The Youngest Sister

‘You sound an ideal travelling companion. Equal to every contingency. Never fazed when plans go awry. Does adventurous travel appeal to you?’

She knew from his book that he had been to many remote and potentially hazardous places.

‘If you mean like your journey through the Atlas Mountains with a mule, I think that would be too adventurous for me.’

‘That was a long time ago. Do I gather you’ve read my books?’

Her mouth being full, Cressy replied with a nod.

‘As far as I know, I don’t have many women readers.’

It was on the tip of her tongue to remark that he would have thousands if his publishers put his picture on the back of the jacket, or included shots of the author in the pages of illustrations. But the only glimpse his readers had ever been given was an anonymous figure with wind-tousled dark hair—not as long as he wore it now—sitting with his back to the camera in wilderness terrain.

She said, ‘You seem very camera-shy. There’s never a photo of you with any of your travel pieces.’

He shrugged. ‘As I’m not an actor or a male model, what I look like is irrelevant.’

His answer surprised and puzzled her. He must know he was, if not strictly handsome, compellingly attractive. Her mother and sisters were all fully aware that their looks were a major asset. Her mother had been one of the first politicians to seek the advice of an image consultant, and to take advantage of a photogenic face and a flair for speaking in sound bites to advance her career.

Having grown up with people who knew and exploited the value of their faces and figures, Cressy found it hard to believe that Nicolas was without vanity. He must have realised how easily he could have dated the most attractive women. Yet he spoke as if his looks were a matter of indifference to him.

It suddenly occurred to her that he might be married. Not that the way he had stared at her in the airport suggested he was a man whose love for one woman had made him blind or indifferent to the rest of her sex.

‘How does your wife occupy herself during your absences? Do you have lots of children?’ she asked.

He said dryly, ‘Even in the quieter parts of Mallorca it’s virtually impossible to find a woman content to sit at home having babies for an absentee husband. I wouldn’t want that sort of wife anyway. But, conversely, there still aren’t many women prepared to spend months on end living in primitive conditions. Those who don’t mind roughing it are usually dedicated to good works, or not feminine enough for my taste. How’s your private life?’

Was that very slight emphasis on ‘private’ a subtle riposte for her cheek in asking him intimate questions? Or was she imagining a nuance where there wasn’t one?

‘I don’t have one,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’m still living with my parents. My job doesn’t pay enough for me to set up independently. Well, it might in the country, but not in London, where the cost of living is higher.’

She had put her watch forward by an hour immediately after fastening her seat belt. When a sensation in her ears told her it wouldn’t be long before they landed, she couldn’t believe how quickly the time had passed since they took off.

Her first aerial view of the island made it look very brown and barren. Almost rising out of the sea was a range of steep, jagged mountains and then the land flattened out and became a patchwork of farmsteads and groves of grey-foliaged trees.

When Nicolas leaned closer to her in order to look out of the window, Cressy was sharply aware of the natural aroma of his skin. Judging by his shorts and boots, he had flown into London that morning from somewhere remote. Obviously he had changed his shirt and had a shave at Gatwick; the shirt was too crisp to have been slept in and his jaw had no trace of dark stubble. But she doubted if Gatwick had facilities for taking a shower, as she knew there were at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. Yet he smelt good. Better than men who sloshed on expensive lotions. He smelt as good as old books and summer grass and clean towels warm from the airing cupboard. She wanted to close her eyes and inhale the scent of him.

Instead she kept her eyes open, studying his face in profile and the way his springy black hair grew from his forehead and temples.

A shiver ran through her. She had a crazy impulse to reach out and stroke his cheek to see what effect it had on him.

In her mind she saw his eyes blaze before, pinning her shoulders to the back rest, he brought his mouth down hard on hers in a kiss unlike any she had ever experienced before.

The fantasy felt so real that, when he did turn his head, she gasped and gave a nervous start.

Slowly Nicolas sat back. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘Nothing ... only ... you startled me.’

‘I’m sorry.’ His blue eyes narrowed as he scrutinised her face. ‘You’re nervous. Are you worried about landing? Don’t be. It’s a good airport.’

‘I’m not,’ she assured him truthfully.

But either he didn’t believe her or he pretended not to. Reaching for her nearest hand, he held it firmly like an adult taking charge of a child.

‘We’ll be down in a minute and then you can shed your sweater. You won’t need it again till you go back.’

Cressy said nothing, feeling, for a different reason, as tense and panicky as if she really were afraid of what might happen as the plane came in to land. Short of an embarrassing struggle, there was no possibility of extricating her hand from his until he chose to release it.

The infuriating thing was that having her hand held was nice. It reminded her of being small and walking with Maggie in the park. She had always felt safe with calm, capable Maggie, and a little afraid of her brisk, energetic, sometimes quick-tempered mother.

Now, with Nicolas holding her hand, she felt both secure and nervous. Secure because in the unlikely event that anything did go wrong she would have him beside her, a man accustomed to danger. Nervous because intuition told her that meeting him and accepting his offer of a lift might put her far more at risk than she was at this moment.

Soon afterwards they touched down and the pilot applied reverse thrust.

Still holding her hand, Nicolas said, ‘Welcome to Mallorca...illa dels vuit vents..’

‘What does that mean?’ she asked.

‘It’s Mallorquín for “island of the eight winds”. We’ve been using wind-power since the fourteenth century, and our eight winds are also the reason so many yachtsmen come here.’

CHAPTER TWO

WHEN the aircraft had come to a standstill, Nicolas rose to his feet and opened the overhead locker where Cressy’s backpack was stowed. But when she would have taken it from him he shook his head, saying, with a glint of amusement, ‘You’re in macho territory now.’

She wondered if he was teasing her, or if, in the less touristy parts of the island, Majorcan manners and attitudes were still very different from those in London.

His own pack, when it appeared on the carousel in the baggage-reclaim hall, was a massive rucksack packed solid with equipment and, she guessed, too heavy for her to lift off the ground, let alone carry for long distances. But he swung it off the conveyor belt with the practised ease of a man who had done it many times before and whose body, compared with those of most of the tourists struggling awkwardly with their suitcases, was as different as that of a leopard from a crowd of overfed lap dogs.

With both packs on a trolley, they went through to the main concourse where a thickset man with grizzled hair was waiting for Nicolas. To Cressy’s surprise their greeting was very demonstrative. They embraced, they exchanged cheek kisses, they smiled at each other with the warmest affection she had ever seen shown by two men. Had they not been so dissimilar, she would have taken them for grandfather and grandson.

Eventually Nicolas turned to her. ‘This is Felió. He and his wife Catalina look after things when I’m away. He’s known me since I was born, and my mother as well.’

Thus he introduced her to Felió, who took the hand Cressy offered but whose smile was more reserved than the beam which had lit up his face at the sight of Nicolas.

It was like shaking hands with the exposed root of an old tree. Felió’s palm and fingers had been callused by years of manual labour. His face had the texture of a dried fig. He was a perfect match for the sun-baked landscape she had seen from the plane.

On the way to the car park, the two men talked to each other in a language which didn’t sound like Spanish. She supposed it must be Mallorquín. Then, out of this flow of words which made no sense to her, came two which did. Kate Dexter. Evidently Nicolas was asking if Felió had heard of her great-aunt.

The older man answered at some length, his reply accompanied by gestures which left Cressy uncertain as to whether he had or hadn’t.

When he finished, Nicolas said, ‘Felió knows where Miss Dexter lives. It’s only about fifteen minutes from my place. So that’s no problem.’

The vehicle in which Felió had come to fetch his employer was a military-green Range Rover.

‘Would you mind sitting in the back?’ said Nicolas as Felió unlocked the doors.

‘Of course not,’ said Cressy. ‘If you’ve been out of touch for a long time, you must have a lot to catch up on.’ She made a mental note to ask him later where he was returning from.