Lucy Gordon - The Stand-In Bride

Hands reached out to open the car doors. Sebastian slipped a reassuring arm about Catalina’s shoulders and led her forward to meet her household. But he glanced back to make sure Maggie was close behind, and introduced her with an easy courtesy that prevented any awkwardness.

The housekeeper showed Catalina to her room. It had a grandeur suitable for the future mistress of this mini palace, and she danced around it gleefully before seizing Maggie’s hand and taking her along the corridor to another room, almost as lavish as the first.

‘This is yours,’ she said.

‘This?’ Maggie echoed, overwhelmed by the gorgeous red tiles on the floor, the mosaic-inlaid walls and the huge draped bed. There was history in this room as well as beauty, and a subtle, ancient magic that elicited her fascinated response. Along the outer wall were two tall, horseshoe arches, hung with heavy net curtains. Set between the arches were floor length windows that opened onto a balcony.

Dazed, Maggie allowed Catalina to lead her out onto the balcony with its magnificent view down the valley and across the distance to Granada, and the hill on which stood the glorious Alhambra Palace. It was early evening and darkness had fallen, showing the gleams of light from the collection of buildings that made up the palace.

Directly under the balcony Maggie could see one of the courtyards of Sebastian’s house, and something struck her.

‘This is like a smaller version of the Alhambra,’ she murmured. She had visited the splendid Moorish palace several times, and recognised the emphasis on highly decorative mosaics, the arches supported on pillars so impossibly delicate that it seemed as though the building was about to fly away.

‘That’s what it’s supposed to be,’ Catalina told her. ‘They say that the Sultan Yusuf the First built it for his favourite, in the style of his own palace. All the other concubines lived in the harem, but he kept her here, hidden away from the world. He was murdered by another man who also loved her. When she heard, she came out onto this balcony where she could look across the valley, and stayed here until she too had died from grief. They say her ghost still walks in these rooms.’

‘If they say that, they talk nonsense,’ Sebastian said from the curtained window. He had come in behind them so quietly that neither of them had heard him. ‘Why should any man force himself to travel fifteen miles for one woman when he could reach the harem in a moment?’

Maggie felt her annoyance rising at the sight of him standing there, so assured, his face full of wry amusement at what he plainly considered female fancies. Yet even then she had to concede that his tall body and proud head had a magnificence that matched his surroundings.

‘He might want to keep her apart if he loved her very much,’ she observed. ‘You, of course, would find that incredible, Señor.’

‘Totally incredible,’ he agreed dryly.

‘Oh, you’re so unromantic!’ Catalina scolded. ‘I love to think of the Sultan standing at a window of the Alhambra, gazing up to where the favourite stood on this balcony, calling her name across the valley. Maggie, why do you laugh? It isn’t funny.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she choked. ‘But you said he wanted to keep her hidden from the world. She wouldn’t be much of a secret if he was bawling her name across fifteen miles.’

‘How unromantic you are!’ Sebastian chided her in Catalina’s words, but he was grinning. ‘And, for the record, Sultan Yusuf wasn’t murdered by a jealous lover. He was assassinated by a madman. And no ghost walks these rooms, Señora-don’t be alarmed.’

‘I wasn’t alarmed,’ Maggie told him crisply. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts. Not that kind, anyway.’

The last words were spoken half to herself and made him glance at her with a quick frown. But he said nothing.

‘You have no souls, either of you,’ Catalina said crossly.

Sebastian stood back, indicating for them to return inside. ‘Forgive my intrusion, ladies. Señora Cortez, welcome to my home. I hope the hospitality meets with your approval.’

‘It’s overwhelming,’ she said, indicating the splendid apartment. ‘Much too fine for me. I’ll get lost in all this.’

‘Be sure that I’ll send out a search party for you,’ he said. And he actually smiled right at her, almost inviting her to share a joke.

He shouldn’t do that too often, she thought. It was dangerous.

A T THEcentre of Sebastian’s home was the Patio de los Pájaros, the garden of birds, an enclosed garden, with a pool and a softly plashing fountain. Elaborately carved stone birds sat in silence beneath the trees and between the shrubs, and more birds hovered beside the pool.

Beyond the trees and shrubs were elaborately decorated arches whose twisted pillars seemed too frail for their burden. And yet the total impression was of perfection. Everything here was of peaceful symmetry, joyful harmony.

A moon was rising high in the dazzlingly clear sky as Maggie slipped outside and took a breath of the sweet night air. It was hard to recall that England was under snow. This far south the December nights were often pleasant, although here in the foothills it was cooler than in the city below, and she wore only a thin nightdress and robe. But even the chill was pleasant, and perhaps the harmony of the garden could restore the harmony of her mind.

The evening meal had been awesome. A pack of Sebastian’s relatives, living nearby, had flocked to see his bride’s return, and they had been joined by some distinguished names from the local government.

The only one who stood out in Maggie’s mind was Alfonso, a distant cousin in his twenties, who worked as Sebastian’s secretary. He was aloofly handsome, and at first glance he had the haughty demeanour of a de Santiago. But his smile was charming, and when he gazed at Catalina there was a kind of dumbfounded shock in his eyes that made Maggie pity him. He would have been a more suitable husband for her than Sebastian, yet even he, Maggie thought, was too grave and serious for such a flighty creature.

Catalina’s butterfly moods changed this way and that with dizzying speed. When they arrived she’d been a girl, so thrilled with her expensive new toys that she’d forgotten the price she must pay. But as the evening wore on the price became more obvious, until she was almost drooping. Both she and Maggie were relieved when they could retire to bed.

Poor Catalina, Maggie thought as she trailed her hand in the water. How right I was to oppose this marriage. It will be terrible for her.

She leaned over, watching her own moonlit reflection, scattering as she moved her fingers, but then becoming one again as the water stilled.

‘Like me,’ she said to the night. ‘All broken up one moment, peaceful the next. But the peace is an illusion; it can be shattered so easily. Why ever did I come here?’

‘Why, indeed?’ murmured a voice behind her.

In the same moment she saw him in the water, a man’s shape, turned to silhouette by the moon. ‘I didn’t know you were there,’ she said, turning.

‘I’m sorry I startled you,’ Sebastian said. ‘It was wrong of me.’

She nodded. ‘One should always wander in an enclosed garden alone. Thus you will find truth and paradise.’

He gave a small start of pleasure. ‘So you understand the symbolism?’

‘I know why so much Moorish architecture is built around places like this,’ she said. ‘But I’m not sure I agree with it. How can you achieve truth or heaven when the enclosure shuts so much out?’

‘But you forget, it also symbolises the whole cosmos, the world and infinity. Here, all beauty can be held in the palm of your hand.’