Spanish Prologue

1

Spanish Prologue

    There was little doubt that if Marinela had not unexpectedly died that winter, Sir Harry would never have got into mischief. In the nature of things, Harry Ainsley had always expected, without really thinking much about it, for his was a naturally optimistic temperament, that he would predecease his pretty little Spanish wife. But alas, it was not to be, and Marinela slipped away from them, clutching her tall son’s hand and whispering: “Look after Harry, mi querido.”

    Six months later it dawned on Luís Ainsley that Madre’s dying injunction was no mere form. Pa had always been damned irresponsible, but over forty years of marriage Marinela had managed, more or less, to keep him in check, finally persuading him to settle down peacefully on the little estate in Spain which had come to her as her portion from her father. But now—!

    Sir Harry, as was his custom, was in his big chair in the courtyard, which Marinela had caused to be hung with flowering vines and dotted with lemon and orange trees in tubs. Smoking a cigar, also his custom, though one that of late years the local doctor, stigmatised as a puling imbecile with the mind of a flatulent old woman—in both English and Spanish, Sir Harry was a considerable linguist—had warned was inadvisable. Luís took a deep breath and marched out there. “Pa—”

    “Oh, there y’are,” he said amiably. “Have a cigarro, old chap.”

    “No. I have not come out here to smoke,” replied his son, glaring at him.

    “Just as y’like,” returned the baronet amiably, puffing.

    “Pa, what the Devil have you been up to? García tells me you have run up a debt of ten thousand!”

    “García’s a whining old woman.”

    “Flatulent: we know,” replied Luís grimly. “You may drop that entirely: it has ceased to amuse.”

    Sir Harry squinted at him through a haze of cigar smoke. “What’ve I done now?”

    “That is what I am asking you!” he shouted.

    “No need to shout, with your sainted mother scarce cold in her—”

    “BALDERDASH!” shouted Luís at the top of his lungs.

    There was a short silence on Marinela’s delightful shady terrace.

    “Balderdash, eh? That’s a good one. Sounded like your damned grandfather, for a moment, there,” noted the baronet. “And that’s a voice I never wanted to hear again in all me puff, I can tell—”

    Luís had never known his paternal grandfather. “If I did, I am damned glad to hear it, for he alone of the entire family—both families—had your measure!”

    “Wouldn’t say that,” he said mildly. “Old Don Luís, y’mother’s father—you wouldn’t remember him—he was a dashed shrewd fellow, too. Is that that money I lost to cursed Manuel Las Heras?”

    “It is if you lost ten thousand to him, yes!”

    “Uh—damned if I can remember. Don’t look at me like that, it’s not as if you’ve never dropped a packet,” he grumbled. “Well, dammit, boy, y’know how it is! Was in town, Las Heras comes up and says Fancy a hand of whist—”

    “Whist?” he shouted. “How is it possible to lose that much money at WHIST?”

    “Wish you’d let me finish me sentences!” said his father testily. “So we has a hand or two—forget who we was playing with, actually: old Antonio de Figueroa, think it was—oh, aye, and some stripling of a nephew.” He sniffed. “Thought he could play: his mistake. So old Antonio hauls him off out of harm’s way and Las Heras says, Make it a hand of piquet, and— Well! There y’are!”

    Luís’s jaw had dropped. “You lost to Manuel Las Heras at piquet?”

    “Luck runnin’ t’other way. Well, dare say me mind was not on me cards,” he said, shrugging slightly.

    Luís was still gaping at him.

    “Very well, I’m losing me mind, that what y’want to hear?” he shouted. “Now tell me that damned old woman García his refused to shell out!”

    It had long been agreed between the Ainsleys that as the eldest son, Paul, was settled in England on the Ainsley estates, Marinela’s property should come to the second son, Luís, not to her husband. Therefore Luís replied grimly: “He most properly referred the matter to me.”

    “Have to pay up, y’know,” he said, shaking his heavy, silvered head. “Debt of honour.”

    “Debt of stupidity, more like!” shouted his son. “Ten thousand! How could you, Harry?”

    “Kept thinkin’ the luck would change,” he replied simply.

    Luís took a deep breath. “Oblige me by not playing cards again.”

    Sir Harry shuddered. “Don’t take that tone, old chap! My God, for a moment there y’sounded like my grandfather upon his high horse!”

    “Did I? Then it is a pity I have not Sir Vyvyan’s fortune to go with the high horse,” replied Luís arctically.

    “Eh?” said his father hazily. “The estate’ll stand it, won’t it?”

    “Ten thousand? No, it damn’ well won’t!” Luís strode agitatedly up and down the terrace, finally returning to come to a halt beside his father’s chair. “I shall have to sell off some land.”

    Sir Harry shook his head. “Dashed bad idea. Never let property go out of the family—sound advice, that, if it did come from me damned father.”

    “I dare say it will not precisely go out of the family, because Primo Julio will be only too glad to buy it back!” he snapped.

    “Should have married that snaggle-toothed cousin of his damn’ wife’s,” noted Sir Harry. “Told you at the time it would have been a damn’ good match.”

    “At the time,” Luís corrected coldly, “you told me she was a snaggle-toothed, yaller-faced bag of bones and a man should think twice before condemning himself to find that in his bed for the rest of his life!”

    Unmoved, his infuriating parent replied: “Dare say. Told you it’d be a damn’ good match as well. Don’t say I didn’t: I remember it clear as day: you was sitting in that very chair, and your mother was in her rocker, bless her—”

    “With her embroidery work in her hand, no doubt,” interpolated Luís arctically.

    “Don’t be ludicrous. Loathed damn’ stitchery,” he grunted. “No, snoring with that old black mantilla over her face.”

    Luís bit his lip. “Mm.”

    “And I said,” continued Sir Harry inexorably, “never mind what y’mother may say, a man don’t get offered a fortune like Julia Molina’s every day of the week.”

    “Consuelo, not Julia, but you are right in essence,” said Luís with a sigh. “That is not the point.”

    “Yes, it is. The damn’ Spaniards hate you because you ain’t settled down and married one. And your mother’s damn’ family’s particularly got it in for you because you ain’t married one of their choosing!”

    “That is beside the point. This place can’t afford debts like that, Pa, what were you imagining? That you were back home in England with Paul's inheritance to chuck away?”

    Sir Harry reddened angrily for the first time. “No such thing! We broke the damned entail and I signed it all over to him, lock, stock and barrel! Couldn’t chuck it away if I wished to!”

    “One good thing,” he said sourly. “Allow me to point out that, strictly speaking, you cannot chuck my inheritance away, either. And if you continue to gamble, you’ll end your days in a Seville prison, because I certainly can’t afford to pay that sort of sum! We need this place to eat—or had that not dawned over the past fourteen years?”

    Sir Harry glared. His had been a very chequered career, in which neither careful husbandry in general nor estate management in particular had figured. Some fourteen years back the family had been living in Brussels, and after Waterloo he had decided to send most of his children home to England under the care of the eldest son, Paul. He himself had not had much impulse to return to England and the heritage that was rightfully his—the which was just as well, since Wellington himself had advised him that, in view of that chequered career, it would be wiser not to do so. Certainly Sir Harry had rendered signal service to England and the Allies in an undercover rôle since well before Boney’s flight from Elba—but Wellington was aware, if his staff was not, that some years back Harry Ainsley’s undercover activities had not all been in the service of His Britannic Majesty. So Sir Harry had retired to Spain with his wife, taking Luís along with them, in view of their intentions for him.

    Luís had been but a lad of nineteen, and at first had had a fine time, riding, hunting and shooting with his Spanish cousins and discovering the rather different delights offered by a succession of giggling village señoritas and a certain maturely beckoning señora of his own class. However, life in Spain had palled somewhat as it dawned that Madre and his Spanish aunts all destined him for some yaller-faced, dim-witted, prunes-and-prisms, rigidly chaperoned Spanish Miss—or rather for any one of a selection of such, there did not seem to be an absolute preference, and Tia Ana, to name only one, would trot out a new candidate every time they visited with her. Neither Harry nor Marinela was in any wise a strict parent, and Luís had not been forced to remain in Spain when it appeared that he was not settling to the life and was missing his brothers and sisters: so for those last fourteen years he had been back and forth pretty often. He had not said as much, but his parents had both realised that he did not wish to settle in Spain, and had it not been for Marinela’s unexpected death, they would have spoken to him seriously on the subject.

    “Well?” said Luís coldly as the silence lengthened and his parent continued to glare like a particularly baffled bull.

    “Impertinent jackanapes! Who do you imagine’s been managing the property these past fifteen years?”

    “García,” replied Luís frankly. “—Fourteen, not fifteen.”

    “I know every damned field!” he shouted.

    “Yes, but do you know how much they bring in, Pa?”

    There was a short silence.

    “Not a damn’ clerk,” he muttered sourly.

    “No,” said his son with a smothered sigh. “Evidently not. The place will not support enormous gambling debts—in fact it won’t support any gambling debts. And Madre’s annuity died with her, you know.”

    He scratched his chin. “Oh. Forgot about that.”

    Luís sank into a chair opposite his. “I thought you might have, mm. Look, Harry, possibly I’m expecting too much of you, but just look at these accounts: they will show you how much the estate brings in.” He passed his father a sheaf of folded papers.

    Sir Harry unfolded them slowly. “Who wrote these up? García?”

    “No, it is my summary of García’s accounts,” said Luís with a sigh.

    “There’s that nut orchard up beyond—”

    “I’ve included that.”

    “Oh. Um, the high pastures—”

    “Rented only: I know.”

    “Don’t like sheep, in any case,” noted Sir Harry. “Paul’s runnin’ some damned newfangled hump-backed runts, did y—”

    “Pa, are you going to look at these figures or not?” he interrupted grimly.

    “Um, well, don’t see what you expect me to— Very well, I’ll look!” He looked.

    “Well?” said Luís without hope.

    “Brings in a decent income,” he said huffily.

    “Harry, it doesn’t! It brings in a barely sufficient income, and should this year’s expenditure be very much greater than last year’s, it will not support us!”

    “Rubbish!” Sir Harry read out the figure.

    Luís’s handsome jaw dropped. He got up and came to look over his shoulder. Sir Harry pointed, a triumphant look on his face.

    “Pa,” said his son, swallowing, “you are looking at the gross figure.”

    “Exact!” he agreed pleasedly.

    “Pa, this sum, here, is the estate’s annual expenditure, which must be subtracted from that: and this, here, is what is left!”

    “That can’t be right, Luís: thing is, you’ve been listening to old Gar—”

    “This is all we have to spend!” he shouted.

    “Um, you just said that this other figure here was the expenditure.”

    “That is the estate’s expenditure. This is what is left for our personal expenses.”

    “Don’t see how y’pay your tailor, in that case, me boy!”

    Luís bit his lip. “Harry, I know that Madre’s death has been a terrible shock, but please don’t lapse into your jolly country squire impersonation: it will not help matters.”

    There was a short silence, during which Luís wondered if he’d gone too far.

    “Well, how do you pay your tailor, old chap?” said Sir Harry on a plaintive note.

    “Uh—piquet, largely,” he admitted.

    “See?” he cried.

    “I don’t lose,” said Luís grimly.

    “Well, nor do I, usually!”

    There was no point in arguing over it—in fact there was no point in even discussing it, and Luís had known that from the first; but he had decided he must be fair to the silly old devil. Well, obviously he was knocked sideways by Madre’s death: to go on playing when he was losing that sort of sum? And then, Harry Ainsley had never lost a serious sum at any card game known to civilised man in his entire life. Up until now: quite.

    He took the papers back, sighing. “Just let’s leave it at this, sir: I must have your word of honour that you won’t gamble again.”

    Sir Harry awarded him a bitter glare but said: “Very well, then, you have my word of honour, Luís.”

    “Thank you.”

    He was halfway to the French doors when his parent cried: “I have it! Sell off the damned sheep! Then we won’t need to rent them high pastures no more!”

    The accounts Luís had just laid under his nose showed very clearly that their fine merino flock was their chief source of income. He took a deep breath and went inside.

    The enclosed courtyard dozed in the warmth of approaching afternoon. Sir Harry fumbled for his cigars and lit up another. A cloud of blue smoke drifted lazily over Marinela’s prized tiling and hovered in her orange-flowered vine. “Always used to be a sweet-natured lad: don’t know what’s come over him. Fuss about nothin’,” he grumbled. “The estate’ll pay it, easy!”

    The white house on the hill was quiet. A few bees hummed in Marinela’s roses and the orange-flowered vine. Sir Harry’s head nodded…

    A small bare-footed figure darted onto the terrace and grabbed the cigar before it could set Sir Harry alight. Even though Señora Marinela was dead, little Julio Juarez had remained steadfastly at his appointed post.

    Sir Harry behaved himself for another three whole months—by the which time the deluded Luís was under the impression that he had come to his senses. Then he accompanied Luís to Seville and while his son was seeing their lawyer wandered into the gentlemen’s club he had been wont, in merrier days, to favour with his occasional presence…

    “Sorry,” he confessed glumly. “Big mistake. Won’t do it again.”

    Luís was very pale. “You will not have the opportunity, there is nothing left to lose.”

    “Um, well, maybe a loan? Security of the estate? Um, try your Primo Julio?”

    “Julio Fernández de Velasco will no doubt be overjoyed to advance me an huge sum which he must be aware I can never repay, and foreclose on the first quarter day: yes!”

    “Well, uh, you ain’t lost your touch with the cards, old chap,” he suggested glumly.

    “I am not such a fool,” replied Luís tightly.

    Sir Harry coughed. “No. Didn’t think you was, really. Sorry. Pity old Pedro popped off: he’d have stood by us. Decent chap.”

    This was not what he had said of Luís’s Tio Pedro during the old martinet’s lifetime, but Luís let it go. Besides, it was probably true: Don Pedro Fernández de Velasco had had a very strong sense of family honour and a soft spot for his sister, Marinela. “Si. Um, Pa, I don’t think you quite realise how things have changed for us. With Tio Pedro gone, and now Madre, we can expect no support in Spain.”

    “No. Young Juanito’s fond of you, but he’s a half-wit,” admitted Sir Harry glumly.

    “Quite.”

    “Uh, Paul would—”

    “No,” said Luís tightly.

    “But he’s me eldest son, when all’s said and d—”

    “Pa, he has all the responsibility of the estate and the family, and has had since he was twenty-three years of age, may I remind you! Not to mention his own children to look to.”

    “Well, yes, but Ainsley Manor brings in a dashed solid sum and there’s money in the Funds, and some town properties as well, and all the girls are off his hands long since, and now Bungo’s joined the East India Company he don’t need to pay him his allowance no more; and he’d be glad to do it!”

    Luís ran a hand through his luxuriant black curls. “Sí, sí, of course he would, Pa, but that is not the point. This is not Paul’s responsibility.” He hesitated: they had only very recently had the news that his youngest brother’s health had broken down under the rigours of the Indian climate. “And you’re forgetting that Bungo is no longer with the East India Company.”

    “Eh? Oh—that’s right, coming home. Don’t see why he couldn’t stop off in Spain,” he grumbled.

    “The ship stops at Lisbon,” said Luís with a sigh.

    “Well, exact! Could get off there, come over to see us!”

    “Pa, it’s not an easy journey, it would be most unwise in his condition.”

    “No. Well, the estate can support him: no question!” he said bracingly.

    “I shall not apply to Paul, and that is final,” said Luís tightly.

    “Um, y’don’t want to end up in the hands of the Jews, old man,” said his father uneasily.

    Sweet-natured though he was, his second son at this gave him a very sardonic look and said: “Sound advice, Father: gracias. But don’t worry, I shan’t.”

    “No, um, good. But what will you do?” he asked glumly.

    “I have looked at my options very carefully and there is but one thing I can do,” replied Luís very grimly indeed.

    “Uh—sell up? Go home to England?”

    Luís looked at his hopeful—and very English—face. Oh, Hell! Was that what he wanted? In fact was that, perhaps, what his stupidity had been about? Not deliberate sabotage of the possibility of staying on in Spain—though he would once have had the cunning for such a move, Harry would never have knowingly injured one of his children—but perhaps, after Marinela’s death, the hidden motive of his gambling, unbeknownst even to himself?

    “If I sold up,” he said very carefully indeed, “there would be enough to pay all the debts and our fares to England, and I would be able to make provision for Marinela’s faithful servants. Not generous provision, but enough.”

    Sir Harry looked at his grim face, and swallowed in spite of himself. “Good, y’mother would have liked to know you were thinking of them.”

    “Mm. After that, however, there would be nothing but a little pin money left. We could probably pay our fares on the stage as far as Ainsley Manor. –I’m not joking, Pa,” he warned.

    “Didn’t think you was. Don’t think I’ve heard you joke since your poor mother went,” he admitted glumly.

    Silence fell.

    “Well, we could do that,” offered the baronet meekly.

    “And then live off Paul’s sleeve?” he enquired arctically.

    “Dammit, he’s me son!” he cried.

    “Yes. Well, you would have to live off his sleeve, certainly. And as he knows all the neighbours for miles around I dare say he could warn ’em all not to play cards with you and you wouldn’t manage to bankrupt him,” said Luís bleakly. “But I have no intention of living off his sleeve, or, I should perhaps make it quite clear now, of dumping my responsibilities on him!”

    Sir Harry nodded approvingly. “Quite right, me b— You mean ME?” he bellowed.

    “Yes,” said Luís baldly.

    Sir Harry spluttered.

    Luís got up. “I believe you lost this last lot—or a substantial part of it—to José Vedia de Bastianini?”

    “Uh—yes. Sour-faced piece of work he is, too. Had heard he never gambled,” he admitted glumly.

    “He doesn’t. This was a sure thing,” said Luís unkindly.

    Sir Harry turned puce and had another spluttering fit.

    “That was not entirely aimed at you. It may have escaped your notice, but José has had me in his sights for some time for Inez Vedia de Bastianini.”

    “Uh—no, no, old chap! Y’mean little Whatsername! Francisca? Think so, yes.”

    Luís eyed him mockingly. “You mistake, Harry. Francisca Vedia de Bastianini is José’s daughter, yes. However, I was referring not to her, but to the Señorita Inez Vedia de Bastianini.”

    Sir Harry gaped. “José’s sister? Y’can’t mean her, old man! Yaller as a Chinee, moustachioed as y’mother’s old tom cat, figure like a scarecrow! She must be forty-five if a day, even if she is rich as Cr— Oh, my God!”

    “Rich as Croesus,” completed Luís sardonically. “Yes.” He strode over to the door. “Jésus!” he bellowed.

    “What’s he doin’ here?” said Sir Harry crossly as a young, very yellow-faced man in the dress of a gentleman’s gentleman presented himself, bowing very low.

    “Nominally, acting as valet to me.”

    “Thought he was supposed to be y’mother’s footman?” he said, scowling horrifically. “—Surrounded by damned so-called footmen and pages and boot-boys off the estate!”

    “Quite. Madre once mentioned that he was keen to be a valet,” he said, looking at the bowing Jésus without particular enthusiasm. “And as I have let my man go I am giving Jésus the chance. –Please stop bowing, Jésus,” he added in Spanish.

    Jésus stopped bowing but instead fell on one knee and kissed Sir Harry’s hand rapturously.

    “Ugh!” said the baronet, wiping it on his handkerchief.

    “He is still overpoweringly grateful to you for having pulled him out of his pickle, as you see. And as I have explained everything to him,” said Luís with a gleam in his eye, “he quite understands that his current task—on pain of instant dismissal—is to keep you indoors.”

    “Eh?” he spluttered.

    “Yes. I am going out: I have an appointment with José Vedia de Bastianini.”

    “Luís, don’t do it!” he cried. “We’ll go to England!”

    “Yes, we will, but not as Paul’s dependants,” said Luís grimly, going out.

    Sir Harry sank slowly down upon a sofa. “Oh, Hell,” he muttered.

    A short period passed. Sir Harry continued to sit on the sofa. Jésus continued to stand guard between him and the door.

    Sir Harry felt in his pocket and produced a pack of cards. “Patience?” he said to himself on a sour note. His eye fell on Jésus Juarez. He brightened. “Come along, Jésus!” he said cheerily in Spanish. “Nice little game of piquet!”

    “No, Sir ’Arry,” replied the valet in his native tongue. “Cards are a trap laid by the Evil One.”

    “Have you been listening to the damned priests again?” he cried.

    “No, Sir ’Arry,” said the man meekly. “To Señor Luís.”

    Sir Harry’s jaw dropped. This give Jésus Juarez his chance: he stepped forward and swiftly scooped up the pack, putting them in his own pocket.

    The baronet spluttered. “What the Devil am I going to do, stuck in here by myself?”

    The valet had retreated prudently to his former position. He merely bowed.

    It dawned on Sir Harry that his last remark had been in English. “What am I going to do all morning?” he said plaintively in Spanish.

    “You could smoke a cigar, señor,” he said respectfully.

    Sighing, Sir Harry outed with the cigars. On second thoughts he put his feet up on the sofa. “Well, get me a light, man!”

    There was a small fire burning in the grate. Jésus came and lit a spill at it for him.

    “Gracias,” said the baronet, puffing scientifically. “Aah! That’s better!”

    Bowing, the valet retreated strategically.

    Sir Harry puffed peacefully on the cigar. Jésus stood silently at his post…

    A second cigar followed the first. Jésus remained at his post. After a little Sir Harry’s head was observed to nod. His slackened arm dropped—

    Jésus Juarez shot forward, quick as lightning, and grabbed the cigar before it could set the hotel’s carpet alight. He retreated to his former place, but this time sank neatly to a sitting position. He puffed scientifically, smiling. Señor Luís had been quite right, quite right! The old Sir ’Arry was absolutely bound to nod off over the second cigar! This was a very good job! And he owed it all to Señora Marinela, so he would light a candle in her blessed memory this very evening!

    The letter from Spain arrived at Ainsley Manor when Mr Ainsley was out and about on the estate. Christabel Ainsley paled, but with a considerable effort refrained from opening it whilst a groom was dispatched to find Mr Ainsley without delay.

    Paul’s lips tightened but he said nothing, just opened it and glanced through it swiftly.

    “Are they all right?” she croaked.

    “Yes,” he said with a little sigh. “Both hale and hearty.”

    Christabel sat down suddenly. “Thank God!”

    He took a deep breath. “There is news, however. Did you let Bungo know this had come?”

    Mr Ramón Ainsley—Bungo to the family—was still very weak; in fact in Christabel’s opinion the East India Company should not have exposed him to all the rigours of a long sea voyage so soon after his dreadful fever—though on the other hand, sending him home had been the preferable alternative to leaving him longer at the mercy of India’s shockingly hot climate. “No,” she said quietly. “He was quite bright this morning, as you saw, but when I suggested a little nap before the midday meal, did not argue: so I thought it best to say nothing until you had read it.”

    “Very wise. Well, there’s nothing he can do about it,” he said on a sour note. “And in any case it sounds as if we shall see Pa and Luís very soon.”

    “Oh! That’s splendid news!” she cried, beaming.

    Paul looked dry. “Read it for yourself, querida, but it is not wholly good news.”

    His wife read Luis’s letter through carefully. “Good Heavens,” she said limply. “But who is she? I would swear he has never writ a word of her!”

    “No, but Madre has,” he said grimly. “As a great joke, I might add. Um… three letters before her last, I think, mi querida.”

    Marinela had written in Spanish but Paul, who had no secrets from his wife, had always translated. So Christabel was sure she must have heard the name, but it rang no bells. “Um, there were always so many Spanish names,” she said apologetically.

    Paul’s big dark eyes that were so like his mother’s twinkled a little. “Indeed there were! No, well, Inez Vedia de Bastianini was the lady whom they encountered at the opera, the last time they were all in town.”

    “Goodness gracious, is that how it is pronounced?” said Christabel weakly. “I had thought it would be ‘Eye-nezz.’”

    “No, ‘Ee-neth,’” said Paul sedately, though his eyes twinkled a little.

    “No wonder it rang no bells— Oh, surely not? The woman with the frightful mother who was throwing her at Luís? She said that although he displayed no interest, the creature—the mother, I mean—did her best to embarrass them by ogling their box all night!”

    “Exactly. Except that an Ainsley is not embarrassable,” said Paul drily.

    “But Paul!” she cried in distress. “I am positive she said the daughter was forty-five if a day, with a face like a lemon!”

    “Mm. Perhaps Luís had his reasons.”

    Christabel was very flushed. Luís’s letter had not suggested any reasons of which she could approve. “Other than that it was time he was solidly established and—and that he wished to settle on a respectable property here in England? Dearest, I wish I could think so! And—and this mention of his coats is just so… I am afraid the frivolous life he has lived these last dozen years and more has done him no good.”

    Luís’s bachelor life, rotating between Seville and London with the occasional look-in at Paris or Lisbon, had certainly been frivolous enough. “Mm.”

    “I—I can scarce believe it of Luís!” said Christabel with tears in her eyes.

    “Oh, Lor’, what’s Luís done now?” croaked a voice from the doorway. “Paid court to the wrong Spanish dasher again?”

    The episode of the wrong Spanish dasher—Tio Pedro’s ex-mistress, an unfortunate fact of which a very young Luís had not been aware, though it was fair to say the whole of fashionable Spain had—was very much in the past, but it had made a great impression upon Bungo.

    “Nothing like that,” replied Paul. “Come and sit down, Bungo: you had best hear it.”

    With a wary expression on the square, pale-skinned, freckled English face which was very like Sir Harry’s, Bungo came and sat down by the fire. “Go on,” he said resignedly.

    His reaction was exactly what his relatives had expected. In especial as on his enquiring grimly precisely what Luís meant by “a rather older lady” Christabel, blowing her nose, revealed: “Forty-five, we think. She is a lady of whom your Madre wrote us, Bungo.”

    “Forty-five?” he shouted.

    Paul said only: “Mm. Well, it cannot be mended, querido. We must just do our best to support Luís in his decision.”

    Christabel got up, swallowing a sigh. “Exactly. And though I cannot approve of a marriage between such disparate ages, we must make Inez welcome in England.”

    “Christa, it’s shocking!” choked Bungo.

    “It is not wholly desirable, but it is not the poor woman’s fault, and she is part of our family now,” she said firmly.

    “Not her fault? It is plain as a pikestaff she seized her chance to buy him!” he choked.

    “I dare say, but put yourself in her place. And I do trust, my dear, that you will not say as much to anyone outside of these walls,” said his sister-in-law. “I shall just have a word with Berthe; she has prepared an excellent soup for the midday meal, but I think we could all do with something light and delicious as well, today.” With that she went out, looking her usual serene self.

    Paul eyed Bungo from under his long, curled black lashes, but said nothing.

    “Food! At a time like this?” he said indignantly. “If that ain’t just Christabel all over! –And I will say it, for if she is your wife, she is also my second cousin!” he reminded him.

    Paul’s lips twitched very slightly, but he said mildly: “Of course she is. But speaking for myself I could certainly do with something light and delicious. Not to say a brandy. Fancy one?”

    “I would that! Luís has run mad! A hag of forty-five? Ugh!” He seized the glass thankfully, and downed it.

    Paul sipped brandy slowly. “Christa is right, you know. The woman is Luís’s wife, now.”

    Bungo reddened. “Naturally I shall behave decently to her,” he said stiffly.

    “Of course,” he murmured.

    “But you cannot claim she ain’t bought him!”

    “I don’t think either of us is claiming that, dear fellow, but perhaps we should follow Christa’s advice and try to put ourselves in Inez’s place.”

    “Put ourselves in her place?” he spluttered. “What the Devil does she mean by that?”

    Not for the first time Paul reflected that it was perhaps a pity that Bungo was not the eldest son, for he would certainly have made the perfect English country squire: he had the bull-headed splutter down pat. Not to say the refusal to consider anything outside the borders of England as normal or natural, let alone desirable.

    He went over to the door. “Think about it,” he murmured. “Shall I suggest Huevos sucrés?”

    This bilingually-named dish was an old favourite of the Ainsley children, dating back to the house in Brussels or even earlier: Paul was sure he could remember eating it in Vienna, after a ride cuddled up in furs in the barouche with Madre, little Luís and the even smaller Gaetana, back in what he had now realised must have been the days of Sir Harry’s service in the Austrian interest.

    Bungo adored Huevos sucrés. “Um, well, yes, good idea—if there are eggs,” he conceded.

    Nodding, Paul went out.

    Bungo picked up Luís’s letter, scowling. He had in fact seen almost nothing of Luís since leaving school at the age of seventeen, some seven years since, and it did not occur to him to wonder if his mental picture of his fashionable big brother leading the sophisticated life of a man-about-town were a true one.

    “It ain’t decent! Selling himself for the sake of his damned fancy coats? Even if he do intend to settle on a decent English property. The fellow’s run mad,” he concluded sourly.

Next chapter:

https://thefortunateformbys.blogspot.com/2023/10/captain-cutlass.html