A Spanish Inheritance

‘What is it?’ He turned it over thoughtfully in his hands. ‘This is the codicil to your mother’s will, Miss Wilson.’

‘But shouldn’t that have been kept by Mr Patterson?’

‘Strictly speaking this is an unofficial document…a letter, if you like, left in my keeping—’

‘By my mother?’

‘Correct.’

Her heart-rate picked up. ‘Shall we open it?’

‘Good idea! Good idea!’ Tipping out a single envelope, he picked up a bone-handled paperknife and neatly slit the top. Scanning the letter inside, his face became still. ‘Ah, yes. I see. All is as I had imagined. It’s quite clear…quite clear.’

‘What’s clear?’ Annalisa asked, dreading his answer.

He smiled, his twinkling eyes barely visible above his ballooning cheeks. ‘You are an heiress, Miss Wilson. And of some considerable worth…just as Señor Perez said—’

‘Ramon knew!’

‘He suspected something,’ the lawyer said carefully. ‘He insisted there should be some treasure at the end of your rainbow. And now I shall have to congratulate him, both on his perspicacity and his persistence in winkling me out. After all, you didn’t leave a forwarding address when you sold the house in England, did you, Miss Wilson?’

‘That’s right, I didn’t,’ Annalisa agreed slowly. Shakily she rose to her feet. ‘So he wasn’t trying to buy me—’

‘Buy you? Buy you!’ Michael Delaney exclaimed, slapping the table as if it was the funniest thing he had ever heard. ‘I can assure you, Miss Wilson, that Señor Crianza Perez’s only motive in coming to see me was to ensure that you received your inheritance in full.’

Annalisa shook her head stubbornly. ‘I still don’t understand. My father never gave my mother a penny—’

‘He gave her far more than a penny,’ the elderly lawyer argued kindly. ‘There was money for you and for your mother so that she would never have to worry.’

‘But we didn’t have any money,’ Annalisa insisted. ‘How can this be true?’

‘I tell you it is true,’ he said. ‘It’s all in here. See for yourself,’ he offered, passing the letter over to her. ‘Your mother chose not to touch any of your father’s money. She saved all of it for you—’ He broke off and looked at Annalisa anxiously. ‘Would you care for that drink now?’

So much had changed, Annalisa thought as the huge jet eased off the runway. Now she was not only the owner of a huge estate, but had the funds to restore it as she wanted. It was like standing outside the secret garden, holding the key to the door. But her mind was still spinning with unanswered questions—about her parents, and above all about Ramon. Without him it might have taken years for Michael Delaney to track her down…by which time the finca would have become nothing more than a distant memory. Had he done all this because he wanted an equal partnership, a merger, just as she had suggested?

That seemed the most rational explanation… But rational explanations were not enough to plug the hollow in her heart.

The low-slanting rays of early morning sunshine looked as if they had been finger-painted by a child across the pellucid sea, and suddenly Annalisa couldn’t wait to get out of the taxi. ‘Would you drop me here?’ she said, leaning forward in her seat.

‘Here, señorita?’

‘It’s not far now to the finca.’

The taxi driver shrugged, but pulled over as she’d asked.

Climbing out, Annalisa asked him to take the luggage on for her, knowing that Maria Teresa would have been up at dawn to feed the animals. ‘Here,’ she said, pushing a generous amount over the fare into his hand, ‘I’ll walk from here.’

The taxi was quickly lost to sight on the meandering lane, but Annalisa made no move to follow. Standing motionless, she drew deeply on the herb-scented air. Then, shading her eyes with both hands, she looked beyond the intricate drystone wall to where the fields stretched up into the pine-clad hills. At the highest point stony fingers of talayotts and taulas pointed to the sky. These mysterious monoliths of a distant Bronze Age stood as monuments to the generations before her who had cared for the land. But no one could own the majesty of the cliffs, she reminded herself, or the deserted sugar-sand beach where a drifting film of mist still hovered tenaciously.

She turned at the sound of muffled hoof-beats. It was hard to be sure where the sound was coming from until she saw the horse and rider streaking down the valley towards her. The horse was black and his tail streamed behind him like a banner as he galloped, his neck outstretched full-tilt with his rider crouched low across his back. And then she gasped. ‘Ramon!’