Beauvallet Read online

  Dominica felt herself to be young and foolish, at a disadvantage. ‘I did not know, señora, but for myself I do not mean to wed my cousin. He is – he is – in short, señora, I do not care for him.’

  Her aunt only looked at her with the tolerant amusement she found so galling, and would say no more.

  But the matter was not to be so easily allowed to slide. Don Diego's attentions became more marked; he was impervious to rebuffs, just as his mother was impervious to argument. Dominica felt Beauvallet's signet ring lying snug in her bosom, and turned a shoulder on Don Diego's advances.

  She would look at the ring sometimes when she was alone and remember how it had been given to her, and what words had gone with it. She had been induced to believe then, under the influence of that dominant personality. Even now, when she conjured up Beauvallet's image before her mind's eye, and saw again his laughing face, and the turn of his dark head, a little of that belief would come stealing back to her. It could not long endure. There, upon the high seas, anything had seemed possible; here in grave Spain it was as though that swift romance had only existed in her imagination. She had only a ring to remind her of its reality; if her heart still cherished its secret hope, her brain rejected it, and knew Beauvallet's coming to be an impossibility.

  Perhaps he had forgotten; perhaps he was even now teasing some English lady in the way he had used to her. Yet he had said: ‘I shall not forget,’ and he had not been jesting then.

  She wondered what her aunt would say if she knew but the half of it. Anyone else, Dominica thought, would be horrified, but she could not imagine Dona Beatrice roused to so strenuous an emotion. Probably she would laugh at the romance; she who had had lovers enough in her day might even sympathize with her niece, but it was very certain that she would not see in the brief idyll a bar to marriage with Diego.

  Dominica had been careful from the outset to hide that piece of the past from her aunt. She showed an admirable indifference to Beauvallet, knowing that such an attitude would be the least suspicious. She said that she thought his powers overrated: he was nothing beyond the ordinary, to be sure. It was not caution made her so reticent, for she could not think that she would ever see Sir Nicholas again, but she had a dread of letting her aunt into her confidence. Dona Beatrice was like a snail, she thought, trailing a sticky poison in her wake. What she touched she soiled; all virtue was made to seem a little foolish; all vice was merely smiled upon.

  She shocked her niece from the first, most of all upon the question of religion. When it appeared that Dominica went too seldom to Mass Dona Beatrice spoke of the omission, and told the girl that it would be wise to attend regularly.

  Dominica, hardly knowing how she dared, perhaps stung by the placid tone her aunt assumed, hinted at reformed notions. She was startled by Dona Beatrice's attitude, startled, and certainly shocked.

  ‘I dare say, my dear,’ had said Dona Beatrice. ‘But it is most foolish to brandish such ideas abroad. You may be as heretical as you please to yourself, but pray do not let Frey Pedro get wind of it. Talk such as this leads to an unpleasant sequel. Respect the forms of religion, I do beseech you.’

  This, from a seemingly devout Catholic! Dominica had expected censure, had steeled herself to meet denunciation. But a calm recommendation to her to play the hypocrite seemed to her depraved beyond words. She looked indignantly at Dona Beatrice, but ended in obeying her.

  Eleven

  When she first heard of the projected ball to be given in honour of Don Diego's birthday Dominica pleaded her mourning state, and said that she could not be present. She had a suspicion that this ball, surely unsuitable for a man's anniversary, was planned to lure her from her fastness. Maybe it was to serve as a prologue to her betrothal. She would not be present.

  This decision drew a sigh from Dona Beatrice. ‘My dear, you are very teasing,’ she complained. ‘In Spain girls do not say I will, and I will not to those set in authority over them. Do me the favour to give way with good grace.’

  ‘You cannot think it seemly, señora, for me to be dancing so soon after my father's death.’

  ‘I do not think it at all seemly for you to stay moping in your chamber,’ replied Dona Beatrice. ‘We will set all in train to have a new gown made for you. There is naught so enlivening to the spirits as a new gown, believe me. But I do not think you should wear colours yet. A cut velvet might do very well.’

  ‘I do not mean to be present,’ repeated Dominica.

  ‘Or a pure white taffeta,’ mused Dona Beatrice. ‘We must consider it.’

  ‘Aunt!’

  ‘Well, child? Oh, are you still tilting your chin at me? I take it very unkindly in you then. Oblige me by being present on this one occasion, and let us say no more about it.’

  ‘I am sorry that you think me unreasonable, señora,’ Dominica said stiffly. ‘But if I obey you in this, you will expect me to obey you in – other things.’

  ‘Marriage,’ nodded her aunt. ‘It makes no odds, my dear. Whether you come to the ball or not I am still desirous to see you wed. You cannot suppose that the care of a niece is at all pleasing to one of my indolence.’

  ‘Show me, then, another suitor!’ flashed Dominica.

  Dona Beatrice picked up her fan. ‘Now I had thought you cleverer than that,’ she said. ‘How should we benefit by another suitor for you?’

  The brown eyes looked sternly. ‘In a word, aunt, you covet my possessions! And so we have the truth at last!’

  ‘Naturally, child. What did you suppose?’ said Dona Beatrice, unruffled. ‘We find ourselves in deplorably straitened circumstances, and you come as a gift from heaven, one would say.’

  Dominica looked round at the opulence of the room. ‘One does not immediately perceive your poverty, señora.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Dona Beatrice. ‘We all maintain a good appearance. But show me the man who is not impoverished today for all his outward pomp!’

  ‘I think,’ said Dominica forcibly, ‘that Spain is a hateful country, and the people – corrupt!’

  ‘Very corrupt,’ agreed Dona Beatrice. ‘An age of loose-living. I remember when I was a girl a Spanish lady was the model of decorum. It is all very different now, and much more amusing. I believe that we become a byword.’

  ‘I wonder, señora, that you are content to be so!’

  ‘To be a byword? What odds? As for our corruption, what would you, when the King keeps his grandees away from the affairs of state, and encourages them to waste their substance?’ She shrugged. ‘I observe, and I am content to smile.’

  ‘So it seems,’ said Dominica. ‘Yet you can leave smiling to lend yourself to an odious scheme to marry me to my cousin. Well, I will not wed him. Never! You will see, señora, that I mean what I say.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it, my dear. You are a very charming girl, and you have wit – a little. But when you put your wit against mine you must lose.’

  ‘When you find, señora, that my wits have won the day –’

  Her aunt rose. ‘I shall have a lively respect for you, my dear. Cut velvet and your pearls. I will see to it.’

  Well, in the end Dominica gave way, and not quite from a sense of duty. Her aunt's duty had given her pause; that placid, smiling dame frightened her: there was no gainsaying it. She guessed that she was required to appear in public to give the lie to a world that might possibly be saying that the Carvalhos kept her cooped up against her will. There was her uncle on the mother's side, one Miguel de Tobar, who had two likely sons of his own, and might conceivably have designs upon her himself. One suitor was as distasteful as the other, but it might serve to play off Tobar against the Carvalhos, Dominica thought. She began to scheme and ponder, weaving her toils. She was afraid of Dona Beatrice, ay, but she would fight her for all that, and find joy in it. She put a finger to her lips, bit the rosy tip, and looked this way and that, frowning at fate. Policy dictated an end to her seclusion. She must go out into the world, and nose about for a deliverer. Tobar would se