Exotic Affairs(113)

Inherent good manners made him rise to his feet also. ‘No,’ he denied. ‘Don Luiz is the new conde here in this valley. If he tells me to marry him to a lady gagged and chained to his side, then I marry them.’ He shrugged, adding with a wry smile, ‘There, the old ways are not quite dead, heh?’ And now it was his turn to flick her a twinkling smile.

But Caroline was in no mood to twinkle back at him. ‘Then let me put your mind at rest,’ she said coolly. ‘Your information is wrong,’ she declared. ‘Luiz and I have known each other for seven years. We have been lovers for seven years.’ Which was not quite a lie, even if it wasn’t quite the truth. But in this situation it served her purpose very nicely to make that point.

Surprised though the priest undoubtedly was by her correction, it didn’t faze him. ‘But have you loved Don Luiz for seven years?’ he threw right back.

Love? Caroline repeated to herself, and smiled a half-smile that was more rueful than cynical, though she had a feeling it should have been the other way round. ‘I’ve always loved Luiz,’ she responded dryly. ‘But if you are going to ask me if he feels the same way about me,’ she added, ‘then please don’t.’

‘Then of course I will not,’ he instantly conceded, and with eyes which conveyed a gentle apology for making her feel compelled to add that final remark, he gently touched one of Caroline’s hands. ‘Forgive my intrusion into what you clearly feel is your private business. But I had to be sure that you cared for Don Luiz before I could carry out his father’s last wish.’

His father’s last wish? Her eyes grew curious, but the priest had already turned away and was walking across the room to where a rather bulky attaché case she hadn’t noticed before lay on a table by the door.

‘I am now going to place something into your care señorita,’ he explained, ‘that I must make you promise to guard with your life and show to no one…’

For some obscure reason, watching him open the attaché case as he spoke those words made her feel suddenly afraid. ‘If it’s something that will hurt Luiz, then you can keep it,’ she told him.

‘I commend your desire to protect him,’ he replied, turning with what looked like several thin ledgers in his hands. ‘And—yes—these will hurt Don Luiz if he ever sees them. He is, of course, the one exception to the promise I am about to make you swear. Can you read Spanish as well as you speak it?’ he asked suddenly.

Caroline nodded. She had spent most of her summers since she was a small child right here in Spain, and that meant that Spanish had become her second language.

‘Then, having read these—’ he indicated the ledgers ‘—I will leave it to your discretion to decide whether you think he needs to know all that has been written in here…’

He began to approach her, and it was all Caroline could do not to snatch her trembling hands behind her back. For whatever it was he was about to give her, she knew she didn’t want. He saw it in her face and paused two steps away.

‘These are the diaries of Don Luiz’s papá,’ he informed her. ‘Left in my care long before Don Carlos was taken ill. They explain why Don Luiz inherits all and Don Felipe very little. They explain why Don Luiz has been his papá’s beneficiary for the whole of his thirty-five years. So take them,’ he urged. ‘Read them and understand—for Luiz’s sake, please, señorita…’

Sombrely he held them out to her. Reluctantly Caroline accepted them, her fingers turning cold as they closed around the diaries; worse her heart felt as if it had turned to stone. She didn’t know why, didn’t understand what any of this was about. But she knew one thing as surely as she knew her name was Caroline: these books were dark things—dark and awful things.

‘I’ll read them,’ she promised.

The priest nodded in silent understanding of the expression on her face and simply turned without another word to take his leave. But as he reached the door he paused, glanced back at her, still standing where he had left her in the middle of the room with the books clutched between tense white fingers.

‘You know, señorita,’ he murmured thoughtfully, ‘it is, I think, quite a curious coincidence that you should have known Don Luiz for seven years. For it was also seven years ago that he first agreed to come here and meet his papá for the first time, only to abruptly change his mind. The reason he gave for that change, was that he had met the woman he was going to marry. Courting her, it seemed, was more important to him then than meeting his father. He did, though, promise to wed her here, in the church of the Valle de los Angeles, as was tradition. It seems he is about to keep that promise, hmm?’