Red Lotus (16 page)

Felicity tried to smile. It was no physical pain, such as Sisa might have known, that had suddenly shattered her peace of mind. Her heart, after that first moment of ecstasy in Philip's arms, lay still and bruised. How could she have come to love this man, so swiftly, so unpredictably? One touch—the physical contact in a moment of uncertainty—had been the igniting spark, but what did she really know of him? There were the things she had heard, the wild rumours which might bear no resemblance to the truth, and there was her own estimate of him Steady, reliable, true. That was what, in three weeks, she had come to consider him, but was it not already the promptings of love?

Her mind veered away from reasoning as Philip set her on her feet again.

"We're almost at the top," he said. "If we could make the crater we could shelter up there and you could rest for a while before we attempt to go down. It's too exposed here."

His words were an encouragement, and she had wanted so much to reach the top of their mountain!

She tried to walk and he put his arm about her to steady her while Sisa took both lanterns. They were almost ineffective now except in the shadows of the giant rocks, dimmed into pale imitations of light by the strengthening glory in the east.

She bit her teeth into her lower lip when the pain in her foot became intense and limped on, feeling that it was not quite so bad when Philip was supporting her.

In the strong, unshaded light the contours of the island began to show themselves, the land beneath them lying at first like a colossal slab of grey granite before it gradually turned into a relief map of deeply indented barrancos and steep, precipitous mountain peaks. The strong basalt wall of the road from Santa Cruz to San Andres marched towards them, and far, far on the distant sea a steamer made for the harbour, the column of its white smoke like a gay plume rising against the deepening blue.

Beyond it, where the sun rose, Grand Canary lay in a bath of light, guarded by two enormous serpent islands lying watchfully along the horizon.

"Lanzarote and Fuerteventura," Philip said, pretending not to look at her too closely. "The islands are very clear to-day."

They had halted on a ledge almost at the summit and he knelt down to inspect her foot. Wreaths of smoke and sulphur vapour emerged from the soil all about them, yet the stones which lay across their path appeared to be coated with ice. It was a strange, weird place for the revelation of love, Felicity thought with a small, painful smile which twisted her lips without rising to her eyes.

"There don't appear to be any broken bones," Philip said, "but I'll see what I can do with a bandage and then we'll begin to go down. We ought to meet Julio about half way."

"It isn't very painful," Felicity managed as she tried to stand again. "I feel so badly about it—spoiling your climb like this."

Instantly the blue eyes were full on hers with a strange, almost angry light in them.

"It was your day," he said. "I have climbed to the top many times."

"I can come again, perhaps," she said in swift confusion.

"But you may not want to trust me a second time—after this."

Still the blue eyes held hers, gently probing.

"Should it be a question of trust, Felicity?" he asked. When she could not reply he added on a drier note: "It's the one instinct that goes wrong most often. We

trust like fools and are betrayed."

The underlying note of bitterness seemed harsher and stronger than ever in these primitive surroundings. Felicity pressed her hand to a fissure in the frozen rock to find that what she thought would be ice-like was boiling vapour, like the breath of a wild beast. They were nearly four thousand metres above sea level, on a great, snow-crested peak at dawn, yet the earth beneath them boiled in a turmoil of heaving, volcanic fire.

Suddenly she shivered, and as suddenly Philip turned from strapping up her ankle with a bandage from the first-aid kit to lead her gently but firmly away from the crater with its views over all the island she had come to love in so short a space of time.

They went slowly downwards by a little twisting path leading eventually to a cave, at the bottom of which was a small, still pool of ice.

She wanted to run then, to hurry away from this frozen place whose chill seemed to have entered her heart, but Philip decided that they should stay.

"Julio will look for us here," he said. "We can't attempt the journey down to Altavista without him."

Sisa roamed round the cave, touching the stalagmites with wondering fingers, but in spite of her small cries of delight, it seemed to Felicity that she and Philip were alone. They were both intensely aware of each other. Felicity could sense that, but surely Philip could only be finding her a nuisance in this high place where already the stars had paled and the night was gone?

He had withdrawn behind a mask of silence, yet she knew that he was still intently watchful and anxious about her comfort.

When Julio came sliding down to the cave entrance half an hour later he explained the position as tersely as possible.

"Felicity has had an accident. We must get her down as easily as we can without further trouble."

"You are hurt, querida!" Julio murmured with sudden

tenderness, bending over her. "I shall carry you—" "There's no need for that." Philip's tone was practical

and a trifle curt. "Felicity can walk quite well now that

her foot is bandaged. She will only need a little support." Julio scowled at him but evidently decided not to argue. "There is an easy way," he said. "Come! I will show

you."

He took Felicity's hand, leading the way, with Philip and Sisa bringing up the rear. Philip had extinguished the lanterns and carried them now slung across his back, his torch thrust into the wide leather belt he wore over his wind-cheater.

When Felicity looked back at him from time to time, he seemed like some giant of the mountains striding there behind her, a dark-browed Peer Gynt in restless pursuit of an ideal, perhaps, or maybe just a man fleeing from his own tormenting thoughts.

Whatever Maria had been to him, whatever Isabella de Barrios was to him now, it was no light emotion which had left its mark on Philip Arnold's face. He was not the man to love lightly, nor would she have had it so, but Isabella was Rafael de Barrios' wife and she felt her heart turn over at the inevitability of pain.

Julio, too, it would appear, believed himself in love. When they eventually reached Altavista and were safely in the refuge, he looked at Felicity with longing eyes.

"I shall play for you while you rest," he offered, taking up his guitar when Philip had gone out to saddle the horses for the ride down to Las Canadas. "The music will make you feel good and help you to forget your pain."

Felicity smiled. Julio's panacea for every ill was the music he made; sweet music, passionate music, sometimes wild music which was a protest straight from his lonely heart, but music which she had tried to understand.

If she had failed at times it was not Julio's fault, she considered. It was something in herself, no doubt, which did not appreciate the true bond between this typical son of a southern race and the music he made so easily.

Conchita had forgotten her sulks and was all kindness. She rushed about the refuge, making coffee, bringing an extra blanket to put behind Felicity's head, watching

Philip to see if he were angry or just very anxious because there had been an accident so high up on the perilous sides of El Teide. She said that they should not have gone, that they should have heeded her warning and returned with her, and Philip said that perhaps she was right.

He had come in to announce that the horses were ready, and he looked in Felicity's direction and frowned.

"I'm all right, Philip," she assured him, trying to stand without showing her pain. "It was only a little thing—"

He smiled wryly, taking her arm to help her round the end of the hut.

"Little things can sometimes develop alarmingly," he said. "We're not taking any risks with this."

Lifting her up into the saddle, he steadied her on the small, honey-coloured pony in spite of her protests. For a moment his hands lingered on her waist and their eyes met. His were very dark, although in the next instant he was smiling.

"That should be better," he said. "Don't attempt to do anything. I'll lead Cinders down."

"But the distance, Philip?" she protested. "And the heat?"

He shrugged indifferently.

"It makes no matter," he said. "I am used to riding about the canyons."

Did he come this way alone? Often alone? Did he ride through the canyons thinking about the past, loving Maria still? And what of Isabella? Felicity could not think of Isabella de Barrios without a desperate pain in her heart, and she turned her head away so that Philip might not see its reflection in her far too candid eyes.

They rode slowly and took a long time in reaching the sandy plain of Las Canadas, where the heat was a fiery breath straight out of Africa. It met them in a stupefying wave, beading Felicity's upper lip with tiny drops of perspiration and causing Philip to mop his brow.

The lethargic, timeless peace that encompasses all southern habitations at the hour of the siesta lay on the old house behind its high stone wall and on the surrounding boulders and on the cacti and the still, white sand. Nothing moved. Even the little buff-coloured goats had disappeared behind convenient clumps of tamarisk and the

few trees within the shelter of the wall drooped in the heat.

Philip, however, seemed to be determined to get back to San Lozaro in the shortest possible time. With many apologies, he woke the custodian of the gate and brought out the car. The man he had called Santiago came and stood before them with wine and cheese and bread on a wooden platter, while the old woman with the wrinkled-walnut face peered at them from behind a grille in the inner door. It was too hot, Felicity supposed, for her to come out, or perhaps she was merely overcome by shyness at this second visit, remembering Philip's generosity of the day before.

They drank the coarse red wine and were on the point of getting into the car when a great bird rose protestingly from a pinnacle of rock far down the winding road to San Lozaro and circled twice above their heads.

Philip's eyes narrowed as he looked up at it and he turned sharply to where the road appeared out of a sparse belt of fir. A little cloud of dust came creeping up the valley towards them, and Felicity saw Conchita's eager gaze following his as she clasped her hands before her in quick expectation.

"Someone is coming, Philip," she said. "Let us wait and see who it is."

Philip's eyes seemed to snap their disagreement, but he answered reasonably enough.

"It will be tourists from Orotava. Who but the English `go out in the mid-day sun'?"

Conchita smiled, but she was not entirely convinced, and when the de Barrios's black Mercedes breasted the final rise she threw Philip a quick look of triumph.

"I knew!" she cried. "I knew it would be Rafael. No one drives a car as he does—so fast, so assured!"

Rafael de Barrios had his family with him. Andrea sat in front, prim and sedate in a white panama hat and white cotton dress, while Isabella and Celeste occupied the rear seat.

Rafael's sisters were not at all like him, Felicity thought, as the newcomers spilled out of the car, but that was no doubt due to their upbringing. The closely-guarded life of the young Spanish girl of good family would account for their natural shyness, and they patently

adored their brother. An only son, Rafael must have been the darling of the household ever since he had first drawn breath, and now that he had succeeded to the title, his will was absolute. Perhaps that alone accounted for his assurance.

His manners were impeccable, however. He bowed over Felicity's hand, touched Conchita's lightly with his lips, did the same for Sisa, which pleased her immensely, although she glanced swiftly in Philip's direction as she drew her hand away.

"This is surely one of the many advantages of so small an island," Rafael mused, smiling down into Felicity's eyes. "We meet often when perhaps we thought that we would not see each other again till the fiesta!"

"We've been climbing The Peak," Felicity explained unnecessarily because he had already glanced at her workmanlike outfit of linen jeans and checked cotton shirt. "It was a wonderful experience."

"But you have been hurt!" he noticed quickly. "You have a bandaged foot."

She drew back. He had probed too deeply, and his felicitations were something she did not want now even in a friendly way, because underlying them she sensed danger.

"I'm sorry," Isabella said, coming forward as if to extricate her from an embarrassing situation. "How did it happen?"

"I was foolish enough to slip going up over a stretch of rough scree." Felicity wished that the limelight of their interest was not quite so fully upon her and the cause of her accident. "It's nothing," she added. "It will soon mend."

"You must see a doctor," Rafael advised. "Allow me to contact Doctor Gondalez for you as soon as we get back to Zamora."