A Stormy Spanish Summer by Penny Jordan Page A

Felicity. My son tends to be rather more protective ofme than is always necessary. It comes in part because of the man he is, and from being head of such a traditional family, but also I think it comes because he was thrust into the role of head of the family at too young an age.’ A shadow of remembered sadness touched her expression as she explained, ‘My husband died when Vidal was seven.’
    Fliss caught her breath in shock, unable to stop herself from creating inside her head an image of a seven-year-old boy learning that he had lost his father. Sympathy for Vidal? She must not weaken herself by going down
that
route!
    ‘Then when Vidal was sixteen his grandmother died—which meant that he had to take on the responsibilities of his inheritance.’ She paused to say quietly, ‘I’m sorry. I’m boring you, I expect.’
    Fliss shook her head. She might be trying to tell herself that she wasn’t interested in hearing Vidal’s loving mother’s stories of her son’s youth, but the truth was that in reality a part of her wanted her to beg the Duchess to tell her more. It was disturbingly easy for her to picture Vidal at sixteen—tall, dark-haired, still a boy, but already showing the physical signs of the man he would become.
    A small charge of sensation touched her skin; Vidal’s touch, like Vidal’s mouth against her flesh, had burned away barriers she had thought set in concrete—values and judgements.
    Somehow she managed to drag her attention back to Vidal’s mother, who was still speaking, telling hergently, ‘Vidal was very attached to your mother, you know. He thought a great deal of her.’
    Fliss managed to nod her head, although she couldn’t trust herself to say anything.
    Her mother hadn’t really talked much about Vidal’s mother—other than to say that she hadn’t been Vidal’s grandmother’s first choice of a bride for her son, and that it was the Duchess who had insisted on Vidal having a more rounded and diverse upbringing than his paternal grandmother had wanted.
    Unwittingly confirming what Fliss’s mother had told her, the Duchess continued, ‘My mother-in-law did not approve one little bit when I persuaded my late husband to hire a young woman to help Vidal improve his English. She thought it very unsuitable, and would have preferred a male tutor, but I felt that my little boy already had enough male influence over his life.’
    Such a fond and loving warmth infused the Duchess’s face that Fliss knew she was mentally picturing the child that Vidal had been. Fliss could picture that child too. Her mother had taken a good many photographs whilst she had been in Spain, and Fliss had grown up knowing who the dark-haired boy featured in some of them was. She had one of them with her now, in her handbag, taken at the Alhambra. It showed her mother and her father with a much younger Vidal, smiling into the camera through a curtain of water from a fountain. In it her mother had her arm round Vidal’s shoulders—a protective, caring arm, as though, young as she herself had been, she was very aware of her responsibility towards the boy she was holding.
    ‘Vidal’s grandmother was a very strict disciplinarian who did not approve of what she thought of as my indulgence of Vidal.’ The Duchess paused. ‘Your mother suffered greatly at the hands of our family. Poor Felipe was such a quiet, gentle person. He hated upsets of any kind, and was very much in thrall to his adoptive grandmother. Understandably so. She had brought him up, following the death of his mother, according to her own strict regime and what she thought his mother would have wanted for him. He hadn’t inherited any money from his parents and so was financially dependent on my mother-in-law. Felipe pleaded with her to be allowed to do the honourable thing and marry your mother, but she flatly refused to allow it. She wouldn’t even agree to advance enough money to him to enable him to make financial provision for the