Red Lotus (28 page)

Then, as if it were a mere echo of the sound they had first heard, thrown back from the steep mountain wall to mock them, the noise of the engine came again, faintly at first and then rising to a great crescendo of sound as the plane came over the ridge of the peaks. It seemed to touch their cruel, jagged edges in its slow, purposeful flight, and it came straight towards them.

"They're searching!" Philip's voice was low and tense. "They've been sent out to look for us." He put his arm about her, drawing her close. "There can be no other possible explanation for such a low flight."

Felicity watched the plane's progress, fascinated into silence by its steady, hovering movement close up there

on the ridge. Her heart was beating madly, thankfully, yet she could not see how anything could land in such a place.

"There's a ledge," Philip explained. "A sort of plateau. It's another hundred feet up. They're making for it in the hope that we can reach there or that they can climb down to us." He looked round at her pale face and fear-filled eyes. "We've got to make it, querida!" he encouraged. "Do you hear me? We've got to make it. The plateau is our only hope."

"Yes," she answered in a dazed voice. "Yes—I'll try." "You've got to," he repeated relentlessly. "You've got to make it. We can't go out like this now."

He pulled her to her feet, steadying her with gentle hands.

"I'll help you all I can," he promised. "Don't look back, and don't look up too often. Just do as I say."

She nodded as he knotted the rope about her waist. Neither of them was equipped for climbing and more than once Philip's smooth-soled riding-boots slipped on the rock, threatening to hurl them both into oblivion. A kind of numb tenacity crystallized in Felicity's mind, keeping her going, moving her limbs with automatic precision when her brain grew too tired to control them.

They appeared to climb for an eternity, with the hum of the plane above them telling them that it had not yet made a succesful landing. It hovered and swerved and hovered again, and it was minutes before she realized that the powerful engine had cut out.

Nothing seemed to matter now but the desperate, upward toil to reach the ledge. For yards Philip all but carried her, straining on the rope, and she heard his breath driven out in quick, painful gasps as he struggled on.

Properly equipped, it might have been an easy enough ascent for him, but he had nothing but the rope and his two bare hands, and he was further handicapped by her utter lack of knowledge. She could only be a terrible burden to him, Felicity thought.

Once, in a mad moment of despair, she even thought of slipping free from the rope, but Philip had knotted it too securely for that. He allowed her very little slack and

no time to fumble with the knot. He drove her on and up, relentlessly, but without a word.

Exhaustion began to cloud her vision. I'll never reach the top, she thought, but I can't let Philip down. I've got to go on trying. I've got to go on!

The rope slackened and she sank back against the rock face, trembling. Philip was above her, but his voice came down to her quite clearly.

"It's now, querida, or never! You've got to come up to me."

She closed her eyes, swaying giddily on the narrow foothold he had found for her. She did not want to go on. She did not want to move. She felt sick and giddy because of the height, and she dared not look down or up.

"Querida, are you ready?"

The rope tightened and she put her hands round it, but she could not answer him She felt herself swinging out and back again towards the rock, but this time she caught hold, pulling herself upwards. There was no hold for her feet.

For a moment of panic she felt them swing free, like a pendulum, back and forth across the rock face, with only her hands gripping and the steady pull of the rope from where Philip stood above her. Then she raised them a fraction of an inch and found what was little more than a toe-hold.

Trembling, she waited, closing her eyes.

"Come up slowly, querida!" Philip's voice was nearer than she would have believed. "Just one more try!"

When she had made the ledge she lay panting against the loose scree, unable to move for a moment which held neither thankfulness nor relief. There seemed to be no more feeling in her, nothing in the world but distance and height and the merciless glare of the fully-risen sun.

Then, strongly, securely, Philip's arms encircled her, supporting, comforting arms that shut out all the world.

"That was it!" he said. "It's going to be easy now."

She never quite remembered the last stretch, the final effort which took them on to the plateau. It must have been an easier climb, because Philip did not have to use the rope so much. He kept it round her waist, however, and firmly attached about his own.

The navigator of the helicopter pulled them up the last rough incline to the flat green surface where his machine

had landed, but she was hardly aware of being placed safely in the cabin, of Philip seated beside her and the engines revving up for the precarious take-off.

Before she realized it they were high above the valley, and in less time than it took her to collect her thoughts they had landed on the firm, dry sand of Las Canadas, where a small fleet of cars stood waiting.

There was an ambulance standing ready, but after one swift look in her direction, Philip waved it aside.

"I shall take her home," he said. "She will be all right. There was no accident."

People surged about them, questioning him volubly in Spanish, but he gave them the barest details, determinedly making his way towards his own car, which he had noticed parked a little way from the others in the shade of the rest hut.

Sabino got down from the driver's seat, inarticulate with relief. In the back Sisa and Conchita were waiting. Sisa was in tears.

"Felicity! Felicity!" she cried. "I thought El Teide had swallowed you up! I thought you and Philip were dead—"

"It was not El Teide that erupted," Philip consoled her. "Only the little mountain above Lozaro Alto."

"But the valley!" Sisa wailed. "It has gone—and you loved it so much!"

"Perhaps it had to go," he said, his eyes suddenly remote. "These things happen to us, Sisa. One day we may be able to make another and easier road to Lozaro Alto. Who knows?"

Felicity was remembering that it was on the high, dangerously winding road to Lozaro Alto that Maria had lost her life. It was the road to the valley which had held Philip a prisoner to unhappy memory all these months. And now the road had gone, and the valley with it. Years must pass before they would be able to open it again, but they were the years in which he would fulfil a promise.

Philip would continue to make a home for Robert Hallam's children at San Lozaro, and the look he gave Felicity told her that he still expected her help.

Conchita's hands were trembling as she guided Felicity into the car.

"It is all because of me that this has happened," she

cried. "I am to blame for it all! Like Maria, I have been blind to Philip's goodness and his wisdom. Like Maria I have fallen so easily a victim to Don Rafael's charm!"

Philip turned abruptly towards the driver's seat and got in behind the wheel. He seemed determined to interrupt Conchita's spate of unhappy self-recrimination at all costs.

"Where is Julio?" he asked sternly.

"At La Laguna." Conchita bit her lip, fighting back the tears of humiliation which threatened to flow at any minute now. "We are all most ungrateful, Philip, but Julio, too, is sorry for what he has done."

"He—reported our position immediately, then?" Philip's tone was dry and Conchita hesitated before she answered his question.

"Almost immediately, Philip."

"Once you had managed to persuade him? I see," Philip said almost indifferently.

"Please do not hold it against him," Conchita begged. "Now that he knows—all the truth about Maria, too, he is sorry for what he has done."

Philip's mouth hardened as the car plunged downwards towards the tree line. His hands gripped the wheel till the knuckles stood out white against his taut skin, but he said nothing.

Conchita, too, lapsed into silence, and Felicity was left with that last poignant sentence of her cousin's ringing in her ears all the way to San Lozaro. "Now that he knows all the truth about Maria, too, he is sorry for what he has done"!

What was the truth about Maria? What had Philip kept hidden about her tragic death for all these months? Conchita had known and never told anyone until she could no longer keep it from her brother, and it had sent Julio to La Laguna in search of the rescue plane which had saved Philip's life.

But before he had heard what Conchita had to say, Julio had deliberately left Philip alone in the doomed valley. He had gone off with Conchita, not caring whether Philip lived or died. Perhaps hoping that he would die.

She shivered at the suggestion that her cousin might even have been witness to Philip's accident, and a fragment of red—the torn pocket of a silk shirt—seemed to flutter mockingly before her eyes.

If he had known, Julio was guilty of murder. As guilty as he had once accused Philip of being. But now Conchita said that Julio knew the truth.

When they reached San Lozaro, Isabella was waiting for them. Her face was pale and drawn, mute evidence of the fact that she had not slept for over twenty-four hours, and she had eyes only for Philip as the car pulled up.

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

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

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

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

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

He turned to help Felicity out of the car.

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

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

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

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

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

But all Felicity's weariness had dropped from her.

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

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

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

"Rafael—?"

Isabella nodded.

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

"But—Maria?"

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

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

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