An Undefended City Read online

  He took her chin and forced it up. 'Don't look so glum,'

  he said gently. 'You've just put me nicely in my place, which I fully deserved.'

  Olivia looked dumbly at him.

  Livvy !' screamed her aunt.

  `Livvy?' he asked, brows raised. 'Seems rather a classical name for such a Renaissance article.'

  She gave a little watery chuckle. 'It's short for Olivia. Mama called me Olivia because she said it couldn't be shortened to anything. But Aunt Betty found a way.' She gave a stage sigh and looked him in the eyes. 'Shortening names—yet another unpleasant English habit. You're meeting a lot of them today.'

  Whether it was the unexpected demure teasing, or the sudden view of her rather remarkable eyes, still filmed with traces of sternly unshed tears, something made him pause. He caught his breath and then, not slowly at all, pulled her hard against him and kissed her forcefully. It was as if he had been shaken out of his previous self-command and Olivia found it suspiciously exhilarating. It was not a sensation she could disguise and they were both trembling by the time he raised his head.

  `Over twenty-one and British, possibly,' said Olivia, clinging tightly. She felt as if the world was reeling and also that what had happened was rather more important to her than a casual kiss on the stairs had any right to be. It needed a lighter touch to bring the situation back to an ordinary plain. 'Where's the dry land, then?'

  He laughed and hugged her, a spontaneously affectionate gesture which warmed her to her heart. When she drew back he was smiling.

  `Definitely not Livvy. I shall call you Olivia.' He kissed the end of her nose. 'And my name is Luis. You will please remember it. The next time, I don't want any cries of "Senor Escobar, this is so sudden." '

  Olivia raised her eyebrows. 'Oh, there's going to be a next time?'

  `Most certainly,' he said with a coolness she could only envy. She contrived to look sceptical and he took another pace towards her, still laughing.

  `If,' he warned her, 'you don't stop being mischievous the next time will coincide with your aunt's descent of those stairs.' A heavy tread could already be heard above their heads. It seemed probable that Miss Lightfellow had reached the second floor. 'And you wouldn't like that, would you? Not having asked Aunt Betty first whether you were allowed to kiss me.'

  Olivia backed up the stairs away from him. 'I already know her views on the subject,' she said loftily. 'She is quite definite that kissing strange men is Not A Good Thing.'

  Luis followed her. 'She is, of course, an expert?' he queried politely.

  Olivia smothered a giggle. 'Oh, surely? I mean, it's a sound academic principle that she has always drummed into me that one should not judge anything without having amassed a reasonable body of evidence.'

  Aunt Betty appeared at the head of the flight of stairs.

  `Oh, Livvy, there you are,' she said peevishly. 'I've been calling you all over the place, I hope you haven't been wasting Señor Escobar's time.'

  Luis looked up limpidly. 'Not at all, Miss Lightfellow,' he said courteously. 'I have just been introducing Miss Olivia to some aspects of the Mexican way of life.'

  Olivia kept a commendably straight face, but the look she sent Luis Escobar was distinctly reproachful.

  `We visited the kitchen and she has met Manuela,' he continued blandly.

  `Oh. Well, I suppose it had to be done some time,' said Aunt Betty disagreeably. 'But I wish you had waited for me, Livvy. You never know what to say to servants.'

  `On the contrary,' said Luis with murderous politeness, Miss Olivia's Spanish is excellent. We were all very impressed.'

  `Well, I dare say it is. She's, half Mexican after all,' snapped Aunt Betty. 'You'd better go and pack, Livvy. I'm sure Senor Escobar wants to be off, and I certainly don't intend to spend all day hanging around in this great empty house.'

  `Yes, Aunt Betty,' Olivia murmured, surprised and touched by his championship. She gave him a grateful smile.

  `No hurry,' he told her, ignoring Aunt Betty's glare. 'We have plenty of time. And there's lots of time for more evidence when you continue your studies, which you will do in Cuernavaca, I hope.'

  `Studies?' said Aunt Betty suspiciously.

  In spite of her boast, Olivia was no little time in packing. This might to some extent have been due to the fact that she found it impossible to choose which clothes she would take from the cases that had suddenly appeared in her suite. Would the family expect her to wear a long dress in the evening? she wondered. Her father had liked her to do so, but it was a habit she had dropped after he died. She had no idea what Luis would expect or prefer. She could have kicked herself for not having asked him when she had the opportunity—at least of asking him what was the custom. She supposed she would have had to elicit his own preference in the matter by rather more subtle means than an outright question.

  She caught sight of herself in the dressing table mirror, looking peeved and undecided and laughed unwillingly. It was too ridiculous, she told herself. There was no way she could guess at what Luis Escobar's tastes in clothes or ladies would lead him to favour, but her own common sense was pointing out that he was both older and immeasurably more sophisticated than herself and probably used to a degree of refinement in both to which she could not aspire.

  Olivia knew herself to be a rather simple creature. In spite of virtually unlimited allowances, she spent very little money and rather less time on clothes. Aunt Betty, who had an uncharacteristic weakness for fine clothes, had taken to following her dead sister-in-law's example and going to Paris most seasons for the Collections. Sometimes she took Olivia, but her niece was uneasy in the company of the super-sophisticated, and, it must be admitted, generally

  ageing ladies who made up the majority of the audience of the designers patronised by Aunt Betty. She made no complaint over paying her aunt's dress bills, which indeed she looked upon as yet another household expense, but she had never shown any inclination to join in Aunt Betty's quarterly orgy.

  Now she was aware of a quite unprecedented discontent with her modest wardrobe. It was not that she wanted to dazzle Luis (or the family, she added conscientiously; she was choosing clothes for a weekend with her family) in figured satin and diamonds. Her nose wrinkled at the thought. But she would have liked to possess a wider choice than was at her command at the moment. There were pretty dresses, as she very well knew, but all had been selected with the aid of Aunt Betty and all emphasised her youth. Besides, Aunt Betty's notion of suitable clothing for a girl of Olivia's age was both staid and unadventurous. Olivia knew that the little sleeves and high round necks did not flatter her, while Aunt Betty's favourite pale flowered smocks detracted from Olivia's brilliant colouring and often made her look haggard.

  Indeed, Olivia sometimes wondered whether Aunt Betty advised such persistently drab colours for herself because they assisted in the demonstration of that lady's ongoing thesis that her niece needed constant surveillance because of her failing health. Olivia had any ordinary girl's liking for pretty clothes and a good eye for style to boot, but she valued the peace of her house more than finery. When crossed, even on so trifling a matter as the colour of Olivia's winter coat, Aunt Betty was apt to sulk. Her retaliation for such slights either took the form of constant nagging criticism of Olivia's rival choice, which was bearable, or martyred silences, which weren't.

  Now Olivia cursed herself for her lack of backbone in the matter. It seemed terrible to her that she should have to appear before Luis in Aunt Betty's dowdy choice. Her casual clothes, trousers and shirts and such did not attract her aunt's interest and she was allowed to have her way. But if she had, as she phrased it to herself, to dress up, he would

  see the aunt-inspired image : a neat doll in clothes a little too circumspect, a little too conservative, like some youthful royalty dressed by Court advisers. She found herself hoping that Uncle Octavio did not insist on dressing for dinner, and reflecting in a comforting but cowardly fashion that if he did she could always
plead exhaustion and retire to her room before the evening meal, at least as long as Luis was one of the party.

  She stopped in her tracks. She had of course been assuming that Luis was a messenger entrusted to conveying her to Cuernavaca and so subsequently to be released to return to his own concerns. It suddenly occurred to her that if he were a friend as well as a colleague he might be staying for longer than the weekend. She could hardly lurk in her bedroom every evening of her stay with Uncle Octavio, if that were so.

  `Oh, how ridiculous I am,' Olivia told herself fiercely, sinking on to a quilted velvet stool and thumping one clenched fist into the palm of her other hand. 'I only met the man last night! I'm behaving like a schoolgirl. I shall put him out of my mind.'

  After which brave words of course she did nothing of the kind and would never have finished her packing at all had not Carmelita, returning to make the bed, taken a friendly interest. She bulldozed Olivia out of her dilemma by seizing one of her prettier frocks and saying, 'Oh, the yellow one, senorita. You must take the yellow one. Senorita Elena, Senora de Cisneros, I should say, has a dress that colour but darker. She wore it last week when they all went to the opera and Don Luis told Dona Anamargarita that she gets one as well, Senorita Elena looked so sweet.'

  `Don Luis? You mean Senor Escobar?' asked Olivia with what she thought was well assumed indifference.

  She received a dry look from Carmelita. 'There is only one Don Luis in this house, senorita. He is like a son to Don Octavio. It was even thought at one time that he would marry Senorita Elena, but she wanted to marry Pepe Cisneros since she was a child and would not change even to please her father.' Carmelita sounded rather shocked at this evidence of unfilial feeling. 'And anyway, the Cisneros are

  an important family. It was a good match,' she shrugged.

  `And now Don Luis interests himself in Dona Anamargarita.'

  'Oh,' said Olivia a trifle hollowly. She had never until that moment heard the name of her cousin's sister-in-law and knew nothing of the lady, but she could imagine her. A pert, curly-haired minx like Elena whom she remembered as a flirtatious fourteen-year-old with a charm which had warmed Sir Ronald Lightfellow more than all his daughter's conscientious unobtrusiveness could do. Olivia had been jealous, as she now reminded herself, and also hurt. She had put so much thought into trying to be close to her father after Mama died, not simply because she was lonely herself, but because she could see that he was and her gentle heart had yearned to comfort him But gentleness was not a quality prized by the Lightfellows and both her father and Aunt Betty had, in their different ways, been enchanted by Elena. The thought of Luis Escobar having been her acknowledged even if unfavoured suitor was depressing in the extreme.

  `Will they marry, do you suppose?' she asked Carmelita.

  The maid was dusting the hardly disarrayed dressing table. She shrugged. 'Who can tell?' She looked at Olivia under her lashes and suddenly seemed much older. 'As I said, the Cisneros family is very powerful. And Don Luis has nothing except what he has made for himself. Oh, his family is very old. His father came here in during the Spanish Civil War. He was a conde--very elegant, very educated. But,' said Carmelita with finality, giving the New World's judgment, 'no money. And wild.' She shook her head. 'They are all wild,' she went on, not looking at Olivia as she busily stripped pillows of their unsullied linen cases. °The Conde was killed in Africa and there is an elder brother who climbed mountains. He is in a wheelchair now. Don Luis used to be the same. And then when his brother fell off the mountain and his father died within weeks of each other and there was no money, he had to change. He was at university then. He wanted to leave, but his mother would not let him. But once he graduated he worked hard so that now he has one of the best houses in Mexico. His

  mother and brother still live in the Conde's old house in San Angel. It is a very good house. It must cost a fortune to keep. All of that Don Luis pays.'

  `He hardly sounds very wild,' sniffed Olivia, offended on his behalf at the girl's prattle. She knew she ought to stop her, that it was unbecoming to gossip with servants. However, she felt that Carmelita was essentially charitable and would not tell malicious tales. Indeed, she put rather more trust in her veracity than in that of her uncle and aunt. Her Mexican relatives had always shown a tendency to doctor the truth, either to suit their own convenience or to tell a story which they thought their listener wanted to hear. Olivia certainly did not want to hear tales out of school about Luis Escobar, but she had a feeling which she hardly acknowledged even to herself that Carmelita was deliberately, and with the kindest of motives, warning her against him.

  `In general he is not,' allowed Carmelita, pausing in her work to consider Olivia's observation. She rested her hand on her hips and tilted her head thoughtfully. But sometimes it comes out,' she decided darkly. 'He will go off and do something completely mad. That is what Don Octavio says,' she added with an apologetic look at Olivia. She went back to her work. 'He says Don Luis will go far,' she went on carelessly. But he needs capital. He has gone as far as he can without it. So now he must marry well. That is why it is thought that perhaps there will be a match with Doña Anamargarita, you see senorita. Don Luis must have a rich wife.'

  CHAPTER THREE

  AFTER Carmelita had retired with her bundle of washing and the basket of cloths and polishes that she had brought with her to clean the already immaculate room, Olivia subsided on to a window seat. The windows were very tall, virtually floor to ceiling, and opened on to a balcony decorated with brilliantly coloured flowers. The further prospect was of trees so that it was impossible to believe that the house was really in a city. Only the roofs of the neighbouring villa, dimly discernible between the conifers, reminded Olivia that she was not as removed from populous streets as she was accustomed to be.

  She felt restless. In spite of the sunshine and the flowers, she felt enclosed. There was a gnawing discomfort which she unhesitatingly diagnosed as homesickness. Carmelita's confidences about her escort had not, she assured herself, had the slightest effect upon her mood. While site found him interesting; she was no more deeply concerned with him than any other of the young men, lawyers, accountants, agents, that she met from time to time. He worked for her uncle and hence their relationship was strictly professional.

  Olivia played with the blind cord. Naturally a shy girl, she found it very difficult to believe that anyone would concern themselves with her quiet self were it not part of their job to do so. This crippling idea she had temporarily relinquished in Luis Escobar's bracing presence, but now it was back in full force. Carmelita, in the kindness of her simplicity had tried to warn Olivia that he was a fortune-hunter, albeit a very distinguished one. Olivia however had understood something different. She was not to encroach on native territory: Don Luis was already earmarked for

  Anamargarita Cisneros and the foreigner would only get hurt if she tried to interfere.

  After that she packed very quickly without any of the debate that had previously exercised her mind. With the efficiency of the much travelled she swept her belongings neatly into their various cases. Within minutes the cases were standing neatly by the door, she had her safari jacket over her arm and an overnight case in her hand and prepared to descend. One last look round the room, restored to its former luxurious anonymity, and she whisked silently out of the door.

  Too silently, as it turned out. Not hearing her bedroom door close, Aunt Betty was holding forth with unabated voice in the first floor salon. Olivia paused. She could of course have run downstairs; her heels on the marble would have advertised her presence sufficiently to have warned Aunt Betty. But Olivia was not feeling in a mood to allow such a concession. If Aunt Betty's conversation was about herself then she deserved to be embarrassed when her niece walked into the middle of it. She had no business to be discussing family matters outside the family Besides, Olivia was very nearly sure that Aunt Betty's companion in the salon was Luis Escobar. She was unaccountably angry with him and felt that he
too deserved to be taught a lesson. Flirting with innocent visitors was not a habit to be encouraged.

  She trod delicately downstairs between the plants.

  `Of course Olivia is hardly her own mistress,' Aunt Betty was saying in a deceptively academic tone. Carmelita was not the only attendant to be issuing warnings this morning.

  `Really?' returned Luis Escobar. He did not, to Olivia's ears, sound deceived. In fact, he sounded rather amused.

  `Her fortune was left in trust. Don Octavio is one of the trustees.'

  `I was aware of that,' he murmured. 'I have had some witnessing of his signature to do in this matter. I suppose you are another trustee?'

  `Me? Good heavens, no!' Aunt Betty gave a false tinkling laugh, for this was a sore point. She had felt that she ought

  to have been a trustee and was bitterly offended that she had not been appointed. Indeed, her expenditure had had to be presented to the trustees, quite as much as had Olivia's own until Olivia was twenty-one. And for the last two years she had received an allowance from Olivia herself and had had to send her incidental bills to Olivia's accountant. While she did not for a moment imagine that Olivia would ever deny her anything, it was galling to be forever receiving support from one whom she regarded as little better than a schoolgirl. Olivia knew of these feelings and to some extent sympathised with them. She thought it very tactless of her father not to have left Aunt Betty an annuity independently. Presumably he had been endeavouring to ensure that Aunt Betty did not leave Olivia's side until his daughter replaced her with a husband. It was out of Olivia's power to make a settlement on Aunt Betty until she gained control of her own money, and this could not take place until she was thirty unless she married in the meantime. Sir Ronald had had a very low opinion of his daughter's ability to direct her own destiny.