LITMIR.BIZ

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be alarmed to find himself being pawed by the Spanish stranger. Approaching him, Rafael sized him up, deliberated how to ensure least disturbance and greatest lifting power. Cecily fluttered around him as if offering assistance, but in fact doing nothing of the kind – although there was nothing much she could do except wipe her son’s nose. Rafael crouched, slotted his hands under Nicholas’s arms and drew him to his chest. ‘Come on, little man,’ he found himself soothing, just as he would with Francisco. The boy offered no resistance and Rafael nearly overbalanced. Righting himself, he strained for the lift, bore the weight then settled him, marvelling how the little body could feel both so unlike Francisco’s and, somehow, at the same time, identical. His heart protested at the confusion. Breathing in the muskiness of the boy’s hair, he nodded to Cecily to lead the way.

      She led him from the Hall to a staircase and up the narrow stone steps to a first-floor door, opened the door, ushered him inside, and drew a truckle bed from beneath the main bed. He made sure not to look around – that would be improper – as he lowered Nicholas on to the mattress. Nicholas frowned, turned on to his side and drew up his knees; Cecily bent over him, wiping his nose again and then busy with blankets. Rafael retreated, risking a glance back from the doorway and getting a preoccupied smile in thanks. She’d be staying in the room. He made his way to his own.

      The next day, visitors arrived: Mr Kitson’s secretary – in London on business – with four smartly dressed men whom Rafael didn’t recognise. They, too, talked all through dinner, but just amongst themselves, perhaps on business matters, which left Rafael’s usual crowd in respectful near-silence. Suffering the beginning of Nicholas’s cold, Rafael was content to sit back. He listened not for the actual words but to the sounds, and he found that he was beginning to be able to distinguish between those sounds: yes, there were the blunt ones, particularly concerning things to hand – the food, and the dog, in whom they all took an interest as if it were a child, in fact in place of any interest in the actual child – but then they’d turn into conversation which had more flow, and Rafael would catch notes of French and Latin. It was a ragbag of a language, English.

      They’d gone by the following suppertime. After that meal, Rafael retired as usual to the cushions alongside Cecily and her son, and Richard – the old man – and dog, to sketch from memory the front elevation of the house, for Francisco. This is where I’m staying. This – up here – is my window. After a while, it occurred to him that Cecily might be watching him: occasionally there was a quick lift and turn of her head in his direction. Once, he’d managed to meet her gaze but she’d glanced back down, expressionless, as if hoping to get away with it. Having sketched her, he’d unsettled her, which he was sorry to see. She was anxious to know what he was up to, to see if she was once again his subject. But it would be too open an acknowledgement for him to take the initiative and show her his drawing. Instead, he took to putting it down every now and then in what he estimated to be her view, while he blew his nose; and then, when that didn’t seem to have worked, he laid it aside while he paced to stretch his aching legs. After that, there were no more surreptitious glances.

      Later that week, he found himself dabbling at the cleft between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand. In isolation, the fold wouldn’t be recognisable: just a smudge of charcoal. Nothing, really. A space.

      There was something about her brow, though, with its broadness that he’d noticed when he’d first seen her. There was something appealing about that. The eyes wide-spaced, unlike so many English faces, which tended towards the pinched. Hers was an open face. He half-sketched, doodled, seeing how little she had by way of eyebrows or eyelashes. Cursory and incomplete, they were, as if only the briefest attempts had been made at them. He had to be so very light with the charcoal to draw their absence.

      He could see some of her hair, even though he wasn’t looking. It reflected light – but whether it was golden or silvery, he didn’t see. Women’s caps here were placed back to reveal middle partings and hair sleek to the head. In Spain, there was never a glimpse of hair: just foreheads, high and bare. Leonor wouldn’t sketch well, even if he dared try. Spanish women were generally soft-faced and doe-eyed, but Leonor had a sharp face with small, slate-coloured eyes, and her mouth was hard, thin-lipped, slipped sideways. He adored that cussed little mouth, a glimpse of it never failed to give a kick to his heart. The memory of it, even. Her hair was plain brown and her complexion sallow, which suggested she was delicate when in fact she was anything but. A trick, that. She was no classic beauty, but still Rafael was captivated by her.

      That night, for the first time in a long time, he thought of Beatriz. She’d been his mother’s maid and she’d seemed to him, aged fifteen, to have been in the household for ever. But it had probably only been two or three years, and she was likely no older than he was. He’d never looked at her: that was the truth. Not like that. She was just there, his mother’s maid. Later, he puzzled how he’d missed that she was so extraordinary-looking with her pale face and amber eyes. Her hair – an abundance of tiny copper curls – he couldn’t have known about.

      One afternoon, while he was sitting in the garden, she approached him, coming up close as if curious. She bent to look into his eyes, and held the look. His worry was that he’d done something wrong and been discovered, because there was a knowingness to her expression. There was nothing for him to do but look back at her, and wait. He’d never before looked into her eyes – of course not – and he was intrigued by their colour. Not a colour that he’d ever seen in anyone else’s eyes, nor even imagined possible for eyes. Amber. Then she had her fingers in his hair, lifting it back off his forehead, away from his face, as if he had a fever. He was suddenly conscious of her laced-up bosom, so close. The easing of his hair from his scalp was causing him a physical stirring of the kind he’d felt before – no use pretending otherwise – but never in direct response to someone’s touch. But then she was gone, across the garden, back towards the house.

      He knew something. He was suddenly in possession of a knowledge, he felt sure, that was going to make all the difference to his life: a touch – the mere touch – of a woman was all that mattered, was reason enough to be alive.

      From now on, he hungered for her presence. That was all. He was sure she’d come to him again; he understood that was what she’d wanted him to know. And a couple of days later, she did come to him. In the garden, again. She stopped as if he’d called her to a halt, which he hadn’t. And gave him that same look, albeit from a distance. He was to come to her, then. Her stillness reminded him of childhood ‘catch’, the pause before the dash. His blood beat inside his ears, great giddying thwacks. When he reached her, he didn’t know what to do; he didn’t know what it was that he was supposed to do. Washed up, he was, there before her. Her face. The linen band of her cap, its edge proud beneath his fingertips; the tiniest drop down on to bare skin and along to the scarcely perceptible well of one temple. The rough silk of her eyebrows. Folds of her nose, one side and the other. Crest of her lips, its resistance. Then the lips themselves, the drag of them in the wake of his fingertip, his complete, so-slow circle. Her lips, their fingertip-breadth, as if made for this.

      They opened, those lips, just a little, just enough to catch his fingertip in her front teeth: the very lightest of bites, very smallest of threats. The serrated edges of her teeth and the unevenness of their set. And then her tongue, a burst of soft, wet warmth.

      He withdrew his fingertip, but only because he wanted to put his own tongue there against hers, just inside her lips. Her breath was hot, which he hadn’t anticipated, and musty. The tip of her tongue lifted his, and he was surprised by its strength.

      Fearing he was about to disgrace himself, he took his mouth from hers, but within a heartbeat he was prepared to take the risk and was back there. Suddenly, though, she pulled away, was on her way across the garden, and only then did he hear what she must have been listening for: footsteps. Into view came the kitchen boy with a handful of herbs. All Rafael could think was how he and Beatriz could continue. It was as urgent as if someone had stopped his breath.

      When he next encountered her in the garden, she did the stopping and looking but then moved off and he realised he was to follow her. She led him through

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