She still remembered the initial excitement of first seeing that huge ancient house from her grandmother’s car the day after her mother’s funeral. She had been so hopelessly impressed that someone she was related to could possibly have enough money to live in a mansion. But her grandmother, Gladys, who could have given Doña Maria frostbite with her nasty tongue, had soon turned Molly’s youthful excitement into a sick sense of apprehension. As soon as Gladys had returned from enrolling Ophelia in her new school, she had sat Molly down and told her that she couldn’t possibly give her a permanent home.
‘Your sister is sixteen. You’re too young a child for me to take on,’ her grandmother had told her.
Molly had fearfully sworn that she would be no trouble and that she would help out round the house and not get in the way, and the older woman had had to admit the true reasons why she wasn’t prepared to raise her younger granddaughter.
‘Your father was a foreigner and he already had a wife when he got your mother pregnant with you. He was a loathsome man who jilted your mother at the altar long before you were born, but he still wouldn’t let her alone to get on with her life!’ Gladys Stewart had delivered with seething bitterness. ‘It’s a shameful disgrace for a woman to give birth to a child when she’s not married, Molly, and that’s why you can’t live here with me. It’ll be much better for all of us if you’re adopted.’
Until today, she had never seen the big sister she adored, Molly recalled painfully. If a heart could be broken, hers had been smashed, as Ophelia had been the only stable loving influence in Molly’s world since she was born. Her eyes wet from those recollections, Molly read on, eagerly sucking up every tiny personal detail about her sister’s life. She hauled herself out of the bath and dried herself at frantic speed. She was going to get in touch with Ophelia. Why not? There was no mention of her grandmother in the article. She was only risking rejection and couldn’t imagine the sister she remembered being that cruel. She was longing for another woman she could talk to, because it was impossible to admit the extent of her unhappiness to Julieta, and Jez was a man and didn’t understand, for he simply urged her to walk out on her husband. As if that would be the easiest thing in the world to do!
Before she could lose her nerve, Molly flung on some clothes and went on the Internet in search of contact details for Ophelia. Madrigal Court had its own website and she sent an email to her sister, couched as casually as she could manage it, asking after the family parrot, Haddock, and including her mobile phone number. After all, Ophelia might not want to talk to her.
At that same moment, Leandro was in his office at the bank in Seville and sustaining a very taxing visit from an elderly uncle who professed to be very much shocked and disturbed by recent outrageous gossip on the estate relating to a family member’s behaviour with an unnamed man. By the time all the complex and deeply apologetic and defensive outpourings had been waded through, Leandro was not a great deal wiser to the facts than he had been at the outset. His uncle, an old bachelor, had a highly refined sense of delicacy and honour that prevented him from being a good teller of tales, for he steadfastly refused to name the source of the gossip, the content of it or to identify the parties involved.
‘Of course, some people will say that artists are like that-all passion and no common sense,’ Esteban framed tight-mouthed with disapproval. ‘But it is your duty to put an end to such activities and protect the family name. I am very sorry that I have had to bring this scandalous matter to your attention.’
Right up until the old man mentioned the word ‘artist’ and linked it with that other revealing word ‘passion’, Leandro had been inclined to take a humorous view of what Esteban might regard as a scandalous matter-too short a skirt? A little flirtation? A woman seen unchaperoned in male company after seven o’clock at night? But when it came to his wife’s reputation, Leandro’s sense of humour died. He was no more liberated than his seventeenth-century forebears who had locked up their wives and fought duels to the death over them. The only artist in his family, as far as he was concerned, was Molly.
‘Fernando Santos?’ he breathed between compressed lips as he shot to his feet.
Startled by that brusqueness with which that word erupted from the head of the family, Esteban nodded in grave and grudging confirmation.
To fill her time that evening, Molly was tidying up her studio. When a car drew up outside she looked out in surprise at the sight of Leandro springing out of the vehicle. He was a sleek, dark and gorgeous image in his well-cut business suit and she ate him up shamelessly with her eyes. Familiarity did not breed contempt in her experience. She might share a bed with him every night, but she remained awesomely aware of his magnificence.