Chapter Four #2
She clasped her arms around her waist, trying to ride the vicious wave of emotion sweeping through her body, and contain the visceral pain in the pit of her abdomen.
‘Cerys, what’s wrong? You have gone very pale…’ Ana’s panicked whisper seemed to come from far away. But it managed to pierce through the churning agony in Cerys’s stomach, the cramping pain.
She dragged in a jagged breath. And then another.
And clasped her stomach tighter to brace against the shadows as they transformed into faces, sights and sounds which seemed to punch her in the gut as each one appeared—a young woman, her smile warm and sweet, a forbidding man, his face devoid of emotion, an angry voice telling her that her mummy was never coming home again, cold rain on her skin making her shiver and shake.
‘She’s dead now, and she deserves to be—for what she did to me.’
She shook her head, struggling to break free of the images. Were they memories? They had to be, memories lodged deep in her psyche, which had nothing to do with Ana’s family or their long-ago tragedy. But something in Ana’s story must have dragged them out of her subconscious.
At last, she managed to breathe deeply enough to stop shaking, to feel the warm afternoon sun on her skin. Whatever those images were, wherever they came from, all she knew was that she wasn’t ready to deal with them, not yet.
‘I am so sorry, Cerys.’ Ana’s concerned voice drew her the rest of the way out of the nightmare, and back to the sun dappled riverbank.
She listened to the calming sound of water trickling over rocks, inhaled the bittersweet scent of the tamarind trees, the heady fragrance of the wildflowers, waiting for her friend’s face to come back into focus and the last of the vicious tremors to subside.
She nodded, determined to make it so, but suddenly wary now of letting those nightmares back in. Whatever had happened to her in her past, she didn’t want to go back there again until she was ready. Certainly not yet. Was that why her mind had sealed off her past?
‘It’s okay, Ana. I’m okay really,’ she said.
‘What happened?’ Ana asked, her dark eyes filled with curiosity now as well as concern.
‘I… I really don’t know. One minute you were talking about your family’s past. And the next…
’ She sucked in another shaky breath as it occurred to her, whatever had once happened to her, Santiago must have suffered what sounded like a terrible trauma.
One that, unlike her, he had never managed to escape.
Guilt and sympathy washed over her. And he’d only been sixteen, thrust into what sounded like a media storm—because his was an aristocratic family in the public eye—after the violent death of both his parents in a matter of a few days.
She’d dismissed him as an autocratic, unsympathetic, exceptionally rigid and judgemental man.
Ana had said he was still angry. But how could she judge him now, for struggling to face whatever trauma he’d suffered then, for dealing with it the best way he knew how—by refusing to spend time with his sister, by closing down discussions about that long-ago scandal—when she herself didn’t have the courage to face her past either?
‘It felt like the memories locked in my head were trying to come out, but I really didn’t want them to, because they weren’t happy ones…’ she managed because Ana was still searching her face, the avid curiosity in her gaze making the gold flecks in her irises shine.
‘Perhaps you should not let them out,’ Ana offered. ‘If they are so sad they will make you ill.’
Cerys let a weak smile lift her lips. Trust Ana to get right to the heart of the problem.
‘It feels a bit cowardly not to, though,’ she said. ‘And I may have to, if I’m going to figure out who I am. I can’t expect your brother to keep me on a salary indefinitely.’ Especially as she was already so sure he didn’t really want her here.
In fact, she already had a deadline. Ana was due to start a new school at the end of the summer—even if she had rejected all her brother’s choices so far.
Either that or the rumour among the staff was that Santiago was planning to get married, so his wife could ‘handle’ Ana, something Ana was even less on board with from her running commentary on all the awful women her brother had chosen to date in the past.
Cerys had made a point of not engaging with Ana’s opinions of Santiago’s dating history, because it would only fuel Ana’s obsession with pretending that Santiago and her could be an item.
But she had secretly agreed with Ana that the Duque ’s marriage plans seemed remarkably unromantic and pragmatic to the point of being deeply cynical—assuming they were true.
But whatever happened with the Duque ’s search for a Duquesa , or a suitable boarding school for his sister, Cerys knew she would be surplus to requirements in six weeks’ time. She certainly couldn’t stay in the castillo, taking a salary from Santiago, once he didn’t need her here anymore.
‘I have a brilliant idea,’ Ana said, an excited smile spreading over her face. It was an expression Cerys knew she needed to be wary of, because it usually meant she was going to have to dissuade Ana from some wild scheme.
‘Hmm, let’s hear it then,’ she said, humouring her friend as she sipped the sangria and tried not to contemplate how hard it would be to leave Ana, and María and all the friends she had made on the staff, at the end of the summer.
If her memory didn’t return in time, she would have to throw herself on the mercy of the British consulate, because she was sure she had to be English.
But she would miss everyone so much. And the castillo, which had become a home—despite its owner wanting her gone.
‘If my brother is in search of a bride, why doesn’t he marry you?’
Cerys sprayed the sangria she had been drinking across the picnic blanket. ‘Ana, are you mad?’ she finally managed through the coughing and spluttering.
‘Why is this loco ?’ Ana asked, looking genuinely puzzled by Cerys’s reaction. ‘He wants someone to look after me, so he does not have to do it himself. This is what María told me. Why should it not be you, when you are so good at it?’
Cerys wiped her mouth, aware of the hot blood charging into her cheeks. ‘You’re seventeen, Ana, you know why,’ she said, even as the visceral hum from three days ago, when Santiago had grasped her arms, began to thunder in her ears and ripple through her abdomen.
‘No, I do not.’ Ana pouted. ‘If his reason for finding a wife is to give me a mother, then why should I not have a say?’
‘Because that can’t possibly be his only reason, Ana. And anyway, I hardly know him…’ she murmured, trying to keep her exasperation front and centre so she could avoid thinking about the hum, which was starting to take on a life of its own.
Instead of being deterred from her mad scheme by logic though, Ana let out a triumphant laugh. ‘But if you marry him you will get to know him very quickly. Do you not think he is handsome? And he is a very good lover. It is what his chicas say when they think I am not listening.’
‘Ana!’ she shrieked. ‘Oh. My. God. Don’t say stuff like that, he’s your brother.’ Cerys slapped her hands over her ears, horrified now by the girl’s shocking candour, and the throbbing sensation which had dropped like a brick into her abdomen. A very hot brick.
She definitely did not need to be thinking about her boss’s prowess in bed, because being the focus of his attention for precisely ten seconds three days ago—not to mention a whole ten minutes three weeks ago—still had the ability to make her wake up at night hot and sweaty and on edge…
Not that she would ever mention that to Ana.
It was bad enough that she already knew she was less worldly-wise than her charge who was three years younger, but she had spent weeks now trying very hard not to acknowledge what felt like a small crush on Ana’s brother.
She’d been keeping a lid on it so well up to now, despite Ana’s provocation, and now her friend had blown her cover to hell.
Something Ana was far too astute not to notice.
‘ Sí , but he is not your brother? No?’ Ana grasped Cerys’s wrists to pull her hands down from her ears, which were doing precisely nothing to halt the conversation.
‘Ana, please, I told you already, I don’t think he likes me much. At best, he sees me as staff, at worst an inconvenience,’ she murmured, humiliation adding to the vivid blush. They could probably see her cheeks on Mars right now they were so hot.
‘Then we must make him see you,’ Ana said, still completely undeterred. ‘Tomorrow is the Fiesta,’ she added. ‘It is the perfect opportunity.’
‘The perfect opportunity for what?’ Cerys asked warily, the determined set of Ana’s jaw starting to concern her. Surely she couldn’t actually be serious about this.
‘For Santiago to see you as a woman—and a bride. No?’
‘Absolutely not, Ana.’ It was official, Santiago’s sister had lost her mind. ‘And anyway, I can’t go. I’m not invited.’
Thank God .
Preparations for the exclusive Cantada Summer Fiesta to mark the beginning of the harvesting season—and Catalan’s national feast day celebrating St John the Baptist’s birth—had been consuming the staff for weeks at the castillo .
It was pretty much all anyone talked about.
One of the main reasons she and Ana had been roaming the woodlands and forests each day had been to keep out of everyone’s way.
Of course, Ana had dropped several hints already about Cerys attending the lavish party.
And Cerys had to admit she’d been tempted—because the event sounded so enchanting and super exclusive and something she knew she had never attended before.
She had also been touched by how keen Ana was to have her there, but now she was beginning to realise her friend might have had an ulterior motive.