A Stormy Spanish Summer(48)

‘I’m sorry if I hurt or offended you,’ Fliss apologised. ‘That wasn’t my intention. But the way Vidal has behaved—preventing me from making contact with my father—’

‘No, that is not true. It was not Vidal. On the contrary, in fact. You owe Vidal so much, and it is thanks to him that you have had—Oh!’

Guiltily the Duchess placed her hand over her mouth, shaking her head.

‘I only came up here to defend Vidal, not to. But I’ve let my emotions run away with me. Please forget what I said.’

Forget? How could she. ‘What is not true?’ Fliss demanded, urgently. ‘And what do I owe him? Please, tell me.’

‘I can’t say any more,’ the Duchess answered, very obviously flustered and uncomfortable. ‘I have said too much already.’

‘You can’t say something like that and then not explain,’ Fliss protested, feeling equally emotional.

‘I’m sorry,’ the Duchess apologised. ‘I shouldn’t have come up here. Oh, I am so cross with myself. I’m sorry, Fliss. I really am.’ She got up and walked towards the door, pausing there before opening it to repeat softly, ‘I really am sorry.’

Fliss stared at the closed door. What had the Duchess meant? What was it she had started to say and then refused to tell her? It was, of course, only natural that a mother should defend her child, Fliss could understand that. But there had been much more than maternal protection in the Duchess’s voice. There had been certainty, knowledge. A knowledge that she did not have. What kind of knowledge? Something to do with Fliss’s father? Something to do with the fact that Fliss had never been allowed to contact him? Something she had a right to know. Something that only one person could tell her, if she had the courage to demand an answer.

Vidal himself. And did she have that courage?

The Duchess’s slip made Fliss feel as though a secret door had suddenly appeared in a room she had thought she knew so well that it could not hide any secrets. It was an unnerving, uncomfortable experience. There was probably nothing for her to discover, no secrets for her to learn, no darkness for her to fear beyond that secret door. But what if there was? What if …? What could there be? Vidal had told her himself that he had intercepted her letter to her father and that she was not to write to him again. The evidence had spoken for itself. Hadn’t it?

She needed to talk to Vidal, Fliss recognised.


Vidal was in his own suite of rooms, working, Rosa informed Fliss in a tone that suggested he would not want to be interrupted, when Fliss asked her where he was.

Not giving herself time to change her mind, Fliss started to climb the stairs. All the way up her stomach was cramping and her knees were almost knocking. Her mouth was dry with apprehension.

As she walked along the corridor, part of her wanted her to turn round, her courage almost failing her. The door to Vidal’s rooms was slightly ajar. Fliss knocked on it hesitantly and then waited, a cowardly relief filling her when there was no immediate reply.

Letting her hand fall to her side, she was just about to step back from the door when she heard Vidal call out briskly in Spanish from inside the room, in a voice that commanded obedience, for her to enter.

Feeling decidedly unsteady, Fliss turned the handle.

She might not have touched any alcohol, but she felt slightly light-headed—light-headed and, she recognised, rather dangerously emotional.

The first thing she realised as she stepped into the room and let the door swing shut behind her was that this room was decorated in a far more modern and pared-down fashion than the rest of the house, in shades of grey and off-white, and was furnished as a functional working office. The second was that Vidal was standing in the doorway between the room she was in and a shower room adjacent to it, with only a towel wrapped round his damp body, and he was looking at her in a way that told her that her presence was neither expected nor wanted.

Unable to say anything, but helpless with longing and love, and humiliatingly aware that she was in danger of betraying everything that he made her feel, Fliss forced herself to drag her gaze away.

Only now did it dawn on her that Vidal had instructed her to come in in Spanish because he had assumed she was one of the servants. He certainly wasn’t at all pleased to see her. She could tell that from the grim expression on his face.

To her dismay he was actually turning away from her, about to walk off.

‘No!’ Fliss protested, darting forward and then coming to an abrupt halt when he turned round so quickly that only a couple of feet separated them. ‘I want to talk to you. There’s something I want to know.’