Dennis Wheatley - Vendetta in Spain

After a few more days the Count's leg was strong enough for him to walk unaided in the garden or down to the beach, and de Vendome suggested that it would make a change for him to go in to San Sebastian. Gulia and Dona Eulalia accompanied them and after leaving the two ladies to do some shopping the Prince drove on through the old town, then along the coast road which almost encircles Monte Urgull, the great castle-topped hill that dominates the harbour, the bay of La Concha, and the city. Pulling up at the road's extremity they sat for a while, now facing inland, to watch the yachts tacking in the bay with, beyond them, the long curved beach of golden sand swarming with holiday-makers enjoying the September sunshine, and at its furthest extremity Monte Izueldo, on a lower slope of which, set in its lovely garden, stood the Royal Palace of Miramar.

Next day they lunched there with the King and afterwards watched him play polo. Soon after they entered the reserved enclosure a number of Gulia's friends came up to her in turn. All of them asked where she had been for the past three weeks and reproached her for declining invitations they had sent her. She explained that she had been looking after a guest who had been seriously ill, and introduced de Quesnoy to them. This resulted in a dozen invitations to lunches, dinners and bathing parties; but each trip in de Vendome's car had brought on one of the Count's headaches, so he begged to be excused from any social engagements until he had had a further week's convalescence.

Afterwards, while watching the game, his headache wore off, and he wondered a little uneasily if his refusal had been less due to that than a preference for spending long hours on the Cordobas' private beach with Gulia rather than to re-enter the social whirl.

That evening an episode occurred which gave him further cause for some uneasiness. For some time past he had been well enough to change and dine with the family, and at dinner that night de Vendome remarked to Gulia:

'I hear you have put off the Villalobars from coming to stay. Isn't that rather a pity? It was so jolly here in August with the house full of people; but for quite a time now we've had no company at all - not even a dinner party.'

De Cordoba promptly replied for his wife. 'My dear boy, you seem to forget that we have had other things to occupy us. When our friend Armand arrived he was at death's door; so naturally we got rid of the people who were staying here then as soon as we decently could.'

'Naturally,' agreed the Prince. 'I should have been the last to expect you to do otherwise. But he has been well enough to enjoy talking to other people for quite a while now, and I should have thought you might open up the house again.'

'Yes,' de Cordoba nodded, 'I see no reason why we shouldn't.' Then he glanced at his wife and added, 'Why did you put the Villalobars off, Gulia? After all, it was a long-standing engagement.'

She shrugged the superb shoulders that rose from her green chiffon frock and replied, 'Having cancelled our invitations to half a dozen other people during the past three weeks I suppose it has become a habit, and I did it without thinking. But, anyway, the burden of entertaining falls much more heavily on the hostess than you men realize, and I've been very glad of the respite.'

De Quesnoy had been about to express his regret that his presence there should have upset their autumn programme, but in view of Gulia's last remark he felt that it might be a little tactless to do so. As far as the other two were concerned he felt no qualms of conscience. The Conde, when not immersed in big financial deals, was always happy to go off on expeditions to hunt butterflies for his collection, and the young Prince led a very full life. Being deeply religious he spent several hours a day at his devotions, and in the role of an extremely active President on the councils of numerous Church charities; then he was frequently in attendance on the King and for the rest of the time enjoying himself at parties, mostly in Biarritz, since far greater numbers of the Spanish nobility spent this season of the year over the frontier in the smart French watering-place than in San Sebastian.

However, after their bathe next morning he did raise the matter with Gulia by saying, 'In spite of what you said at dinner last night about entertaining meaning a lot of hard work for the hostess, I fear that devoting your time to me, as you have during my convalescence, must have deprived you of a lot of enjoyment. Even if you hadn't had people here to stay, you must have refused many invitations to luncheons and dinners, and could often have driven into Biarritz.'

'No,' she replied. 'I can see most of my friends any time and a great many of the invitations come from acquaintances whom I wouldn't mind if I never saw again. In Spain, as you must know, except over a luncheon or dinner table women of my class are given little opportunity to converse with men. We are expected to be quite happy making small talk with our own sex; and you can have no idea how ill-educated, stupid, narrow-minded and altogether boring most of the women of the best families can be.'

'From having met a number of them I think I can,' he smiled.

'Then you will understand how greatly I have enjoyed escaping from them to be with you.'

'In spite of the fact that if we carried our political beliefs to their logical conclusions we would cut one another's throats?' he twitted her.

She laughed. 'Yes, in spite of that. After all, politics aren't everything in life. There is another side to it, the personal one; and that is much more important.'

'I agree; and we certainly have a great many things in common.'

'We have; but I should never have found that out if you had not been temporarily incapacitated for ordinary activities, which has led to us spending so many hours alone together. You can't think how I shall miss our talks when you have gone.'

'And I shall too.' He spoke with complete honesty. 'There can be few women of your age who have such a good brain - except perhaps for professional blue-stockings - and as far as I am concerned they don't count. To have heard sound argument on a great variety of subjects coming from the lips of a woman of your beauty and distinction has been a wonderful experience, and one that I shall long remember.'

'Thank you for the compliment,' she smiled. Then, with a little sigh, she added: 'I don't get many these days.'

'Then I'm to blame for that. It's because you have given so much of your time to me instead of getting out and about.'

She shook her head impatiently. 'I don't mean the vapid expressions of admiration with which I am bombarded by Jose's friends. I was thinking of the honest compliments that I used to receive before I married, from young professors and women who were making something of their lives.'

'None of us can have everything,' de Quesnoy brought out the old platitude philosophically, 'and surely the acknowledgement of your mental attainments while living in your uncle's circle at the University cannot have meant more to you than being the Condesa de Cordoba.'

'I suppose not,' she murmured a shade uncertainly.

'Oh, come!' he rallied her. 'You have palaces, servants, jewels and beautiful clothes. You bear one of the greatest names in Spain, and that of a charming and intelligent man who adores you.'

Suddenly she turned her head and looked straight at him. Her big dark eyes held his as she asked, 'What grounds have you for assuming that he does?'

For a moment de Quesnoy was nonplussed, then he answered a shade uncertainly, 'Well, it is obvious that Jose has no interests other than his bank, his butterflies and yourself.'

'Ah!' her eyes flashed. 'You would have been nearer the mark, my friend, if you had stopped short at "butterflies". To have a flutter with his favourite specimen is his real reason for going each week to Madrid.'