accusing anyone because I have no proof. I came to give you back the ruby and to tell you that I was innocent. I hoped you would believe me, but—now I see how impossible that is. Everything points to my guilt, you see. Teresa found the ruby in one of the drawers of my dressing-chest. I don’t know how it got there—I didn’t steal it—but the fact remains that it was discovered in my room. That’s all you have to go on, isn’t it?’ she rushed on. The evidence of my guilt!’

  ‘Not quite.’ He rose slowly to his feet, coming round the edge of the desk to stand beside her and seeming to tower over her in his superior height. ‘I do not intend to judge you until I have gone into this more carefully. Blame or proof, how can we consider them impartially when so much emotion is involved?’

  The little pulse beating at his temple suggested that he might be keeping powerful emotions in check with considerable difficulty, and she could not blame him for being angry.

  ‘When did Teresa find the ruby?’ he asked.

  ‘About an hour ago.’

  ‘While you were out with Alex?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And you had no idea it was there, in your drawer?’

  ‘None whatever. I give you my word.’

  Did it really matter, she wondered, when all the evidence was stacked against her?

  A small, thin smile touched his lips.

  ‘I know how you must feel,’ she said. This is a dreadful thing to happen, but I must defend myself. If you thought me a thief—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I couldn’t stay here. In any case, I must go away.’

  ‘Not so fast,’ he said. ‘I will make the decisions. You must stay at Soria till we discover the truth.’

  ‘Surely now that you have the ruby it doesn’t matter very much, unless—unless you want to punish me for something I haven’t done.’

  He laughed abruptly.

  ‘You have an odd way of putting things, Cathy,’ he said. ‘I will punish the offender, of course, but until we know exactly who it is I wish you to remain here. There must be no scandal now that the ruby is safely returned, and you will help to present it by staying where you are and continuing to instruct Teresa.’

  ‘But that will be impossible!’ she cried. ‘How could I pretend that everything was the same? Teresa knows, although she still believes in me because we’ve become friends, and soon Dona Lucia will find out when you return the ruby to her.’

  He turned his back on her for a moment.

  ‘I want you to make me a promise,’ he said almost harshly.

  ‘Anything,’ she agreed.

  ‘I want the discovery of the ruby to remain secret for an hour or so. I want time to think and perhaps to act.’

  ‘What’s the use?’ she cried. ‘Even if you wait for a day or a week Lucia will still accuse me.’

  His jaw hardened as he turned back to face her.

  ‘That may be so,’ he agreed, ‘but I have to be sure. You believe that Lucia has become your enemy, but you have no proof of that, either. Listen to me, Cathy!’ He pulled her round to face him. ‘Four years ago I took on the full responsibility of Soria. That meant the hacienda and the peons who work on the plantations, the servants here in the house, and my brother’s wife, to say nothing of Teresa. It wasn’t a promise to Eduardo before he died or anything dramatic like that. It was just the natural thing to do. A Spanish family is one unit, whether they are rich or poor, and they are sheltered by the head of that family. You have to understand that before you can understand me. Just as our wide Cordoban hat shields a man from the heat of the sun, so I must shelter my family from misfortune while I can.’

  ‘I know all this,’ she agreed in a shaken whisper, ‘but you didn’t expect the ruby to be stolen. It was a family heirloom.’

  ‘Indeed, but I think I can survive the loss of a precious stone, however valuable it might be. The ruby is nothing. The important issue is that I am responsible for Lucia, just as responsible, in a way, as I am for Teresa. She is my brother’s widow and I owe her a home.’

  ‘Yes, I understand.’

  ‘I wonder if you do!’ He swept a handful of papers across the desk in an impatient gesture which reminded her incongruously of Ramon. ‘Soria is beginning to pay for the first time in a decade, and it is very much thanks to the money Lucia invested in the estate when she married my brother.’

  ‘I see.’ Her spirits were at their lowest ebb. He would defend Lucia because Soria owed her so much, turning a blind eye to anything she might have done. ‘You’ve explained everything.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said immediately, ‘but the rest can wait. Have I your promise to keep quiet about the ruby for the moment?’

  She nodded.

  ‘If that’s what you want me to do,’ she agreed, ‘and I suppose you have yet to be convinced that I’m innocent.’

  ‘I must take your word,’ he said, crossing to open the door for her. ‘Since you have given it.’

  ‘Do you wish me to speak to Teresa?’ she asked, pausing on the threshold to look back at him.

  ‘No, I will do that.’

  It was the most unsatisfactory situation Catherine had ever known, but she could only acknowledge his authority and keep her own counsel about the ruby.

  The salon was empty when she reached it and the rain which had been threatening all day was already falling in great, heavy drops on the terrace so that she could not find solace in the garden, yet she could not go back into the house where she might so easily come face to face with Lucia. If they met it would be like the collision of the angry storm-clouds above El Teide.

  She stood listening to the rain, hearing it falling on the tiled roof and running along the gutters and watching as it filled the ornamental troughs in the garden until they overflowed. It was tropical rain such as she had never seen before, falling relentlessly out of a leaden sky, but no doubt it would be good for the thirsty soil when it rained so seldom in this sun-kissed land. Water had to be stored in vast basins set into the hillsides against the possibility of drought and she knew the Ramon and Jaime had been supervising the construction of a new one for some time now. It had kept them busy between harvesting the vast banana crop and packing the tomatoes to make way for a further yield.

  Restlessly she paced to the far end of the colonnaded way where the rain fell like a grey curtain between her and the garden trees, saturating the ground beneath them until it became a sea of mud, the weight of water snapping the heavy flower-heads from the wet branches to scatter them like thrown confetti at her feet.

  Somewhere beyond the garden a sudden roar of water descended the planted terraces, rushing relentlessly downwards until it was finally trapped in one of the vast concrete dams. It was a terrible sound, driving fear into her heart. Where was Ramon a
nd why didn’t he come home?

  For half an hour she stood there wondering about the immediate future, wondering what Jaime would do about the ruby; wondering about Lucia and her terrible obsession with power, and wondering, too, about Teresa when the time came for her to leave Soria altogether. She had another year to do at the convent before she went to Madrid, and a year could seem like an eternity to someone of Teresa’s age. She had passed through it all herself not so long ago, the restless desire to leave the realm of childhood behind for ever and step boldly into the adult future which beckoned so seductively. Thinking of her own schooldays, she realised how happy they had been, but she could not caution patience when she had stretched out her hand so eagerly to the future herself. Even when she had taken this job and had come to Tenerife it had been with the odd, pathetic hope in her heart that she would find a home.

  And now, in a matter of days, perhaps, she would be alone again.

  The rain poured down relentlessly, the sound of it obliterating all other sound. Surely there was enough water now to fill all the catchment areas for many weeks to come? She looked out at the tormented garden, already despoiled by the weight of water and the ferocity of the sudden wind which bent the palms almost to the ground and tore great fronds from their upper branches to hurl them across the terracing in wild abandon. Broken lilies hung on their stalks, still gleaming bravely above the ornamental pool, and the little pink geraniums which grew almost wild around them hung their bright heads in dismay.