The Rhythm of Flamenco

THE RHYTHM OF FLAMENCO Isobel Chace

Lucy went to Jerez to study the Spanish side of her family's sherry business. She learned a lot about the production of sherry--but she didn't think she would ever be able to understand the director, Don Marias del Constantino y Mantero.

My thanks are due to Senor Don L. Eduardo Jacobs, who was kind enough to show me around the bodega of Williams & Humbert Ltd, Jerez. The information on the production of sherry is his, the incidents that happen in the Arbuthnot bodega are entirely my own.

For MONICA DE GUISE my brother's wife and the mother of my nephews

CHAPTER I The dark face peered into the window of the taxi. 'You have nothing to declare?' he asked in heavily accented English. 'Nada,' the taxi-driver replied lazily. The Customs officer searched with his eyes into every nook and cranny, his face still jolly as though the whole business was more in the nature of a joke than his means of livelihood. 'Nada, nada?' he asked the sole occupant of the taxi. Lucy Arbuthnot smiled back at him, a trifle nervously, for she was quite unaccustomed to this light approach to the hypothetical bottles of whisky that she might have been carrying. 'Really nothing,' she assured him. His twinkling eyes met hers. 'You carry gold in your eyes,' he told her. 'You must be careful or we shall find some means of charging you, no?' He said it in Spanish, and she sat up very straight and pretended she hadn't understood. He gave a little disappointed shrug to his shoulders and moved back. In a second the taxi-driver was back in the car and they were moving forward into the shabby streets of La Linea, streets that had suffered in the gigantic gales of the winter before, but were nevertheless authentically Spanish in every feature. Lucy took a deep breath and gazed about her in excitement. At last she really had arrived in Spain.

'Where shall I put you down, miss?' the Gibraltarian taxi-driver asked her.. Lucy hesitated. 'Anywhere here,' she said at last. This was the one part of the arrangements that had been made for her that she wasn't too happy about. Supposing that no one had come to meet her after all? Or supposing that they had muddled up the day, or that she hadn't understood exactly where she was to stand? The taxi swung in towards the pavement and drew up with a flourish. 'Are you sure this is the place, miss?' the driver asked doubtfully. 'It doesn't seem a very likely spot.' Lucy looked about her. 'He said he would meet me just the other side of the Spanish customs,' she repeated firmly. But she was nervous all the same when she was left standing on the narrow pavement with her two suitcases placed neatly beside her. Anxiously she looked about her for a likely-looking person who might have been, with a stretch of imagination, her cousin, and then she was worrying again as to whether they would like her. It had been her father's idea that she should come to Spain. They had been standing together in the winter sunshine, looking up at the building that housed the great vats of sherry that were waiting to be bottled and sent all over England, and at the name of Arbuthnot that stood guard over the building in proud scarlet letters.

'How do you feel at being the last of the English Arbuthnots?' her father had asked her, and Lucy had laughed. 'I can't imagine it,' she had said frankly. 'You're so much a part of it all that I can't imagine it without you!' Her father had looked more serious. 'Nevertheless I shan't be here for ever,' he had reminded her. 'One day it will all be in your hands. I think you should go to Jerez for a year and learn all about the Spanish side of the business as well as our side. It will make it much easier for you later on if you know all the people over there.' Lucy had agreed, though secretly she hadn't altogether welcomed the idea. It had been her great-grandfather who had started up the great sherry bodega of Arbuthnot, and he had still been alive when his younger son had decided to return to England and the family had split in two, both sides working for the same firm, but without much real contact apart from the sherry that one side produced and that the other sold. Lucy had heard a great deal about her Spanish cousins, but she had never met either of them. It had been hard, in a way, to exile herself from her parents for a whole year to go to live with strangers, and yet the thought of Spain had beckoned to her, apart from her work. All her life she had heard so much about the Iberian peninsula and she had wanted so badly to see it for herself. A large woman, dressed in the inevitable black of widowhood, pressed past her, calling a greeting as she went. Lucy bent down and moved one suitcase slightly so that it would be out of the way of other passers-by. When she stood up again a man was coming towards her and her heart began to beat more quickly as she realized that he had seen her. He was not particularly tall, but he

seemed to have a compact dark strength that showed clearly through his tailored shirt and casual trousers. His features were clear-cut and unsmiling and his eyes withdrawn and proud. 'Miss Arbuthnot?' he asked, and his voice came as a surprise, it was so deep and warm, and quite different from his reserved expression. 'Yes,' Lucy agreed simply. He bowed slightly. 'I am sorry that you should have been put to the trouble of getting yourself through the customs. It is not easy for Spaniards to get into Gibraltar.' Lucy was on the point of retorting that he wasn't really Spanish at all, but she stopped herself, wondering suddenly if the Jerez Arbuthnots had taken Spanish nationality after all. 'My name,' the man went on quietly, ' is Don Matias Constantino y Mantero.' He smiled suddenly. 'I am to welcome you to Spain in the name of the Arbuthnot Bodega.' Lucy stared at him. 'Then you're not my cousin!' she exclaimed, wondering why she should feel so relieved that he wasn't in any way related to herself. 'No, I am not,' he said briefly. 'Is this all the luggage you have?' Lucy nodded and flushed. She supposed that two suitcases were not a great deal for a year's stay, and yet there had been nothing else that she had wanted to bring with her. She had brought her clothes and some books —and herself.

'One can't take much on an aeroplane,' she said defensively. 'No,' he agreed gravely. He picked up the cases so easily that she knew she had been right in thinking that he was extremely strong, and carried them quickly across the road, throwing them into the back seat of the car he had waiting there. Lucy crossed the road after him at a more sober rate, largely because she was unaccustomed to the traffic roaring past her on what seemed to be the wrong side of the road. The car was big but not luxurious, and it was a make she never remembered having seen before. Don Matias opened the door for her and she sat in what should have been the driving seat and strove to overcome her growing sense of feeling thoroughly foreign and out of place. 'It was very kind of you to come and meet me,' she proffered shyly as he got in beside her. He gave her a rather twisted smile. 'Your cousins were otherwise engaged,' he said harshly. Lucy relapsed into silence. It was difficult to know whether it was she that he disliked, or whether it was her cousin who had somehow displeased him. She looked at him sideways out of the corners of her eyes and was dismayed to discover that he had no such inhibitions. His proud, dark eyes were searching her face with an intentness that somehow rendered it almost impersonal. 'Well?' she said at last, almost curiously, allowing only a shade of the outrage she was feeling to show in her voice. 'You have quite a look of the old man,' he told her. 'Your cousins, you will discover, have completely lost that golden look.'

Lucy smiled suddenly, unaware that when she did so she suddenly became quite pretty. 'I suppose I do look like him,' she admitted. 'My father has the same colouring. He looks exactly like a lion when he's angry. But I'm afraid most people would describe my colouring as mouse!' 'Perhaps,' Don Matias agreed seriously. 'It will be different when the sun has bleached your hair and tanned your skin.' He turned away from her, apparently losing interest in the whole matter. 'I hope you are not too tired after your long journey,' he said with quiet formality. 'I am afraid we still have quite a long drive ahead of us.' Lucy said she didn't feel at all tired. There was no point, she thought, in remembering now how frightened she had been when the aeroplane had been gathering its strength before taking off and how even seeing the sunrise, bright and glorious, from way up over the clouds, had quite failed to remove that shattering feeling of inadequacy she had experienced when she had first looked down at the retreating land below. She was more tired than she cared to admit, tired from smothering that tiresome, evergreen panic that had threatened to completely ruin any joy she might have had in the flight. It had taken determination to sit, quite quietly, with her hands in her lap, looking out of the window as though she had flown every day of her life. The only time she had given herself away was when she had taken her plastic coffee-tray from the stewardess and had noticed that her hand was shaking. 'I hope you didn't come all the way specially for me,' she said. 'I could easily have taken a train.' Don Matias permitted himself a quick smile.

'I am afraid you would have taken a long time to arrive,' he said. 'Public transport in Spain is more exciting than reliable. We have fewer people wishing to travel, of course,' he added by way of explanation. He spoke in such matter-of-fact tones, that she couldn't be sure whether he was serious or whether he was teasing her. 'It was kind of you to come anyway,' she said. He shrugged his shoulders. 'Your cousin appeared to be otherwise engaged,' he told her briefly. It was fascinating, Lucy thought, driving through the edge of the town. Melons lay in gay profusion, cluttering up the pavements, and, a little further on, people were sunbathing on the wall that separated the road from the sea. There was a warmth, an unselfconsciousness about them that appealed to her, and she watched them, with her nose pressed to the window, more than half wishing that she could join them. 'Is it very hot in Jerez?' she asked. Don Matias changed gear to allow a donkey-cart to turn off in front of him. 'It's considerably hotter than it is here, but one becomes accustomed to it quite quickly. Don't you like the heat?' Lucy thought about it. 'I should if I didn't have to work in it,' she said. 'But it makes me feel delightfully lazy!'

To her surprise he smiled. 'We all feel much the same,' he said. 'It is said that the Spaniard greeted the invention of electricity with cries of joy because he could at last really turn the night into day. I think that is because of the heat. We prefer to do things when it's cooler.' Lucy laughed. 'You speak English awfully well,' she said. He smiled again. 'I ought to,' he said. 'I went to school in England.' She felt rather crushed, wondering if she ought to have guessed it. 'So did my cousin!' she said proudly. 'That is right,' he agreed. It was surprising, she thought, that she had never met him then. There must have been holidays, or halt terms, when it would have been impossible for him to travel home to his parents. But she couldn't remember that he had ever come to the house. Perhaps he had had other friends he had preferred to go to. All she could remember of passing through Algeciras was the well-built and rather friendly-looking prison, and then they were out into the country again, high in the hills, catching odd glimpses of the Mediterranean below and sometimes the harsh rocky structure of the Atlas mountains reminding her how close she was to Africa.

The grass had been burned brown in the hot sun and the only green was the leaves of the trees. Mostly they were cork-oaks, looking naked up to the level of their first branches, where the cork had been stripped away to be processed in one of the many local factories. 'How soon do we come to the vineyards?' she asked. Don Matias looked both proud and withdrawn. 'I am afraid we shall pass through hardly any of them. They are mostly hidden away from the main road. But later on you will see them all, I expect.' Lucy nodded with satisfaction. 'I expect my cousin will take me to see them,' she agreed. 'Perhaps^ Or perhaps one of your uncles, or even myself.' 'You!' she exclaimed, and then she flushed, knowing that she had been unwittingly rude. 'I'm sorry,' she said immediately, ' but the bodega is such a family affair that I hadn't really thought of anyone else as being connected with it. Do you work for Arbuthnots?' Don Matias held his head up high. 'I am one of the directors,' he answered quite gently, ' so I suppose I can say that I do.' Lucy tried to hide her astonishment. 'But there are so many Arbuthnots out here,' she said blankly. 'Surely they can manage between them?'

Don Matias nodded gravely. 'I think you will find Francisco has other interests,' he replied shortly. 'There have to be one or two working directors, after all.' 'I suppose so,' Lucy agreed meekly. But she couldn't really understand it. She had been brought up with the idea that Arbuthnot's was for the Arbuthnots and she found she rather resented this stranger foisted on to her, for despite his excellent English he was Spanish to the core and had no Arbuthnot blood whatsoever. 'But Uncle Iago and Uncle Antonio are still very active, aren't they?' she protested hopefully. 'Of course,' he agreed smoothly. She thought that she could detect a certain cold reservation in his tone about them also, and that started her worrying. In England it had never occurred to any of them that all might not be well in Jerez! Sherry had always arrived from the bodega and she had supposed that it always would! 'Do you mind my intrusion so much?' Don Matias asked her suddenly. 'Because you needn't, you know. I'm practically one of the family myself.' 'Are you?' she said doubtfully. 'Very much so!' he affirmed cheerfully. 'Shall we stop for a cup of coffee?' They stopped at a wayside cafe which had a number of little tables grouped beside the road and where the dust formed in patterns on the wooden tops every time a car went past. The coffee was very black and strong and was served in glasses that were boiling hot to

the touch. Lucy drank hers from a sense of duty, and promptly regretted it. She felt slightly sick and thirstier than ever. 'Do you think I could have a glass of water here?' she asked Don Matias humbly. He grinned and for the first time his amusement reached his eyes. 'I'm afraid not,' he told her. 'The water is seldom safe for newcomers at these country places. You will have to wait until you have built up some resistance to our germs.' She was nonplussed, not liking to tell him how thirsty she really was, and she was frankly relieved when he took the whole matter out of her hands and ordered her a fizzy orange drink instead. She drank it gratefully through a straw, not caring a rap about his superior expression. It was the best drink she had ever tasted! But after the stop the road, that had never been good, became worse than ever. The potholes, grew more frequent until they were impossible to avoid and the edges were rutted by the heavy lorries that plied their way backwards and forwards between Madrid, Seville and the coast. But when she had despaired of it, they reached the salt flats around Cadiz and the road improved again and they went along several miles of brand new surface until it gave out again just before Jerez itself. Lucy sat, bracing herself against the bumps, but Don Matias scarcely seemed to notice. He drove fast and skilfully where anyone else, she thought, would have broken all the springs in the car. 'We are nearly there,' he said at last. He pointed out the Puerta de Santa Maria, where Columbus's men had returned after discovering America. 'You will probably go there some other time,' he said.

Lucy glanced down the road that led to the small fishing port with a new sense of excitement. She hadn't given a thought to the prospects of exploring Spain, but it would be fun in her spare time, if she had any, to see as much of it as she could. 'Is that Jerez over there?' she asked, pointing into the distance. Don Matias nodded. 'If you look very carefully—and know exactly the right place to look—you can see the bodega buildings from here,' he told her. She looked excitedly from one white building to another, wondering which one it could possibly be. Now that she was so close to the place where all the Arbuthnot sherry had ever come from, she felt she was in a dream, and the shimmering heat added to the illusion, giving the buildings an insubstantial look. 'Will the family be there?' she asked, carefully eliminating any trace of nervousness from her voice. 'They will be waiting to greet you at the house, yes,' he said slowly. He glanced at her and for the moment his proud eyes looked almost sympathetic. 'But I am afraid you will not be living in the Arbuthnot house,' he went on. 'You will be living with my mother and myself.' 'But why?' she cried out. Didn't the Arbuthnots want her at all? 'Your cousins do a great deal of entertaining,' he told her carefully. 'It was thought to be a more convenient arrangement for everybody if you came to us. You will be seeing your family every day, so you will have no lack of their company. On the other hand it will give my mother a great deal of pleasure to have you.'

She wished that she could believe him, but she couldn't. If her father had known, she thought, he wouldn't have sent her. But she wouldn't let any one of them guess that she was hurt by their indifference! She sat up very straight and deliberately composed herself so that she would be ready to meet them when the time came. She might be young, she thought, but she could be very tough and—what was the Spanish word for that elusive quality that they admired so much?—valiente! Well, an English woman could be that as well!

There was a signpost in the main square pointing the way out to the Arbuthnot bodega. Don Matias drove a short way down the road indicated and drew up beside some massive white walls. 'This is it,' he said with a smile. 'Welcome to Arbuthnot's, Miss Arbuthnot.' He got out of the car and opened her door for her, leading the way into the huge building. 'The bodegas are over there,' he explained. 'This building is the actual Arbuthnot house. It has been transformed into flats now and the whole family lives in various parts of it.' But not herself! Lucy thought, and wondered again why not. 'Is that where we're going?' she asked. He looked away from her, straight into the white glare of the street. 'Feeling nervous?' he suggested ironically.

The idea shocked her. 'Of my own family?' she demanded. 'Of course not!' He shrugged slightly and she thought he looked a little sorry for her. But they were all Arbuthnots, she thought rather desperately. They couldn't be so very different from the English branch of the family. Her father had always told her what a strong family resemblance there was between them all. Don Matias led the way along a spacious verandah and gestured towards some heavy wooden doors that had been thrown open to catch any movement of air that was going. Lucy preceded him into the comparative darkness beyond and came face to face with a group of people so intent on their own conversation that they hadn't even noticed her arrival. The young man was handsome enough, she noted, but the girl had a beauty that was so vivid it was difficult to tear one's eyes away from her to look at the others. Don Matias strode forward into the room and went straight to the girl. 'Mari, come and meet your cousin,' he said peremptorily. And he said it in Spanish. The girl turned her head to look up at him, her eyes dancing with surprised pleasure. 'Why, Matias, how you startled me! Francisco was telling us funny stories -' She broke off, biting her lip. 'Have you brought her?' she asked. Don Matias smiled down at her, his pride replaced by something warmer and his eyes quite gentle. 'I have indeed. I was suggesting that you should come and meet her.'

He caught the girl by her hand and drew her across the floor towards Lucy. Mari stood stock-still and eyed the English girl with marked suspicion, and then her right hand began to play with the fan she held lightly between two fingers. 'How do you do?' she said in careful English. Then she turned away with relief and called excitedly to her brother. 'Francisco! She's here! Please to tell Tio and Papa!' Lucy looked from one to the other of her cousins. Francisco might not have quite the same endowment of looks as had his sister, but when he moved he did so with a careful grace that she found vaguely disturbing. He was as dark as his sister, with high, Spanish cheekbones and the longest eyelashes that Lucy had ever seen on any human being, male or female. When he had summoned his father and uncle he returned to where the two girls were standing. 'Francisco,' Mari said in almost a whisper, ' is the dandy of the family and Papa's despair! But he's beautiful, isn't he?' Lucy licked her lips quickly and smiled. 'He certainly is!' she agreed. Francisco frowned impatiently. 'I can't imagine that my looks are of any interest to our cousin,' he said silkily. 'I hope Matias gave you a comfortable journey here?' But Lucy never replied, for at that moment the senior members of the family entered the room, their expressions grave and absolutely correct, but without a single gleam of welcome from any of them. To her relief, Don Matias placed himself firmly between herself

and them. She found these Spanish Arbuthnots frankly overwhelming. 'This is your uncle Iago,' Don Matias introduced her softly. 'Uncle James, you would say in English,' her uncle told her, a smile flashing over his face. 'And his brother, Antonio,' Don Matias went on. 'The father of these two. The Senora is his wife. Don Iago is a wiser man, he has remained a bachelor.' Lucy stepped forward quickly to greet her aunt. The men, she saw immediately, would take their cue from her, and it would all be so much easier if they liked her! 'Senora,' she greeted her softly. Her eyes met the older woman's and she was shocked by the weariness she saw in them. 'I am afraid I don't speak any English,' her aunt said in Spanish, ' but I wished to be present to welcome you to Jerez. I did not wish you to think I had no interest in your arrival. It is unfortunate enough that we haven't the room to have you in our own house -' 'Hush, Mama,' Mari interrupted her. 'I don't suppose Lucy cares whose house she is staying in. Why should she? We are all strangers to her!' Yes, they were strangers, Lucy realized. Complete strangers! And the knowledge gave her a hollow feeling inside. She couldn't understand any of them—either the way they behaved, or their curious lisping English!

'It doesn't matter at all, Senora,' she said quickly to the older woman. 'Please don't give it another thought.' Her Spanish was correct, she knew, though rusty from lack of practice, and it seemed to surprise everyone present. 'We had not realized that you could speak Spanish,' her uncle Iago said slowly for them all. 'But we should have known, of course, that your father would not have sent you otherwise.' He smiled expansively all round. 'It is rather a relief!' he added endearingly. Lucy grinned back at him. 'You forget that all the Arbuthnots are bilingual,' she said. His eyebrows rose slightly in amusement. 'So we are,' he agreed. 'I am afraid I am called Don Iago so often that I am apt to forget that I am also an Arbuthnot.' 'But it's important, isn't it?' Lucy prompted him. 'Of course it is,' he agreed soberly. 'It must be in any family business.' His eyes went quietly from Don Matias to his niece, Mari. 'It is always important to have strong ties in business,' he said. Antonio and his wife smiled and nodded their agreement. Mari, Lucy noticed with amusement, was busy playing with her fan. There was little doubt as to what they were all hoping. Only Don Matias's feelings in the matter were in doubt. He looked as proud and distant as ever. 'Ah well, now we have all met, you. had better take her over to your mother,' Iago suggested to him. 'Lucy must be tired from all her travelling.'

Don Matias bowed slightly and looked enquiringly at Lucy. 'lama little tired,' she admitted. She shook all her relatives by the hand, still a little shy of them, and wondered if she would ever feel really at home with any of them. When they went back out into the sun it seemed hotter than ever.

The Constantino house was very nearly as big as the Arbuthnot mansion and was Certainly very much older. They had walked from the one to the other, entering the garden through the side gate in the wall; a garden full of cooling vines and bright flowers. The house itself was entirely Spanish in character, with heavy, elaborately carved, old-fashioned furniture that smelt strongly of polish and loving housewifery. Don Matias threw his hat on to a convenient peg and clapped his hands, bringing a maid running into the hall. 'This is Ana,' he said simply in Spanish. 'She will see to all your needs. I hope you will be quite comfortable while you are with us.' He bowed rather formally to her and left her in the hands of the maid, striding out of the hall towards his own rooms. Lucy stood for a moment, looking after him. He, too, must have been tired, she thought, but he gave no indication of it. He looked tough and as though he knew exactly where he was going. She wondered if he was aware that the whole family were expecting him to many Mari and if he resented it. 'If you will come this way, senorita,' the maid said hesitantly. 'Your luggage is already in your room.' Obediently, Lucy followed her middle-aged figure up the stairs and down a bewildering number of corridors. How odd it was, she

thought, that people who were so Spanish—so very un-English— should, possibly be called Arbuthnot! Yet she had liked them, all of them, even if she didn't begin to understand them. But it was just that she didn't know any of them very well yet. And she began to admire the view and to tell the maid how pleased she was with her room.

CHAPTER II When Ana had gone, Lucy was able to explore her new quarters better. Her first impression had been one of luxuiy, but now she saw that this was not entirely so. The bedspread was indeed of handmade lace, but it was so old that the threads had worn thin and what had originally been snowy white was now yellow with age. The curtains also spoke silently of past glories and standards that could now no longer be maintained. There was no carpet. The floor was covered with marble tiles that were cool to the feet and were easy to keep clean. But it was the furniture that pleased Lucy most of all. It was all typically Spanish, with that rich grandeur that other European countries have renounced in favour of the utilitarian. The bed was a four-poster, the small table beautifully inlaid with precious metals and a variety of different coloured woods, the deep armchair covered in a velvet grown bare with the number of people who had sat on it. Outside she found she had a balcony almost as big as the room itself and shaded from the sun by brightly coloured canvas blinds. From it she could see right across the fine gardens and over the dividing wall to the Arbuthnot grounds beyond. Later on she would be able to sort out one building from another and say exactly what was the purpose of each, but now they just seemed a mass of whitewashed walls, fascinating because of the way they were related one to the other, casting deep, vivid, purple shadows across the cobbled yards and their own walls. Her suitcases had been placed in one corner of the room and it took her a moment or two to find them, so that she could start her unpacking. A layer of fine dust covered the leather and so she took them out on to the balcony so as not to dirty the pristine cleanness of the floor. It was a soothing occupation, she discovered, unpacking her clothing and the few possessions she had brought

with her. It made the room seem less strange and more a part of herself, and by the time she had discovered the small bathroom that was obviously for her own exclusive use, and the quaint door that hid away the built-in hanging space, she felt quite at home. She had hardly finished grouping her hairbrushes and odd pots of cream on the dressing-table when there was a knock at her door. 'A dalante!' she called out. The door opened a couple of inches and Ana's face appeared in the crack. 'The Senora is ready to receive you, senorita,' she announced breathlessly. 'Perhaps you would be so good as to come with me?' Lucy smiled and nodded. She took a quick glance at herself in the looking-glass, fixed her hair with a simple gesture with one hand and then hurried to the doorway. She was frankly curious to see Don Matias' mother. She found herself wondering about her as she followed Ana's severely dressed, middle-aged figure down the endless corridors. She could imagine her tall, with a beaky nose, and the same pride as her son, scorching everybody around her. It was certainly obvious that Ana was more than a little awed by her, and it was that, more than anything else, that made Lucy nervous as she waited for Ana to knock on the door. The Senora was sitting with her back to the door. She turned her head slightly, her dark eyes alert and kindly. With a rush of relief, Lucy saw that she was not in the least like her son. She was small and dumpy with very fine hands and feet and a face that tried to laugh even when she was being serious.

'How nice of you to come so quickly!' she exclaimed in English. 'I hope Ana didn't bustle you into it because she knew I was longing to see you. Sit down, my dear, and let me look at you properly. You don't know how nice it is for me to have you here!' Lucy sat down opposite her hostess and smiled in return. 'It's very kind of you to have me,' she murmured, trying to hide her astonishment. Was she English? Surely not! Her looks were quite, quite Spanish! And yet her accent was so perfect as to be quite indistinguishable from Lucy's own. 'I am pleased to say that everyone agreed it would be more convenient for you,' the Senora smiled. 'It goes without saying how delighted I was by the idea!' She paused. 'I went to school in England, you see, and sometimes, even now, I miss the greenness of the fields and the freshness of the air! And yet, when I was there, I was always longing for the sun, I remember! Still, it will be such fun to have you here! Matias went to Gibraltar for you, I hear?' Lucy nodded and smiled a little. So that was where the Senora had learned her English! She felt her fine, heavily-lidded eyes upon her and her smile widened. 'It was quite a surprise,' she admitted. 'I was expecting my cousin to come for me.' Senora Constantino laughed. 'I see,' she said. 'I'm afraid you'll find Francisco a selfish young man. I am hoping Mari is different. What do you think of her? She's a pretty little minx, isn't she?' Once again Lucy smiled.

'They're a very handsome family,' she said slowly. 'Much more so than our branch is! And yet we are far more like my greatgrandfather.' Senora Constantino sat forward with a little rustle of black silk. 'Your family must mean a great deal to you,' she said earnestly. 'The name of Arbuthnot is very greatly respected in Spain. It is because of your ancestors and one or two others like them that Jerez has such a great love for all the English. Matias is very proud to be director of the Arbuthnot bodega.' Lucy wondered how true that was. She couldn't help thinking that Don Matias was under the impression that he was Arbuthnots and it was only some unfortunate accident that had given Francisco the rightful name. Of course she and Mari had it too, but that wasn't the same, for they would marry and change their names, though the heritage would always be theirs. That was something that her father had bred into her as carefully as he had taught her the different grades of wine and when to serve them. But Don Matias had another name and so he could never be a part of it in quite the same way! It gave her a queer sense of satisfaction to know that, to know that no matter how important he felt he was he could never become one of the family! Unless he married Mari, a cold voice added inside her, and she wondered why the idea didn't appeal to her more. Everybody else would obviously be so glad! Senora Constantino glanced at her tiny jewel-encrusted watch and sighed with pleasure. 'It is still too early for me to drink sherry,' she said apologetically. 'I am afraid it will take you a little time to get accustomed to our Spanish hours! But if you would be so kind as to touch the bell, I'll

get Ana to bring us both some chocolate. We make it particularly well in this house.' Lucy obediently rang the bell and sat down again on the highbacked chair she had chosen. 'Is this house as old as it looks?' she asked. The Senora nodded. It is really a palace,' she explained simply. 'Most of the rooms are shut up now and there are others that we use very little. I keep mainly to my own suite up here and Matias has his downstairs. For the rest, I see that it is kept clean and dusted and that is the best that I can do. It is far too large for us, but it has been in the family for a very long time and we should be sad to give it up now.' 'I imagine it's a great deal older than the bodega,' Lucy said thoughtfully. The Senora's lips twitched with amusement. 'Considerably, my dear,' she agreed. 'We are the older by some two centuries, I think.' Lucy blushed. 'I—I didn't mean -' she stammered. 'Of course you didn't!' Senora Constantino exclaimed. 'Nor did I think it!' She turned away to answer a knock at the door, rising slowly to her feet so that for the first time Lucy could see that she was almost crippled and had some difficulty in getting about. 'Our chocolate, I think! You must tell me if you don't think we make the best you have ever tasted.'

Lucy accepted her cup and tasted the steaming hot liquid with interest. It was so thick that it coated her lips as she drank it, but it was delicious as her hostess had promised, both sweet and bitter and very, very hot. Senora Constantino chuckled gleefully. 'I knew you'd like it!' she triumphed. 'But don't expect to get exactly the same outside these four walls. Ana only makes it that way for me, and nobody else can make it in exactly the same way—not even I, and I've tried often enough!' She drank her chocolate slowly, savouring the flavour of it, and Lucy found herself doing likewise. 'You must tell Ana if there is anything you need,' the Senora told her in a businesslike manner as Lucy laid their empty cups carefully on the tray. 'I am so sorry not to have seen your room for myself, but I find it increasingly difficult to get about and so I am rather lazy and stay in my rooms as much as possible.' It was the first time she had referred to the disability that knotted her joints and made her almost a cripple, and Lucy allowed her sympathy to show in her eyes even while she said nothing. 'My room is quite beautiful,' she replied warmly. 'I'm sure I have you to thank for its choice!' The Senora looked pleased. 'Once, before I was married, I slept in that room,' she said. 'I have always been fond of it.' She held out her hand with a formal gesture. 'It has been so nice to meet you,' she said gravely. 'I cannot say whether I shall be down for dinner or not, but any of

the servants will show you to the dining room. We eat at ten o'clock.' Lucy thanked her and, feeling warmed by her visit, shut the door carefully behind her and started back to her own room.

Somewhere on the way she got lost. She couldn't possibly decide which of the many corridors she should have chosen, but she knew that something had gone wrong when she found herself at the top of some wrought-iron stairs that led down into a quite different garden from any she had hitherto seen. The plants had only recently been watered and the warm smell of the damp earth was heavy on the air. Rapidly Lucy descended the steps and saw that she was on the other side of the house to the garden she had seen from her own room and that the two were joined together by a vine-covered walk that had morning glory creeping in and out of the pale green stems. Glancing down at her watch, she saw she had at least two hours before dinner and wondered how best to fill them in. The tall buildings of the bodega drew her like a magnet and she wondered if anyone would mind if she had a look round them now, by herself, before the morning. No one had yet mentioned to her what work she would be expected to do there, but she hoped it would be something that had to do with the wine itself, for she loved the smell of the seasoned wood of the butts mingled with the maturing sherry. It was easy to find her way out into the narrow, high- walled road which went between the two properties and easier still to let herself into the main courtyard of the bodega by the small

wrought-iron gate that someone had thoughtfully placed in the wall. Although she knew the exact size of the place and all about it, she was surprised by its actual size now that she was confronted by it. The buildings that housed the butts, also called bodegas, were huge cathedrals of wine, silent and immense, with row upon row of butts, each one holding one hundred and ten gallons of young sherry. Lucy glanced into one or two of them and began to wonder if she would ever be able to find her way about this vast maze of buildings and gardens. It was easy to see how the former had encroached on the latter. Once upon a time the gardens must have been very fine, with tall, towering trees and green patches of coarse watered lawns surrounded by fine flowers. But gradually the bodegas had encroached and now only remnants of the gardens were left, forming small oases of coolness and colour between the gigantic buildings. The largest of the gardens was the one that Lucy liked the best. A couple of painted seats had been placed there for the casual visitor and the whole of one side of it was taken up by a menagerie of animals, all of them caught locally and tamed by the workers for their own amusement. A group of foxes came rushing forward to greet her, overjoyed at seeing another newcomer come to admire them. The leader sniffed her bare legs gently while the others, a little more timid, wove in and out of each other in the rear. Moving very slowly so as not to alarm them, Lucy bent down and held out her hand, her fist clenched, and was welcomed by a slight push of a warm nose.

'You're beautiful!' she informed the leader warmly. 'And really very like a dog!' 'He must recognize the Arbuthnot scent,' a laughing voice said behind her. 'He is not usually as friendly as that on a first acquaintance 1' Lucy turned quickly, causing the foxes to back shyly away from her. Behind her, looking tall and handsome, was Francisco, a slight smile on his face and laughter in his eyes. Lucy smiled back at him. 'I am good with animals,' she said simply. 'They nearly always come to me.' Francisco's eyes glinted down at her. 'I can understand the attraction,' he said solemnly. Lucy coloured slightly. 'How long have you had them here?' she asked, deliberately turning her attention back to the foxes. Francisco squatted down beside her, flicking his fingers with a steady rhythm that brought the animals running over to him. 'I think the collection is almost as old as the Arbuthnots. We look on them as a kind of mascot. You know the sort of thing: as long as they're friendly, the wine will be good! That sort of thing!' 'Really?' Lucy asked. She wouldn't have thought that sherry production and superstition would have mixed very well.

'No, not really,' he said lazily. 'They're just for fun. Here, watch this!' He put his hand into his pocket and produced a small rubber ball, holding it aloft, high over his head. 'Go! Fetch it!' he called out in Spanish, and threw it hard across the coarse grass with the foxes in hot pursuit. He watched them chasing one another and the ball through half-shut eyes. 'They're intelligent little beasts,' he said softly. Lucy sat down on the edge of the grass. 'I don't think I've ever known any foxes before,' she said. Francisco chuckled cynically. 'Now that I can't believe! My dear girl, you've been living among Arbuthnots all your life!.' Lucy gave him a startled look. 'So have you!' she reminded him. 'Exactly! That's what I'm telling you.' He grinned impudently. 'Foxes, every one of them!' Lucy blinked. 'Aren't you being rather harsh?' she asked him. Almost sulkily, he smiled at her. 'Perhaps I am,' he admitted. 'Or perhaps your side of things in England is run differently. I like it well enough in some ways, but I don't want it for the rest of my life.'

'You mean you wouldn't mind if it went out of the family?' Lucy asked in puzzled tones. It was so hard to believe that any Arbuthnot should want to do anything that had absolutely nothing to do with sherry. Francisco grinned. 'It might cause me a twinge,' he admitted. He looked at her with an almost equal curiosity. 'But it would cause you something more than that, wouldn't it?' Lucy nodded soberly. 'Perhaps it's because I'm the only one left of either sex in my generation in England,' she explained. 'I know we don't produce the sherry, but selling it is important too, and England is far and away the biggest national market.' Francisco shrugged. 'No, I couldn't care that way,' he said. 'I sometimes think I shouldn't care if I never heard the word sherry ever again!' 'But why?' Lucy burst out. Francisco flicked his fingers to the foxes and threw the ball for them again. 'I suppose I'm ambitious for other things.' He laughed suddenly. 'Do you know the family thinks I spend all my spare time with girls! But I'm a man for all that! You'll probably find out, if you get to know me better.' Lucy sat up straight and put her lips primly together. Francisco could be very much a man if he liked, but she found it far more

disturbing that the bodega should mean so little to him. She glanced into his laughing eyes and wondered whether it was all an elaborate tease on his part. 'Don Matias seems to like his work well enough!' she said a trifle bitterly. Francisco looked at her sharply. 'He's practically one of the family,' he drawled. 'But don't let him bother you! He used to have us all running around in circles, but I decided one day to just ignore him, and it seems to have worked. Anyhow, they seem to get along a good deal better than I do with him! But what Arbuthnot ever liked being told what to do?' 'He tells you what to do?' Lucy repeated, shocked. 'He's senior to me,' Francisco said wryly. 'How is he treating you? The mat of welcome, or the frozen hand of resignation?' Lucy tried to sort out her impressions of her host. 'I don't really know,' she said in confusion. Francisco stood up in one easy movement. 'He won't leave you in doubt for long,' he told her dryly. 'Have you met his mother? She's my best girlfriend! In fact I'm dining with her tonight—you too, for that matter.' He dropped the bantering note in his voice and became quite serious. 'Look, don't let Matias get you down,' he warned her. 'Take a leaf out of my book and ignore him!' He held out his hand to her and pulled her up to her feet, and she smiled up at him.

'I'll try it anyway,' she promised, ' and see what happens.' 'What could happen?' he asked her slyly. 'Matias never notices anything until it's been maturing for seven years. Poor Mari has another couple of years of his company to go before he's due really to see her. You, I'm afraid, don't even begin!' Lucy laughed. 'I hope I've begun with you,' she said shyly. His eyes filled with mirth. 'Oh, surely!' he said casually. 'I've always longed to act as somebody's guide, philosopher and friend, and in this particular jungle I'm getting to be quite an expert!' She laughed with him, thinking that he was really very likeable. In fact she was ridiculously glad that he would be there at dinner to ease her way into the Constantino household. 'I'm sure it isn't half as bad as you make out!' she teased him. 'But I shall be very glad of your help. My father is expecting me to go home knowing everything there is to know about sherry, and that's quite an undertaking.' He looked at her with some respect. 'It's more than we would expect of our women out here.' He laughed again. 'Tell Matias that and he'll really keep your nose to the grindstone, so my advice is don't! Help me put these animals back in their cage and I'll walk over with you to the house.' It seemed an even shorter distance between the two gates than it had before, and Lucy couldn't decide whether it was because she

was beginning to get familiar with the way or because she had company. Francisco escorted her as far as the main hall and then said he was going to find Matias and that he would see her at dinner. 'Should I change?' she asked him hastily, realizing that no one had told her this important detail. 'The Senora will, but I imagine you can do as you like,' he advised. He gave her an airy wave of the hand and vanished into one of the dark corridors that led out of the hall. Lucy paused for an instant at the foot of the stairs, looking after him, and then she slowly mounted the solid marble steps, glad that she had made at least one friend among these foreign relations. Ana was in her room, turning down the bedspread and drawing the curtains. 'The Senora is already dressed,' she announced without even looking up. 'Then I had better hurry,' Lucy replied equably. 'Si,' said Ana shortly. She spread Lucy's nylon nightdress out on the bed with loving care and paused for a second to admire her handiwork. 'The Senora is tired tonight with all these comings and goings.' Lucy stripped off the cotton frock she was wearing and threw it lightly over the back of a chair. 'I'll try and see she doesn't stay downstairs too long,' she said, picking up her cue as easily as if she had done it a hundred times before.

Ana sniffed. 'You won't find her very willing,' she said dourly. 'She has a weakness for young Francisco. He laughs with her and flatters her, and not many find the time to do that nowadays. But don't you pay any attention to him. The Senora is tired and she shouldn't be going downstairs at all.' Lucy buried her head in the wardrobe, looking for a suitable dress to put on. 'I'll do my best,' she promised. She came out of the wardrobe with the dress triumphantly clasped in one hand. Ana took it from her and dropped it over her head with the experienced hand of one who had been a personal maid for many years. 'You have some very pretty things,' she said approvingly. 'The Senora says I am to wait on you as well as on herself, and if I may say so, it will be a pleasure. It is a long time since we had anyone young in the house.' But what about Don Matias? Lucy asked herself silently. He wasn't old! But perhaps the maid had meant young women. She smiled gently at her. 'It's very kind of you. In England we have to fend for ourselves nowadays -' Ana' sniffed again. 'The Senora did say you might not be accustomed to the attention,' she said grandly. 'But I told her we would manage somehow. You'll be no trouble at all, out all day at the bodega and only in in the evenings.'

Lucy grinned at her reflection in the looking-glass. 'I'll try not to be any trouble,' she agreed meekly, and was rewarded by a look of approval from the maid. 'If you'll sit down, I'll dress your hair,' Ana said tersely. 'It needs building up to give you height. We'll have it looking like something in no time at all!' Lucy laughed before she could stop herself. 'I'm afraid I'm not giving you much material to work on,' she chuckled. 'I'm decidedly penny plain in comparison with the Spanish Arbuthnots!' She had a mental vision of her two cousins and bit her lip at the thought. Her own wide golden eyes and her light brown hair seemed very poor by comparison. Ana's darker eyes met hers in the glass. 'Beauty is not everything,' she said dryly. 'I have seen it tarnished by an ugly expression until it was no more than a caricature.' 'Tarnished?' Lucy queried, not knowing the Spanish word. Ana explained the word, graphically, in one or two earthy phrases, and then stood back to admire her handiwork. 'There, that'll do,' she said finally, and added: 'I think the Senora will be pleased.' Lucy couldn't have said whether she was or not, but she herself was delighted. The whole way down the stairs she hugged the final image she had had of herself, astonished at how quickly and how delicately Ana had completely altered her style—even the shape of her face! She descended the stairs with her head held high and was

doubly pleased by the quick glint of admiration in Francisco's eyes. Don Matias had his back towards her, but the Senora, who would probably always know what every man in the room was thinking, turned immediately to greet her and gave her a quick little smile of approval that brought the colour to her cheeks. 'I'm so sorry if I've kept everyone waiting,' she said softly, a little confused by their admiration. 'Ana— Ana dressed my hair.' Her hand went up to her head and she touched her hair lightly. 'It looks—well,' the Senora said with finality. 'Don't you think so, Matias?' Don Matias looked round slowly, a slight frown flickering across his proud eyes. His gaze came to rest on Lucy for what seemed an endless moment. 'It looks—Spanish,' he said. 'And yes, I like it.' An explosion of temper fountained up inside Lucy, making her eyes flash gold. She looked away from Don Matias so that he wouldn't see how angry she was. It was strange that she hadn't minded Francisco's silent admiration, nor Senora Constantino's outspoken praise. But she had minded that cool appraising look and the way he had said that he liked it! Then, just as suddenly, her temper vanished and she wanted to giggle instead. All she could think of was Francisco saying that he ignored Matias, and she wondered how he did it! Don Matias offered her his arm and she saw that Francisco was already leading the Senora into the dining room, carefully matching his step to her painful limp. In silence she put her hand on his arm,, wondering a little at the formality of it all. The cloth beneath her fingers was soft and had an expensive feel, and the arm shook slightly so that she knew that he was laughing.

'There's not much of the mouse about you this evening,' he remarked conversationally. 'Perhaps you have more of the lion than you imagined.' She remembered that she had told him that her father sometimes looked like a lion. It was just the silly, childish sort of thing she would say, she thought with bitter self-contempt. 'It's really Ana who has been so clever and not me at all,' she said a trifle sulkily. He laughed. 'Are you really an Arbuthnot?' he teased her. 'Or just pretending?' Her eyes flashed indignantly. 'Why should I pretend?' she demanded. Francisco held the Senora's chair for her with attentive care. When he had done, he smiled across the table at Lucy. 'Matias doesn't believe that the Arbuthnots are ever honest with themselves about anything,' he said smoothly. 'Do you, Matias?' Lucy's eyes went from one to the other of the two men. Don Matias was standing up very straight behind his chair, looking prouder than ever. 'As a family you have a gift for self-deception that I deplore,' he agreed with a sudden, charming smile. 'But I don't know that I would have you otherwise.' Lucy glanced at Francisco and was surprised to see him laughing too.

'Poor Matias,' the young man drawled, ' you fell among thieves indeed when you threw in your lot with us!' Matias grunted with amused indifference. 'Not thieves,' he said. 'Fools perhaps!' Which was far, far worse in Lucy's opinion. How she hated his smug opinion of the Arbuthnots! How dared he? And then she remembered that the Constantinos had been living here, in this house, long before the Arbuthnots had even been thought of, and she found the idea confusing. 'But I am forgetting my manners,' Francisco said lightly. 'Pour me a glass of wine, Matias, and I shall drink to your mother's bright eyes!' He lifted his glass with careful grace. 'To the finest woman I know,' he said gently. The Senora's eyes sparkled maliciously, though she was obviously pleased. 'Not even fools, Matias,' she said to her son. 'Liars!'

CHAPTER III Lucy was unaccustomed to dining so late at night. She had accepted the fact that the meal would not be until ten o'clock without any hesitation. It was only now, when the plates from the main course were being taken away, that she felt the full weight of her tiredness. Her eyes felt sandy and it became increasingly more and more difficult to sit up straight. And then Don Matias dropped his bombshell and she was jerked into wakefulness with a horrible suddenness. Francisco was flirting gently with the Senora, bringing a light to her eyes. He was a kind boy, Lucy thought, and wondered how old he was. Twenty? Or twenty- one? Possibly not even as much as that. She pulled her attention back with an effort to Don Matias, her sleepiness plainly visible to any but the most casual observer. 'By the way,' he said to her, refilling her glass with wine, ' Don Iago thinks you should start off by working for me. Is it true that you have had secretarial experience?' Lucy felt winded. 'Yes,' she said. 'In both English and Spanish?' 'Yes.' 'Then that seems to be settled,' he said finally. There was very little doubt that he didn't like the arrangement any better than she did. 'It will involve you in quite a lot of responsibility,' he added dryly. 'I hope you will be able to manage.'

Lucy avoided looking at him. She would hate every moment of it, she knew, but she couldn't very well say so. 'I worked for my father for some time,' she said instead. 'He didn't have any complaints.' Don Matias threw her one of his crooked smiles. 'It is rather different working for one's relatives,' he said. Lucy faced him squarely. 'In what way?' she asked. 'My father has very high standards!' His proud eyes became suddenly mocking. 'I am sure he has,' he said smoothly. 'But the fact is that you resent my having been found a job in your department?' she stormed at him. 'I suppose you're feeling put upon!' 'Well, yes, since you ask, I am,' he retorted. 'I haven't the time to check everything my secretary says and does -' Lucy regarded him mutinously. 'I shall do my best to please, sir!' she said. He smiled civilly at her. 'I shall see that you do,' he stated simply, and asked Francisco to pass him the cheese. It was a great relief when the meal at last came to an end. Rather belatedly, Lucy remembered that she was supposed to be getting

the Senora up to her room at a reasonable time and wondered how on earth she was going to set about it. But in fact it proved to be quite simple, for Francisco had already noted the shadows beneath the Senora's fine, heavily-lidded eyes and was quietly insisting that she should have her coffee upstairs. 'I have business I wish to discuss with Matias,' he told her with a cheeky smile, ' and you know how difficult I find it to concentrate when you are about! Lucy will take you upstairs, she's practically asleep herself!' 'Yes, I am,' Lucy admitted. 'It's been rather an exciting day.' Ana was waiting at the top of the stairs and she carried the Senora off with her, chiding her in soft, liquid Spanish the whole length of the corridor. What a terrible day tomorrow was going to be, Lucy thought. She hurried down the corridor towards her own room, intent on getting to bed. At least she had the satisfaction of knowing that her speeds were good. She hadn't wanted to take any secretarial course when her father had first suggested it, but she had been far too conscientious not to do it well when he had insisted. Later she had been glad of it, for she had enjoyed working for him—they had both enjoyed it. But perhaps it was different from working for a stranger. A proud,' critical stranger who would be looking for an .opportunity to humiliate her because she was an Arbuthnot and he was not! Well, he wouldn't get the opportunity, not if she could help it! She would work until she dropped before she would complain. An Arbuthnot was a match for anyone! Certainly for Don Matias Constantino y Mantero! She kicked her shoes off her aching feet,, gave her face no more than a lick and a promise of a wash, and bundled into bed.

In the morning it was strange to awaken to a hot sun already overhead. Ana brought her a drink of hot chocolate that was so thick she could scarcely stir it at all, and everything seemed strange and rather pleasant. 'I'll get your breakfast sent up,' the maid told her gruffly. 'You can sit in the sun on the balcony and eat it. It will do you good to get a bit of colour into your skin.' Lucy sipped her chocolate and then dressed rapidly, a little anxious lest she should be late her very first day. She chose a simple cotton frock that she thought would be suitable for office work and then settled to the task of doing her hair. She couldn't hope to compete with the style Ana had given her, but she was quite pleased with the result, teasing it up and spraying it lightly with lacquer to hold it. Ana was pleased too. She came in bearing the rolls and hot coffee and came to a full stop in the doorway. 'Muy guapa!' she exclaimed with appreciation. 'Don Matias will certainly notice that!' 'Oh, I hope not!' Lucy said grimly. The idea appalled her and she was in two minds as to whether to go back to her usual style or not. Ana set down the tray with a bang and made a great clatter pouring out the coffee. 'Don Matias will notice, but he will say nothing,' she went on cheerfully. 'He has always been just the same, ever since he was a little boy. It is something the little Mari will have to learn to understand.' She sighed gustily. 'Drink your coffee while it is hot,' she instructed. 'I must go and see to the Senora.'

It was a curious breakfast. Lucy ate the bread and jam and drank the boiling coffee, leaving the sweet biscuits on the plate. It was so hot on the balcony that, for her second cup of coffee, she moved back into her room. The garden below was already wilting in the heat and not a bird sang. Lucy finished her coffee in a hurry and rushed down the stairs, letting herself out of the little side-gate and running down the road towards the bodega. A uniformed porter standing guard outside the main entrance saluted her smartly. 'Can you tell me where Don Matias's office is?' she asked him. He gave her an enquiring look of covert curiosity. 'If you will wait a moment, I shall see if he is expecting you,' he suggested. 'Oh, is he here already?' she asked him anxiously. 'He will be here any minute.' Lucy swept her hand up to her hair, forgetting all about the intricacies of her new style. 'I'm to be his secretary,' she explained. 'I'm Miss Arbuthnot—Lucy Arbuthnot.' The man didn't smile, but his eyes grew visibly warmer. 'I should have guessed,' he told her. 'You're the image of the portrait in there!' He pointed into the room beyond with his thumb. 'I'll show you the way now, miss.'

All the offices were on the first floor-of the main building. The porter pointed out her Uncle Iago's, her Uncle Antonio's, and Francisco's on the way. They all seemed much the same, heavily ornate with vast paintings on the walls and shuttered against the sun. Iago's looked businesslike, Antonio's dusty and Francisco's frankly unused. A guitar held pride of place on Francisco's desk, she noted with amusement, where the others had bottles of sherry, but otherwise they were really very alike. Don Matias's was quite different. The shutters had been thrown back and the windows were wide open, causing the vast pile of papers.on his desk to flutter in the breeze. There were no portraits on the walls and the furniture was simple and modern. In fact there were no inessentials at all. 'He'll be along in a moment,' the porter told her. 'He's never one to be late for work, not that one!' He left her standing in the middle of the room and went back to his post downstairs. Lucy wandered over to the window and felt more alone than she had ever done in her life before. There was very little in the way of a view, only a glass-covered corridor down below. The other offices, she realized, all looked out across the main gardens, but it seemed that. Don Matias was excluded from that privilege. Because he wasn't an Arbuthnot? she wondered. She was still brooding over it when he came in. 'So you are already here,' he greeted her. She nodded, thinking about all she had been told about Spanish pleasantries and how little they amounted to as far as this particular Spaniard was concerned! 'Good morning!' she said brightly.

His glance spared her nothing and gave her no clue as to whether he approved of her choice of dress or of her new hair-style. 'Good morning,' he replied gravely. Her hands clung nervously together and she resented that he should make her feel so gauche and ill at ease. She watched him anxiously as he crossed the room and sat down behind the desk. He took his time, looking completely at home, and then he looked up at her and smiled. 'Well, shall we begin?' he said. Afterwards Lucy was doubly glad that she had been efficiently and thoroughly trained in her work. Don Matias got through a prodigious amount of work that morning and so, perforce, did she! She began to wonder what there could possibly be left for anyone else to do. The whole working of the bodega was gathered up and organized from that one desk. The people who produced the grapes were dealt with, the workmen were considered, plans for the future were considered and either approved or rejected, even the sales charts were kept tightly under his control. Naturally Lucy was more interested in the sales than in anything else. It was a relief to her to be thoroughly at home and to know what she was about, as she was not in her other work. The charts were old familiar friends and, though they dealt with every country in the world, except those behind the Iron Curtain with whom the Spanish Government will have no dealings, they were exactly the same as those that her father dealt with in England. But the other work was interesting too. Don Matias dictated meticulously and very fast in both English and Spanish, but she was pleased to find that she could more than keep up with him,

and her letters, when she laid them on his desk for him to sign, were well laid out and immaculate. He did not thank her or congratulate her, but she was aware of his eyes upon her more than once, looking slightly puzzled, and she accepted that as a compliment in itself and was satisfied that she was upholding the name of Arbuthnot—whatever he might think of her cousin. When at last two o'clock came though,, she was both tired and hungry. She was not yet accustomed to the heat and the humid air seemed to sap the strength out of her, making everything twice as difficult as it would be normally. The carbon was smudgy, the ribbon dank, and her fingers left marks on the paper unless she was very careful. Nor was she accustomed to eating so late, and from one o'clock onwards she found it increasingly difficult to concentrate. The third time her eyes stole towards the hands of the clock Don Matias looked up. 'Getting hungry?' he asked her with a grin. 'A little,' she admitted. She made a great show of typing a letter so that he wouldn't think she was slacking at all, uncomfortably aware that he was watching her every movement. 'Then perhaps you had better go home and get ready for lunch,' he said at last. 'My mother prefers us to be punctual for our meals.' Lucy came to the end of her letter and tore it out of the typewriter. 'Thank you,' she said quietly. 'What time should I be back?' Don Matias looked amused.

'We start again at four o'clock,' he replied briskly. 'It will be cooler then and you will be able to relax a little.' She stood up, feeling small and forlorn. 'It's always a little difficult getting the hang of a new job,' she defended herself. 'So it is,' he agreed. 'Can you find your own way?' She held her head up very high. 'Yes, thank you,' she said clearly. 'And in any case I should hate to disturb you, Don Matias!' He looked as proud and as withdrawn as ever. 'I don't think you could succeed in doing that,' he drawled. She was glad to leave him alone in the office and to get out into the cool corridor that led to the stairs. He was perfectly horrid, she thought stormily, with his concealed insults and his complacent ways! She ran down the steps in a great hurry and smiled at the porter as he bowed formally and waved his hand to her. The Spanish grace of movement delighted her, despite her irritation, and she slowed down a trifle, and was glad she had done so when she found herself in the street and the burning sun. A donkey, steaming in the heat, passed her at a gallant trot, a small boy in a cheeky hat on its back. 'Buenos tardes!' he called out to her. 'Good afternoon.' She returned the greeting and was rewarded by his grin. Behind him she could see another figure in the street, waiting in the small

shade of a tree. Squinting against the glare, she tried to see who it was and was surprised to recognize Mari, half hidden from her by the dusty leaves. 'Hullo,' she called out. 'Are you coming to see us?' Mari came reluctantly into the sunlight, playing with her skirts to make them swing with her walk. 'Ola,' she said almost sulkily. 'Is Matias coming soon?' Lucy shrugged her shoulders. 'He told me to go and get ready for lunch,' she said. Mari looked at her shrewdly. 'You don't like him, do you?' she asked. 'It must be very strange to have to work for him!' She gave a little chuckle in the back of her throat. 'Do you like working?' she asked curiously. Lucy smiled at her, genuinely amused. 'Does it seem so odd?' she laughed. 'Well, yes, it does,' Mari admitted. 'It must be so peculiar never to have any time to oneself.' 'But I do!' Lucy insisted, and immediately wondered whether she would have very much in Spain, living as she did with the Constantinos. 'I should be terribly bored if I didn't have to work,' she added firmly. Mari squinted into the glare of the street.

'Perhaps it's the way you've been brought up,' she said, sounding faintly bored. 'In Spain we are taught how to fill up our time—it makes us into better wives, and mistresses too.' Lucy raised her eyebrows slightly and tried not to laugh. 'I really think we should be much cooler, waiting for Don Matias inside,' she suggested at length. Mari gurgled with laughter. 'Have I shocked you?' she asked almost eagerly. 'Francisco is always saying that the English are shocked terribly easily.' Lucy considered the question. 'I think we think the same of the Spanish,' she said at last. Mari pouted and then flounced towards the gate that led into the Constantinos' garden. 'You are right. It is too hot. I'm going to see if the Senora has come down yet.' She ran through the garden and into the house without a single backward glance, without caring if Lucy followed or not. Senora Constantino had descended from her room. She was sitting stiffly on an uncomfortable-looking chair, trying vainly to keep her feet out of Mari's way as the girl threw herself into a heap on to the floor beside her. 'Is my son with you?' she asked Lucy, and her eyes softened for a moment as she saw the unconscious picture the English girl made, framed as she was in the rounded arch of the doorway.

'No, he isn't,' Mari answered petulantly, before Lucy could say a word. 'I'm waiting for him because he promised to take me riding this evening and I want to know what time he will be free.' 'Then you had better stay for lunch,' the Senora suggested with resolution. Mari smiled up at her. 'May I?' she said prettily. 'I was so hoping that you'd ask me.' The Senora grunted. 'You're a pretty kitten when you want to be! I suppose you're leading my son a merry dance?' Mari caught the end of her tongue between her two teeth. 'I'm not going to tell you—in company,' she said. Senora Constantino tapped her sharply on the head. 'You would do better to acquire a few manners:' she said sharply. 'It is not at all well-bred to make other people feel unwanted. I apologize to Lucy for you.' Lucy forced herself to smile. 'It's quite all right,' she said quickly. 'I expect Mari would rather be alone with you for a few minutes, and I would like to wash before lunch anyway.' The Senora's disapproval vanished as quickly as it had come. 'Quite right, my dear,' she approved. 'But you must not be made to feel de trop. We all have to remember that you are our guest. If

Matias and Mari are going riding this evening, I shall insist that Francisco takes you also.' Lucy was very conscious of Mari's burning indignation and tried to refuse, but the Senora would have none of it. 'I shall inform Matias when he comes in,' she said loftily, and Lucy escaped while she could, wondering which was worse, Mari's obvious resentment or the Senora's heavily laboured amends. They were a difficult people, she thought as she mounted the stairs to her room, and she wasn't at all sure that she would ever understand them. Only she must! She couldn't let her father down. She was an Arbuthnot, and that was all there was to it!

Don Matias hadn't come to lunch. It had been an awkward meal with Mari sulking, Lucy madly searching her brains for something pleasant to say, and Senora Constantino apparently under the illusion that she was eating alone. Afterwards the afternoon stretched out, long and hot. It was odd to lie on one's bed in the middle of the day and odder still to go back to the office at the peculiar hour of four o'clock, just when, truth to tell, Lucy would have far preferred a very English cup of tea. Don Matias wasn't in the office either. Lucy found that he had left some letters for her on the dictaphone, a piece of machinery that she wasn't accustomed to and thoroughly disliked by the end of the afternoon. But it was important to her to get the letters finished. Whatever arrangement there had been in the past it couldn't have been very effective, for they were sadly behind what her father would have considered efficient. Indeed, quite a few of them were a week, or even a fortnight, old.

She had just finished reducing the more urgent ones to a neat pile ready for his signature when Don Matias came in. 'Still here?' he asked her. She nodded her head without speaking. 'Are those for me to sign?' Was she imagining it, or was there a slight smile on his face? 'You're very behind with your mail,' she informed him coldly. He looked surprised. 'So,' he said carefully. She was a little afraid of him, but she wouldn't have admitted it for worlds. 'I should get the rest of the backlog done tomorrow,' she went on doggedly. He really smiled then, and he lost that proud, aloof look and merely looked rather nice. 'You seem very determined about it,' he said humorously. 'You're probably right at that!' He fiddled with the dictaphone, starting it and stopping it again. 'Francisco tells me that you and he are joining us on our ride this evening?' His dark eyes met hers and she flushed. 'It was your mother's idea,' she said uncomfortably. 'But I'm not really at all keen to go, if you would rather ride alone with Mari.' He bowed courteously, his expression inscrutable.

'On the contrary,' he said smoothly. 'I think my mother is quite right and that the exercise will do us all good. Mari and Francisco will be waiting for us in just half an hour. Do you think you can be ready?' Lucy nodded, feeling more than a little like a child dismissed. 'I haven't proper riding clothes, but I have a pair of quite tough jeans. Will they do?' 'You will doubtless be excused as being English,' he replied loftily. 'But if you go riding often it would be as well to get yourself the proper apparel, don't you think?' She met his proud stare mutinously. 'I don't think I shall be riding often,' she retorted. 'I don't much care for horses.' He laughed with a sudden gaiety. 'But that we must change!' he exclaimed. 'There is nothing so wonderful as having a fast horse beneath one and the whole of Spain in which to ride. We shall have to do all we can to convert you!' Which was all very well, but she didn't want to be converted. She far preferred to keep both her feet on the ground, rather than throw a leg over some spirited beast, over which at most she would have a very limited control, and be swept along at a pace she was neither ready for nor desired. She put the cover on her typewriter with trembling hands and gathered up her things ready to go.

'I—I'll go and get ready,' she said. His eyes followed her all the way to the door. 'Don't worry too much,' he said quite gently. 'We shall find you a quiet mount who won't hurry you into anything.' She swallowed and fled before he could say anything else. It was still very hot despite the late hour, and the heat made one feel more than a little fractious and very near to tears.

Lucy looked well in jeans. She was sufficiently long in the leg to carry them with an air and sufficiently slim not to look ridiculous. Over them she wore a bright orange shirt and she tied a scarf of the same colour over her head, which, oddly, did not kill the gold of her eyes, but rather accentuated it, giving her quite a look of the yellow eyes of a lion. Mari had already mounted when she came into the yard. She wore a full Spanish habit that looked very well on her, and the widebrimmed Spanish hat, worn at a jaunty angle that was very attractive. 'Matias has insisted that you ride Luigi,' she called across to Lucy. 'Francisco is just coming, and he will help you mount.' Lucy looked round defiantly for the horse she was to ride. He was smaller and considerably more elderly than either of the glowing stallions waiting for the two men. She went over to him and he eyed her sleepily, his head hanging a little in the heat.

'Me too!' she whispered to him, and bravely patted him on the neck. He nuzzled gently at her shoulder and she wished she had some sugar to offer him. 'Why didn't you tell Senora Constantino that you can't ride?' Mari asked her, bringing her horse up very close, and controlling it beautifully as it tried to push Luigi out of the way. 'Because I can ride,' Lucy replied simply. 'I was taught at very great expense. I don't like riding, that's all.' Mari giggled. 'No wonder Matias was so upset,' she choked. 'It's his favourite occupation, you know, after bossing about the wine industry. Even if I hated horses, I should never have had the courage to tell him so!' Lucy stood up very straight and looked up at her. 'No?' she asked coolly. Mari tucked her whip under her arm. 'No,' she agreed. 'But then in Spain we are careful not to cross the men we are interested in. I suppose in England you don't care about things like that?' Lucy blinked. 'I wouldn't say that,' she said slowly. 'But then I don't happen to be interested in Don Matias Constantino y Mantero!' she added. She had not heard the footsteps behind her, and she started visibly when Don Matias took her horse's bridle from her.

'Mari should have known better than to think you were,' he told her lightly. 'I am not an Arbuthnot, and that is all that matters, is it not?' Lucy was aware of Mari's round eyes on them both. 'I—I hadn't thought about it,' she said stupidly. He held her stirrup for her. 'That could very well be true,' he agreed grimly. 'Be careful that you are not the one to be disturbed when you do think about it.' He threw her up into the saddle and her right foot sought and found the other stirrup automatically. She took the reins from him without looking at him and settled herself more comfortably. 'Disturbed, senor?' she asked him, very much in the grand manner. 'Why should that disturb me?' A muscle jerked in his cheek and she knew she had scored a hit, but his face was quite impassive as he turned to his own mount. 'Perhaps you are yet a little too young to know,' he retorted, and she had the uncomfortable feeling that he had managed to have the last word despite her. He leapt neatly into the saddle and looked calmly about him. 'Perhaps someone would tell Francisco that we are waiting for him,' he suggested dryly.

CHAPTER IV In the evening light the grey horses—and they mostly seemed to be grey in Jerez—turned to a splodgy shade of mauve. Lucy, riding a little apart from the others, thought what a very Spanish group they made, and she felt a little out of it and very foreign. Don Matias, in his purple riding coat, looked particularly fine and elegant. He sat his horse with a casual ease she could only envy, controlling his horse with only the very slightest movement of the knee or wrist. 'You are not yet quite at home?' he said after watching her struggle to make her own mount keep up with the others. Lucy raised her eyebrows slightly and said nothing. The corners of his mouth twitched and he turned away from her. 'You are proud enough to be Spanish,' he remarked with some amusement. Lucy grinned, suddenly not minding at all that she didn't ride well and that she hadn't the right clothes. 'I'm an Arbuthnot!' she reminded him. His smile vanished. 'I hadn't forgotten,' he said dryly. She wished she hadn't tried to make such a stupid joke. For just a moment they had seemed to be friends, but now he was as withdrawn as ever, and she felt quite cold in the face of his disapproval. 'Won't you ride on ahead with the others?' she asked him. His hard stare passed over her. 'If you wish,' he agreed.

She wasn't sure what she wished, but it was something of a relief when he went, leaving her to her own devices. Francisco and Mari were running races into the distance, the Guadalite river bright with light as it wound its way down below them and, across its banks, stood the honey- coloured facade of the Carthusian monastery, resplendent in its simple majesty. Lucy reined in her horse and eased her already aching thighs, thinking anxiously about the coming stiffness of the morrow. Her eyes wandered across the grass, burned brown by the sun, and came to rest on a patch of green in the middle distance which she knew to be a vineyard. Perhaps, she thought, she could go and see it and dismount for a few minutes, which would be a welcome respite. The soil was firm and white with chalk and so she guessed that this was one of the better vineyards, producing grapes that would eventually become one of the famous fino sherries that went all over the world from this one small area of Spain. And yet no one could really tell just what the juice would do before it had matured sufficiently to take on that mysterious character that made it either one kind of sherry or another. She busied herself making a pattern in the white soil with the toe of her shoe, dreaming of the lands where the sherry would finally end up, repeating to herself the names of the countries she had seen on the charts on Don Matias's wall. The heavily veined vine leaves spread out beneath her to catch the sun, a tinge of red in their colouring reflecting the Mediterranean glow in the light. They were beautiful, she thought, and somehow symbolic of the great gifts of the earth. She picked one and studied it carefully, remarking how it was made and the toughness of its exterior. When she looked up she saw that Don Matias had come back to her.

'Don't you wish we grew our own grapes?' he asked her. She nodded. 'It would be fun to help pick them,' she said. He laughed. 'I suppose you could do that anyway,' he told her. 'Most of the girls around earn some pin money every year picking grapes.' His smile grew broader. 'I think you'd look rather sweet in trousers with a skirt over the top!' Lucy drew herself up. 'Indeed?' she said haughtily. His eyes danced. 'You'd have to have just the right shady hat, of course,' he added. She flushed slightly. 'I would too,' she agreed. 'I imagine it gets very hot out here in the middle of the day.' He sat on his horse for a long moment looking down at her and then he swung himself down to the ground. 'I think you'd better mount up and go back to the others,' he suggested calmly. He caught up the reins of her horse and led him up to her, mounting her on his hand. 'Mari will be wondering where we have got to,' he said. She was puzzled for an instant, for she couldn't think that Mari would be in the least concerned about her, but then she remembered that Mari had been going riding with Don Matias all along and that he hadn't been paying her very much attention.

'Why don't you ride beside her for a bit and leave Francisco to me?' she asked him quietly. He was busy remounting so she couldn't see his face. 'In Spain,' he replied shortly, ' we do not go about things that way. We are a hot-blooded people and have to be very circumspect. You will have to learn our ways.' She was trying to, she thought indignantly, but she couldn't see why he couldn't ride beside Mari as easily as he was riding beside her. 'But -' she began. 'In Spain,' he went on as though she had not spoken at all, 'a hint is so easily misunderstood as a declared intention.' He prodded his horse into a canter and she followed him as best she could. Really, she thought, the Spanish can be a very difficult people to deal with. She sighed, and prepared herself to meet the other two, but only Mari looked sulky and ill-pleased by the ride. Francisco, his face shining with health and the joy of speed, grinned as the two of them approached. Hasn't it been a splendid evening?' he said. And while nobody could quite agree with him, nobody contradicted him either, but they all turned their horses and started back for home.

Lucy became quite comfortable living with the Constantinos. She seldom saw Don Matias, but she often visited his mother up in her rooms and would sit and gossip with her, telling her all the latest

news at the bodega, and listen to the endless plans the Senora had for her garden. 'Francisco is in charge of the gardens of the bodega,' she told her one afternoon. 'He is very clever with growing things, though, of course, they will never turn him into a sherry man.' 'Why not?' Lucy asked. Of all the Arbuthnots she felt she knew Francisco the least and was curious about him. 'His heart is elsewhere,' the Senora replied cryptically. 'Matias says they would do better to let him go.' 'And do you agree with him?' Lucy asked her. 'I? I know nothing about these things,' the Senora retorted sharply. 'You should find out about him for yourself. Ask him for a few cuttings for my garden while you are about it. I could do with some more geraniums to go down that wall!' Lucy looked at her with affection, wondering how that gay, dumpy little figure could have produced an eagle like Don Matias. 'Are you worried about Francisco?' she asked her frankly. Senora Constantino's dark eyes came !to rest for a moment on Lucy's face. 'Yes, I am,' she admitted. ',Of us all, he is the one who has nobody to talk to—not even his mother, poor woman. It will do him good to have some admiration and a little finesse from a woman. I think you will supply both qualities admirably.' Lucy was slightly embarrassed. 'I'll ask him about the plants anyway,' she said.

Senora Constantino quivered with laughter. 'Tell him only the very best ones will do! I pride myself on my garden also!' Laughing, Lucy agreed that she would and she hoped that Don Matias would not keep her late that evening, for it was only in the cool times that she really came alive, and the Senora had stirred her interest in Francisco. She found him talking to the gardener who was watering the lawn that was the pride of the whole bodega. The grass was thick and tough, with edges that could cut into a naked foot, but it was green and cool-looking in amongst the trees and the burned soil that surrounded it. The gardener was a small man, so Francisco looked taller than he really was and so slim that she wondered again, as she had when she had first met him, how he managed to stand up at all. 'Hullo, Lucy,' he greeted her. 'Does Matias want me?' She smiled at him a little shyly. 'No,' she said. 'I wanted to ask you for some plants for Senora Constantino.' He nodded solemnly. 'Can you wait a minute? I should like to finish here first.' Lucy nodded agreeably. She liked to watch his almost theatrical gestures and the careful way in which he used his hands to express himself. His Spanish fell in liquid syllables on her ears, quite different from Don Matias's more brusque, clipped manner of speaking. The Arbuthnots had all the charm, she thought, and then

wondered what she meant by that, for Don Matias too had charm, of a different sort. A disturbing charm that caught one unawares with a sudden smile or a humorous expression—a charm that could appear like a streak of lightning and disappear again just as quickly. Francisco exchanged a last smiling word with the gardener and then turned towards her, giving her the whole of his attention, his dark eyes alert and beautiful behind his fantastic eyelashes. 'So you came to take a look at my other hobby,' he said thoughtfully. 'Shall we do a tour of the gardens,' he suggested, ' and then you can make up your mind what you think Senora Constantino would like?' She nodded again, and he smiled at her, deliberately teasing her a little. 'You are surprised to find me working?' he said. She grinned. 'Oh, very!' 'And you still like working for Matias?' he asked. She made a face at him, feeling very much at home with him. 'He has very high standards,' she said mildly. He laughed. 'Oh, very high! He quite outshines any of us Arbuthnots when it comes to sheer hard work, you know. But then he really loves every stick and stone of the bodega. It's his whole life.' He sighed softly.

'And you don't?' Lucy insisted. 'I can't really believe that!' She wondered if the Senora would have considered such a question as having finesse, but she didn't care, she wanted to know for herself. Francisco looked shocked. 'I have no choice. I am an Arbuthnot!' he said bitterly. Lucy stared at him in astonishment. It had never previously occurred to her that anyone could not want to be an Arbuthnot. The traditions of the family were so much a part of her that she could hardly imagine herself apart from them. There was nothing more important, surely, than the endless stream of golden liquid they provided, forming a bridge of friendship amongst the peoples of the world. 'But what do you want to do?' she demanded. He smiled with a certain cynical humour. 'It wouldn't interest you,' he said quietly. 'It is enough that I am a worry to my family, busy sowing my wild oats, but that soon, surely, I must settle down and pull my weight in the firm.' Lucy blinked at him. 'But you sound as though you hate it!' she exclaimed. He laughed. 'How astute you are, my little cousin!' he teased her. She blushed. 'I can't pretend to understand it,' she told him, ' but if you do hate it, why don't you do something else?' He bent over and examined lovingly a wilting flower.

'Not so astute,' he rebuked her. 'I am an Arbuthnot.' He stood up again, his movement so easy and controlled that she wondered if he were also an athlete. 'How do you like my gardens?' he asked, deliberately changing the conversation. She allowed her eyes to wander round the perfectly laid out beds, intersected with crazy-paving paths that led towards a central fountain and lily pond and back again through some flowering bushes to where they stood. 'I think they're beautiful,' she said simply. He watched her face intently, evidently weighing up in his mind whether she was being sincere or not. 'It has nothing to do with sherry production,' he said at last. 'But it is creating beauty,' she replied. He smiled, his eyes lighting up. 'Does beauty mean much to you?' The question made her feel very English. One did not after all discuss these things easily, at least she did not. 'Yes, it does,' she said hesitantly. 'It means a great deal to me.' 'But only visual beauty?' he insisted. She laughed nervously. 'Of course not! There are so many beautiful things! I find sherry beautiful. And the other evening I saw a vine leaf in the setting sun and that was beautiful. But I like sound too—and—and other things.'

He nodded sympathetically. 'I too love beauty,' he said. 'That is my life.' She thought perhaps he was right. He was so startlingly beautiful to look at himself, that perhaps it had affected his whole life. 'And you don't find any beauty in the bodega?' she asked him curiously. He shrugged his shoulders. 'A kind of beauty, yes,' he admitted. 'But I want to make beauty—to make it with myself! To dance and to sing—but you would never understand this!' Lucy didn't answer. She went ahead of him down one of the crazypaving paths, trying to make up her mind which plants to choose for Senora Constantino. There were so many, laden with bloom in exotic profusion, the majority of which she couldn't even give a name to. 'Can one take cuttings now, when they are all in flower?' she asked. 'Why not? Anything grows here as long as you give it water,' he assured her. 'What will you take?' She looked helplessly about her. 'It's so difficult to choose -' He smiled. 'Shall I choose for you? I will make a very nice selection and you can help me plant them when I bring them over, if that will suit you? I can see I have been neglecting the possibilities of my English cousin!'

She thought of his reputation for giving the girls a whirl and wondered if it could be true. 'I should like that,' she said. His eyes were soft and very dark. 'Perhaps, one day, you would like to hear me sing?' he asked. 'Yes, I should,' she said, surprised that he should ask her. 'Do you sing often?' He chuckled. 'Very often. I sing in all the local cafes and nightclubs.' Her eyes widened. 'So that's why -' she began. 'Yes, that's why! But don't tell the rest of the family, will you? One day I hope to be good enough to travel to America and I shall never, never come back! But in the meantime I practise my singing and my dancing all the time and I get better and better. My, but you should see me dance when the crowd is with me and they cheer me on and on until we are all drunk with the music and the rhythm! There is nothing so absorbing as the authentic rhythm of flamenco!' Lucy stared at him. 'I didn't know,' she said inadequately. 'And I should have guessed. That's why you're so beautifully slim and move so well!' He flushed absurdly.

'I'll take you with me one evening,' he promised her, ' if you'd really like to come? But I'd rather the family didn't know about it—they don't like to think of an Arbuthnot doing such a thing!' Lucy looked thoughtful. 'I can't think why not,' she said at last, ' but I certainly shan't tell them anything about it if you don't want me to.' He threw back his head in a gesture of pride. 'I don't,' he said. 'In my own time I shall break away and make my own life, but I won't have them hustling me into anything!' They walked back together' down the. narrow path in silence, a comfortable understanding between them. There was something about sharing the same blood, she thought, that made for ease between people. She tried to imagine having the same easy fellowship with—with Don Matias, for instance, and the impossibility of the idea amused her. Perhaps Mari saw another side of him, something that was other than proud and aloof, but she doubted it. He was a strange, awkward man and he had a way of invading her thoughts that she didn't like. She would have preferred to have dismissed him at the end of her working day as she was sure he dismissed her, never sparing her a thought apart from how well or badly she did her work. 'I'll bring the plants over tomorrow evening,' Francisco promised her gaily as they parted. 'Will you be able to find your own way home?' She was surprised that he should ask and then remembered that he was only really excusing himself from not accompanying her.

'I'll manage!' she said dryly, and smiled. 'Thank you very much for the plants. Goodnight.' He bowed with a dramatic formality. 'The pleasure was all mine. Goodnight.' Left to herself, she walked slowly down the road to the Constantino house, making the most of the cool evening and glad that dinner would not be for another couple of hours. It no longer bothered her at all to eat so late. In the morning Don Matias was in his office before her. He barely looked up as she passed through into her own, smaller room that led off his, but she had hardly settled in front of her typewriter before he knocked on the door and came in. 'My mother tells me you are great company for her,' he began abruptly. 'It is kind of you to take the trouble.' She glanced up at him, wondering what he was really thinking. 'I am very fond of your mother,' she replied gently. He picked up a pencil from her desk. 'She is often lonely these days. It is one of the reasons why she is so anxious for me to marry.' He smiled briefly. 'Women have a way of enjoying each other's company, don't you think?' She did think so, but she was astonished that he should have thought so also. She smiled up at him, a glint of mischief in her eyes. 'Surely, Don Matias, you are flattering us?' she asked him slyly.

He smiled. 'Am I? You should know your own sex better, of course!' She looked down at her hands, defeated. 'I imagine your mother would enjoy almost anyone's society,' she said quickly. 'She likes most people and finds them interesting.' His eyes fastened on her, drawing her gaze up to his. 'She is very Spanish,' he said. Lucy thought of her dumpy little figure, rocking with joy over some joke. 'Yes, she is Spanish,' she agreed warmly. 'But not at all in the way that you are Spanish. She has the warmth and the joy of the sun -' 'And I?' he asked her. She blushed, aware of his amusement. 'You have the pride—the—the other qualities of Spain,' she said rather desperately. He raised his eyebrows slightly. 'The other qualities?' he repeated. 'Now I wonder exactly what you mean by that?' But, to her relief, he didn't stop for an answer, but turned on his heel and went back to his own office, closing the door behind him with a sharp click. Really, he was the most exasperating man! She wondered pensively whether he deliberately tried to antagonize her, to make her say something stupid, and smiled wryly, because, if he did, he certainly succeeded! She put a piece of paper into the typewriter

with brisk efficiency and began to type the first of the letters he had left for her. In ten minutes the first of his engagements was due to arrive and she wanted to get his signature before the man actually arrived. In this she was unlucky. She heard Don Matias scraping back his chair as he rose to greet his visitor and the subdued murmur of voices as they began to discuss qualities of sherry and the costs of shipment. She would have liked to have listened to them, to have followed the close bargaining and to have heard the stories that sherry men always seemed able to tell—about their customers, about the wine they sold, or just about people in general and the peculiar things they do. Somehow the letters didn't seem very interesting in the face of such competition, and Lucy was frankly daydreaming when there was a soft knock on her door, followed immediately by Mari's face peering round at her. 'So you really do work here!' the Spanish girl greeted her with naive wonder. 'But it is so hot in here! Why don't you ask for a bigger room that looks over the gardens?' Lucy smiled. 'I don't think there is one available,' she replied easily, ' and anyway, I don't think a secretary would qualify, do you?' Mari considered the point. 'Perhaps not,' she said. 'But you are something more than a secretary!' Lucy laughed. 'It feels very much the same, typing these letters,' she assured her.

Mari looked with interest at the work that was laid out on the desk. 'I couldn't believe that you really did all this!' she exclaimed. 'You must be very clever!' 'Well, hardly ! In England most girls earn their own living now.' Mari wrinkled up her nose. 'It is all very strange,' she said. 'But you cannot be stuck in here for ever! You must see more of Spain than that. You must come with us to the festival of dance and song—every night! There are several companies coming down from Madrid to perform here. You will like that, won't you?' 'Very much!' Lucy agreed promptly. Mari's eyes danced with excitement. 'It won't be at all the same as in England,' she informed Lucy loftily. 'They dance late at night, when it is a little cooler, and go on and on until the small hours of the morning. Have you seen the way they dance?' She began slowly to execute the first intricate steps of a flamenco dance, beating her heels against the wooden floor and clapping her hands in time to the imaginary music. 'It is beautiful, no?' Lucy had very little knowledge to guide her. The quarter-tones of the music still confused her, for she found them difficult to hear after the more usual semitones of the music she was accustomed to, buti she found that the beat stirred her blood in a way that she wouldn't have thought was possible. Mari began to go faster and faster until her hands and feet were a blur of sound and movement, then, quite suddenly, she came to a full stop and looked over her shoulder at Lucy for applause. 'Bravo!' Lucy responded eagerly.

Mari relaxed her pose and broke into smiles. 'It was well done,' she admitted, ' but my brother can do better. Francisco is magnificent! I have never seen better, and I have seen the very best of Spain!' She began to hum snatches of a wild, haunting song that soared upwards into a wail of grief. 'Shall I dance for you again?' she asked. . 'Oh, yes, do!' Lucy begged her eagerly, and then remembered Don Matias next door. 'But very quietly.' Mari stuck her tongue out at the door that led into Don Matias's office. 'He won't care!' she declared. She began to dance again, clapping her hands slowly together and whirling round the room, increasing her pace all the time as she went. Lucy watched, intrigued by the subtle variations in the rhythm and the steps, more than half wishing that she could join in. 'We need a guitar to do it properly,' Mari said suddenly, breaking off in the middle of a movement. 'I have lost my concentration. That time it was very badly done!' She pouted dismally, quite as cast down by her failure as a few minutes ago she had been exultant with success. 'I shall start it again.' But before she had time to do so, the door was flung open and Don Matias came into the room. 'What is this?' he demanded in icy tones. His eyes swept over the two girls. 'Would it be too much to ask of any Arbuthnot to keep their music and their business separate?' Mari ran over to him and wound her arm into his.

'It was all my fault, Matias,' she said breathlessly. 'I thought I would come and see where Lucy works.' Don Matias frowned down at her. 'Do any of you know the meaning of the word "work"?' he demanded irritably. 'Of course,' she smiled, as smooth as cream. 'Lucy works much too hard—and in such a hot, stuffy little room too! I was telling her that she should ask for another!' Don Matias shot a steely look at Lucy. 'And are you going to?' he asked in indifferent, almost lazy tones. Lucy took a deep breath. 'No,' she said. 'Perhaps that is just as well, as you seem quite unable to keep order in here,' he retorted. 'May I have your permission now to do a little "work" myself?' 'Of course,' Lucy murmured stiffly. He unwound himself from Mari's caressing hands and came and stood over Lucy's desk, leaning on his hands so that his face was almost on a level with hers. 'Good,' he said briefly. He looked as though he might be tempted to say something more, but evidently changed his mind. He straightened up slowly and went quietly back to his own office, closing the door gently behind him. Lucy stared after him, unbidden tears in her eyes.

'But you are so silly to let him upset you!' Mari said lightly. 'That is what he intended to do! He is always like that when he doesn't like one very much. Francisco says the only thing to do is to think hard about something else!' But that was the whole trouble, Lucy thought. She didn't enjoy being not liked very much by Don Matias. She wanted to be liked by him—to be spoilt by him, and flattered by him, in the same way as he spoilt and flattered Mari and his mother. She sighed and went back to her typewriter. 'I must do some work myself,' she said.

CHAPTER V Mari was reluctant to go. She prowled about the office, playing with all the various gadgets. 'Did it take you a long time to learn to type?' she asked. Lucy shook her head. 'No—but shorthand takes rather longer,' she said. 'You must be very clever!' the Spanish girl reflected with frank admiration. 'Matias says you are!' Lucy received the information in two minds. To be thought clever was all very well, but who knew what Don Matias really meant when he said it? She thought on the whole that she would rather be considered beautiful. Beautiful in that tired magnolia way that is so very Spanish. 'Well, I'm not,' she said frankly: ' But I'm interested in the work— that is, in the bodega, and that makes it easier.' Mari shuddered. 'I shouldn't like to work for Matias. He is so cross all the time. It is bad enough that I shall probably have to marry him. But to see him all day -!' 'But he is charming to you!' Lucy protested sharply. Mari shrugged elegantly. 'Of course. He is very anxious to marry an Arbuthnot. It is his career, you see.'

Lucy dusted the keys of her typewriter with her fingers. 'I should think he is rather important to the bodega too,' she said mildly. 'Your father and your uncle can't go on for ever.' Mari pouted. 'Who cares?' she asked childishly. 'Francisco may suddenly become interested in sherry. Men are quite unaccountable!' 'Oh, quite!' Lucy agreed gravely. Mari saw the twinkle in her eye and laughed herself. 'I suppose you think I am very silly,' she giggled, ' but I know about lots of other things, even if I don't know anything about running a bodega!' Lucy chuckled. 'Well, one of the first things you have to know,' she said, ' is that in a bodega there is a great deal of work to be done -' 'You want me to go?' Mari discovered in surprise. 'Are you really so busy?' 'I'm afraid I am.' The Spanish girl clicked her tongue against her teeth. 'It isn't good for you, all this work,' she stated positively. 'I shall tell Matias so.' Her hands fluttered over her immaculate hair. 'And you will come to the Festival, won't you? Every night?' 'I will indeed,' Lucy assured her.

Mari turned and smiled at her. 'Then I'll go,' she said. She went out, through the communicating door, into Don Matias's room, winking naughtily as she closed the door behind her. Lucy smiled to herself. She was beginning to like Mari—to like her as much as she liked her brother, although she was not a bit like him, apart from her love of dancing and her complete lack of interest in sherry. Lucy worked hard all that afternoon. There was much to be done. A letter from her father gave her a little start of pleasure and surprise, and she noted eagerly the clarity of its message and Don Matias's short pencilled response in the margin. She typed it rapidly and then added a long note of her own, telling him all the things he would want to know about the bodega and adding some of the amusing things that had happened to her since she had been away. It was only when she had finished that she remembered Don Matias had yet to sign the official note, so she typed it again, leaving her own letter underneath, ready to go into the envelope. She had barely finished when she heard footsteps come running up the stairs and a second later Francises exploded into her room. 'Matias still busy?' he asked her. 'I—I don't know. Shall I see for you?' Francisco nodded in a businesslike way. 'Tell him the consignment of butts has been held up.' He grinned suddenly. 'That'll make him jump I' Lucy knocked carefully on Don Matias's door.

'Adalante! ' She opened the door and slipped through it. 'Are you free now?' she asked a trifle breathlessly. 'Francisco wants to see you.' Don Matias grunted. 'I'll come,' he said wearily. From habit he looked at the charts on the wall as he passed them and gave a friendly pat to one that showed a marked upward trend. Lucy gave him an involuntary smile as he passed her and he smiled back with that unexpected warmth that always took her unawares. 'Doing better, isn't it?' he said with satisfaction. He nodded towards Francisco. 'The butts, I suppose?' Francisco nodded gloomily. 'They're late,' he announced without adornment. 'They are always late,' Don Matias replied smoothly. 'It is probably something in the Spanish air that makes them so.' Francisco flushed. 'I think we can manage without them,' he said eagerly. '\ye have a large number in store.' Lucy listened to them in bewilderment. Her knowledge of the transport of sherry was limited to its arrival in England and she was fascinated to know where the butts came from and who made them.

'Don't we make our own?' she asked, unable to contain her curiosity any longer. Francisco shook his head. 'We have a small cooperage,' he told her, ' but it is mainly for repairing the old butts and things like that. It takes a long time to get a butt ready to take the sherry, and the Bible is quite right, one can't put new wine into old containers, and so we are always having to have new ones.' 'But isn't that frightfully expensive?' Lucy asked him. 'I suppose so. They are made from American oak and cost around twenty-five pounds a piece. Each one makes a double trip to England, say, and then it has to be scrapped.' He turned back to Don Matias. 'Would you like to come and take a look at what we have got?' Don Matias withdrew into a proud silence. 'How many butts are there in the old swimming pool?' he asked at last. Francisco shrugged his shoulders. 'I couldn't say offhand. We have about a hundred soaking in wine.' 'In wine?' Lucy gasped. It was Don Matias who answered her. 'We soak all the butts for six months in water and then for three in wine before we can use them. Would you like to see the cooperage for yourself?'

Her eyes shone in anticipation. 'May I?' she said. 'Now?' Francisco grinned and Don Matias threw her a quick, indulgent look. 'Francisco is the man to ask,' he told her. 'He is in charge of the cooperage.' Lucy was impressed. She hadn't known that he had such a responsible job, for it seemed to her that the cooperage was rather more important than anyone had led her to believe. 'I've got the men working full out, repairing those that we can use again,' Francisco went on eagerly. 'They would like it if you could spare the time -' Don Matias put an impersonal hand on to Lucy's elbow. 'Let's go,' he said easily. 'You'll enjoy seeing it all anyway.' Lucy did. They walked down the long, hushed warehouses (also called bodegas) of maturing wine, odd hieroglyphics marked up on the butts with chalk told their histories to the expert, but to the uninitiated there were only the acres of butts of wine, smelling of matured wood, dust and silence. At the far end stood the cooperage, the yard filled with small fires over which the butts were bent into shape, the heat and smoke stopping the timber from cracking. Hammers fell on to the metal bands that held them in shape in a crazy din that all but deafened her, but the two men beside her remained quite unperturbed, not even bothering to raise their voices above the noise.

'If we go through here, you can see the old butts being washed out for their second journey,' Don Matias told her. 'Perhaps your father has actually handled some of these himself.' Lucy followed him eagerly. 'Perhaps I have also. It seems funny to think of it.' He smiled. 'I doubt if you will recognize them,' he cautioned her. But she didn't care. To her they seemed a romantic link with the offices in England that she knew so well and her own purpose in coming to Spain. A symbol giving meaning to her whole upbringing. The men saw them coming, but didn't stop for an instant in their labours. They turned the butts on end. half filling them with water and heavy chains, shaking them until they thought they were clean, emptying them and then repeating the process with wine. The foreman went from one to the other, testing their work and eventually passing out those butts that were ready to be used again. He joined the two foremen from the cooperage and Francisco and Don Matias and they began a lengthy discussion on the number of butts they had at their disposal. 'We shall have to keep bigger reserves,' Francisco observed at last. 'These delays are becoming more and more frequent.' 'For what reason?' Don Matias snapped.

Francisco's mouth tightened. 'I imagine they are having difficulty in procuring the wood,' he replied in an odd, flattened voice. Don Matias looked at him sharply. 'My apologies,' he said briskly. 'I was not implying any inefficiency, but I find it annoying that any move we make to expand should be blocked by such a trivial cause.' Francisco's face cleared as if by magic. 'My uncle is partly to blame for that. He won't have any dealings with the other firm which is willing to supply us, though actually their terms are rather better— at least I think they are.' Don Matias smiled also. 'I shall have a word with Iago. What has he got against the firm?' Francisco gave him an insouciant grin. 'They offended against the Arbuthnot code in my grandfather's time, I believe,' he offered without even a flicker of laughter. Don Matias made an explosive noise and lifted his hands helplessly. 'Heaven help us I' he exclaimed. It was difficult not to laugh. Lucy felt the giggle break, tried to stop it and choked. Don Matias patted her kindly on the back and, feeling more than a little foolish, she thanked him. His eyes searched her face, his expression aloof.

'It is of no moment,' he assured her. How beastly he was to the Arbuthnots, she thought, and yet he had something to be beastly about if they were really so obstructive in such petty ways. Her father too would have been outraged and annoyed. They walked slowly back through the bodegas, stopping every now and then to watch a man measuring out a quantity of wine and feeding it into a butt of maturing wine. Lucy smelt it and the sugar in it was strong and fermenting. 'This is all the very sweetest of the sherries,' Francisco told her, noticing her interest. 'It is heavy with sweetness.' She sniffed it again, storing up the sensation in her memory. It was too sweet for her to enjoy, but she liked the sensation of the bitter beery smell mixed in with it—the smell of the fermenting wine. 'Is it all for export?' she asked. 'In this bodega,' Don Matias affirmed. 'That group over there is for England, that for the States, that for Ireland, and so on.' It made the charts seem more real to see the great lines of butts of wine, waiting for maturity and shipment to the various countries that the Arbuthnot bodega dealt with. Lucy smiled. 'I shall have to take a trip round with the tourists and find out all the processes and where everything is for myself.' Don Matias nodded seriously.

'It wouldn't be time wasted at all,' he agreed. 'And we have so many English visitors that you would always be useful to act as a guide as well.' Her eyes twinkled. 'In my spare time, of course,' she teased him. For an instant he stiffened, and then he smiled back at her. 'Of course,' he said gravely. 'I couldn't spare you from my letters in office hours.' She tried to decide whether he was serious or not, but he gave her no clue, only walking on down the long corridor between the butts of sherry, scattering the little groups of working men as he went. She stared after him for a few moments and then her eyes went enquiringly to Francisco. 'One never can tell,' he consoled her. 'But if he does use you as a guide he will somehow see that you have some other time off. He is always just.' She hesitated for an instant, wondering if she could agree with him. 'Yes, he is always just,' she repeated. But justice was a cold, hard thing to live with when it wasn't tempered with something warmer. Francisco glanced at his watch. 'Another day done,' he announced in a thankful tone. 'Can you find your own way back? Because I must rush!' He made an exuberant movement with one hand. 'I have a date!' he confided, and his eyes lit up with sudden mirth. 'Quite a date!' he added.

Lucy chuckled. 'And I must go and chat with Senora Constantino. I love her dearly, and I do so admire the way she never complains about not being able to get about.' 'So do I,' he admitted. 'Give her a very special hug from me!' When she was alone she sauntered slowly through the bodegas, stopping to watch whatever was going on, talking to the men and thoroughly enjoying herself. They showed her the measure at the end of a wire that the tasters used to fill their glasses, and so proficient were they that they could manage the whole operation with a single flick of the wrist, whereas, when she tried, the majority of the wine went on the floor. She saw the bottling plant as well, and was fascinated by the endless stream of bottles that made their way with a certain drunken dignity along the chain belt to be filled, labelled and corked. Eventually she found herself back at the main house where the offices were, and ran quickly up the stairs to cover her typewriter for the night and to make sure that everything was in order. When she had done, she let herself out and walked the short distance to the ironwork gate that led into the Constantino gardens. Senora Constantino was sitting on one of the garden benches waiting for her. She looked up immediately and with evident pleasure. 'I've been waiting for you, my dear,' she said.. 'Francisco has sent across the cuttings and we must discuss where they are all going.' Lucy sat down beside her, shading her eyes from the strong sunlight with one hand. 'If you point out where you want them, I'll plant them for you,' she offered.

The Senora smiled. 'I knew you would say that!' she preened herself. 'And of course I shouldn't allow it for a moment, but it would be rather fun to see them going in! I sent one of the gardeners to get my old tools, and you can use those.' Lucy enjoyed the evening. The soil was warm and friable between her fingers and she loved the tangy smell of the geraniums and the spicy scent of rosemary. The sun was setting when she had finished and she insisted on taking the Senora up to her rooms. 'Ana will be so cross with me for keeping you out so long,' she said as they gained the landing. 'I do hope it hasn't been too much for you?' 'Nonsense!' the Senora retorted with vigour. 'What difference does it make if I sit upstairs or in the garden? Besides, you are a restful person to be with. I enjoy your company very much and I shall miss you very much when you go back to England.' She sighed audibly. 'I could wish your cousin was a little more like you. She is so very young, isn't she?' Lucy chuckled. 'She'll soon grow older,' she said. 'But will she grow any wiser?' the Senora asked doubtfully. 'She is such a charming child, but I do wonder whether there is any depth there. Matias will make such a demanding husband, and I wouldn't like it if he made the child unhappy.' 'No,' Lucy agreed. 'But I don't imagine Mari allowing herself to be made unhappy for long. She has a very happy nature and she is not at all afraid of your son.'

Senora Constantino's shrewd eyes twinkled slightly. 'Meaning that you are a little afraid of him?' Lucy flushed. 'A little,' she admitted. 'Do you think it is very stupid of me?' The Senora considered for a moment. 'No, dear, I don't. I felt the same way about his father before I married him. They are the kind of man who can hurt very badly if one doesn't take care. It is difficult to see one's own son objectively, of course, but I am not blind and I know how attractive he can be— and also how, quite unintentionally, he can be very cruel.' She allowed herself to be helped into a chair and rang impatiently for her maid. 'Ana will see to me now, my dear,' she told Lucy. 'Run away and amuse yourself until dinner-time.' She patted Lucy's hand with clumsy affection. 'Thank you for your help.' Lucy bent down and kissed her on the cheek, admiring the older woman's perfect complexion and the softness of her skin. 'It's been a lovely evening,' she said softly. 'I shall miss all this when I go home. The peace and the long, unhurried hours.' 'So you like Spain?' a man's voice said from the doorway, and Don Matias came into the room, bowing slightly to both ladies. 'Very much,' Lucy answered him, her surprise quite evident in her voice. He nodded with satisfaction. 'Good. It was thought before you came that you would get very homesick here.'

'I never thought anything of the sort!' his mother contradicted him flatly. 'I said if Lucy were anything at all like her father she would be perfectly happy here!' Don Matias looked amused. 'Yes, I believe you did,' he affirmed. Lucy edged towards the door, determined to leave mother and son alone together, knowing there was nothing that the Senora liked more than having an uninterrupted chat with Matias. 'I'm glad you think I'm something like him,' she said lightly. The Senora laughed. 'How very Arbuthnot of you! Why do you all want to be like each other?' Lucy looked helplessly from one amused Spanish face to the other. 'I—I don't really know,' she admitted. Don Matias threw back his head and really laughed out loud. 'But this Arbuthnot has honesty, mia madre, a rare quality.' Lucy made a face at him. 'I don't believe it! And I will not be patronized either.' She held up her hands, grubby from the garden. 'I must go and wash my hands, so I'll love you and leave you!' She left the room with what dignity she could summon up, well aware that both of them were watching her every movement. Don Matias said something to his mother in very rapid Spanish that she couldn't quite catch, but she heard the Senora's deep chuckle.

'I love that girl like my own daughter,' she said. Lucy caught her breath, more pleased than she could say, for she loved the Senora, loved her almost as much as she was timid of her son. Back in her room, she stood for a long time looking out of the window at the deepening dusk outside. The heavy, ornate furniture behind her cast deep shadows into the corners of the room and still she refused to turn on the lights and to draw the curtains. It was cool for the first time that day, a gentle breeze just stirring the flowers and releasing their scent into the evening air, a rich mixture of jasmine, heliotrope and dusty palm trees. The gardens, stiffly formal in the Spanish manner, looked like a stage setting waiting for the players to come out and start the action. To amuse herself she began to think of a suitable plot, but as her hero began to take on the shape and characteristics of Don Matias and her heroine was undoubtedly herself, she judged it safer not to go on with the game. Don Matias was the most unromantic creature she had ever met, she told herself crossly, and wondered why she should even have thought for a moment that he was anything else. It was all the Senora's fault! And with a sudden urgency she wished that his attraction had never been pointed out to her, for, while she hadn't yet admitted it, she had been able to ignore it, and that had been a far more comfortable state. Quickly, she turned away from the window and went into the bathroom, turning on the taps of the shower until the water gushed down, steaming with heat. When she had undressed, she stepped under it and played with the taps until it was so hot she could hardly stand it, and then slowly she turned off the hot water and allowed the cold to play on her until she felt almost cold herself. She had barely dressed again when there was an anxious tap at the door, followed immediately by Ana.

'The Senora has made herself ill!' the maid announced dramatically. 'Don Matias is with her and they argue and argue— and now she is so tired she will not dress for dinner!' Lucy looked worried too. 'Is Don Matias still with her?' she asked. 'Of course he is still with her! And still they argue!' Ana retorted angrily. Lucy bit her lip. 'But Don Matias would hardly make her ill!' she protested. 'Go and see for yourself!' the maid bade her. She opened the door with a flourish and gestured down the corridor. Lucy took a deep breath and advanced slowly towards Senora Constantino's suite. It was none of her business, she knew, and yet, if the Senora were really ill, what then? She could hear their raised voices from outside the room and paused, still undecided as to whether she should interfere. 'It has always been understood that you would marry her!' the Senora's voice came clearly towards her. 'So you tell me!' Don Matias returned dryly. 'Sp the least you can do is to escort the girl to the plays and the ballets of Festival Week. It would be most unkind of you not to do so!' Lucy could imagine Don Matias standing there, proud and withdrawn, his nostrils flaring slightly with temper, as he answered:

'Perhaps I shall do so, but Mari will not thank either of us for making her conspicuous by always being seen in my company—if we don't marry.' 'But of course you will marry. It has always been understood that you would do so! Arbuthnots is a family bodega. Your position will be much stronger in the firm when your wife is an Arbuthnot! 'It is no good pushing me, madre mia,' and although he sounded as though he meant what he said, Lucy thought she had never heard him sound so tender or loving. 'I shall go my own way.' „ The Senora snorted. 'When have you ever done anything else?' she asked. 'But if you can't see what is plain to everybody else -' Lucy tapped tentatively on the door, making her presence known. She was embarrassed by having overheard so much and she was afraid that that too showed clearly on her face. 'Come in,' the Senora commanded her impatiently. 'I suppose Ana brought you running, telling you I was on the point of collapse.' Lucy blushed. 'Something like that,' she admitted. Don Matias's proud stare made her long to turn tail and run, but she put her head back and glared back at him. The Senora played with her tiny, lace-edged handkerchief, pulling it through her fingers in a gesture that showed her agitation. 'That a son of mine should be so laggard!' she said painfully. 'It is necessary that he should marry the girl!' Don Matias smiled suddenly, his eyes lighting up with laughter.

'On the contrary,' he said, ' it isn't necessary at all! Mari isn't the only Arbuthnot I can marry. If my position in the firm is so tenuous, I shall have to consider ail the means open to me to establish myself. I have two alternatives, have I not?' Lucy could feel the rich colour welling upwards, but she stood her ground. 'You still have only the one, senor,' she told him proudly. 'The other one is not and never shall be open to you!' His laughter dropped from him. 'No, senorita?' he challenged her. 'We shall see.' It was his mother who smoothly changed the conversation, her face white with fatigue, so that Lucy's limbs ached in sympathy with hers. 'Francisco sent over some very fine plants,' she said.

CHAPTER VI It wasn't easy to persuade the Senora to go to bed. Ana fussed over her like a hen with one chick, chiding her gently for allowing herself to get so tired. 'How many times do I have to tell you that I am not really ill?' the Senora demanded of her crossly. 'Arthritis isn't in the least likely to kill me, you know. I shall live to a grand old age and be a nuisance to everyone about me, you see!' 'May you do so indeed!' retorted the maid. 'Is that a reason for allowing yourself to get so upset?' The Senora gave a tired smile. 'It isn't everyone who has such a stubborn man for a son!' Lucy was able to agree heartily with that sentiment. She helped the Senora to rise and more than half lifted her into bed. 'Are you more comfortable?' she asked sympathetically, when the older woman was settled. The Senora pursed up her lips. 'A little,' she said at last. Lucy smiled, and the light from it caught at the corners of her eyes giving her a fleeting beauty. 'Then I shan't scruple to tell you that I think your son is the bitter end!' she said lightly. The Senora laughed.

'I think even he understood that, my dear,' she said with humour. 'Of course, the trouble is that you are more than half in love with him.' Lucy stood stock still and stared at her. 'Never!' 'No? Perhaps not. Please straighten that rug for me before you go. Oh, and your uncles have asked us all to dinner tomorrow night. I gather that it is a rather belated welcome for you,' she added dryly. 'How nice of them,' Lucy responded automatically. The Senora giggled. 'I had forgotten what the English can convey with their smooth politenesses,' she smiled. 'It is amusing to me to see the difference between you and your cousins. They are all Spanish and you are so very English!' Lucy flushed slightly. 'I am very proud to be English!' she said haughtily. The Senora looked very, very tired. 'It was not meant as a criticism, child. But our ways of life are so different! Please make my excuses to Matias for not coming down to dinner.' Lucy was frankly dismayed at the prospect of having to dine alone with Don Matias. She spent a long time trying to arrange her hair as Ana had done it for her, and only when she was quite satisfied with the result, and had thereby built up her confidence a little, did she go downstairs to eat.

Don Matias was waiting for her at the head of the table. It came to her with a shock of realization that he was an incredibly handsome man in his own way, his proud stance lending him a dignity that almost frightened her. 'I'm sorry I'm late,' she said rather breathlessly. He bowed slightly. 'There is no hurry. Perhaps you will have a sherry before we eat?' She accepted one of their own fino wines and sipped at it gratefully, glad to have something for her hands to do. 'It tastes even better here than it does in England,' she told him. He smiled. 'It's possible,' he agreed. 'It's always difficult, travelling wines from one country to another. We are fortunate in that ours travel better than most.' He looked at her curiously. 'You must have a very fine palate to be able to detect the difference.' Lucy took another quick sip to hide her confusion. 'I—I don't know,' she said helplessly. 'Do you know immediately you see the grapes whether the sherry will turn out to be a fino or an oloroso?' He looked surprised at the question. 'I thought you knew all about the solera system and how the wines are produced?' She shook her head, glad of a good, safe subject.

'I know very little about it really,' she said. 'Oh well, then,' he began, and proceeded to tell her all about it. He was an excellent teacher, starting right at the beginning with the planting of the vines. 'There is a long adolescent period,' he went on, ' when nobody knows what the wine in each butt will do, but finally it settles down into one type or another and starts its career as a particular kind of sherry. It is then added gradually to the other maturing wines, so that the taste never varies. Some particles of sherry in that sherry you are drinking may well be over a hundred years old. This process goes on for seven years and then, at last, it is ready.' 'And it is always exactly the same?' 'Always. The climate and the special soil we have here has a lot to do with the quality, and the solera system of mixing the old with the new makes sure that our standards never vary.' She looked down at her glass of sherry with a new respect. 'It's rather fun, isn't it, to think that there is something of the beginning of it all in every glass?' She looked up, half expecting him to think that she was harping back again on to her family, but, to her surprise, his eyes were kindly. 'Great fun,' he agreed. 'But then the whole life- cycle of the grape right up to the final product is rather fun.' He took her glass from her and put it down on one of the highly polished tables that littered up the salon, then rang the bell for the servants to bring in the dinner. It was late when Lucy finally went up to bed. The soft scents of the garden had made their way into her room and someone, Ana

probably, had left the windows wide open, so that the silver light of the moon shone right across her bed. Spain, she thought, was undermining all her defences, for, that night, she was completely happy.

There was an air of flurry throughout the house the following evening. Ana bustled from one room to the other, hurrying Lucy and Senora Constantino by turns in and out of their baths and into their dresses. 'Please don't worry about me,' Lucy begged her more than once. 'I can easily manage by myself.' 'And disgrace me for ever?' Ana demanded crossly. 'Everybody will know who has dressed you, and if you are not perfect, whom do you think they will blame?' Lucy laughed. 'I don't suppose my cousins will care,' she said. Ana folded her upper lip in over her teeth. 'I was not referring to your cousins, senorita,' she said proudly. 'Me, I do not work for the Arbuthnots but for the Constantinos!' Lucy stared at her, her eyes slowly widening. 'You mean that Don Matias might notice?' she asked at last. Ana's eyes glittered. 'And whom else would I mean?' she retorted. 'Does it matter to either of us what the Caballero Francisco thinks? No! His opinion

is important to a great many others, no doubt,' she added with wry humour, ' but we can manage without it!' She was gone again before Lucy could answer, carrying a bundle of brushes, hair-spray and powders with her. Lucy sat at the dressing-table and exchanged a long, thoughtful glance with her reflection. Did she care what Don Matias thought about her appearance? she wondered. Honesty compelled her to admit that she did. She liked to surprise that almost hidden look of approval that sometimes came into his eyes and she liked it when his aloofness melted into something softer—something that came near to amused affection, such as one might feel for a child who gave one pleasure. She made an exasperated little movement. That wasn't what she wanted him to feel at all! But it was so much safer that he should feel that way and it was better than nothing at all. When Ana came back she had finished dressing and her cheeks were flushed. 'Will I do?' she asked gently. Ana surveyed her with severely critical eyes. 'Tonight you are beautiful,' she announced finally. 'Tonight we have achieved something together.' It was true that Lucy had never looked better. With her hair done up in the Spanish way and with a touch of excitement to light her eyes, she looked very young and very English and rather shy. 'I'm not at all beautiful really,' she said with regret, ' but I think I do look rather nice. Thank you, Ana.' 'It ,is nothing,' the Spanish woman replied immediately, but she was pleased all the same to be thanked and to have her efforts

appreciated. As Lucy descended the stairs into the main hall, she was conscious of the maid's face peering over the banisters, watching their departure, and she waved to her, fleetingly, as she went over to stand beside the Senora, to help her into the carriage when it came. It was the first time that Lucy had seen the traditional horse and carriage that the Senora used to make her local excursions and to appear in the Jerez shows now that she could no longer do so on horseback. A footman, in full livery, held open the small door and helped the Senora in with gentle hands. Lucy mounted the steps after her and sat on the narrow, uncomfortable leather-covered seat. 'I've never been in one of these before 1' she exclaimed. 'What fun 1 Isn't it a pity that everyone travels everywhere by car nowadays?' The Senora smiled. 'I never travel by car,' she replied calmly. 'Matias indulges me shamefully by keeping the carriage going for me.' They went round the long way to the Arbuthnot establishment, the gentle clip-clop of the horses raising a trail of white dust behind them, the children running after them, excitedly racing back and forth, exchanging clipped comments with the Senora, who seemed to be a friend of them all. Both Don Iago and Don Antonio were waiting at the entrance to receive them. They were joined almost immediately by Don Matias who had walked across from his own home and silently, with a minimum of fuss, helped his mother to alight and stood quietly by as she was greeted formally by the Arbuthnots before they turned to Lucy.

'My wife has not been well or we should have had this dinner before,' Don Antonio told her as he bowed over her hand. 'I am afraid you have seen very little of the family since your arrival.' Don Iago frowned at his brother. 'Nonsense, man, she has seen plenty of your son. Why should she want to see much of the old fogeys like us?' Lucy smiled at them both. 'On the contrary,' she said easily. 'All the Arbuthnots are very dear to Lucy,' Don Matias added dryly. 'She has a great feeling for her family!' Lucy blushed. 'I suppose I do,' she agreed in some confusion. 'My father always speaks so kindly of you all -' Don Matias smiled at her with that gentleness that he usually reserved for his mother. 'You take us all far too seriously, my dear,' he told her, and offered her his arm to go into the house. 'You look so beautiful tonight,' he added for her ears alone, ' you are almost a stranger.' She chuckled in her throat. 'Your compliments are always so double-edged!' she complained. He looked genuinely surprised. 'Are they really?' he asked. She chuckled again. 'You know they are,' she whispered. The lights of the hall took her by surprise. She had not expected such fine chandeliers and had never seen them all lighted before so that the light blazed all round them, casting faint shimmering

shadows against the walls as the crystal glass moved slightly in the currents of air that came through the open door. They paused, waiting for Senora Constantino to catch up with them, and, while they were waiting, Lucy's aunt slipped nervously into the room and came towards them. 'How nice to see you, Lucy,' she said quietly. Lucy allowed herself to be- embraced by the soft, scented arms that reached out towards her. 'I am so sorry that you have been unwell, Tia,' she said prettily. 'I hope you are quite well now.' Her aunt looked confused for an instant. 'I am never very strong,' she explained apologetically. 'I—I forget things very easily too. I am afraid it often annoys Antonio. He is a very punctilious man, you know, more so even than Iago, and I am so often tired -' She broke off, her soft, fluttering voice dying into silence, and then she started again. 'You must come and see me by yourself some time, when we can have a good talk and really get to know each other. I was so glad to know that you speak Spanish. Antonio kept saying that I would have to entertain you, and if you hadn't been able to understand anything -' She broke off again, helplessly peering into Lucy's eyes. 'It would have been awkward,' Lucy agreed readily. Her aunt sighed. 'I must go and greet Senora Constantino.' She lowered her voice to a whisper. 'Do you like living with her?' she asked. 'I find her a most terrifying woman.'

Lucy smothered a smile and shook her head. 'I love her dearly,' she said clearly. 'Would you like me to come with you?' 'Oh, would you, my dear? How kind you are! I am always so afraid of hurting her if I touch her, and if I don't, it seems so unfriendly somehow. Her husband was just the same, you know. He may have been employed by us, but I never felt at home with him.' Lucy, conscious of Don Matias standing beside her, blushed to the ears, but he only smiled sympathetically at them both and excused himself with dignity to go and talk with the men. 'Oh dear!' Senora Arbuthnot cast an agitated glance after him. 'Do you think I have offended him?' Lucy thought it was only too probable, but she didn't like to say so. Across the hall she met Senora Constantino's amused eyes and knew that Matias's mother must have seen the whole incident and knew exactly what had taken place. The older woman beckoned to her and she went across quickly, taking her aunt with her. 'Why, Senora, how pretty you are looking!' Senora Constantino greeted her hostess. 'Lucy and I hive been working so hard all evening, and you have quite put us in the shade!' Lucy's aunt went pink with pleasure. 'Oh, do you think so?' she asked earnestly. 'Mari told me that she thought I should never wear pink, but I do like it so -' Lucy found herself secretly agreeing with Mari, but she was touched by her aunt's simple pleasure and grateful to Senora Constantino for saying something kind to her. 'Where is Mari?' she asked.

Her aunt promptly looked flustered. 'She and Francisco were supposed to be here ten minutes ago.' She glanced at the clock on the wall. 'Iago will be so cross with them. He is taking your visit so seriously, my dear,' she added to Lucy. 'He keeps saying how well we must look after you as your father has entrusted you to our care.' Senora Constantino's eyes twinkled naughtily. 'I thought he considered Lucy would be bored by a lot of old fogeys like us,' she said innocently. Senora Arbuthnot smiled with painful sincerity. 'But he is always asking Matias about her,' she replied. 'Antonio told me so.' She looked round as the door opened and her son and Mari came in, laughing and talking to one another. 'Ah, here they are now,' she said with relief. 'I do hope that means we can all go in to dinner.' She fluttered away to speak to her children, leaving Senora Constantino and Lucy to their own devices. 'There goes a much-tried woman,' the Senora remarked conversationally. 'I am always resolving to be more kind to her, but she makes it very difficult. I can never quite manage to engage her attention.' Lucy laughed. 'I don't suppose anyone ever does,' she suggested.

The Senora shook her head. 'Her family does. Carmen is very primitive where her children are concerned. She is not at all a wise woman, but her instincts are very active.' Lucy gave her a quick, protesting look, but was prevented from answering by Francisco suddenly appearing at her shoulder. 'I am to take you in to dinner, cousin.' He smiled cheerfully. Senora Constantino chuckled. 'Yes, take her away before I say something I shouldn't!' she bade him gaily. 'I always find it extremely difficult to behave myself when the Arbuthnots are putting on a show!' Francisco grinned. 'Who doesn't?' he asked. Lucy was more than a little bewildered by their attitude. She had thought the Senora had liked Arbuthnots, enough indeed to encourage her son to establish himself with them more securely. She must have looked a trifle puzzled, for the Senora went on to say : 'It's only sour grapes, my dear. Everything here is so splendid and rich and our place is a trifle shabby by comparison.' 'But the things you have there are splendid I' Lucy replied indignantly, quite forgetting for the moment that she also was an Arbuthnot and remembering only how much she loved the large rambling palace of the Constantinos. 'There isn't any comparison!' The Senora gave her a quizzical look. 'Isn't there?' she asked dryly. 'I think your eyes have been dazzled by something quite different.'

Lucy blushed, conscious of Francisco's laughter beside her. 'I think my room, anyway, is absolutely beautiful,' she said stubbornly, and, rather reluctantly, allowed herself to be carried away by Francisco to the other end of the room. 'I have been dying to have a word alone with you,' he said almost immediately. 'I've got an engagement at the Tres Soles all next week and I thought you might like to come one evening?' Lucy turned to him enthusiastically. 'Oh, I would! When?' , . 'We-ell, I'd rather the family didn't know about it. Could you come on Tuesday, and -I'll see you home to the Constantino house between the shows?' Lucy nodded. 'I'd love that. What time shall I be ready?' He considered the point. 'About nine?' Lucy nodded again. 'I'll be ready,' she said. It was a large, unwieldy party when they finally went in to dinner. Don Iago took the head of the table, putting the Senora Constantino on his right hand and Lucy on his left. The rest of the family found places where they could, but Lucy couldn't help noticing how Don Matias made sure that he was next to Mari, holding her chair for her with that stern courtesy that was so much a part of him. She wished that he had been sitting beside her and then reminded herself that she could never find anything very much to say to him at the best of times and that keeping the

conversational ball going for more than an hour would have tried her resources rather severely. But she couldn't help peeping across at him at intervals all the same, because she liked looking at him and because, all dressed up as he was now, he looked very strange and exciting and quite unlike any other man she had ever known before. Don Iago made an excellent host. By the time the soup had been served he had settled into his usual suave good humour and began to tell Lucy some outrageously funny stories about the people with whom the bodega had dealt with in the past. 'We have far fewer eccentrics in the world now,' he mourned. 'We are all so serious. Are you serious?' Lucy pondered the question. 'I think perhaps I am,' she said at last, almost apologetically. Don Iago sighed. 'I wish I could say the same for my nephew,' he said more sternly. 'Francisco, who is the current girl you are going out with?' Francisco gave his uncle a sulky glare. 'No one,' he muttered. 'Only my cousin.' There was an instant's startled silence. Lucy could feel the Arbuthnots' combined and surprised gaze upon her. 'Is that so?' Don Iago asked her gently. 'I—I -' she began. It was Don Matias who came to her rescue.

'Our little Lucy is a very shy bird,' he said abruptly. 'Surely this is not the time to question her?' Don Iago reached out and patted her gently on the hand. 'Amuse yourself how you wish,' he bade her quietly. 'But remember that Francisco is your kin. It would be wiser not to think of marriage within your own family.' Lucy stirred uncomfortably in her seat. How on earth had he leaped to such an appalling conclusion? she wondered. 'But I -' she started to object. Again it was Don Matias who interrupted her. 'Lucy is too young to think of marriage with anyone yet,' he said. Lucy started indignantly. 'Why?' she asked him. If she had been uncomfortable before, she was now frankly ruffled. Don Matias looked amused. 'Because marriage is something very different from romance and you haven't learned that yet,' he replied with conviction. Lucy felt her anger explode inside her and the gold in her eyes sparkled with temper. 'Really?' she said conversationally. His dark eyes danced. 'If you had you wouldn't be nearly so angry,' he teased her. 'But I am not crossing swords with you. I sue for peace!' Lucy laughed suddenly.

'You have crossed swords with me,' she reminded him, ' and I don't give in so easily -' Mari looked quickly from one to the other of them, frankly puzzled. 'You might just as well,' she told Lucy simply. 'Matias always wins in the end.' But Lucy was still angry enough to be brave. 'Perhaps he hasn't previously met the dogged English?' she suggested sweetly. Don Iago looked at her with a new respect. 'There spoke an Arbuthnot!' he announced proudly, and for the first time, Lucy would have liked to have disclaimed her family. Her quarrel was with Matias alone and the other seemed merely a complication clouding the issue. The servants came and removed the plates and there was a pause in the conversation while the second course was brought in. When they had all been served Don Antonio brought out his collection of extremely old wines and carefully selected a bottle for each member of the party. 'Not everybody has the same palate,' he explained carefully. 'But I think I have chosen well for each one of us.' Lucy waited excitedly for her own bottle, interested to know what wine had been selected for her. Senora Constantino was given a light white wine which was obviously what she always drank and therefore came as no surprise. Then Don Antonio brought Lucy's to her. It was a red wine, heavier than she was accustomed to, but

as smooth as silk, and it gave her a little rush of pleasure to know that he thought sufficiently well of her to give her a wine that had such style and depth. She smiled up at him as he waited for her to taste it. 'It's terrific,' she said. He looked very well pleased with himself. 'Don Iago will give us a toast in a moment,' he said, ' but in the meantime drink some of your wine and enjoy it.' He passed on with his tray of bottles, leaving one beside each person. But only Don Matias was given the same wine as she had been given, Lucy noticed, and she wondered why. Then, when they had all been given their own bottle, Don Iago rose dramatically to his feet. Lucy more than half expected the toast to be ' The Queen', but then remembered that she was not in England. Instead Don Iago raised his glass with a flourish. 'To the Arbuthnots!' he exclaimed. The Constantinos exchanged a swift, amused glance and Lucy blushed. 'To the Arbuthnots!' she repeated proudly.

CHAPTER VII The ladies withdrew into the salon, leaving the men to finish their drinks, and settled themselves on the ornate, high-backed chairs that stood stiffly in straight lines round the room. Mari seated herself with a flourish of skirts beside Senora Constantino and smiled engagingly at her. 'Aren't these functions a bore?' she demanded. 'We ought to refuse to have anything to do with them and then Papa and Tio Iago could have them all by themselves.' Senora Constantino looked sympathetic, but refused to be drawn into condemning the dinner. 'It is good for us all to be formal at times,' she replied suavely. 'And it was only right and proper that Lucy should be received by her family with due courtesy.' Lucy, hearing her, flushed a little and earnestly addressed herself to her aunt. She thought that actually her family had put themselves to singularly little trouble on her behalf, remembering how much of her father's entertaining was based on his work and how much he enjoyed it all. By comparison she felt that her own welcome had been cold and half-hearted, and if it had not been for the Constantinos, possibly it would have been colder still. Senora Arbuthnot made a little fluttering movement with on? hand that sent a chain reaction down her bright pink skirt. 'I suppose Matias will see his mother home,' she said agitatedly. 'I expect so,' Lucy replied soothingly.

'She tires so easily,' her aunt went on. 'I suppose it is all the pain she gets. Not that one ever hears her complain, you understand, but one can see it in her eyes. I am very sensitive to such things because I have suffered so much myself. She's lucky really, as I am always telling her, because her nerves are quite all right. She doesn't suffer from them at all!' Lucy smothered a smile. 'Was her husband very like Matias?' she asked, and she was cross with herself for doing so, for Matias hadn't entered the conversation and she didn't want her aunt to think that she was in the least bit interested in him. Her aunt wriggled into a more comfortable position on her chair, preparatory for a good gossip. 'He was shorter than Matias,' she said reflectively. 'Matias isn't really tall, but he has more presence, if you understand me? But he had that same pride, that same way of making one think that he must be someone very important! But then the Senora has that too. It is bred into them!' She sounded faintly wistful, and Lucy felt sorry for her, an Arbuthnot by marriage, who so obviously felt herself inferior to the Constantinos in every way. In answer she flung back her head in a gesture which held every bit as much of pride as any Constantino could produce, and said : 'It is bred into us too!' Her aunt looked weary and disillusioned. 'Perhaps, perhaps. My own family is different. We have no pretensions other than our noble blood, and that is at a discount these days.'

Lucy wondered whether that was true in Spain, the one country where the revolution had been won by the nobility and where any Marxist ideas were most fiercely resisted. She was glad that she was saved from haying to answer by the arrival of the men and the whole party rearranged itself with a great deal of chatter and laughter, leaving her seated beside Don Matias who had somehow, she felt, managed to arrange everything to suit himself. 'I should be grateful if you would see that my mother gets home fairly soon, she looks tired.' Lucy glanced across at the Senora and saw the involuntary shadows beneath her eyes that gave her a drained appearance despite the sparkle of her conversation. 'I'll do my best,' she said quietly, ' but she looks as though she is enjoying herself.' Don Matias made a slight face. 'She is glad to be at a party given in your honour,' he replied dryly. 'She has become veiy fond of her little guest.' Lucy swallowed bravely. 'It is difficult for me to know the customary expressions in Spanish,' she forced out, ' but surely I am not as small as all that!' He laughed. 'Do I make you feel small?' he asked with interest. 'I had no intention of doing so.' His eyes lit suddenly with laughter. 'I find it very significant that you should think so.' She blushed. 'Do you, senor?' she reproved him haughtily. His eyebrows flew up so that for once his eyes were clearly visible.

'You have courage, senorita,' he returned quietly, ' but I should keep it to do battle with someone more of your own weight.' 'But how conceited of you!' she exclaimed innocently. 'Besides,' she added, thus quite ruining her effect, ' other people don't make the same maddening, patronizing remarks!' His eyes were hooded again and secret. 'Is that so?' he drawled. She bit her lip with irritation and turned away from him so that only the flushed curve of her cheek could be seen. 'I am quite prepared to go whenever your mother is ready,' she said stiffly. He bowed slightly, still looking amused, and rose to his feet. 'Thank you. I'll see that her carriage is called.' They took their departure on a very formal note. The Arbuthnot family stood stiffly round the carriage while the Senora was helped into it and then Lucy made her round, kissing her aunt and Mari on either cheek and allowing Francisco to kiss her hand in his turn. Feeling more than a little regal, she mounted the steps with the help of Don Matias's strong right arm and sat down triumphantly on the narrow uncomfortable seat. 'Well done!' he teased her lightly, and bowed over her hand. 'Goodnight, Lucy.' 'Goodnight,' she replied. The horses set off at a brisk trot, throwing their passengers forwards in their seat. Lucy put out a quick hand to steady the

Senora and was rewarded by the warm grasp of the older woman's fingers closing round her wrist. 'Thank you, my dear. I must be more tired than I knew. These evenings are always rather an ordeal for me.' Lucy looked at her with concern. 'Perhaps you shouldn't have attempted to come,' she suggested. Senora Constantino laughed. 'Oh, I wouldn't have missed it!' she exclaimed. 'It was right and proper that a party should be given in your honour, and also, we Constantinos owe the Arbuthnots a great and very real debt that perhaps we don't always like to admit.' Lucy looked frankly curious, remembering how inferior her aunt had felt. 'Oh yes!' the Senora went on. 'We may have been a very rich family once, but that was a long time ago. My husband was very glad to work for the bodega, we were frankly glad of the money. Then came the Civil War. It was a tragedy for the whole of Europe, of course, but it was a greater tragedy for Spain. Both sides were fighting for an ideal—to save Spain from herself—and both sides were more than ready to die in that belief. My husband was killed quite early on. He was shot as a spy.' Her voice took on a bitter, ironic note. 'I was quite desolated, and Matias was only a boy. It was the Arbuthnot bodega that paid for his upbringing and his schooling and even put him through university. So you can see I have reason to be grateful to your family.' Lucy was silent. She knew she ought to be proud of the way the bodega had acted, proud of their quick and generous response to

tragedy, but she was only aware of a small, proud boy having to be grateful for everything that he was given, and the man he had grown into working harder for the bodega than any member of the family worked, in fact running the whole show for them. It seemed to her that it had been a good investment for the Arbuthnot family, and she wondered, for the first time, whether Don Matias would have chosen to go into the sherry business if he had had any choice in the matter. 'Well?' the Senora prompted her after the silence had gone on for too long. Lucy blinked the tears out of her eyes. 'I am glad the firm was so generous,' she said stiffly. The Senora gave her a quick look and glanced away again. 'I did not tell you in order to make you sorry for me,' she said softly, ' but so that you would understand a little more why Matias must marry Mari. It has been understood between the two families since they were both children. It would not do at all if he were to default now.' Lucy didn't answer immediately. She was wondering why the idea should suddenly leave her feeling bereft and bewildered when she had known all the time that they were meant for each other. 'I think he likes her,' the Senora went on a trifle doubtfully. 'I'm sure he does!' Lucy said with determined enthusiasm. 'It will be ideal in every way 1' The Senora looked at her anxiously.

'If you really mean that, my dear, then I shall be very happy.' Lucy stared down at her gloved hands, noticing that the edge, along one of the finger seams, was just beginning to fray. 'Of course I mean it,' she said heartily.

The days following the party were difficult ones for Lucy. Her cousins were indignant that she should be made to work while she was in Spain and kept trying to persuade Don Iago to release her. Lucy herself was much happier working, but when she sought some support from Don Matias he withdrew into his ivory tower of pride and refused point blank to enter into the argument. 'I expect you are finding the heat rather trying,' he said. 'No more so than anyone else 1' she retorted. 'I want to know if you find my work satisfactory, or whether you would prefer to have someone else?' He sat well back in his chair, completely at his ease, and looked up at her thoughtfully. 'I have no intention of sacking you, if that is what you want,' he said at last. She clenched her fists to keep herself from showing how cross she was with him. 'Well, it isn't! I just wondered if it was you behind this move to make me give up my job?' He smiled, thereby irritating her further.

'No,' he said dryly, ' not guilty. In fact I didn't even know that there was such a movement afoot.' 'Well, there is!' she replied heatedly. 'I wish you'd tell the Arbuthnots to leave your secretary alone!' His eyebrows shot upwards, making his amusement plainer than ever. 'Tell the Arbuthnots?' he teased her. 'I wouldn't dare! You'll have to tell them yourself.' Her anger drained from her, leaving her with a strong desire to giggle. 'I didn't know you were such a coward -' 'As well as being proud, vain and conceited?' he asked her sweetly. 'Yes, as well as all that!' 'But then I am only a Constantino -' he excused himself. 'Y Mantero,' she reminded him smugly. 'Y Mantero,' he acknowledged. 'But you are an Arbuthnot! One of the family itself!' She blushed. 'I think you're perfectly horrid!' she told him fiercely. 'It would serve you right if I did leave you. What would you do for a secretary then?' His eyes twinkled. 'Are you so sure that I wouldn't prefer that?' he asked her. She considered the point carefully.

'I don't know,' she admitted at last. 'I suppose it is difficult for you—I do try, though, not to let it make any difference, my being an Arbuthnot!' He smiled at her and his eyes were very kind. 'That isn't what I meant at all,' he said. She was immediately curious. 'Then what did you mean?' she asked. But he only shook his head and went back to his work. She stood and watched him for a long moment, trying to puzzle out his meaning, but it was quite beyond her. With a sigh, she turned and left him, going back to her own room. It was queer, she thought, that he could irritate her beyond measure, and yet the thought of giving up working for him was almost more than she could bear. She sat down at her desk and stared with unseeing eyes at the typewriter in front of her. She wished hotly that she had never brought up the subject with him at all and, even more urgently, that she really knew what he was thinking. It was important to her, more important than she would have believed possible, giving her a hollow, uncomfortable feeling that dismayed her. If only he were not so attractive, she thought, she could dislike him with a clear conscience—and yet there had beep a time when she hadn't thought him attractive at all! Appalled at where her thoughts were leading her, she picked up the nearest piece of paper and fed it into the typewriter, dashing off the first letter that came to hand. It was later than her usual time when she finally put the cover on her machine and automatically cleared up the room before closing the door on the office for the evening. The full weight of the heat seemed almost unbearable as she descended the stairs, and she

wondered why it should be so that day of all days when Francisco was coming to take her to see him sing and dance and when she wanted to be at her very best for him. But she began to feel better when she got out into the open. The scent of the flowers and shrubs mingled with the dust and dry whitewash of the walls and the pungent aroma of charcoal came towards her as a woman fanned her fire into life in an enamel washing-up bowl, quite unconcerned at the inconvenience she was causing the passers-by who had to step down from the pavement to give her room as they went past. Lucy greeted her with a smile and a quick comment on the hot evening and the woman answered with a dour smile that belied the twinkle in her eyes. 'The quickness of your footsteps tells me that you are going to meet someone special this evening!' she drawled. Lucy laughed. 'Perhaps,' she said a trifle smugly. The woman smiled more openly. 'Ana will be pleased. There is nothing she likes better than dressing up her ladies! A pretty young lady at that!' Lucy screwed up her eyes against the sun. 'But nobody could come up to her Senora in her eyes, surely?' she observed humorously. The woman laughed. 'We never thought so, but she is more fond of ,you than one would have .believed possible.' She went back to her fanning with renewed vigour, sending up clouds of smoke from the reluctant charcoal. 'Is it Don Matias you are going out with tonight?' she asked slyly.

Lucy blushed. 'No.' The woman smiled and the twinkle in her eyes became more pronounced than ever, but she said nothing, and Lucy hurried on, glad when she gained the small gate in the wall and the sanctuary of the little garden beyond. Ana was delighted as always that her services were required and ran to turn on the water in the shower and ponder over Lucy's wardrobe, deciding which of her dresses was the most suitable for the occasion. 'There will be many eyes on you tonight if Don Francisco is to be your escort,' she muttered happily. 'It is only his own family who won't know about his singing -' She broke off abruptly, her hand going up to her mouth. 'Pardon me, senorita, I am apt to forget that you also are one of the family.' She sighed heavily. 'You are much more a Constantino, loving the Senora the way you do!' Lucy went into the shower and tried to wash the words away, but they stayed with her, mocking her, for that was what she wanted too, more than anything else in the world—she wanted to be a Constantino y Mantero, and not even the saying out loud of the whole name to herself could make her smile at the fancy. She had fallen, quite suddenly and without any warning, into a bottomless pit of tragedy and she could see no way to escape. She had fallen in love with the one man who would never look at her because it was already arranged that he should marry her cousin, and, ironically, she too was an Arbuthnot, but it wouldn't count because she was also English.

She came out of the shower in a sober mood and dressed herself with care, allowing Ana to have her way and to do what she would with her hair. The result made her look so Spanish that she caught her breath and stood quite still, staring at her unfamiliar reflection. Somewhere in the house she had seen a portrait of the Senora, much younger, lovely and in love, dressed very much as she was dressed now. She wondered briefly whether Ana had created the effect deliberately, but there was no reason why she should have done and so, chiding herself for being so sensitive, she went slowly down the stairs to where Francisco was waiting for her. He had his back to her, his Andalusian hat dangling from one hand, his pencil-slim body relaxed and unexpectedly vivid in his high, Spanish trousers and short bolero coat. How ridiculous it was that he should bear the name of Arbuthnot, such a very ancient and British name, when his picture could have been used on any advertisement for Southern Spain. He turned and saw her, his face lighting up and the beginnings of a smile appearing on his face. 'You look terrific! * he mocked her gently. 'So very Spanish!' She laughed. 'And so do you!' she exclaimed, her admiration brimming over into her words. 'And terribly, terribly handsome!' He looked absurdly pleased. 'But then I am Spanish '—he said proudly—' on my mother's side,' he added a trifle more doubtfully. 'Enough anyway. Shall we go?' They walked down the narrow streets, the smell of orange-trees accompanying them right down the road and into the main square where it mingled with the last of the hot sunshine and the coffee from the crowded cafes. Here and there a crowd of young people

gathered, gossiping and flirting with one another while their elders watched them with an indulgent air. Again and again Francisco would stop to greet a friend, embracing him delightedly, one hand on his shoulder, the other slipped behind his back. It never failed to amaze Lucy how the Spanish were always delighted to see each other, no matter how many times a day it was, and always showed their pleasure with an unaffected good nature. They came to Los Tres Soles almost before Lucy was aware. The entrance was small and unpretentious, with a few tawdry coloured lights to attract the passers- by. 'Is this it?' she asked, surprised. Francisco looked a trifle anxious. 'It looks better inside,' he assured her. 'These ventas usually are. I—I think you'll be surprised when you see it properly.' Lucy was. Once they had passed through the rather squalid entrance they came into the restaurant proper through a short passage filled with pot-plants of all varieties. Beyond Lucy could see the first of the tables, each one covered with an immaculate white cloth and lit by candlelight. 'It looks terribly expensive,' she said in almost a whisper to Francisco. He grinned. 'I believe you're impressed that I could get a job here,' he teased her. She smiled.

'I am! I'm frightfully impressed! You must be awfully good to have been asked. I can't understand why you don't ask the whole family to come and see you perform, and then perhaps they would understand better how you feel!' Francisco's smile faded. 'They'll never understand!' he said passionately. 'To them the bodega is the beginning and end of life. Why should they understand?' Lucy didn't know, but she thought they might if they could feel the undertones of excitement in the restaurant and knew that all these people had come especially to hear Francisco sing. The thought that he had chosen her to come with him made her proud, and it was with a head held high that she took her seat at the table that had been reserved for her, fully conscious of the curious eyes that watched her every movement. 'Will you be all right if I leave you now?' Francisco asked her. 'I ought to start the first performance and then we can have dinner before I go through it all over again.' 'Yes, of course,' Lucy agreed with a confidence she was far from feeling. She had not realized that Francisco was quite so well known, and it was only now, when she could hear the odd comment from the people around her, that she realized how expert the audience was in flamenco singing and how much they would expect from him. 'You're sure—you're sure it will be all right?' she asked him anxiously. He smiled and nodded. 'You don't have to be afraid on my behalf,' he said quietly. 'I'm good, you know. In fact I'm damned good!'

She came close to believing him, but her confidence waned again as he disappeared in search of his guitar. She hardly noticed when the waiter brought her a bottle of wine and a small dish of little meat-balls as an appetizer while she waited for her dinner. It was so difficult to believe that anyone one knew personally could be really good—good enough to become a professional and to earn a reasonable living by singing and dancing. But when the lights went down and there was only the candlelight from the tables left and a single spotlight that picked out her cousin's slim figure as he stood in the centre of the restaurant, calm and assured, her nervousness left her and she became one with the rest of the audience, excited and expectant, tense with waiting for that first twang of the guitar that would mean that Francisco had begun. He started slowly with a mournful melody that filled the hushed room with a wailing cry that rasped on their ears but changed immediately to a softer tone of resignation. The quarter-tones, so foreign to her English ears, made it difficult for her to hear the full effect of the intervals at first, but gradually these became clearer and she could admire to the full the incredible control he had over his voice and the effortless ease with which he delivered his songs. When the colour of the spotlight changed the audience gave a hushed gasp that brought a slight smile to Francisco's lips. He tipped his hat to them, leaving it at a jaunty angle so that it was quite surprising that it should stay on at all. Then, suddenly, without any warning at all, his feet began to tap out a rhythm and there was complete silence again. So intent was Lucy on the intricacy of the beat that she scarcely noticed the three guitarists who appeared from nowhere and began to play, giving the counterpoint to the melody of his feet. It was exciting, vivid, strangely colourful and the sheer magnificence of the timing took

her breath away. His slim body bent backwards, his head was thrown even further back in a gesture that would have been ridiculous if it had not been so dramatic. The end of the dance came with the same sense of surprise as the beginning. The guitarists stopped and Francisco flung himself into one final, haughty attitude, and then the audience were cheering wildly, and Lucy found herself clapping also, clapping until her hands stung. He was great! The greatest she had seen! And she could have sat and watched him all night, hearing the strange wild notes of the flamenco that throbbed so strangely in her ears, but Francisco merely bowed and smiled, blowing one or two kisses to his audience, and then he came back to her table, his normal, everyday self, and she could hardly believe that he could be the same man. 'Did you like it?' he asked her, almost casually, but she could see by the excited glint in his eye that he was still caught up in his own performance, tense and eager to hear her praise. 'I thought it was marvellous!' she exclaimed. 'I had no idea that flamenco was so exciting -' He gave her a quick look of approval. 'It invades one's very roots,' he agreed quickly. 'Sometimes, when I lie in bed at night, I can hear the more complicated rhythms of it in my head and I think my feet will never be able to do it, that this time I shall be defeated, but I never have been yet!' He smiled briefly and triumphantly. 'Nothing can give one greater satisfaction than that! To realize those subtle changes and to give them to others!' He glanced around the other tables. 'It is a fine audience here tonight,' he added with satisfaction. She looked round also, her eyes running from one table to the next.

'I should have thought someone from the family would have come!' she burst out without thinking. Francisco was frankly appalled by the idea. 'I should hope not!' His mouth set into bitter lines. 'Can you imagine me dancing with Tio Iago looking on?' Lucy giggled. 'Yes,' she said - frankly. 'I don't believe you would even notice that he was there!' Francisco smiled too. 'Perhaps not,' he admitted. His eyes came to rest with a slight start on a distant table. 'I did not, after all, know that Matias was with us,' he reflected gloomily. Lucy's cheeks burned with dismay. Quickly she looked across the room, hoping against hope that he hadn't seen her, and cross with herself at the same time, for there was no reason why her cousin should not take her out to dinner. He, too, was dressed in the Andalusian style, and looked so proud and withdrawn that she felt hurt somewhere deep down inside. His eyes met hers and he rose slowly to his feet, bowing distantly in her direction. But he made no attempt to come over and greet her, and the wine she was drinking could have been water after that, the stardust had abruptly gone out of the evening.

CHAPTER VIII Francisco regarded her face with some amusement. 'Don't let him spoil your appetite,' he admonished her. 'Why don't you take a leaf out of Mari's book and play hard to get? Matias rather likes a subtle approach, you know.' Lucy was first outraged and then, as the full implications of what he had said dawned on her, hotly embarrassed. 'But,' she protested quietly, ' Matias means nothing to me. To Mari, he is her future husband.' Francisco made a face at her. 'I see the difference,' he admitted. 'But if you ever need a foil to fix his interest, I'm ready to oblige.' Her eyes widened and met his blankly. The marked twinkle in his warned her that he was enjoying himself and that probably his family were right up to a point in saying that he was a ladies' man, that he had an eye for a pretty girl, for he didn't spend the whole of his time dancing and singing. 'It's a kind offer,' she said lightly. 'If I should ever want to fix his interest, I'll let you know.' He laughed, well pleased with himself. 'You don't have to pretend with me, cousin. I like Matias well enough. I don't mind doing him a favour— and it would be one to keep him away from Mari's embraces. She's a cunning little baggage and more than capable of frying her own fish!'

Lucy chuckled. She rather liked the way Francisco mixed his idioms, even though she found the things he said faintly disturbing. 'I don't know what you mean,' she said with dignity. He grinned. 'Don't you?' he taunted her gently. 'I think you do.'. He reached out for the menu and handed it to her. 'Make up your mind what you will have to eat while you are thinking about it.' But in the end he chose for her, choosing the truly Spanish dishes with a strong Andalusian bias that amused her. She enjoyed the meal too, or she would have done, if she hadn't been so conscious of Don Matias sitting behind her, across the room, ignoring her existence, after that one cool, casual bow, as though she were indeed nothing more than some automaton who typed his letters, a stranger to whom he owed a passing politeness. It was that that hurt so much, she decided, that lack of recognition, when her whole being lit up with expectancy every time she saw him, leaving her with a hollow feeling in her middle and a dry sensation in the mouth. She took a quick sip of wine and tried to concentrate on the things that Francisco was telling her, her mind a blur of dance and song with a thread of pain running through it, tantalizing her with the knowledge that Don Matias was there and had watched it all also. 'May I interrupt for a moment?' a cold voice said over her shoulder, and Lucy visibly started. She looked up quickly and met the cold, wintry pride of Don Matias's eyes. 'Y—you aren't interrupting anything,' she objected hastily, and then promptly wished she hadn't said anything at all because his

blatant disbelief did something to her and for a moment she felt all her old dislike for him welling up inside her. 'I'm glad,' he said with simple mockery. His eyes swept over her and then over Francisco briefly, dark with amusement, returning to her again in a long silence. Then: ' I was wondering if you would like to come with me to Seville tomorrow.' Lucy gazed up at him with suspicion. 'Why?' she blurted out at last. He smiled, looking both proud and superior. 'I suppose there has to be a reason?' he asked a trifle wearily. 'Actually it was with the idea of pleasing you. I have to attend a conference of the local Sindicato de la Vid in Seville and I thought you might like to take the opportunity of seeing the Cathedral and the Alcazar and anything else you have time for.' Bitterly conscious that she had been ungracious, she looked away from him down at the table and was aware that her hands were shaking as she picked up her glass. 'I see,' she said weakly. 'And?' he prompted her. 'And I should like to go very much,' she replied bravely. His eyes softened, though the mockery was still in them, plain to be seen. 'Good,' he said briefly, and turned on his heel and went as suddenly as he had come.

Francisco gave her a pitying look. 'Charming!' he commented with an underlying current of laughter. Lucy straightened her back and held her head up high. 'I forbid you to say any more,' she said haughtily. 'It was very nice of him to ask me!' Francisco grinned, enjoying himself. 'Oh, very!' he agreed nastily. She blushed, biting her lower lip. 'By the way,' she said quickly, ' what is the Sindicato de la Vid?' Francisco shrugged his shoulders. 'I thought you knew,' he said in a bored voice. 'It's the society that controls all the local vineyards. Matias is one of the leading lights, in case you hadn't noticed.' Lucy blinked. 'He probably deserves the position!' she exclaimed hotly. 'I think we're all perfectly beastly to Matias! We envy him and so we're nasty about him!' Francisco was taken aback by this sudden attack, but he recovered himself quickly and grinned at her. 'Speak for yourself, girl,' he drawled. 'Speak for yourself!' Confused, she stuck out her tongue at him. 'You would say that!' she berated him. 'Because you don't want to admit that it's true!' He shrugged his shoulders and smiled disarmingly. 'He has a very pretty defender in you, anyway,' he said.

It was an unfamiliar role, but she found that she didn't entirely dislike it. There was something rather satisfying in the thought that Don Matias should need defending at all. Don Matias, the proud; the all but self-sufficient!

Ana surveyed the chaos of Lucy's room with a blank face. 'Are you looking for something?' she asked. Lucy looked round, her eyes alight with laughter. 'Yes! Help me to choose something to wear. It has to be smart enough to go to Seville in; it has to be pretty, because I feel pretty today; and it has to be quiet, because I don't want—anyone to think I am dressing up specially! Does that make sense?' Ana sniffed. 'It makes sense to me,' she agreed stiffly. 'I suppose Don Matias is taking you with him to his meeting?' Lucy grinned. 'How did you know about that?' she asked. Ana sniffed. 'I make it my business to know what the family is doing,' she retorted briskly. 'They are my life,' she added simply. Lucy smiled at her. 'I know they are,' she said quickly, ' that's why I think it is all the nicer of you to look after me too.' Ana sniffed again. 'Since you've asked me,' she went on as though Lucy had not spoken at all, 'I should wear the yellow Courtelle

dress. We haven',t much of the material yet in Spain, for we are not afraid of washing and ironing as the English seem to be -' 'We live a different way of life,' Lucy protested. 'And we don't have all this gorgeous sun! It makes such a difference if you can rely on getting everything dry!' Ana chuckled. 'So that's the reason, is it?' she mocked. 'But that was not why I suggested it. No, it's the yellow colour—it will bring out the yellow of your hair, where the sun has bleached it.' Somehow that reminded her of her first meeting with Matias. He had said then the sun would bring out the colour of her hair. She glanced quickly at herself in the looking-glass, seeking for a touch of beauty, but she could see none. The yellow dress? It was a good choice. As always in these things, Ana was quite right. 'Do you think—do you really think -' 'That he'll like it?' Ana finished for her. 'Why shouldn't he?' The tartness in her voice brought the colour to Lucy's cheeks. 'It's so nice of him to ask me,' she explained lamely. Ana's expression softened. 'He wouldn't have done if he hadn't wanted to do so,' she said bracingly, and started to pick up the clothes which Lucy had discarded round the room and to put them away. Lucy was frankly nervous as she waited downstairs for Matias. She wouldn't sit down, for she was afraid of creasing her skirt, and

she couldn't settle to doing anything in case he should choose that moment to come. When he did come it was almost an anti-climax. He walked into the small withdrawing room with a businesslike tread and scarcely glanced either at her or what she had on. 'Are you ready?' he asked in a preoccupied way. 'Yes,' she said. She tied her scarf over her head with nervous fingers. 'I've been ready for ages.' He stopped short and stared at her. 'Is that so?' he drawled. 'Ready for anything?' Her confidence was promptly undermined. 'I—I think so,' she stammered. He held the door open for her with an exaggerated gesture. 'Only think?' he teased her, a thread of laughter running through his voice. 'What a pity I must wait until you are quite, quite sure!' 'W-wait for what?' she demanded. 'Wait for you to make up your mind,' he replied. 'But what about?' she insisted. He laughed. 'When you're absolutely sure, you'll know,' he told her. She drew herself up, her eyes angry, and the lion look she had inherited from her father more in evidence than ever.

'I think you're -' 'The last word,' he supplied calmly. 'Also conceited, arrogant, proud and vain?' She glared at him. 'Correct,' she said with dignity. He sighed. 'It's quite a list for someone you're completely indifferent to,' he commented. She swept past him out to the car. 'Oh, I'm not indifferent to you, Don Matias Constantino y Mantero! Nobody is indifferent to a constant thorn in the flesh. One keeps picking at it, hoping to pull it out!' He laughed, gay amusement spreading delightedly across his face. 'So that's what you're doing! Picking at it! You'll have to be careful that it doesn't get into your bloodstream !' She eyed him coldly as he opened the car door for her. 'There's no danger of that! ' I have good, healthy blood,' she informed him loftily. He was still laughing as he got in beside her. 'I'm very glad to hear it,' he said. Which wasn't quite the answer she wanted.

His car was exactly as she had remembered it. It was large, but certainly not luxurious, with curtains on the rear windows to keep

out the heat and woven covers to the seats to prevent one from sticking to them. They were necessary too, for it was hot, burningly hot, outside. Even with the windows wide open there was no relief, for the air that blew in was as hot and sticky as the atmosphere inside. The only thing to do was to put the whole thing as far out of one's mind as possible and to think hard about something quite different. Lucy tried this, worrying about how she was going to protect herself from the pain she knew was inevitably coming her way when Matias should marry Mari. The thought of it nagged her, until even the heat seemed preferable, the heat and the little prickles of sweat that ran down her back and beneath her stockings. 'Francisco, says you are a very important person in this guild,' she said out loud to break the crushing silence. 'What does it do exactly?' 'The Sindicato de la Vid? It's the governing guild of the sherry growers.' 'But we don't grow our own grapes at Arbuthnots,' Lucy objected. 'Why should we be represented on it?' 'We have an interest in the grapes. But actually, I attend the Sindicato in my own right. My family still has a few vineyards round about.' 'I see,' she said. Truth to tell she was a little put out that he should be a member of anything so important not through his association with Arbuthnots. 'But you also represent us?' she insisted. 'I suppose you could say that,' he replied, and she was almost sure that he was teasing her again.

'Well, surely Arbuthnots is more important than a few vineyards!' she exclaimed. 'I guess it depends from which angle you're looking at it,' he answered slowly. 'I'm'fond of my vineyards because they're mine. I suppose it's the only thing that makes me patient with you about your attitude over the bodega.' Lucy flushed. 'It's the way I've been brought up,' she defended herself. His eyebrows shot upwards. 'Are you trying to tell me that your father also thinks that the Arbuthnots are gods walking the earth, disguised as other men?' Lucy gave an impatient shrug to her shoulders. 'You don't understand!' she complained. 'Arbuthnots has fed and clothed us for generations. It's ours!' He glanced at her and then glanced back at the long, dusty road. 'It's mine too,' he said quietly. She lapsed into silence, feeling rather guilty. Of course she should have remembered, she thought, that he too had been brought up by Arbuthnots and that it still supplied his bread and butter whether he wanted it to or not. He was denied even the luxury of complaining about it, as her cousins ,did. She cast him a quick, speculative look from uiider her eyelashes, trying to make up her mind whether he resented his fate or not. But, looking at him, it was quite impossible to tell. He just looked calm and solid and very, very nice. Nice? No, he couldn't possibly be called nice! He was proud and arrogant and all sorts of other things, but surely not

nice? It was just that her heart went out to him and no matter what brakes she put upon herself, she couldn't seem to recall it. They came into Seville through the richer suburbs. Nurses in uniform and surrounded by their charges sauntered up and down the wide avenues in front of the solid, well-kept houses. The public gardens were full of people, sitting, watching the world go by, while they drank coffee or the thick chocolate of which the Spanish are so fond. A few roses, almost reverted to the briar in the hot sun, did their best to provide some colour beneath the spreading, dusty trees. There was little breeze, but such as it was, it succeeded in blowing the fine white dust over everything and everybody. It was particularly obvious in the creases of the priests' black soutanes and on the mantillas of the few women who still wore them, their high combs set firmly into their sleek black hair. Here and there a cluster of balloons rode high above the trees, tempting the children to come and see the other wares: the sweets and the cheap toys that were also for sale. Lucy found the whole city a very satisfying place. The spilling purple of the bougainvillea; the gold of the buildings; the foursquare churches with their deep, solemn bells; the formality of the little children; and the vivid light of the south that danced over everything. In the centre, enormous and dominating, stood the Cathedral: a mighty building that spoke of strength and awe, but somehow, to Lucy at least, had singularly little charm. 'If I leave you here, do you think you can amuse yourself for a couple of hours?' Matias asked her. She nodded. 'Of course. I think it's a beautiful city!' she exclaimed.

He looked pleased. 'So do I,' he admitted. 'Don't forget to go across and look at the Alcazar. I think you'll like it better than the Cathedral.' She did. She went first to the Cathedral because it was so handy, but she couldn't feel anything but rather small as she wandered about it. The size of it was even more apparent inside, a splendid place for processions, but hardly for the quiet intimacy of an occasional prayer. Its altars backed with gold and silver that glittered in the dark of the great wastes between; the confessionals huddled into unlikely corners, completely lost under the enormous pillars that utterly dwarfed them and the few people who had come to look and to wonder. It was gloriously cool inside, though, and that was the one thing that made Lucy delay going out again into the sunshine and the heat of the little squares, lined with orange trees and the cars of tourists. When she did find her way into the street again, she found she had somehow managed to come out of a different door and that the Alcazar was nowhere in sight. By taking a complete circular tour of the Cathedral she came back to the place where she had first started, stunned by the heat and the strong rays of the sun. It was hotter even than it was in Jerez, and it seemed quite impossible to believe that in winter it could be so cold and wet that those same people who were now toiling against the heat would be wearing overcoats and returning to centrally-heated houses, Lucy hurried towards the entrance of the Alcazar, her one ambition to get back into the shade. Hardly glancing at the man behind the grille, she paid her entrance fee, and went inside. It seemed to her that she had entered a new world, one so different from the one from which she had come that it left her breathless and astonished. Surely, she thought, she was not in Europe at all, but in the

richness of the Arabian Nights, lost in the grandeur of Aladdin's cave. She stood quite still in the ancient hallway where kings had received the foreign ambassadors, both in the times when the Moors had ruled Spain and when Spain had ruled half of Morocco. Fountains, silent for the moment, graced the pools of water that stood between the slender pillars that formed the arches so beloved by the Arab eye. 'American, senorita? English?' asked a voice beside her. 'English,' she replied automatically. 'I speak a little English,' the guide went on apologetically. 'Perhaps I may show you around?' His accent was atrocious, but his enthusiasm for the place where he worked was absolutely genuine. 'Thank you very much,' Lucy replied. 'I speak a little Spanish too, so perhaps that will help.' He was quick to realize that she spoke it well and turned with relief to his native tongue. 'I will show you everything I can,' he assured her. He led her through the gracious apartments, pointing out the furniture that had been used by the Spanish royal family. 'When Franco comes here, he uses different furniture,' the guide explained earnestly. 'He would not like it to be thought that he had any pretensions to the throne. It is a gesture that is much appreciated.'

Lucy could see that it would be, even amongst the Republicans, in a country where the king had never signed his name but only I, the King. It was a gesture that held something of both the pride and the unexpected humility which is Spain. The tour was almost over when Matias joined her. Lucy was staring upwards at a moulded ceiling and chandelier and didn't see him come. 'Day-dreaming?' he asked her. She smiled slowly, reluctantly tearing her eyes away from the roof. 'I suppose so,' she admitted. 'I got through quicker than I hoped,' he said. 'I was hoping I might show you the gardens myself.' She thought she could detect a distinctly warmer note in his tone and she blushed. 'I should like that,' she said. She watched him tip the guide, giving him far more than she would have done in the same circumstances, and then allowed herself to be hustled out into the almost tropical gardens outside. 'So you like Seville?' he smiled at her. 'I like it second best,' she affirmed. She was very conscious of his hand that was still resting lightly on her arm. It was ridiculous to allow herself to be so affected by his presence, but she was and there seemed to be so very little that she could do about it.

'Only second best?' he asked, surprised. 'Which place do you like better?' She gave him an astonished glance, wondering that he should ask anything that was so obvious to herself. 'Why, Jerez,' she said. 'It's much smaller, I know, and it hasn't got the Alcazar, but it's perfect in its way.' He gave her a broad, pleased smile. 'Could it have anything to do with people, do you think?' he asked her. She made an agitated little movement with one hand. It wasn't a question that she wanted to answer. It wasn't even one that she wished to think about. He grasped her hand firmly in his. 'Well, could it?' he prompted her. Her breath caught in the back of her throat and she swallowed painfully. He's going to kiss me, she thought, and her heart hammered so loudly that she thought that he must be able to hear it too. But he didn't kiss her. He let her go with an abruptness that was almost unbearable and turned away from her. 'It seems we have company,' he said. 'Unexpected company!' She turned quickly and saw Francisco and Mari sauntering across the gardens towards them. With determination she pinned a smile to her lips and waved to them.

'What brings you here?' she asked, annoyed with herself for the curious, rough edge that had crept into her voice. Francisco stood elegantly, completely at his ease, and smiled. 'Mari was resentful at being left behind,' he said slowly. 'So we thought we would catch you up.' His eyes met Matias's briefly. 'The Arbuthnots get lonely very quickly,' he said. Matias withdrew behind his wall of pride and Lucy couldn't even guess at what he was thinking. 'I'm glad the cooperage is working so smoothly they could spare you,' he said dryly. Francisco flushed. 'It'll get along,' he muttered. Matias grunted. 'It will have to, I suppose.' Mari clutched him by the sleeve, her eyes dancing with the sheer delight of being out and about. 'Oh, I am so glad we came though!' she exclaimed. 'Though I nearly died when Francisco said he was bringing me by bus! Can you imagine what a crush it was?' To Lucy it seemed that Mari had knocked the final prop away from beneath her, for now there was no hope that she would travel home alone with Matias, and the knowledge of how much such a small thing had meant to her almost broke her heart. She could tell herself and tell herself that Matias belonged to Mari, but she was foolish enough to hope still to pick up a few of the crumbs. It was better this way, she told herself sternly, but that seemed very cold comfort indeed.

She thanked him as briefly as she could on their arrival at the bodega and made her escape, almost running down the road, away from him and away from the violence of her own emotions. But when she reached the sanctuary of her room she found she couldn't bear her own society either. With care, she washed her face in cold water and, feeling a little more normal, she went to say goodnight to the Senora. 'Was it a good day?' the older woman asked her. She looked tired and grey from pain, and Lucy was uncomfortably aware that this was not one of her better days. 'It was gorgeous,' she said. 'Matias was very kind to take me.' The Senora looked at her closely. 'I am glad to hear that at least you have dropped that ridiculous Don whenever you speak of him,' she said tartly. 'What did you see?' Lucy told her, going to some trouble to evoke the little scenes that had entranced her in Seville, even doing a fair imitation of the guide who had shown her round the Alcazar to make the Senora laugh. 'You are good for me, my child,' the Spanish woman said at last. 'I had not thought that I could have laughed tonight. This has been a long and tiring day.' Lucy took her courage in her two hands. 'Are you sure there is nothing that can be done for you?' she asked hesitantly.

'There is nothing for me. I am told the Americans think they have a possible answer, but it would be far too costly to even think about, especially as the results would be most probably negative. But you must not be sad about it. There are compensations to most things, you know, and I have more than my share.' Frankly Lucy couldn't think of any that would have helped to resign her to being chained to the limitations of an arthritic body, but she wouldn't have said so for anything in the world. Instead she turned the conversation adroitly to the garden, and when she thought the Senora was tired enough to sleep, she quietly kissed her goodnight and made her own way to bed. Outside, below in the gardens, someone was singing a flamenco love song. It caught at Lucy's heart-strings and brought Matias's face vividly before her eyes. If she could only know whether he had been going to kiss her or not! She wished urgently that the singing would stop. There was something in the tone of the voice that reminded her of him quite unbearably. But it had to be Francisco, for only he could sing like that, with that certain style that set him so far apart. How foolish of him, she thought. If anyone else were to hear him there would be endless misunderstandings. She half thought of going out to stop him, but there was something so compelling about the song that she could not. She could only stand and dream of Matias and the things that were never going to be. Oh, Mari, she thought, I hope you make him happy! But the doubts kept creeping in.

CHAPTER IX The meeting of the Sindicato de la Vid in Seville seemed to herald the grape harvest. Within a day or so they were in the thick of the season and Lucy began to wonder why she had ever thought she had worked before. She had never in her life before seen such quantities of fruit anywhere as arrived at the bodega, and it all had to be dealt with promptly. Matias was everywhere at once and she, as his secretary, seemed to be expected to do likewise, taking notes, checking invoices, and just chatting with the owners of the vineyards who liked to spend the odd half-hour in aimless chatter before they resumed their hard labour. The grapes were laid out in piles on mats outside the lagar, the building where they were crushed, for a whole twenty-four hours, to lose some of their moisture. Then the first pressing began, at night when it was cooler for the men and to discourage the juice from fermenting too quickly. The workmen, wearing shoes studded with heavy nails, tramped their way through the night, singing and shouting encouragement to each other with that particular brand of cheerfulness which is so Spanish. Mari was in her element. Lucy couldn't help thinking how good she was at it all, joking with the workmen, teasing her brother, and generally adding a note of enthusiasm to the proceedings. 'You really must learn exactly what the ritual is,' she said to Lucy. 'Matias will expect you to have been born with the knowledge, so I had better tell you all the names and things.' She caught a glimpse of Lucy's momentary doubt. 'I do know all the right names, you know,' she added. Lucy was immediately afraid that she might have hurt her.

'I'm sure you do,' she said warmly. 'I was just surprised that you should enjoy it all. I was beginning to think that no one in the family was particularly interested in the bodega.' Mari wrinkled up her nose. 'I'm not,' she said frankly. 'But everybody loves the grape harvest. It has an air of bustle and excitement about it, and everybody sings and is happy. That reminds me,' she added, ' they'll be putting up the stage soon for some of the performances of the Festival week. You did know that Tio Iago said they could use the famous lawn, didn't you?' Lucy had not known, and she wondered whether anyone had thought to tell Matias about it. With a sigh, she put down the papers she was trying to work on and went off in search of him. 'What do you want?' he asked, exasperated, when she at last found him, overseeing the handling of the latest batch of grapes. 'Mari says they're going to start building a stage on the lawn at any minute,' she reported dryly. 'Do you want to be there?' He stared at her aghast. 'It isn't true!' he protested. 'No, I do not want to be, there! And tell the men that if they get so much as a screw in my way, I shan't come to see one of their performances!' She laughed. 'I'll tell them!' she promised, and went off happier merely for having seen him. Mari caught her up as she was making her way across the lawn.

'I wish you would give up working for Matias,' she said petulantly. 'It is impossible to hold a proper conversation with either of you any longer!' Lucy smiled. 'Rubbish! You're talking to me now!' Mari caught her urgently by the hand. 'Then prove it to me! Stop doing whatever it is you are doing and talk to me!' Lucy held her hand tightly before releasing it. 'I can't,' she said. 'But I'd love it if you would come with me and tell me the difference between yemma and prensa, or whatever it is that Matias has written down here.' Mari laughed briefly. 'All right, I'll come. But you have yourself to blame if I do something you don't like! Nobody ever listens to me!' Lucy glanced down at her notes again. 'Don't they? What is yemma exactly?' Mari flounced a step or so away from her. 'It's the mosto, the juice, from the first pressing of the grapes. It makes the finest of the wines. Lucy, I wish you'd let me ask you something.' Lucy came to a reluctant standstill, still clutching her notes in front of her.

'Ask away,' she invited. 'Do you think Matias really wants to marry me? That he loves me?' Lucy was aware of a constriction inside her that took away the glow of the day and brought her veiy close to tears. 'Yes, I think he does,' she said slowly. 'I think he's very fond of you.' She wondered why her confirmation of this fact didn't seem to make Mari look any happier. The Spanish girl looked decidedly sulky and not at all pleased. 'Well, of all people, I suppose you ought to know!' she exclaimed. She turned away her head and for a moment Lucy thought she was crying, but when she turned round again she looked as excited and as gay as ever. 'Let's go back to the lagar and watch them getting ready for the pressing,' she suggested brightly. The smell of grapes lay heavy on the air, sweet and quite different from the beery smell that it would acquire with fermentation. Lucy wandered round the mats, knowing that she ought to be working, but reluctant to leave the great piles of fruit that would some day be wine, the very finest sherry that would travel the world, to north, south, east, west, anywhere that was not behind the Iron Curtain. 'When I'm married to Matias I shan't allow him to work you so hard,' Mari stated positively, seeing how Lucy was torn. 'What should you be doing now anyway?' Lucy was brought back from her dreaming with a bump.

'But I shan't be here!' she protested. 'I shall be back in England. I'm only going to be here for a year —and a month of that time has already gone!' Mari gave her a sudden, almost furtive look. 'You won't go back to England!' she scoffed. 'You'll stay on here till you die, you know you will!' Lucy knew an instant's panic. Never to see the green of England again, to feel the soft, damp air, to see the pale pink and white of the blossom in spring! 'But why should I stay?' Mari shook her head. 'I don't know, but they'll find some way of making you! You'll see!' It was only the threat of a child, Lucy told herself uneasily. She could never stay on in Spain, and after Matias's marriage it would be doubly impossible—surely even the Arbuthnots could be brought to see that! 'I must do something!' she said aloud. 'I ought to be checking in the next assignment of grapes and I haven't the faintest idea how to set about it 1' Mari shrugged her shoulders disdainfully. 'I expect one of the men will show you how,' she said. 'I'm going to watch them putting up the stage. It's far too hot to work anyway!'

Lucy watched her go with puzzled eyes. And what had all that been in aid of? she wondered. Then quickly she turned her mind back to her work. Even if the grape harvest had begun Matias still expected a full day's work from his secretary—and she gave him that and a little bit over because she was also an Arbuthnot.

She soon became used to the unusual hours that the pressing demanded of her. Because it had to be done at night, and because they all had to take turns in checking the quantities of grapes that were put into the enormous vats for the men to tramp out the juice, she was expected to do her share of keeping a tally of the weights and the measures of mosto. There was very little that was left to chance in modern methods of wine-making. She became accustomed to the patches of light cast by the inadequate electric light bulbs and the fantastic shadows that jumped up and down with the men, growing larger and smaller again as the power fluctuated. She even grew used to Matias's comings and goings, ever unexpected, that made her heart race and do peculiar things and her whole body tingle: she always knew when he was there, but she had learned not to show that she did, but to go quietly on with her work, to control even the shaking of her hands. The pressing was hard work, but everyone enjoyed it. The men, with their hands on each other's shoulders, would walk and walk the juice out of the grapes. The heavy nails of their boots ensured that the pulp was not ground too finely, so that only the very best of the juice would ran out. Later, the pulp would be taken away for hydraulic pressing and an inferior mosto, prensa, would be wrung out of it. It seemed rather an anti-climax after the excitement of the first pressing and Lucy much preferred recording and watching the latter.

The men were beautiful, she thought. All of them seemed to have lovely bodies, wedge-shaped, tough and strong, if not as tall as the average man in England. They would roll their trousers up to the knees and jump into the vats, tramping up and down for hours on end. 'Why don't you join us, senorita?' they would ask her cheekily, and she would be tempted for just a moment, before she went back to her work. 'Why don't you?' Mari asked her one evening, her eyes black and mysterious in the unshaded electric light. 'We have all taken a turn at one time or another. Even Matias.' The last words hung between them, and Lucy wondered, uncomfortably, if the Spanish girl could have guessed that she, too, was in love with Matias. 'Matias is a man,' she replied gently. Mari's eyes danced. 'Really?' she scoffed. 'But the girls often take a turn also.' But Lucy wasn't willing to make the experiment. She settled herself at the high desk in the corner of the lagar and arranged the charts in front of her that she didn't really understand even yet. 'I wish someone would explain these to me properly,' she complained. Mari glanced at them over her shoulder and made a face at them. 'Give them to Matias to do!' she suggested nonchalantly. Lucy looked shocked, the more so as she could see Matias coming down the long building towards them.

'Why don't you go away?' she asked her cousin with sudden impatience. Mari smiled a trifle impishly. 'But I want to talk to Matias too,' she said. 'He's always so busy at this time of year. I hardly see him at all.' Lucy tried to feel sympathetic. All the world loves a lover, she told herself, so why couldn't she? She deliberately turned her eyes away from their meeting, but her imagination played her strange tricks and she was quite sure that Matias was hardly encouraging in his expression. 'What are you doing here, Mari?' he asked abruptly, as if determined to prove her imagination right. 'I came looking for you,' Mari pouted. 'The only person of the family one can ever find these days is Lucy, and she is always working for you!' Matias looked proud and awkward. 'If you're bored, why don't you go and visit my mother for a while?' he asked. 'She would appreciate seeing someone just now. She misses the bustle and the excitement of the harvest time.' Mari touched him fleetingly on the shoulder. 'I will,' she promised, ' but it was you I wanted to see now. You're not doing anything this moment, Matias, are you?' He cast a quick look at Lucy and the charts. 'I suppose you can manage those by yourself?' he shot at her.

Lucy nodded. 'Of course,' she said with dignity. Mari giggled. 'She doesn't really understand them at all! Matias, darling, do give me a cup of coffee and tell me where we are all going to sit once the stage has been built. We shall have the very best seats, shan't we?' Matias allowed himself to be pulled away, smiling slightly. Oh well, Lucy thought, if he didn't care whether she understood the charts or not, why on earth should she? She drew a little squiggle on the back of one of them and was not best pleased when it turned out to be a very fair portrait of Matias himself. 'We've enough here to fill one of the butts,' the foreman called out to her. 'Will you mark it off?' She did so automatically, hoping that she had put it into its right square, but without much faith. She was sleepy, and the hot scent of the night mixed with the grape-juice didn't help much. She was getting very Spanish, she reflected with dour self-mockery, sleeping almost as little as they did, getting into bed merely for the pleasure of getting out again. Only she didn't seem to share their endless stamina. She was tired now and the season had only just begun. She was asleep when Matias returned to the lagar. He stood over her for a moment and then gently shook her awake. 'Go to bed, Lucy,' he bade her briefly. 'I shall finish here.' She rubbed her eyes like a small child, ashamed at having been caught out. 'I can do my own work!' she insisted crossly.

He laughed softly. 'Can you, sleepy-head? Well, tomorrow you shall. But you have done enough for today. Tell my mother I shall be following shortly, will you, please? She has a way of waiting up for me when I'm late.' Lucy got unsteadily to her feet, surprised to find that she was stiff and cramped. 'I don't think you'll find the charts quite right,' she apologized to him. 'But I understand what I have down -' 'We can sort them out in the morning,' he replied shortly. She bit her lower lip, knowing now that he was angry at having found her asleep. She was cross with herself too. Of all the stupid times to choose, just when he would be sure to come and find her! She picked up her handbag haughtily, wishing that she didn't know her hair looked a mess. 'Goodnight, Don Matias,' she said coolly. She thought she saw a glint in his eyes, of amusement perhaps, but put it down to the unsteady light above the desk. 'Goodnight, little Lucy,' he responded. In English such an endearment sounded ridiculous, she told herself fiercely, but it hadn't. The soft Spanish lisp redeemed it from that. It sounded charming and warm, even a little loving. 'I—I'm sorry I fell asleep,' she said.

He looked very strong and alive in the peculiar light and the planes of his face fine and very masculine. 'Go to bed,' he said. She didn't say goodnight again, for she felt it would have been unwelcome; instead she wandered off, swinging her bag from one finger, taking a last look at the pressing for the night. Outside it was soft and warm and one or two birds sang. It was only then she realized how rare that was in Spain, where even the tiniest birds were looked on as meat by the boys with their catapults and their ancient guns. And at that moment she longed for the safety, the tolerant live-and-let-live of the English. She walked home the long way, going right round the bodega and entering the Constantino house by the main entrance. She could see that there was still a light on in the Senora's room and went there first to deliver Matias's message. 'You look tired, child,' the elder woman grunted. 'And thinner.' Lucy smiled. 'I am tired, but it's only the heat and the excitement. I shall be as right as rain in the morning.' The Senora looked at her doubtfully. 'Then don't stand chattering to me,' she said firmly. 'Get straight off to bed and stay there until Ana brings you some coffee in the morning. You cannot work both days and nights, and I shall tell Matias so.' Lucy blew her a kiss.

'It's sweet of you,' she began, ' but I would rather -' 'Matias is my son,' the Senora retorted. 'He is hard and intractable, but he has his human moments. Goodnight, child.' 'Goodnight,' Lucy replied and, oddly comforted, she took herself off to bed.

The next day they had almost finished building the stage. Lucy, feeling rather lost with nothing to do, stood on the tough, sharp grass that made up the lawn and watched them screw the last planks into position. 'Doesn't it make you long to get up there and sing and dance yourself?' Francisco asked her. She shook her head, laughing. 'I wish you would give notice of your arrivals—you startled me!' she complained. 'Ah, that is the story of my life!' he teased her. 'You were waiting for another! Come on, confess!' 'I was doing nothing of the kind!' she retorted sharply. 'And that reminds me. I would rather you didn't sing your songs outside my window.' She flushed slightly. 'I enjoyed it very much, but other people might not understand. I know you don't mean anything by it, but Tio Iago has already seen fit to remind me that we are kin and that therefore nothing serious can come of it.' Francisco grinned.

'How disappointing for you, my sweet,' he said lightly, but she could tell he was annoyed all the same. 'In England people wouldn't think anything of it,' she assured him, wondering how she had the face to say anything of the sort, for nothing that she could think of would cause more comment in England than someone serenading a girl under her window. 'But in Spain one has to be so frightfully careful,' she added sternly. Francisco gave a delighted yelp of laughter. 'Is that so?' he demanded. 'Well, it all sounds very right and proper! There's only one snag -' 'What snag?' Lucy asked him. Francisco's shoulders shook with mirth. 'You can work it out for yourself, my sweet,' he pointed out to her. 'I was working all week, including the night of the day we went to Seville.' Lucy gave him a bewildered and apologetic smile. 'Well, I can't understand it,' she said at last. 'Spain must be going to my head, or something, but someone was singing out there. He sang beautifully,' she added reminiscently. Francisco shrugged his shoulders. 'It was probably someone's transistor set,' he suggested casually. 'One hears them all the time.' But Lucy dismissed that impatiently. A very small hope was budding, unbidden, in her thoughts.

'Does Matias sing at all?' she asked casually. Francisco's mouth tightened expressively. 'My love, you are so delightfully easy to tease,' he said. 'Is it likely that Matias would serenade anyone else but Mari? You'll have to think of a better explanation than that!' His eyes twinkled with laughter. 'Perhaps it was I between shows?' But Lucy no longer knew whether she could believe him. There had been something personal, intimate about those songs, something she had unconsciously treasured ever since. Only, if it hadn't been Francisco, who could it have been? The last plank was screwed into the stage and two of the men jumped up and down on it as hard as they could to see if it would hold firm. 'Will it do, do you think?' they called down to Francisco. He was up with them like a shot, drumming his heels against the firm wood, his face set with concentration. 'It's just fine,' he pronounced at last. He looked almost perfect, posed against the trees behind, his slim figure perfectly erect, his head thrown back from the concentration of listening to his own feet. Matias came slowly across the lawn and stood for an instant watching. 'The typical Arbuthnot !' he said dryly. 'Is this a private session, or can anyone join in?'

In answer Francisco reached down a hand and hauled him up on to the platform beside him. 'The old routine?' he asked him. Matias nodded, smiling a little. 'If you think the audience can stand it?' He nodded his head towards Lucy and his smile grew warmer. Francisco grinned. 'She's a fan,' he confided softly. 'She can hear singing even when there's no one there!' Lucy could feel herself blushing and frowned fiercely at Francisco. 'Perhaps she's in love,' Francisco suggested wickedly. 'Are you in love, cousin Lucy?' Lucy gave him what she hoped was a quelling glance. 'I'm in love with the flamenco beat,' she said clearly, ' and a little in love with Spain -' 'And she's in love with a dark, handsome man!' Man's voice joined in. Lucy laughed. 'Oh, him!' she said neatly. 'He inhabits all our dreams!' Mari nodded gravely. 'It's very sad for us,' she considered. 'We all love the man of our dreams and he isn't really there at all!'

Francisco came right to the edge of the stage and squatted down beside his sister. 'You're talking nonsense,' he told her with an undercurrent of seriousness that caught and held her fickle attention. 'You have only to snap .your fingers for the man of your dreams to come running!' Mari gurgled with laughter that ended almost in a sob. 'Nobody ever takes me seriously!' she exclaimed, stamping her foot. 'An Arbuthnot is given in marriage —she doesn't choose her husband!' Lucy felt suddenly outside the family, as though the discussion had nothing to do with her, and she wondered whether it would be more tactful to walk away and leave them to it, but before she could do so Francisco was standing up again. 'It would be more fitting,' he told his sister sourly, ' if we did not hold such a discussion in public.' To Lucy's surprise Mari looked very close to tears. 'I think you are perfectly horrid!' she stormed at her brother. 'Why can't you mind your own business?' 'Because although you're young and extremely silly I shouldn't like to see you actively unhappy!' he told her sharply. He turned to the still silent Matias with an impatient gesture. 'Do you dance?' he asked him. They fell readily into a dramatic stance and then they were off, vying with each other for the honours of the dance, each trying to

outdo the other with the intricacies of the rhythm they attempted. It was an unfair contest, though, with Francisco an easy winner. Matias went on for as long as he could, but he was exhausted long before Francisco really got into his stride, and he leapt down to join the two girls to watch. 'Bravo!' he shouted. 'Marvellous! More! More! MORE!' 'Yes, more!' Lucy agreed. Only Mari was silent, her small face set and distant, with storm clouds brewing in her eyes. 'I hate you! All of you!' she announced suddenly, and fled across the lawn, her tears falling on to her cheeks, but somehow failing to mar her looks. 'Oh dear!' Lucy sighed. 'Do you think we ought to—' But the men weren't even listening. Francisco had gone back to his dancing and Matias had begun to stroll across the grass towards his office, unconcern in every line of his body. He was, Lucy thought bitterly, completely incomprehensible. * She slipped away herself as soon as she could, a little drunk with the sun and the speed of Francisco's dancing. There was something in the insistent and intricate beat that undermined her defences and made her feel soft and vulnerable inside. She wanted to run away before she was betrayed into admitting, even to herself, the extent of the brittle unhappiness that was growing up inside her and which was all wrapped up with what she felt for Matias. She would go and talk to his mother, she decided. She was beginning to look on the Senora's room as a kind of sanctuary, for Matias was

seldom there just now and his mother was invariably pleased to see her and welcomed her with open arms. It seemed to Lucy at that moment that he was truly carrying the whole burden of the bodega on those broad shoulders of his, and she was doubly ashamed of having fallen asleep the night before. It had meant one more thing for him to have to do and he had so much on his plate already. She made her way through the gardens and round the bodega buildings, allowing herself time to enjoy the fine lines of shadow cast by the creepers on the white walls. Inside the lagar she could hear Matias's voice and she stopped to listen for the sheer joy of hearing him speak. 'No,' he said clearly. 'No and again no. I shall not marry you immediately! So please go away.' Shocked, Lucy stood rooted to the ground. 'But, Matias,' Mari's voice came clearly to her, ' everyone expects it of you to marry me. The longer it goes on the more difficult it will be!' Lucy could well imagine the proud, withdrawn look on Matias's face. 'And would that be such a tragedy?' he asked dryly.

CHAPTER X Lucy would have gone away. He could have been kinder, she thought, for it couldn't have been pleasant for any girl to beg a man to marry her like that. But he hadn't said no, he had only said not yet! She tried to move away, but she seemed to have lost all control over her limbs. How could he? It was hardly any surprise at all when he came out of the building and found her there. She saw the temper in his eyes and put a hand up to her mouth to defend herself from it. 'Oh, for heaven's sake!' he exclaimed. Lucy was silent, waiting for the storm to break over her. 'What are you doing here anyway?' he asked. 'I suppose you heard every word?' She nodded her head. 'I didn't mean to,' she said. 'I was just passing.' 'I know.' So he didn't believe her. She could feel the colour creeping up under her skin and that annoyed her too. 'It wasn't a very sensible place to hold a private conversation,' she remarked coolly. The tightness of his mouth relaxed a little. 'I didn't exactly choose the location,' he said dryly. 'I didn't think you had!' she retorted equally dryly.

He stood very erect and she thought, fleetingly, that he too could probably dance beautifully, even if not as well as Francisco. 'I don't choose to discuss my conversation with Mari with you. Haven't you any work to do?' The hot Arbuthnot temper rose within her. 'And what makes you think I'm in the least bit interested in your conversation?' she demanded. 'You can be as laggardly as you like as far as I'm concerned! It's not I who have to put up with your "not nows" and " laters"!' He looked a trifle taken aback. Then quite suddenly he laughed. 'You're as bad as Mother! But for your information, no one is going to hurry me into any wedding with a mere child like Mari! I am quite capable of making up my own mind whom I am going to marry—and of asking her too!' Lucy glared at him. 'Is that so?' she taunted him. 'But your choice is somewhat limited, isn't it?' 'Is it?' he asked bitingly. 'I think that is an Arbuthnot idea rather than a Constantino one.' 'Your mother -' 'Leave my mother out of this!' 'How can I? Isn't she a Constantino?' He laughed without any humour.

'Actually,' he drawled, ' she is a Mantero.' 'But a Constantino by marriage?' He folded his arms across his chest and surveyed her thoughtfully. 'Am I to understand by that that you don't think you will be an Arbuthnot until you die?' he asked. Her fury made her eyes pure gold. 'If I marry, naturally I shall take my husband's name,' she said proudly. He smiled, thus angering her further. 'You relieve me,' he said. 'I was half afraid you would expect your husband to become an Arbuthnot!' 'How silly! How stupid -' 'In deed, if not in actual fact,' he went on smugly. She was hurt. 'Really?' she said coldly. 'And I suppose you would expect your wife to become a—a mere accessory to your personality?' He laughed. 'It's an idea!' he admitted. 'I should certainly expect her to put Constantino interests first— and Arbuthnots second.' 'But they're the same thing,' she said, puzzled. 'You think so?'

She didn't like being pressed. She took a step backwards and found herself with her shoulder-blades against the brick and mortar of the building. There didn't seem to be any way of escaping the man! 'I feel very sorry for Mari,' she burst out, ' if you're expecting her to differentiate between the two!' 'But we are not talking about Mari,' he objected softly. 'Are—aren't we?' He smiled intimately at her, and she was terribly aware of how attractive he was to her. 'No, we are not.' He leaned forward, such a little bit that she hardly noticed, and brushed her lips with his in a kiss so gentle that if she had had her eyes shut she would have thought she had imagined it. 'That'll teach you to eavesdrop!' he whispered in her ear. She tried to rub his kiss away with the back of her hand. 'It doesn't come off,' he teased her gently. 'You'll bear the mark of it until the day you die!' And for a moment she really believed him. 'Then the more shame to you!' she stormed at him. 'Philandering with everyone you meet!' He chuckled. 'You over-estimate me!' he said. 'Yes,' she agreed. 'I should have said philandering with every Arbuthnot you meet!'

His jaw tightened. 'Be very careful!' he warned her. 'Oh, I'm very careful,' she assured him. 'I know it's Mari you mean to marry, you see. So there's not the slightest danger of my taking you seriously 1' His anger was a strangely exciting thing. She could feel it as strongly as if it were her own. 'Is there not?' he said grimly. For an instant he hesitated and she was afraid—afraid of him and afraid of what she might have stirred up inside him. Then he gathered her firmly into his arms and kissed her with a fierceness that held no tenderness at all. Lucy was at first startled into compliance and then relaxed into a willing sharing of the moment. When he finally let her go she was bemused and dazzled and more than a little ashamed that she should have been such an easy conquest. 'Darling?' he said with some anxiety. Then he laughed. 'You must forgive me,' he apologized gently, ' but you see, I had no idea that Arbuthnots are such pleasant people to philander with!' With difficulty Lucy tried to regain her grasp on reality. 'What a beastly thing to say!' He released her, still smiling at her. 'It was rather,' he admitted. 'I'm sorry.' The apology shook her almost as badly as the kiss had done.

'It's all right,' she said awkwardly. She tried to meet his eyes, but found she couldn't. 'It's Mari you ought to be apologizing to!' she added bleakly. His eyes narrowed. 'I think not,' he said slowly. lie turned on his heel and walked away from her. She watched him go, feeling suddenly cold, and wondered that he should look just the same as he had ever done, proud, arrogant, and more than a little remote. And yet he was the man who held her whole heart. She was shivering as she made her way down the hot, airless street. It was reaction, she told herself. Nothing more nor less. Half an hour and she would feel quite normal again. But that could never be. She would never be quite the same ever again. Matias had taken the last traces of her childhood away from her and left her a woman.

Senora Constantino was holding court in her room. The Arbuthnot family were grouped about her, the younger members sitting on the floor and Antonio and his wife sitting side by side on two upright and extremely uncomfortable-looking chairs. 'I am so sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you,' Lucy said from the doorway, and started to go away again. 'Come in, Lucy,' the Senora bade her. 'I had hoped you would come. Come over here and let me look at you. Mmm, yes, you look better.' Her sharp eyes twinkled vivaciously. 'Has someone been paying you compliments?' Lucy laughed.

'I think it's just a good night's sleep,' she said lightly. Really, it was extraordinary how easily these half-lies came tripping to the tongue! She turned and greeted her uncle and aunt and then settled herself down beside Francisco, glad of his warm smile of greeting. 'We were just talking about you,' he told her, sucking in the sides of his mouth to show her that she might not like what they had been saying. 'Senora Constantino thinks we should take you out buying with us.' Tio Antonio smiled benignly. 'We all think that you should see all the various aspects of winemaking,' he agreed. 'Matias particularly so,' he added as though the fact surprised him. 'He wants you to go buying with him this afternoon.' 'Really?' Lucy tried to hide her joy in case someone should take it away from her. Francisco's sudden look of displeasure had not escaped her and she wondered why it was that he seemed to resent her having any time alone with Matias. 'You should take a picnic,' the Senora suggested. 'All the growers will offer you something to drink, but experience tells me that it is only rarely one is offered anything to eat!' 'But is it usual for Matias to go buying on his own?' Lucy asked. 'Of course not!' Francisco retorted. 'It isn't even his job. Trust him to poke his nose into everything!' Perhaps, Lucy thought, hugging the idea to her, Matias had engineered it so that he could take her out without too much comment. She couldn't really bring herself to believe it, but it excited her all the same, bringing a glow to her cheeks.

'When do we start?' she asked. 'When the great man is ready,' Francisco taunted her. Senora Arbuthnot cast anxious eyes on her hostess, plainly upset by Francisco's attempts at humour. 'The boy means no disrespect!' she muttered anxiously. 'I am sure of that!' Senora Constantino hid her irritation with an effort. 'It is of no moment,' she said. 'What is important is that this child should have a day's holiday. My son has been working her far too hard!' Lucy looked up at the soft rounded lines of the Senora with a very real affection and laughed at her. 'Your son works himself pretty hard too!' she said. The Senora glanced round at the assembled—and patently idle— family. 'Yes, he works very hard,' she agreed with friendly malice. She glanced shrewdly at Lucy's face and then turned away to Mari. 'Are you going with them, child?' she asked. Mari shook her head. Her eyelashes were still damp with tears, and Lucy couldn't help wondering what excuse she had given for her obvious misery. 'No,' she said on a sob. 'I have—I have a headache!'

Francisco frowned while his mother rushed into the fray with eager and maternal arms. 'My poor little love! But you must go and rest in a darkened room, not sit around with the sun in your eyes! No wonder that you have the headache, the glare in here is painful for all of us. I wonder—I wonder if I might close the blinds just a little?' Senora Constantino, who had a most un-Spanish welcome for the sun in her room, looked faintly put out. 'Perhaps Mari would be happier in her own room,' she suggested coldly. 'These adolescent moods are recovered from so much more quickly alone.' Lucy gave her a startled glance, for it was the first time she had ever heard her be impatient with Mari, regarding her, as she did, as her future daughter-in-law. Mari, however, seemed not to have noticed the harsher tone. Lucy suspected that she was rather enjoying being unhappy and felt a little impatient with her herself. Mari jumped neatly to her feet, tears like little drops of silver spilling over down her face. 'I hope it's a perfectly horrible picnic!' she stormed at them. 'I think you're all absolutely beastly!' She ran out of the room with a pretty toss of her head and they could hear her footsteps disappearing down the corridor and then down the marble stairs. 'Very adolescent!' Senora Constantino remarked complacently, rather enjoying the bridling anger of Tio Antonio and his wife. But as soon as the moment had faded her real tiredness became apparent and she sighed. 'I don't want to seem ungracious to you others, but I am rather tired now. Would you mind very much if I turned you all out?'

The whole family rose to their feet in a single movement. It never failed to amuse Lucy how the Senora could command them all at the merest nod, no matter how much richer the Arbuthnots might be, or how much property they might own. Francisco stretched himself with an animal enjoyment. 'I must go too and see what Matias has arranged for my entertainment this afternoon.' He bent over the Senora's crippled hand and kissed it lightly. 'I hope you are not thinking of changing horses in midstream?' he asked her. The Senora looked decidedly cross. 'Certainly not 1' Francisco chuckled. 'We're an impossible family, Senora, are we not? Shall we ask Lucy to bring you back a bunch of grapes for yourself?' The Senora was pleased by the suggestion. 'I should like that,' she said, her voice heavy with weariness. Lucy noticed with concern the lines that had etched themselves into her face while they had been talking. 'I think I should go and get ready,' she interpolated quickly. 'It will get so hot otherwise, and I never did buy that shady hat I' 'Well now, that can be remedied,' Francisco drawled. 'Most shops in Jerez could supply you with one. Let's go and buy you one.' 'But— ' Lucy hesitated—' Matias will be waiting.'

'A minute,' Francisco insisted. 'No more than a v minute! You go and buy the hat and I'll explain to him where you've gone.' A little dubiously Lucy agreed to the plan. They went past her room so that she could pick up a scarf just in case and some cream for her face in the sun, then they ran lightly down the cool marble steps and out into the garden. 'I can never get over the beauty of Jerez,' Lucy remarked, delighting in the formal beauty of the garden as always. 'Each view one gets of it seems to be more perfect than the last!' Francisco shrugged his shoulders. 'I think you must be easily pleased,' he said. She laughed. 'You are quite incorrigible!' she said. 'If you ever did have to go away for some reason, you would absolutely pine to get back again!' Francisco looked at her, his dark eyes completely serious. 'No,' he said slowly. 'I shouldn't really care a flick of my fingers. My heart is in my feet!' 'And your voice,' she agreed sadly. 'And you sing and dance so beautifully too! I wonder if you ever really will get to America.' Francisco shrugged again. 'Who knows?' he said. They parted at the gate and Lucy went quickly down the nearest street towards the shops. It was cooler between the tall houses where the pavements were always in the shade and Lucy was able to hurry more than she might have been able to otherwise. But there were no hats to be had, not even the ones which the girls used in the fields.

'Next week perhaps,' the shopkeepers assured her. 'Next week they should be here.' Disappointed, Lucy retraced her steps to the bodega and looked round the courtyard for the waiting car. Matias's was nowhere in sight, but another, an older model and not nearly so comfortable, stood waiting. The dust had settled on the seats and the springs had had to cope with the truly terrible Spanish roads for so long that they sagged badly and gave the car a curious listing look. Lucy went over to it, half expecting to see Matias already behind the wheel, but there was nobody there. In the end it was Francisco who came out to her, a delighted smile breaking up the brown tan of his face. 'I've persuaded Matias that it would please you much better if I took you,' he told her on a note of triumph. 'It wasn't easy, but we made it! He was finally convinced!' Lucy stared at him, aghast. 'But I wanted to go with him!' she exclaimed, her voice breaking with her own disappointment. 'I wanted it more than anything!' Francisco grinned cheerfully. 'Nonsense! It will be twice the fun with me! Get in, my dear, and let's get going.' He checked on the food and then climbed into the . driving seat, still looking abominably pleased with himself. He was still smiling as he wound down all the windows he could reach, glancing casually at Lucy's bare head. 'No luck with the hat?' he asked. 'Never mind, but you'd better wrap up against the dust.'

She was glad she had taken his advice once they were moving. The heavy lorries that travelled the roads incessantly, tore them to pieces, and the only repairs that were ever carried out were spasmodic and inadequate. Somehow though one grew accustomed to the jagged ruts, the pot-holes, and the occasional stretches where the roads gave out altogether and only the fact that one could see it again somewhere in the distance gave one the courage to continue. Nor did Francisco handle the car as well as Matias handled his. He had none of Matias's instinctive knowledge of where the pot-holes were going to be. Instead he swore blithely whenever he fell into one of them and promptly headed straight into another one. The car swerved and bucketed, adding to the acute discomfort of the drive. 'What did Matias say?' she asked at last. How could he have given Matias such a false impression when she would have given anything—yes, why not admit it?— anything to have gone with him. 'He didn't like it at first,' Francisco admitted cheerfully. 'But I soon persuaded him that it was up to him to cheer Mari up a bit. Besides, I wanted to take you myself!' There didn't seem to be any answer to that, but Lucy felt miserable about it all the same. He might be going to marry Mari, but that didn't stop her loving him and wanting to be with him. 'Look about you, cousin Lucy,' Francisco ordered her, apparently determined to do the thing properly and act as guide. 'If you look carefully you will see we are coming to the vineyards. Now they are very carefully controlled. Sherry grapes can only be properly grown in a specific area which is controlled by the Jerez Control

Board. The vineyards are divided into three types: Albariza, which has a chalky soil; Barros, which has a clay soil, and Arena, which has a sandy soil. Do you want me to go on?' 'Yes, I do. I find it very interesting. Which of the three soils is the best?' 'The Albariza. You see the white soil on the top of those slopes? That land probably produces the most valuable grapes in all Spain 1' Lucy stared into the distance at the white vineyards. Scattered amongst the vines were the people who were picking the grapes,, their clothes making bright patches of colour amongst the green of the leaves. She found herself wondering if they were some of the vineyards belonging to Matias and resolutely pulled her mind away from him and back to her present company. 'Is that where we're going?' she asked. Francisco nodded. 'We're going there first, then we'll stop for the picnic, and then we'll get on to the next group.' He put his foot down hard on the accelerator and the car shot forward, pitching Lucy forward in the most alarming manner. 'Sorry,' Francisco said casually, and drove on, faster than ever, up to the top of the hill. A long train of donkeys stood patiently waiting for their baskets to be filled by the men who carried the fruit between the women pickers and the donkeys and then escorted the beasts down the long slopes to the lagars of the various bodegas. Lucy travelled the

whole length of them, talking to each and every one, impressed by how well fed and contented they looked. If an animal was hungry in Spain, she thought, it was usually because his master was hungry too. She pulled some lumps of sugar out of her pockets, but only the braver spirits would take it from her; the others, rather sadly, didn't recognize it as food. Francisco went straight into the vineyard, sampling the grapes as he went, and making sure that only those which were really ready were being picked. The owner went with him, beaming expansively at everybody concerned : the vines, the men, and the girls who watched the small procession with downcast, modest eyes that flashed fire beneath their lids at the slightest provocation. Afterwards, the inspection over, they gathered together under a tree and talked of Spanish things, of bullfights and the latest jokes which were going the rounds in Madrid. Lucy frankly enjoyed herself and she was sorry when it was time to go. Everybody had been nice to her, including her in all that was being said and even casting her the odd glance of admiration and respect that warmed her and gave her a gloss of happiness that lasted just as long as she didn't think about Matias. 'Perhaps we could have our picnic here?' Francisco suggested at last. The owner of the vineyard nodded agreeably. 'It's a. pleasant spot,' he agreed. 'I'm only sorry I can't join you, but I have an appointment. I shall send our maid over with some wine for you though. On that I must insist. Adios, senorita. Adios, caballero.'

His stocky figure moved away from them and, at a gesture of his hand, somebody brought up his horse and he was mounted and away. 'It's a pleasant way of earning one's living,' Lucy remarked. 'I'm not surprised Matias still keeps his vineyards.' Francisco looked at her with astonishment. 'Do you mean to say he still has those miserable plots of land? No wonder he isn't arguing about joining the Arbuthnot clan! He'd never make a living out of those!' Lucy bit back a retort with difficulty. 'I don't think he's trying to!' she said dryly instead. She was silent for an instant and then she added: ' Anyway, I think Arbuthnots need him far more than he will ever need Arbuthnots!' Francisco smiled thoughtfully. 'It's the succession that has to be secured,' he said bitterly. 'Arbuthnots is our Golden Calf, you see, and sooner or later we all have to sacrifice to it. But if Mari marries Matias the blood will continue in the new line and I shall be free to go to America. Arbuthnots is a spider, growing fatter and fatter as it eats all us little flies up. But it shan't get me! I'm off as soon as I can pay my ticket. If you're wise, cousin Lucy, you'll follow my example!' Lucy swallowed down the tears that were forming in a painful lump in her throat. 'You haven't any illusions left, have you?' she said sadly.

He grinned. 'Not one! Not even a few regrets for a forsaken heritage!' 'Is it so bad?' Lucy asked. 'It is if you are truly caught in its web,' Francisco affirmed intensely. 'In thirty years I should be just like my father, only Tio Iago will have retired or died and it will be Matias in his place, giving all the orders and expecting all the lesser fry to jump to it!' He got lightly to his feet. 'Well, are you hungry?' he asked. 'Or did we bring all this food for nothing?' He went across to the car and collected the hamper, setting it down at Lucy's feet. 'Are you going to do the honours?' She began to spread out the food, not really thinking what she was doing. It seemed so strange to her that anyone would allow themselves to be talked into marriage for such a reason, but then she wasn't Spanish and her own traditions didn't go so deep. She was proud to be an Arbuthnot, prouder still to be her father's daughter, but she couldn't imagine either of her parents pushing her into a marriage to secure the family name for the future! But Senora Constantino wanted the marriage also. Mari would be such a suitable wife for Matias in every way. It was such a pity, she thought resentfully, that she couldn't join in with the general rejoicing as was obviously expected of her. But she couldn't want Matias to marry Mari for the simple reason that she wanted, very badly, to marry him herself.

CHAPTER XI The beauty of the evening was in full possession of the land when they were coming home. The light, golden and soft, spilled over the white buildings, casting purple shadows and softening the glare of the day into a truly glorious evening. Lucy slipped out of the car at the main gate to the Constantino house and, with a word of thanks to her cousin for taking her with him, hurried up to her room to change her dress before she took her turn at the lagar, checking the quantities of mosto off against the complicated charts. There was no one in the house, and in a matter of seconds she was back in the gardens, anxious to spend those last few precious moments before she had to work outside in the open air. A nearby bed of tobacco plants caught her fancy and she wandered over to them, marvelling at the scent that came from them, so much more pungent in the evening than at any other time of day. Slowly she went past them and on towards the rose garden, that struggled bravely in the heat but couldn't compare with her father's rose garden in England where the weather was more kind to them. Here they grew tall and straggly and were apt to revert to the original briar before they ever really got started. Lucy wandered down the full length of the beds and on through the honeysuckle archway into the second garden. Ahead of her someone else was standing, and for a second she thought it was one of the maids, but it was Mari. Beside her stood a tall young man in a white coat. One of the laboratory scientists, she supposed, and wondered what it was that they had to discuss so earnestly. And then, while she was still watching, Mari took a quick step towards him and he held her tightly against him, kissing her with a hardness and urgency that spoke silently of how much they were in love with one another.

Lucy stood quite still, shocked by what she had seen, and angered too, because she felt Matias had been betrayed. She stood there, struggling to regain her composure, and inevitably Mari saw her. The Spanish girl first went very pale and then she blushed. 'Lucy!' she called out, the attractive Spanish lisp making the name sound quite different and foreign. 'Come and meet Ignatius.' She caught up the young man's hand in her own and pulled him up the pathway. 'Please,' she added pleadingly. Lucy hesitated. How could she meet him when Mari belonged to Matias? How could anyone prefer the kisses of anyone else to those of Matias? The whole thing was quite beyond her! And that was stupid too. She forced a frozen smile on to her face and held out her hand to him, despising herself for her own lack of decision. 'How d'you do?' she said quietly. Ignatius grasped her hand warmly and bowed politely over it. 'I have heard a great deal about Cousin Lucy,' he said with a halfsmile. 'Welcome to Spain!' Spain! Lucy thought. The gulf between their ways of thinking was insurmountable! She shivered suddenly. 'Are you cold, Lucy?' Mari asked her unbelievingly. She shook her head. 'A goose walked over my grave.' The two Spaniards looked at first horrified and then amused. 'I see, an English idiom,' Ignatius laughed.

'But, Lucy,' Mari cut him off, ' will you tell Matias about—about us?' Lucy bit her lower lip. 'Of course not,' she said finally. 'It isn't any of my business, is it?' It was Ignatius who answered her. 'I think it is,' he said with a becoming gravity. 'You are a member of Mari's family and I think you expect some kind of explanation, no?' Lucy smiled uncomfortably. 'I think perhaps you should explain to Matias——' she began. 'I really don't think it's any business of mine.' Mari gave the young man a lilting smile. 'That means that she disapproves of us,' she told him. She frowned into the setting sun. 'Matias won't care!' she scoffed. 'He doesn't really care for me.' 'We intend to marry some day,' Ignatius went on simply. 'It will not, perhaps, be very easy, for I have very little to offer Mari, but she will be happier with me than she ever could be with anyone else.' 'But everybody expects her to marry Matias!' Lucy burst out. The two of them exchanged glances, Mari shrugging her shoulders petulantly. 'You see how it is, Ignatius? I told you -'

'Yes, sweetheart, you did. But it will all work out. Don Matias is a reasonable man -' 'Oh, it isn't him!' Mari interrupted him scornfully. 'He doesn't want to marry me any more than I want to marry him. It's being an Arbuthnot that's the difficulty.' Lucy gazed at her helplessly, not knowing what to say. Ignatius put a comforting arm round the Spanish girl's shoulders. 'They all know we want to get married,' he explained. 'But for years they have been determined that Mari should marry Don Matias. Little by little Arbuthnots has been slipping out of the family—that is obvious to all of us who work here. More and more we take our orders from Don Matias, he has more and more authority in the firm, the Arbuthnots have less and less. It is obvious that they would , like to make sure of Don Matias by marrying him into the family.' He smiled ironically. 'It would be a very correct thing to do, don't you think?' Lucy was frankly appalled. 'I don't believe it! Surely arranged marriages are a thing of the past even in Spain?' He nodded, still smiling. 'They are, of course. But family pressure is another thing. You have that in England too, I expect.' Lucy was silent, deciding it was wiser not to commit herself. 'What are you going to do?' she asked instead. Mari looked down in a feminine gesture as old as Spain.

'We shall wait,' she said stubbornly. 'If Matias had wanted to marry me, he should have done so when I asked him to. He knew I was on the point of falling in love with Ignatius—and he didn't care at all! He hasn't got a heart, that man! Just a machine that tots up the litres of sherry we are making, and he lives on that!' 'He does not!' The three words were out before Lucy could stop them. She coloured uncomfortably. 'I don't think he likes being pushed either,' she went on weakly. Ignatius grinned, lighting up with laughter. 'I don't suppose he does!' he chuckled. 'Have you tried, senorita?' 'Of course she hasn't!' Mari put in loftily. 'Lucy has been nicely brought up!' Lucy smiled despite herself. 'I don't know about that,' she said grimly. 'But what I should like to know is how you are going to explain yourself to Senora Constantino.' It was Mari's turn to look uncomfortable. 'I suppose we have all deceived her a little,' she said. 'But truly, I thought myself that I should marry Matias eventually until quite recently. Only what I feel for Ignatius is so different, you see. One day I felt nothing and the next it had flared into life like a—like a match!' 'The Senora will be very disappointed,' Lucy said quietly. 'She had quite set her heart on it.' Mari screwed up her face.

'I reckon she wanted to see Matias's children,' she said flatly. 'She likes me well enough, but she finds me frightfully young, if you know what I mean?' Lucy did know what she meant, but she thought that there was more to the Senora's anxiety for the marriage than that. There was some other reason why she wanted to see her son married to an Arbuthnot—which was all the more mysterious as Mari wasn't really an Arbuthnot at all. She glanced down at her watch and was shocked to see that she was already late for her spell at the lagar. 'I must fly 1' she exclaimed. Mari put her arms lightly about her and kissed her softly on the cheek. 'And you give us your blessing?' she wheedled gently. Somehow she made Lucy feel very old and responsible. 'For what it's worth!' she said almost brusquely. It was Ignatius who rescued her and who escorted her to the gate in the wall that led into the road where the bodega stood. 'You mustn't think that Mari is fickle,' he told her earnestly. 'It is only that before her heart had never been touched. Don Matias will not mind a great deal, I think, so it would be silly for you to concern yourself on his behalf, no?' 'Very silly,' Lucy agreed. His funny, stiff English was oddly consoling and reassuring, but even so, the whole incident had upset her. She didn't understand them at all, any of them. And it

was curiously important that she should understand Matias at least, for daily he was becoming more and more the centre of her life and she felt helpless and adrift in the face of her own love for him. The sooner she went back to England the better, she told herself ruthlessly, and almost cried at the thought of it.

It was late when she left the lagar. A money moon, golden and solid, hung so large in the sky that one could almost reach out a hand and touch it. It cast a glow of light down the narrow street, blue and mysterious with dark, black shadows where the cats hovered, hoping not to be seen. On such a night as this! Lucy almost ran down the street and through the gate into the Constantino gardens. The sound of her footsteps echoed after her, getting faster and faster, more and more urgent, until she arrived breathless in the doorway. 'Is that you, Lucy?' the Senora's voice sounded down the stairs towards her. A little reluctantly Lucy turned and went in out of the garden. 'Yes,' she called back. She ran up the stairs and went straight into the Senora's rooms to find out what she wanted. 'It is late for you to be getting home, child. Did Matias bring you to the door?' 'Well, no,' Lucy admitted. 'I asked him not to.' The Senora looked up at her sharply, but made no comment. 'It is not good to go straight to bed when one's mind is so active,' she said instead. 'Stay and help me for a few minutes here.' She

chuckled. 'In my young days fell girls had to have the proper accomplishments, and mine was hand-painting fans for my friends. I am busy sorting out my paints in case I can manage to do one or two now. They are very pretty, aren't they?' 'Very!' Lucy agreed. They were absolutely charming. Painted on the finest silks, or very old parchments, the Senora had vividly caught the various aspects of life around her. There were dancing girls in flaring skirts, bullfighters swinging their cloaks, the grapes being pressed by candlelight, and parties of handsome men sampling the wines and teasing the girls. They had changed but slightly as the years had gone by, gaining only in strength of line and greater confidence in the way the paint had been put on. They were absolutely Spanish in every detail, with the scarlet and yellow combinations they were so fond of, even to having them as their national colours. 'I am afraid my hands are not very steady now,' the Senora went on, ' but I should like to have something to do on my better days. Perhaps you would care to do one or two yourself?' Lucy picked up one of the prettiest of the fans and held it out to the light. 'I'm afraid I have very little artistic talent,' she mourned. The Senora smiled. 'We all say that!' she agreed. 'Still, it's amazing what one can do when one tries. It would be something for you to take home to your family.' Lucy swallowed. So the Senora still had no idea of her staying. It was so silly to go on hoping, she told herself bleakly. She was only

storing up trouble and heartbreak for herself. If she could only, even for a few minutes, get Matias firmly right out of her mind and heart, but he refused to budge. Briefly she smiled at her own audacity, wondering what the Matias of the flesh would have had to say about her day-dreams, had he known about them. Something pretty caustic, she supposed, for he had never yet spared her the whiplash of his tongue. 'I should like to have a try,' she said out loud. Senora Constantino looked pleased. 'Why, that's fine, my dear! Ring the bell and we shall have some hot chocolate, and then we can get these paints sorted out in peace and be all ready to start some time when you have a minute tomorrow.' Obediently Lucy rang the bell, wondering when Ana slept as she did so, for the maid seemed to be always on duty. 'It's very late, Senora,' she said mildly. 'Very!' the older woman agreed with satisfaction. 'I cannot tell you how I hate the nights! They are so long and one does not like to disturb the whole household for company, you understand, but I sleep very little and I become very tired of my own society. Ana is unfailing, though, she will come to me at any time of day and night. You must not think that I don't value her kindness to me, though. We have been together for so long that we understand each other too well for that!' Feeling that she had been justly rebuked, Lucy sat down again and began to sort out the Senora's paints, throwing out the ones that had become hard and impossible to use through lack of use.

Ana arrived after a few moments in her dressing-gown and with her hair all tied up for the night. 'What is it now?' she asked testily. The Senora cast amused eyes in Lucy's direction. 'Would it be asking too much if we had some chocolate?' she asked apologetically. 'Lucy thinks I am imposing on you,' she added on a laugh. 'So you do!' Ana retorted. 'Chocolate for two?' The Senora smiled wickedly. 'Oh, I think for three,' she corrected slyly. Ana bridled. 'Ugh! Would you have me' soiling my insides with that stuff at this hour of the night also?' She laughed loudly, flinging her hands up in the air to make her point more plain. 'Any Christian would be in her bed!' she added darkly. They all three laughed. 'Oh dear, I'm afraid it is I who am the pagan,' the Senora said sadly, ' because both of you are just humouring me. Bring the chocolate quickly, Ana, and then I shall allow this poor girl to go to bed.' Grumbling, Ana disappeared down the corridor, to return shortly afterwards with two steaming cups of chocolate.

'Will there be anything else?' she enquired gruffly, and it would have taken an acute ear to detect the faint note of anxiety that underlaid the question. 'No, nothing, thank you.' The Senora looked up, her eyes soft with affection. 'Sleep well, Ana,' she said. The maid laughed. 'There's nothing wrong with my sleeping!' she exclaimed. 'I sleep like one of the dead, as well you know. I'll bid you both goodnight.' She shook a finger in Lucy's direction. 'That child is almost asleep now!' she warned. 'Don't you go keeping her up for long 1' Lucy smiled too and bade the old woman a warm goodnight. 'I'm not really in the least bit tired,' she said when the maid had gone, ' and I'm so fascinated by your fans that I shouldn't want to go to bed anyway.' The Senora laughed. 'You have a kind heart, my dear.' She sighed. 'And that is a rare commodity in an Arbuthnot!' Lucy stacked the bundle of scarlet tubes she had collected together into their allotted slots in the paintbox and took a sip of her chocolate. 'Would you be very disappointed if Matias didn't marry Mari?' she asked suddenly. The Senora became very quiet and watchful.

'What do you mean, my dear?' 'I just wondered if you had really set your heart on the match,' Lucy explained awkwardly. 'No-o,' the Senora said slowly. 'I shouldn't be so foolish. Let us just say that a wedding between them would give me great pleasure. Does that answer your question?' Lucy clenched her hands together to give herself greater courage. 'But would any marriage that united the two families please you as well?' She waited, holding her breath, wondering what the Senora would say in reply. There was a long moment's silence. 'I'm not sure,' the older woman said at last. 'One has to consider the two people's backgrounds also, don't you think? One has to consider whether they would be able to blend.' Lucy looked up, surprised. 'I suppose one does,' she admitted. 'But supposing one wanted it very much? And supposing Mari doesn't want to marry Matias?' The Senora smiled gently. 'Would I be terribly disappointed? Is that what you mean? Well, frankly, my dear, I should be. I am not a believer in a man leaving marriage until he is too old to enjoy it. And I don't see him marrying anyone else but Mari. It has always been understood that he would marry her one day.' Lucy looked shocked.

'But Matias -' she protested. 'Is a hard man to please,' his mother stated in matter- of-fact tones. 'Mari is young enough for him to mould into his own ways without coming to any harm. Another girl might have too many ideas of her own. She would have very little chance of happiness in that case, don't you agree with me?' She picked up one of the fans and fanned herself gently from the wrist as the experts insist, despite her swollen joints. Lucy looked down in a gesture she had caught from Mari, a slight smile on her hps. 'I shan't commit myself.' She looked up suddenly, her eyes alight with mischief. 'But I don't think you're- right. I think a strongminded woman could probably cope with Matias quite well!' The Senora laughed. 'In that case it would not be- quite so much of a tragedy, would it?' Lucy was still smiling. 'I don't think it would be a tragedy at all!' 'So! That's the way it is, is it?' The Senora looked suddenly tired. 'Doubtless I should have thought the same at your age. The wisdom of this world is acquired with age and experience. The careless rapture gets lost somewhere along the way.' Lucy placed the last of the paints into its allotted slot and got to her feet. 'May I help you to bed before I go?' she asked pleasantly. The Senora smiled wearily.

'You are right, my dear. It is not a subject for us to discuss. And no, I shall not be going to bed for a few minutes. Matias promised to visit me when he came in -' 'And here he is,' Matias said from the doorway. 'May I come in?' Lucy noticed the warm glow that came immediately into his mother's face and for an instant she knew exactly how the other woman felt about him, dreamed about and planned for his happiness, and she felt sad for her, for Matias was every bit as ruthless as she had said he was, and ruthlessness seldom led to happiness. 'Of course come in!' his mother welcomed him. 'We've been waiting up for you.' Matias threw back his head. 'We?' he queried. The Senora met his proud look and pointed a finger at him. 'Lucy and I,' she said equally proudly. To Lucy's surprise he smiled. 'No wonder she falls asleep over her work!' he said cheerfully. 'Did she tell you that? Very pretty she looked too, not at all like an Arbuthnot!_' Lucy blushed. 'Is that so, Don Matias Constantino y Mantero? Well, let me tell you -' He held a finger up to his lips, his eyes glinting at her. 'Ssh,' he teased her, ' we're not alone!'

'I don't care!' she retorted, wondering vainly how he could make her so angry so quickly when she was normally a fairly eventempered sort of person. He laughed. 'No,' he agreed, ' you're quite sassy enough to be a Constantino!' 'Now that is enough!' the Senora interposed hastily. 'I'll not have the two of you quarrelling on top of me. Haven't you anything better to say to one another?' Matias turned to his mother immediately. 'Forgive me,' he said quickly. 'What else can we talk about? I have the tickets for tomorrow's ballet.' He turned back to Lucy. 'You will be included, of course, in the celebration. They can manage at the la gar without you.' Lucy accepted the information in a stubborn silence. It would be another family celebration, she supposed, and felt suddenly very tired of the Arbuthnot family. 'Thank you very much,' she said coolly, trying to hide her lack of enthusiasm for the treat. 'I was just on the point of going to bed when you came in,' she added. 'Perhaps you will forgive me if I go now?' He bowed. 'Please do,' he said. She had the strong suspicion that he was laughing at her, but she wouldn't stay to find out. She bade a hasty goodnight to the Senora and left the room quickly, her back held very straight and her head high.

Damn him, damn him, damn him! she thought, that he could do such terrible things to her heart when he cared no more than a flick of the fingers for anyone! She would go to the ballet, because it would be considered very odd if she didn't, but nothing would induce her to sit anywhere near him. His mother could do that — his mother and perhaps her aunt. That would be a good, safe combination that would hurt nobody at all. Nobody, that is, except herself, who would be perfectly miserable, but then she was beginning to expect that, she had known more bewilderment of the heart since she had come to Spain than in her whole life before. She would be very sensible, she decided. She would go straight to bed and she wouldn't give him a single thought for the rest of the night. It was all the more annoying therefore that she found she had no control over her dreams.

The heat was oppressive in the morning. Lucy ate her breakfast as slowly as possible and put off going along to the office for as long as she decently could. When she got there, someone had shut and barred all the windows and it was close and stuffy. She pushed them all open wide and stood for a long moment, staring out at the dazzling sunlight. 'Excuse me, senorita,' the porter broke into her thoughts. 'Senor Arbuthnot would like to see you in his office.' Lucy started and turned quickly. 'Which one?' she asked, puzzled. 'Don Iago,' he replied with a grin, arid left before she could ask him why. It was very odd, she thought, as she hurried down the corridor, for her uncle had never sent for her before. But any

nervousness she might have felt vanished promptly before her renewed outrage as she compared Don Iago's office with that of Matias. 'Come in!' She pushed open the door a little wider and walked inside. 'Ah yes, Lucy,' he said softly. 'Please sit down, my dear. I thought that perhaps you may have had a letter from your father? No? A little bit awkward, isn't it? I expect he thought someone in the family here was sure to have told you. Yes, very awkward 1' Lucy licked her lips and swallowed. 'I'm awfully sorry,' she said, ' but I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about.' He looked up and smiled nervously. 'No—no, I don't suppose you have. It's to do with Arbuthnots.' He paused significantly. 'We cannot afford to drift on towards a doubtful future any longer. Indeed we couldn't, even if we wanted to. My brother, as you will have seen, is not very active in the firm, but this hasn't mattered in my generation. If I could see Francisco taking my place, I should not have been worried, but there was only Matias -' 'Only Matias?' Lucy repeated indignantly. Her uncle smiled wryly. 'He is not an Arbuthnot,' he reminded her. Her temper flared. 'Not an Arbuthnot! Why, he practically is Arbuthnots!'

Her uncle winced. 'That is very true,' he said quietly. 'Truer than you know. Today my brother sold out all his stock to him, and so Matias is now the largest stockholder of Arbuthnots and holds a controlling interest in the bodega.'

CHAPTER XII 'Matias

does?' It was difficult to keep the lilting joy she felt out of her voice. It was such a very far cry from the small boy who had been educated out of charity and taken into the firm for much the same reason. 'But how?' 'He's been slowly buying with his own money—with our consent and approval, naturally. I have to admit my brother's selling came as a personal blow to me, though I could not ask for a better buyer than Matias.' Lucy's eyes danced. 'I should think not indeed 1 Is he changing the name of the bodega to include Constantino?' Tio Iago looked distinctly uncomfortable. 'Oh no, oh no indeed! Nothing like that! Matias has a great respect for all our traditions.' Lucy chuckled to herself. She was already wondering how she could convey the delight that this news had given to her father. Matias, who did all the work; Matias, who took all the responsibility; and, let's face it, Matias who gladdened her heart whether she would or not. She couldn't have been more pleased about anything. 'What do the rest of the family think about it, Tio?' she asked him. Tio Iago shook his head wearily. 'There isn't one of them who really cares, I don't think,' he began. 'Francisco can think of nothing besides -' He broke off as the door

was flung open and Francisco came in, tall and elegant, with only the scarlet of his cheeks showing his intense excitement. 'Have you got a moment, Tio?' he asked, his voice hoarse with suppressed emotion. His uncle looked up with a marked lack of enthusiasm. 'What is it now?' he asked testily. The young man looked actively beautiful as he produced a piece of paper from his breast pocket. 'I've done it!' he triumphed. 'I've done it 1 That's the proof that I have enough money, earned by my dancing, to get me to the States! And I'm going! I'm going just as soon as I can get a passage!' Tio Iago covered his eyes with his hands. 'The Arbuthnot future!' he groaned. Francisco went on, determinedly cheerful. 'It won't be so dreadful, Uncle. Matias will marry Mari and so it will all be in the family. Ask her,' he added persuasively, ' ask her if she doesn't want to marry him!' It was Lucy's turn to look dismayed. Tio Iago looked at her enquiringly. 'N-nothing,' she stammered. Francisco gave her a contemptuous glance.

'You don't want to pay any attention to her, Tio,' he said scornfully. 'She wants Matias for herself, but she won't get him! I've made sure of that! Matias knows it has always been expected for him to marry Mari, his mother is forever telling him so. All they need is a gentle push and I shall be free! Free! And you must admit that that will be small loss to the bodega.' Tio Iago looked decidedly cross. 'I shall make my own enquiries about it. I shall go and find Mari and ask her what her own wishes are. You had both better wait here until I get back.' There was a silence after he had gone. Lucy wondered uncomfortably what he could have said to Matias about her, and this became so important to her that she could think of nothing else. 'It was Matias who sang under my window, wasn't it?' she asked quietly. He shrugged his shoulders. 'And if it was?' 'Mari isn't in love with him. She wants to marry Ignatius.' 'She does not!' he retorted sharply. 'Oh, she may be having a flutter with him, but she's got to marry Matias! Can't you see that? If she doesn't, they'll never let me go. I'll have to stay here for ever and all so that I can eventually produce a son with the magic name of Arbuthnot!' Lucy blinked.

'I shouldn't have thought that- was necessary,' she said coldly. 'The Constantino name is an equally proud one, and I can't imagine Matias agreeing to any child of his having any other!' Francisco sneered, ' You'd like to think that, wouldn't you?' Lucy swallowed. Was it really true? she wondered. 'Yes, I should,' she said. 'And anyway my name is Arbuthnot too. Didn't you think of that when you brought Mari to Seville and broke up my picnic with Matias?' 'But an English Arbuthnot!' he reminded her. There didn't seem to be anything else to be said. She felt hurt and more than a little confused. She no longer knew whether Matias had really wanted to take her out or not. At that moment all she wanted was to be by herself. She couldn't face any of them the way she was feeling now, and least of all could she face Matias. It was something of a relief when Tio Iago came back into the room. He looked an old man, his former confidence shattered for ever, and that was something else that Lucy would find it very difficult to forgive Francisco. 'I have spoken to Mari,' he said with a touch of his former pomposity. For a moment he looked as if he might burst into tears. 'She is in entire agreement with you, Francisco,' he went on shakily. 'She cannot see why Arbuthnots should come before her own happiness. She is not going to marry Matias.' Francisco looked aghast. 'Then what are we going to do? I can't stay here 1 I won't stay!'

His uncle pulled himself together with an effort. 'There is absolutely no necessity for you to do so.> The continuation of the firm is now Matias's responsibility—I am thankful to say.' For the first time he smiled. 'You go to America with my blessing, Francisco, and your sister will marry whom she pleases. Arbuthnots will manage quite well without you, I have no doubt. Do you wish to discuss the matter further?' Lucy stood up with determination. 'I think I'll go,' she said gently. 'I have work to do.' Francisco's eyes met hers. 'Don't you think you ought to hear it out?' he asked her. 'You are an Arbuthnot, after all.' 'But an English Arbuthnot!' she reminded him sweetly, and went while the going was good.

It was difficult to settle to any work. She turned her desk slightly so that she could both type and watch the door just in case anyone should come in. But her mind continued to race off on its own, wondering how Mari had succeeded so easily in persuading her family that she was going to marry Ignatius; wondering how Francisco would get on in America; wondering about Matias— wondering ceaselessly and with an increasing feeling of discomfort about Matias! Indeed she was thinking about him so hard that it came as a distinct shock to her to find him standing quietly before her desk, watching her with an almost equal intensity. She blushed, an unbidden joy fountaining up inside her. 'I didn't see you come in,' she said, and was dismayed to hear her voice shaking. Desperately she cleared her throat. 'I was thinking,' she explained.

He looked amused. 'And am I disturbing you?' he asked. She shook her head. 'I was thinking about Mari,' she went on with apparent disinterest. 'I see,' he said. She gave him an uncertain look. 'What do you see?' she demanded. 'That you wish to find out if I know,' he teased her. She blushed again, annoyed that he should find her so transparent. In fact she was distinctly put out, the more so when he laughed. 'But of course I know.' His voice was soft and warm and turned her heart right over. 'Mari is not a very difficult person to understand. It was obvious that she would never be happy married to me.' Her eyes searched his anxiously. 'Was it?' 'Certainly it was 1 Besides which I have never had the slightest intention of marrying her.' Lucy allowed her eyes to drop. 'Your mother will be upset,' she whispered. To her surprise Matias looked distinctly cheerful at the prospect. 'I fancy she may be a little at first, but that will mostly be out of a sense of duty!' 'Matias!' His eyes danced. He was very close to her, one hip hitched on to the edge of the desk. If he chose to move the merest fraction their

hands would touch. But he did not choose to move and Lucy refused to allow herself to be disappointed. 'Shall we run off, the two of us, and spend the day by ourselves, not coming back until it is time to go to the ballet?' he asked her. She was silent, waiting for the sudden, almost painful beating of her heart to subside. 'To Seville?' she asked at last. 'No, not to Seville. We could go somewhere up into the mountains, somewhere high where we would have all Spain at our feet and perhaps a glimpse of Gibraltar standing guard in the distance. I might even sing to you all over again, if we only had the birds for company.' She was startled almost out of her chair. The memory of the soft singing of a flamenco song beneath her window came vividly back to her. She had been so sure it had been Francisco she had hardly believed his denial. She had begun to think she had imagined it, that the charm of the moment had been no more than some fantastic dream. It had never once occurred to her that it might have been Matias! Her eyes flew to his face. 'So it was you!' she accused him. For answer he bent down swiftly and kissed her on the brow. 'It was I!' he admitted. 'Will you come?' For answer she shook her head.

'We couldn't,' she said huskily. 'You must see how impossible it is. Everybody would wonder where we had gone—and Mari wants to get all her wedding plans settled, and—and -' He bent and kissed her again, this time on the lips. 'All right, my love, have it your own way, but you shan't escape me for ever. Besides,' he added wickedly, ' everyone will be so disappointed if I don't make some kind of a push to marry an Arbuthnot!' 'Well, really!' said Lucy.

Afterwards she wished she had gone with him. There was very little to do in the office and everybody else seemed to have other things to do. Tio Iago gathered various members of the family into his office and they came out again, looking either dazed or triumphant according as to what he had to say to them affected them. Tio Antonio was the gravest member of the party and his wife looked very close to tears. Watching them, Lucy could only sympathize. It must seem to them that their whole world was disintegrating around them as, in a different way, it did to her. She stood at the window and watched them as Mari brought Ignatius up to them to be presented. Her aunt's shoulders were stiff with resentment, but Tio Antonio seemed more interested in other things. Only Ignatius appeared to be feeling quite at home. He made some joke and the whole party dissolved into laughter. Lucy stood quite still and watched the young man take her nervous aunt's hands in his and kiss her firmly on the cheek. For a startled second Carmen Arbuthnot nearly repulsed him with an agitated movement, but he wouldn't allow it, merely kissing her other cheek too, and Lucy could see the glint of tears on her lashes as he

released her. She, at least, would welcome her new son-in-law, if only for the reason that he was never likely to make her feel at all nervous. The party moved slowly out of sight, leaving Lucy once more to her own devices. She was bored, but she would scarcely admit it, even to herself. She played at doing some work, inventing letters for herself to write, and was glad when lunchtime came and she could escape from the office with a clear conscience, locking the door firmly behind her because she had absolutely no intention of returning in the afternoon. She would sleep, she decided, for the ballet would begin very late that night and it would be five or six o'clock in the morning before she got to bed. She went home the long way, crossing the famous lawn to see the simple scenery mostly made of woven reeds that had gone up to finish the stage in readiness for that evening. It was selfish, but she wished the whole family were not going. Matias wasn't the sort of man who would kiss a girl lightly, she was sure of that, but was it only because she was an Arbuthnot? She could hardly bear the thought. What a tease the man was! How dared he disturb her so deeply with such a casual caress and then not insist that she went with him up into the hills as she had been more than half expecting him to? She hurried through the gardens and down the road to the Constantino house, where the Senora was waiting for her on the seat by the side gate. 'Well, my dear?' the older woman greeted her. 'I hear we are in for a great many changes at Arbuthnots.' Lucy smiled.

'A great many,' she agreed. 'It will hardly be Arbuthnots at all—' she stuck out her tongue with a touch of the gamine—' more like Constantinos, wouldn't you say?' The Senora laughed. 'Matias is very secretive about it all. I had no idea he owned so much of the stock, none at all!' She preened herself happily. 'I have to admit I'm terribly pleased about it, but—' the glow left her face—' it hasn't upset you at all, has it?' she enquired anxiously. Lucy shook her head, seating herself on the other end of the garden seat. 'Not a bit 1' she assured her. 'In fact I think it will be a good thing. Francisco wasn't at all happy as things were—nobody was!' 'And it doesn't sadden you to see the bodega going out of the family?' Lucy found herself blushing. 'No,' she said quietly. 'I'm even rather glad about it. I think I must have grown up a bit since I came to Spain.' The older woman looked at her with warm eyes. 'Yes, I think you have a little.' She got slowly but determinedly to her feet. 'And what do you plan to wear this evening?' she asked. That was the great problem, and when the evening finally arrived and it was time to dress, Lucy was no nearer to a solution. 'What do you think?' she asked Ana in despair. As usual the Spanish maid had no doubts about the matter.

'It will be rather grand, a fully dressed occasion. I think you should wear your gold evening dress,' she said finally. It was with a growing sense of excitement that Lucy watched her lay it out on the bed. It was generously cut with yards and yards of material in the skirt, and it reflected the gold of her hair and her eyes. In it she looked rich and rare and rather unapproachable, and that, she decided, was exactly the right note to strike with Matias that evening. She would show him just what an Arbuthnot was made of! She swept down the stairs as soon as she was ready, expecting to find the family already gathered there, but the hall stood completely empty and the only sound to be heard was Matias's laughter coming from one of the smaller sitting rooms. She followed the sound with a gathering feeling of pleasure. Matias was alone when she reached the doorway and she hesitated for an instant, wondering whether to break in on him or not. Then he looked up and saw her, and if she had had any doubts as to whether Ana's choice of garment was a good one, they had been answered for ever in that quick glint of appreciation. 'You look every inch an Arbuthnot tonight,' he said obliquely. She held her head up high. 'I meant to,' she retorted. 'We are not a beautiful tribe, but we have a certain magnificence on occasion!' His lips twitched. 'Do you not mean a pride?' he asked innocently. Her eyes met his in blank bewilderment. 'A pride of lions,' he added. 'You have your collective adjectives muddled up.'

She was flattered rather than otherwise. 'A pride of Arbuthnots?' She considered the idea, lowering her eyelids in a trick she had learned from Mari, so Spanish that for an instant she didn't look English at all. 'But the Spanish Arbuthnots haven't got the same tawny look, have they?' 'Nor the same pride.' She laughed with embarrassment, in her throat. 'I don't know,' she said. She couldn't read his expression. The darkness of his eyes and the proud lines of his face were so misleading—they must be so, for his voice was as warm as the glow from a fire. 'Shouldn't we be going?' she asked. 'Where are all the others?' 'Nobody else is going tonight, only you and I,' he replied. 'Oh!' She clasped her hands together in sudden nervousness. 'I didn't know.' He laughed. 'I had to be very devious about it,' he admitted. 'You wouldn't come with me earlier, and I was quite determined to have you to myself somehow before the day ended.' 'Oh,' she said again, feeling completely inadequate. He looked unbearably pleased with himself. 'Yes, oh,' he agreed solemnly. He took her hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm. 'Tonight the whole of Jerez will know all about our happiness.'

She supposed that was true. Everybody would see that she was alone with Matias and they would draw their own conclusions. Did it matter? She bit her lower lip, struggling against her own feelings which she couldn't begin to understand herself. If she only weren't an Arbuthnot! She searched for the words to tell him so, to beg him to go more slowly, to give her time! And it seemed that he did understand a little, for he gave her a little shake and kissed her lightly on the cheek. 'You look as sad as Ruth amidst the alien corn,' he told her. 'Haven't you got her courage also?' She nodded, for she had, and how could she possibly explain that she wanted to be asked? Most of the audience had already arrived when they crossed the lawn to take their seats. Polite bows were exchanged here and there, but who the people were, Lucy could not have said. It all seemed like a dream, a vast, beautiful dream. There was the blackness of the night and the rustling trees, ghostly in the pools of light reflected from the stage. The remnants of a stork's nest stood out against a chimney stack, picked out by the light of the moon that hung so huge and silver in the sky. It was all so very, very like a dream. The seats were of slatted wood and not very comfortable. Lucy sat down carefully, arranging her full skirts about her. Matias stood quietly watching her, waiting for her to be quite settled before he sat down himself. She could hear the whispered remarks behind them and the colour came pouring into her cheeks. The scent of Francisco's flowers stole across the heavy air. Great banks of blooms buttressed the edges of the stage and more stood at every

corner, arranged with a generous abundance that was typical of the Arbuthnot bodega and even more typical of Francisco. A polite spatter of applause greeted the orchestra from Seville. With a great deal of conversation they took up their plates and began tuning their instruments. Matias leaned his dark head towards her. 'Happy?' he asked her. Her eyes watched a Spanish woman in front of her, pretty and confident, flirting with her fan. 'Very happy,' she whispered back. It was true, she thought. She was happy. It fountained up inside her almost like a pain. She was happy and yet she was not happy. She might not have been here at all, sitting next to Matias, if she had not been an Arbuthnot. The ballet began like a clap of thunder. The story was trivial, but adequate. It was merely a vehicle to introduce the various dancers of the company. Some of them were very well known by the audience and were greeted with a barrage of applause, others came and went, as anonymous as when they started. A Spanish audience is an informed audience and as harsh and exact in its judgement as any collection of experts is apt to be. When the hero fell they rocked with laughter, and Lucy could see the blaze of temper on his face as he stood up and attempted the difficult movement all over again. When the interval came Lucy found that Matias had been holding her hand most of the way through the short ballet. Afterwards there would be the individual dances, which was really what they

had all come to see. This, in a way, had been merely a way of warming everybody up. She tried experimentally to withdraw her hand, pretending to search for her programme, but he only held it the harder. 'Come and have a look at Francisco's gardens in the moonlight?' he suggested. She nodded because she couldn't have spoken. Nearly everyone all around them had left their seats in search of a drink and a chat and it was easy enough to make their way through the gathering and across the gardens. 'And now, Miss Lucy Arbuthnot -' She winced away from the name. 'Is that why you're doing it?' she asked him painfully. 'Because I'm an Arbuthnot?' He turned her round to face him, looking in silence at the tears that hung on her lashes. 'Is it?' she pressed him. 'No. I'm doing my very best to. change your name to Constantino.' Her breath caught on a laugh. 'Y Mantero?' He smiled. 'We all take our mother's name as well in Spain,' he said. She buried her face comfortably into his shoulder.

'I know, but you must admit it makes it sound so much grander than just the one name.' 'Grand enough for an Arbuthnot?' 'Oh, Matias,' she said in broken tones, 'you don't know how much I want to marry you, but I want you to want to marry me too!' 'And you think I don't?' 'I don't know what to think. There has been so much talk about how important it was for you to marry an Arbuthnot that I'm quite confused. But I love you too much to marry you if you don't love me!' She stood back from him proudly, defying him to touch her until he declared himself properly. She wished yet again that she knew what he was thinking when he looked so proud and withdrawn. 'We have our different customs here in Spain,' he said at last. 'My family is an old and honoured one, but we no longer have the great riches that we once had. My father was glad to work for Arbuthnots. It is one of the greatest and most respected of the bodegas: I think, though, for some time Iago has been worried as to who would succeed him as chairman. Francisco obviously took but the slightest interest in the business. Pablo is too young. There remained only myself and, somehow, I was building myself up within the firm to an almost alarming degree. It was clear that it would be much better if I could be persuaded to marry Mari and so become a member of the family. I regret to say that he worked on my mother and persuaded her also that this would be the best thing for both our families. There was only one difficulty. Neither Mari nor I particularly wanted to marry one another.' Lucy took a deep breath.

'But I am an Arbuthnot too,' she said. His lips twitched. 'You are more an Arbuthnot than any of them!' he agreed. 'But an English Arbuthnot, as you were forever pointing out, and therefore your value was rather an unknown quantity.' 'Indeed?' she interrupted him coldly. 'Yes, indeed! If I were to marry you, I wouldn't really be any closer to the family, would I?' 'No-o,' she agreed doubtfully. 'So Iago made the best of a bad bargain and included me anyway,' he went on humorously. 'He didn't have very much choice, for he suddenly discovered that I owned more actual stock than he did himself.' 'But how?' she asked. He looked amused. 'I kept buying whenever I had any spare cash.' 'Then it's just chance that I'm an Arbuthnot,' she prompted him. 'I wouldn't quite say that!' he teased her. 'If you had not been an Arbuthnot you wouldn't have had that golden look which completely bowled me over the instant I set eyes on you at Gibraltar.' 'That's a lie!' she broke in. 'I was nothing but a confounded nuisance that you had to come miles and pick up because nobody else would!'

His arms slipped about her. 'True, but I hadn't seen you then. It was quite different after I had seen you. I knew immediately then which Arbuthnot I was going to marry!' She yielded to his touch, much comforted by the strength of his arms. 'I know, taking over everything in sight! It's a shame that everything should fall so easily into your hands.' For answer he kissed her hard on the mouth. 'I love you,' he said simply. 'Will you marry me, little Lucy, proud and arrogant as I am?' She couldn't find the words to answer him, only at that moment he didn't seem proud to her at all. He was no more than the charity boy who had bought his way into security, and it was that boy whom she loved so desperately, loved him as much as he loved her. 'Darling,' she began, feeling her way. 'Darling, I'm awfully proud of you!' she burst out. 'And I shall be awfully proud to be your wife.' He hugged her to him, laughing. 'Will you mind being Spanish?' he asked. That came as a shock to her. 'I don't think so,' she said honestly. 'The Arbuthnots seem to make a habit of it after all!'

His eyes danced. 'But you will be a Constantino, my love!' he reminded her smugly.

The rhythm of the flamenco was in her blood. Her hands were stinging from clapping in time to the dancers and her whole being was echoing the crazy beating of their feet. The dresses of the women whirled in a blur of colour before her eyes and the harsh rasping of the singing grated on her ears. This too, she thought, was a part of herself. And she knew that she had come home.