Red Lotus Page 21

  "The Blessed Virgin has answered my prayer!" she breathed, clasping his hand as he got out from behind the wheel. "Philip! you are safe! You have not been too badly hurt?"

  "Scarcely scratched!" Blue eyes looked into brown and the blue ones smiled. "You are not to distress yourself on my account, Isabella. Not any more."

  Isabella de Barrios looked at him for a moment longer with her whole heart in her eyes. She's in love with him, Felicity thought, completely and irretrievably in love, but this time she acknowledged it without jealousy and without envy. Only with the deepest, truest pity. For Isabella's love was not returned.

  Philip looked across at Sabino, who had travelled in the front of the car with him

  "Find Julio," he said. "Tell him to come home. You will say, Sabino, that I sent you. He is at La Laguna. You will know best where to look for him."

  He turned to help Felicity out of the car.

  "Let me take care of her," Isabella said. "You, too, must rest, Philip. You have a wound on your back. It is necessary for the doctor to see it to make sure that there is nothing seriously wrong. I have sent for him to come here."

  "There was a doctor waiting at Las Canadas," he told her, shrugging indifferently. "This is no more than a graze, Isabella. A flesh wound. I have had a fortunate escape, but Felicity is exhausted. Make her go to bed, if you can."

  He looked at Felicity and smiled, a strange, detached smile which bade her forget the events of the past twenty-four hours, if she could.

  Did it ask her, also, to forget her confession of love for him?

  "Come!" Isabella urged. "You are tired. Do not try to tell me what happened until you are rested a little."

  But all Felicity's weariness had dropped from her.

  Physical exhaustion was something which she felt she could bear a little longer.

  "Isabella," she said when they had reached the sanctuary of her own rooms, "can you tell me about Maria? You see," she added swiftly, "I feel that I have a right to know now."

  "Yes," Isabella agreed, "I think you have that right." She drew a deep breath. " 'The truth about Maria'?" she repeated slowly. "In part, it is what you already know. Maria was in love with Philip—deeply, fondly in love with him. She had given him her promise to marry him, even as a very young girl, and she meant to keep that promise—until Rafael came along."

  "Rafael—?"

  Isabella nodded.

  "Rafael, Marques de Barrios," she said with shame in her voice. "The man I married. We had been married for less than a year when I knew him for what he was—a heartless and cynical philanderer. But it was too late then. I was his wife."

  "But—Maria?"

  "How can we explain such things?" Isabella sighed. "Maria was only another sweet and innocent child who fell victim to Rafael's charm. You may not have felt it, Felicity, but he has such charm," she added. "Even though our marriage was more or less one of arrangement between our two families, I, also, felt it. It swept me off my feet. I imagined myself to be the most fortunate girl in the whole world when he came from Spain to court me." Tears dimmed the lovely black eyes. "I was to learn later that love such as Rafael's is as light as air. Always it blows hot and cold and in the end it goes off in another direction. In the direction of the latest pretty face he stumbles across on his travels away from Zamora."

  Felicity was very white. She could not hurt Isabella unnecessarily by admitting that she had almost fallen a victim to that fatal charm on her first meeting with Rafael, but no wonder Philip had frowned on her, distrusting her on sight!

  "Maria never meant to fall in love with Rafael, but he swept her off her feet," Isabella continued, crossing to the windows to close the shutters against the sun. "When she tried to run from him, he followed her. I don't quite know

  whether he meant to break up Philip's marriage or not, but on the eve of her wedding to Philip, Maria disappeared. She left a note. In it she said that she must go away by herself to sort out her dreadful unhappiness. She was confused and full of despair. Philip guessed that she would go to Lozaro Alto, but he did not follow her at once. He thought that she should be given time to search her own heart for the truth."

  "He didn't—really believe that she was in love with Rafael?" Felicity whispered.

  "No." Isabella shook her head. "He knew the truth, you see. Maria was held by no more than a hopeless fascination." She bit her lip. "Philip came to see Rafael. I met him. The Blessed Virgin forgive me! I showed him the letter Rafael had left for me that morning in which he said he was going to take Maria away. He asked me for his freedom, which I could never have given him. Philip knew that, and he also knew what Maria would feel, and so he acted to save her. He went to Lozaro Alto and found her dead."

  Felicity stared at her, aghast.

  "But—the accident?" she protested.

  "The accident was to Maria and Rafael. They were coming back from Lozaro Alto in Philip's car when it went over the cliff. Maria had taken the car, as she often did when Philip was not using it, to drive to the valley, but Rafael was driving it when it crashed."

  "And—Philip accepted the responsibility?"

  Isabella nodded.

  "It was his car," she pointed out. "That saved the situation as far as Philip saw it. No one would know that Rafael and Maria had been together. He did it for Maria, and because of your uncle, Robert Hallam. Philip owed a great deal to Maria's father, you know, and this was the way in which he sought to repay his debt. He also tried to save me the scandal." Isabella moved slowly back across the room. "Rafael had a slight concussion and a few superficial cuts and scratches from the accident, but that was all. So it was easy, you see, for Philip to send him back to Zamora on the horse he had ridden up to the valley. Rafael's own horse was returned later."

  "And nothing—none of all this—came out at the inquest?"

  Isabella shook her head.

  "No. Philip accepted full responsibility. He was reticent about some points, and that was what led to the gossip. People said that he had been growing tired of Maria, because they had noticed how unhappy she had looked, and Philip would not stoop to contradict them. He had been exonerated from all blame by the court and that was all he cared about."

  "I've been so unjust!" Felicity said in a choked whisper.

  "But you love him," Isabella said. "And love and trust

  must go hand in hand." She halted before she reached the

  door. "You are still going to marry him?" she asked. "If he will have me."

  She could not tell Isabella that she had been torn by jealousy on her account, also, because she believed that Philip loved and admired her. She felt ashamed of her former emotions and curiously humbled by the knowledge of the trust and friendship which existed between these two. Philip had been so ready to sacrifice himself in defence of Isabella's marriage, as ready as he had been to protect Maria's name from scandal after her tragic death.

  It was all so easy to understand now—so simple.

  After Isabella had gone she lay down obediently on the bed in her darkened room, but sleep would not come. The events of the past few hours were too close, too terrible in retrospect to let her slip easily beyond consciousness. She dozed fitfully, waking at every unusual sound, and when a

  car drew up at the foot of the terrace steps she went out on to her balcony and looked down.

  Julio got out from behind the wheel. He appeared strained and tired, with dark smudges beneath his eyes which suggested that he, also, had not slept.

  Felicity drew back a little way, but he had already seen her. Before she could speak, before she could even think what he was about to do, he had caught hold of the gnarled old stem of the creeper which grew up the wall and drew himself to the level of the balcony rail.

  "Querida!" he said. "Are you safe? Are you really safe?"

  "Yes, Julio." Her heart was beating madly. "We were taken out by the helicopter you sent from La Laguna."

  He swung his legs over the rail and came to stand beside her.
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  "I didn't mean to send it," he confessed thickly. "I

  meant Philip to die. Then I discovered that you were up there with him I even meant to—leave you with him when I knew that you must love him or you would not have gone there." His words were harsh, but his voice had trembled. "Then Isabella de Barrios came to find me. She told me the truth—the truth about Maria's death. That was my real reason for hating Philip—"

  "I know, Julio," she said gently. "Philip did it for Maria, and for your father, whom he loved like a son. And now he has promised to look after you and Sisa and Conchitato keep your home intact. It was what your father wished. It was what he asked me to help Philip to do. You will help us, will you not?"

  "I suppose so." He looked down at his feet. "Are you going to stay with us? Are you going to marry him"

  A great flood of longing rose in Felicity's heart. She wanted to marry Philip more than anything else in the world, but suddenly she knew that she wanted all his love in return. Measure for measure. Her loving demanded it. Somehow, the thought of waiting for years until Philip recognized how necessary they were to each other was like putting happiness just beyond her reach.

  "I don't know," she said. "I don't know, Julio!" He backed towards the balcony rail.

  "You know what you want," he said. "You ought to let Philip see."

  I've already told him that I love him, Felicity thought. He knows. He ought to be sure.

  The deep colour of humiliation ran up under her skin. He had shown her pity and tenderness in that moment. Nothing more.

  The house was very still when she finally went down in search of the others. Philip had sent up a meal to her on a tray, but she had left much of it untouched. The siesta hour had passed and the sun was already well down the western sky. Isabella had gone, and Sisa and Conchita were nowhere to be seen.

  "Felicity, will you come out here for half an hour?" She had not seen Philip standing in the shadow of the palms, but she went to him at once.

  "How do you feel?" he asked. "Have you managed to sleep?"

  "Not very well." She looked up at him, her eyes suddenly full of tears. "There was so much to think about." "So much of regret?" he asked.

  She shook her head, turning to fumble with a spray of the trailing stephanotis which hung from the wall above them. The little star-shaped flowers sent up their perfume to fill the air between them, and Philip reached out and took her gently by the shoulders, turning her back to face him

  "Of what, then?" he asked. "What has made you sad, querida?" His words were gently probing. "If you have no regrets," he said as his hands tightened on her shoulders, "does it mean that you meant what you told me at Lozaro Alto?"

  She looked at him, and his eyes seemed to draw her whole soul up to meet his own.

  "You said that you loved me." His voice was stronger now, more commanding. In some ways it was the old, arrogant Philip who spoke. "You said it of your own free will, in a moment when nothing else in the world mattered between us, but I want you to say it again, here, in this house, where our loving will mean so much."

  "You love me?" she whispered. "You love me, Philip!"

  "With all my heart." His hands slipped from her shoulders to her waist, drawing her strongly to him "I can't tell you when I knew," he said. "You must not ask me. Perhaps it was right from the beginning, when you came here with so little knowledge of this adopted country of mine but with such a brave ideal in your heart. I wanted to protect you—to take you and keep you for my own."

  His lips came down on hers, gently and then possessively.

  "Yes, I wanted you from the beginning," he said with absolute conviction in his voice.

  "And I was foolish enough to be fascinated by—someone else at first," she whispered. "Oh, Philip! Forgive me!"

  "What have I to forgive?" he asked, brushing her hair with his lips. "Nothing, querida—now that I know you are mine!"