The Mountains of Spring Read online

  She was borne past the impassive manservant, and into a brightly lit entrance hall, where vivid multicoloured rugs glowed warmly against the cool green tiles of the floor, and the white walls seemed lined with antique chests and cabinets made of mellowed Spanish oak. Almost in the middle of the floor, close to the foot of a curling staircase, there was a handsome brocade-covered couch, and on this Caroline was set down, while further discussions were entered into with the manservant, and finally Senor Rivel sketched her a small bow, and disappeared through a curtained doorway. Minutes later he reappeared, and this time he was accompanied by one of the most minute elderly ladies Caroline had ever seen in her life.

  Senora Rivel could not, in her stockinged feet, have been more than four feet eleven inches tall, and everything about her, from her tiny beringed fingers to her dainty Paris-shod feet, was reminiscent of some exquisite china doll, lovingly designed in every detail by the sort of craftsman who died out a long time ago. Her hair, which was silvery, was beautifully ordered, and her skin had that delicate pearly pallor which only the most fortunate of Spanish women possess when they are old. Even her nose was small and straight and aristocratic, and her magnificent dark eyes were the eyes of an Andalusian.

  Caroline attempted to stand up as the older woman approached her, but she was not allowed to do so, for the Senora gave a small sign, and her grandson placed a hand upon the guest’s shoulder to restrain her.

  ‘You are Miss Ashley? Miss Caroline Ashley?’ The old lady’s English was very good, and her beautifully modulated voice had an old-fashioned gentleness about it.

  ‘Yes, senora.’

  Not offensively, but quite deliberately, the beautiful brown eyes studied her, obviously taking in and considering every tiny detail of her appearance. A pale English wraith, with fine, gleaming ash-blonde hair swinging to her shoulders and big blue eyes that just now were clouded with exhaustion; soft, creamy skin that at this particular moment was a little too pale, and an alarmingly bandaged forehead. The child looked, Senora Rivel decided, rather like an amazingly attractive apparition.

  ‘You are hurt, senorita,’ she said, moving towards Caroline and lightly touching the bandage, ‘and you are tired. You will be pleased to go to bed, I think.’

  Caroline made one more attempt at a protest.

  ;But, Senora Rivel, I can’t possibly impose on you like this…’

  The Spanish woman smiled and patted her shoulder. ‘Never mind, never mind. You do not impose. I am most pleased to have you here. In the morning, if you are better, we will talk, but not tonight.’ She pressed an electric bell, and when, as if from nowhere, a uniformed maid appeared, she gave some rapid instructions in Spanish.

  ‘Manuela will look after you,’ she told Caroline, still smiling with the amazing serenity that made the whole thing seem strangely dream-like. ‘You will go with her, please.’

  Obediently, Caroline stood up, and Manuela, a middle-aged Mexican woman of decidedly forbidding appearance, took her arm and propelled her towards the staircase.

  As they passed him, Diego Rivel bowed slightly. But he did not return Caroline’s small, hesitant smile, and he did not bid her good-night either in English or in Spanish.

  CHAPTER II

  When Caroline awoke the following morning the first thing that impressed itself upon her was the realization that, apart from possessing a slight headache, she felt almost completely recovered from the effects of her accident. And the second was the recollection that she had absolutely no right to be where she was.

  She sat up in bed, and looked around her at the room which had been allotted to her. It was a very large room, and it was expensively and luxuriously furnished—not in any traditional Mexican or Spanish style, for it was extremely modern, but everything in it had been selected with skill and a good deal of taste. Thick white fur rugs were scattered across the highly-polished golden floorboards, and there were comfortable-looking armchairs upholstered in a rosy shade of pink. Cascades of snowy net hung beside the wide windows—which just now were hidden by Venetian blinds—and more white net adorned the dressing-table. Everywhere there were silk-shaded table-lamps and attractive items of gleaming modern furniture, and on the walls had been hung one or two small, rather clever paintings, the principal ingredients of which appeared to be plenty of brilliant, forceful colour.

  Despising herself for doing so, Caroline yielded to the temptation to relax once more against her pillows, and in the restful half-light imposed by the Venetian blinds set to work to think things over.

  She had come to Mexico for a purpose. Officially, she was supposed to be on holiday, but her holiday was a precious annual period of freedom to which she looked forward and for which she planned throughout most of the preceding year, and it would certainly not have occurred to her to spend it in visiting one of the few foreign countries which had never held any attraction for her unless she had had a very good reason for doing so. If Peter, her brother, had not fallen in love with Mexico while travelling with an archaeological team and elected to settle down there she would probably never have thought of setting foot in the country.

  But Peter had settled down in Mexico. He had bought himself a ranch, and gone in for horse-breeding—on rather an ambitious scale, if his first enthusiastic letters on the subject were anything to go by. And then, at the end of a year—during which time he had become progressively less satisfactory as a correspondent—he had given up writing altogether. Two, three, four, eventually half a dozen of Caroline’s letters had gone unanswered, and when nearly another twelve months had elapsed and nothing further had been heard from him she had become very worried indeed. Peter wasn’t the type, normally, to be very neglectful. He had always taken letter-writing much more in his stride than most young men of his age, and even when he was still at school he had had a graphic, amusing style which always made entertaining reading. In addition, Caroline knew that since their father’s death six years earlier he had felt vaguely responsible for her well-being. They had no other brothers or sisters, and as their mother had died when she was born she knew that at heart he had felt very guilty about taking himself off to Mexico at all. But she had had—and still had—an excellent and very secure job as secretary to the head of an established and solidly respectable fashion house. And, as he had pointed out, she could always come and join him in Mexico.

  The one thing that had never seemed to occur to him had been the possibility that he ought to resist the temptation to remove himself to a distant and thoroughly alien country. He had behaved very much as if he were under some sort of spell, and nothing that any of his friends had been able to say in condemnation of his plans had had any noticeable effect whatsoever. Caroline herself had done little to persuade him. His idea obviously meant so much to him, and it didn’t seem fair to interfere … although later, as the months went by, and no word came, she had often wondered whether her attitude had been the right one. And at last she had made up her mind to go to Mexico and find out for herself what, if anything, had happened to her closest surviving relative.

  The fare was not very much of an obstacle, for she earned a good salary, and found it easy to save. She always saved up for her summer holiday anyway, and when Peter had been away for nearly two years, and for months nothing had been heard from him, she knew exactly what she was going to do. It was January when she reached her decision, and within a few days she had arranged with her employer that that year she would take her holiday in April.

  And now it was April, and here she was in Mexico, and by what did seem to be a quite remarkable stroke of luck she had already run into somebody who claimed to know Peter. That, she knew, ought to give her a good deal of comfort. Whatever else Diego Rivel might be, he was undoubtedly a man of quite considerable importance—possibly a very rich man—and if Peter knew people like that he couldn’t be doing too badly. She stared at the pretty dressing-table, on which, the night before, the maid Manuela had carefully placed her handbag, and determinedly pushed aside the
uneasiness that nagged at her.

  Because she was Peter’s sister, Senor Rivel had already done quite a lot for her. And that must mean something.

  A little later on, just as she was deciding guiltily that it was high time she got up, dressed herself and ventured downstairs in search of her hostess, there was a knock at the door and Manuela came in. To Caroline’s genuine horror, she was bearing a breakfast tray, and as she deposited it on a pale oak table beside the bed she expressed a rather grudging hope that she was not disturbing the Senorita too early.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Caroline flushed, and sat up quickly. ‘I’m so sorry. I was going to get up, and go downstairs—I didn’t want you to have to bring anything up to me.’

  Manuela shrugged. ‘In this house, senorita, nobody has breakfast downstairs. Except,’ she added conscientiously, ‘Senor Diego. And he is not often here.’ She tugged lightly at the Venetian blinds, and a small quantity of fierce white sunlight filtered into the room. Then she turned, to study Caroline more closely. ‘You are better, senorita?’

  ‘Oh, yes, thank you, I’m perfectly all right now.’ Manuela continued to stare at her, and Caroline felt vaguely embarrassed. ‘As soon as I’m up, and have had my breakfast, I shall have to leave,’ she said. ‘It was terribly kind of Senora Rivel to take me in, but of course I mustn’t take advantage of her hospitality for any longer than I have to. Where can I find her, when I want to say goodbye?’

  The maid moved towards the door, her starched apron rustling. ‘The Senora does not get up before twelve o’clock,’ she told Caroline firmly. ‘After that, I expect you will find her in the salon.’

  Manuela left the room, and feeling a little chastened Caroline turned her attention to the hot rolls and steaming coffee weighing down her breakfast tray. She certainly didn’t want to disrupt the household—and it didn’t seem likely that she would be allowed to do so, anyway—but it was still only half past nine in the morning, and she would have liked to be on her way again before twelve o’clock.

  When she had finished her breakfast, she got out of bed and went straight across to the window, where, after struggling for several minutes with an amazingly complicated selection of cords, she eventually succeeded in raising the blinds.

  Outside, the sunlight was vivid and dazzling, and as its glare filled the room she almost recoiled physically. Her windows overlooked a little courtyard, in which fountains played, and around the walls of which hanging baskets overflowed with exotic flowers, and in the middle of the courtyard a magnificent Siamese cat was sunning itself, stretched out at full length upon the stones. In the distance she could just hear the subdued hum of traffic, and nearer at hand the sound of somebody singing, with more enthusiasm, than skill, in Spanish, and for the first time the knowledge that she was really in Mexico sent a little thrill of excitement quivering through her. Mexico was, after all, supposed to be an exciting country, romantic and primitive. And this whole mission on which she had embarked was, in a sense, an adventure.

  By some miracle, all her luggage had been safely collected from the airport and carefully stacked in her room, and as she had plenty of time at her disposal she decided that before she made her way downstairs she might as well pay the maximum amount of attention to her appearance. As it happened, she had with her an extremely adequate wardrobe, for her job in a fashion house made it easy for her to collect good clothes at fairly reasonable prices, and it was some time before she was able to make up her mind what to wear. But eventually she selected a slim, sleeveless linen dress, in a heavenly shade of blue that very nearly matched her eyes, and by the time she had brushed her pale hair until it shone like silk, and her finger-nails had received a fresh application of delicate, pearly polish, she knew that she was looking almost at her best. Her forehead, it was true, was still marred by a small patch of sticking-plaster, her face was paler than usual and her eyes, if one looked into them, had a tired look, but she had never been what her grandmother, whom she could just remember, would have called ‘vain’, and she had always had a remarkably modest opinion of her own looks. She believed in making the most of herself, but if for some unavoidable reason she was not looking quite as attractive as she might have been the fact did not particularly upset her. In certain circumstances—if, for instance, she were going to meet a fiancé, or someone likely in the foreseeable future to become a fiancé—she was prepared to admit that she might feel very differently. But she had no fiancé, and she had never even been in love, so she had no idea at all what effect being in love might have upon her.

  Just before twelve o’clock she took a final look at herself in the mirror, glanced around the room to make sure that she had left everything in order, and then made her way out on to the landing. She had remembered it from the night before, an unusual circular gallery around the white walls of which little jewelled saints looked out from specially prepared niches, and in the centre of which, above the staircase, a great antique lantern was suspended. There was some graceful wrought-iron balustrading around the well of the stairs, and before going down she leant against it for a moment, looking down into the hall and instinctively hesitating because she had heard voices below her. But from where she was standing she could see no one, and in any case whoever had been speaking had evidently left the hall for one of the rooms that opened off it, for she heard the sound of a closing door, and after that there was silence. Slowly, she walked down the stairs, and at the bottom stood hesitating once again, for although it seemed certain that one of the five or six arched doorways around her must give access to the salon she hadn’t the slightest idea which one, and she had no wish to blunder into a room that was in any way private.

  And then, as she stood looking around her, one of the doors opened, and a man emerged. For a moment she didn’t recognize him, and when she did realize who it was she went on standing still, unable, for some curious reason, to think of a thing to say. For several seconds he said nothing either, and to Caroline’s surprise and considerably to her annoyance a blush began to creep up over her cheeks.

  Then he took a step towards her, and bowed. ‘Good morning, senorita.’

  He was studying her, she realized, with a cool and detached kind of interest, and his scrutiny made her feel extraordinarily shy. She had never in her life before seen such deeply black, penetrating eyes, and the intensity of their concentrated gaze seemed to have the effect of making her feel slightly dizzy. Or it could be, she supposed, that she had not yet quite recovered after all from her experience of the previous evening.

  He seemed to appreciate that she was still not really quite herself, and covering the remainder of the space between them he placed a hand beneath her arm.

  ‘You will come into the salon, senorita. My grandmother is waiting for you.’

  When they entered the salon, a long, sun-filled room in which brilliantly coloured furnishings glowed strikingly against the sharp, clear whiteness of the walls and ceiling, Senora Rivel was seated bolt upright in a chair which had first seen the light of day in seventeenth-century Spain, and for the second time Caroline was struck by the strangely perfect elegance and charm of her diminutive figure. As soon as she saw the English girl she smiled and indicated the chair beside her own, and when Caroline was seated she made one or two enquiries.

  ‘You slept well, senorita? You are recovered? Manuela tells me that you say you are, but is that quite true?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’m quite all right now, thank you, senora.’

  ‘But the poor head was so badly hurt.’ Her hostess looked as if the thought of the injury caused her considerable personal distress. ‘Last night, you looked so ill. I thought that perhaps it would be a week at least before you were better.’

  Her grandson put a glass of sherry into her hand, and then turned to hold one out to Caroline.

  ‘Miss Ashley’s injuries were not serious, abuela.’ His voice, with its unobtrusive Mexican accent, was quiet and cool, and he sounded as if he thought more than enough time had already been was
ted upon the subject of Caroline. There were evidently one or two things which he wished to discuss with his grandmother—he had just, it seemed, bought a house in Rio de Janeiro, and was rather pleased with the acquisition—and without further ceremony he proceeded to describe his new possession in detail, while Caroline, feeling supremely uncomfortable, sipped slowly at her drink, and longed for the courage to ask how she could best find out about trains to Toluca.

  If it had not been for the fact that she felt she already owed him a certain amount of gratitude Diego Rivel’s behaviour would have annoyed her intensely, and as it was she couldn’t help feeling decidedly resentful. She watched him, covertly, while he was absorbed in conversation with his grandmother; and it occurred to her that he possessed perhaps the most arrogant face she had ever seen in her life. His features were fine-drawn and very regular, and there was a look of old Spain about them, particularly in the handsome aquiline nose, and the hard, narrow mouth. His eyebrows were intensely dark, and his eyelashes were also dark, and, for a man, extraordinarily long and noticeable. His hair was so black that in certain lights it seemed to have almost a bluish sheen, and although it seemed to have a natural inclination to wave slightly it was clear that its owner did everything in his power to discourage such a tendency.

  Looking at him, Caroline felt more and more profoundly thankful that she was not in any way dependent on him.

  When the subject of the house in Rio de Janeiro had been more or less exhausted a short silence fell, and in the midst of this silence Caroline turned to her hostess, and resolutely broached the subject of her own departure.