And then Vidal had come to see her mother. The child she had heard so much about transformed into a hero who fitted her private template for what a man should be so perfectly that he had stolen her heart before she had even realised what was happening to her. Vidal—so handsome that just looking at him made her breath catch in her throat. Vidal—who carried about him such a powerful aura of male sensuality that even she at sixteen had been aware of it. Vidal—who knew her father. Was it any wonder that he had held so many of the keys that could unlock her emotional defences? Not that he had needed to unlock them. She had thrown down her barriers for him herself.
Shocked by her own vulnerability, Fliss tried determinedly to concentrate again on the countryside beyond the car window. They had turned off the main road now, and were travelling along a narrow road that was climbing between two outcrops of rock. Beyond them, she could see as the car crested the top of the incline, lay a lush, wide and fertile valley filled with orchards, and on the lower slopes of the ring of hills that enclosed it rows of vines.
‘The boundary to the estate begins here,’ Vidal told her, as they started to descend into the valley, still in that formal tone which told her how little he wanted her company and how much he wished she wasn’t here with him.
Well, she didn’t care. She wasn’t here because of him, after all. She was here because of her father. But much as she tried to take comfort from that knowledge, comfort eluded her, and her aching heart refused to be soothed.
‘You can’t see the castillo yet, but it is at the far end of the valley—built there so that it could command a strategic position.’
Fliss caught a glimpse of the silver ribbon of a river, wending its way below them on the valley floor. The valley was a small perfect paradise, she recognised, caught off-guard by the unexpected sharp pang of envy that touched her as she thought of how wonderful it must have been to grow up here, surrounded by so much natural beauty. In the distance she could see the high peaks of the Sierras, and she knew that beyond the Lecrin Valley lay a sub-tropical coastline of great beauty.
But the coast and what lay beyond this place were forgotten as the road twisted and turned and then, up ahead of them, she could see the castillo. She had not realised it would be so large, so imposing, and her breath caught on a betraying gasp of awe. Its architecture was a blend of a traditional Moorish style and something of the Renaissance, and sunlight shone on the narrow iron-grille-covered windows of its turreted corners.
This wasn’t a home, Fliss thought apprehensively. It was a fortress—a stronghold designed to reveal the might and the power of the man who held it and to warn others not to challenge that power.
They had to drive past formal gardens and an ornamental lake before reaching the front of the castillo, where Vidal brought the car to a halt.
An elderly manservant was waiting to greet them once they had stepped into the vast marble hallway, and a housekeeper who smiled far more warmly at her than Rosa was summoned to escort her to her room after Vidal announced that she might want an opportunity to ‘freshen up’ whilst he spoke with his estate manager.
‘Since it’s almost lunchtime, I suggest that we delay our visit to Felipe’s house until after we have eaten.’
Vidal might be using the word suggest, but what he really meant, and wanted her to know, was that he was giving her an order, Fliss thought angrily, forced to nod her head and accept his dictat, even though she wanted to insist that she see her father’s house immediately.
A couple of minutes later, following the housekeeper down a long, wide corridor on the second floor, Fliss reflected that both the vastness of the castillo and its architecture reminded her of a long-ago visit to Blenheim, the enormous palace given to the Duke of Marlborough by Queen Anne. Here at the castillo, the ceiling of the long gallery-style corridor was decorated with ornate plasterwork, and the crimson-papered walls were hung with huge gilt-framed portraits.
They had almost reached the end of the corridor when the housekeeper came to a halt and opened the double doors in front of her, indicating that Fliss was to precede her into the room beyond them.
If she had thought that her bedroom at the family townhouse in Granada was large and elegant, then she had obviously not realised what the words could actually mean, Fliss recognised. She put down the overnight bag she’d brought with her, lost for words in the middle of what had to be the most opulent bedroom she had ever seen.
Gilt swags and cherubs adorned the half-tester bed, whilst above it on the ceiling nymphs and shepherds rioted in discreet pastel-painted pastoral delight. Ornate gilt plasterwork decorated the cream-painted walls, framing insets of rich gold cherub-imprinted wallpaper, and matching silk curtains hung at the windows and fell from the bedhead.