She assumed a record and knocked on the door. The music ceased. When Aldara answered, Daidre saw the other woman was not alone. A swarthy man in the vicinity of thirty-five was placing a guitar onto a stand. Aldara had hers tucked under her arm. She and the man had been playing, obviously. He was very good and, of course, so was she.
“Daidre,” Aldara said, neutrally. “What a surprise. Narno was giving me a lesson.” Narno Rojas, she added, from Launceston. She went on to complete the introduction as the Spaniard rose to his feet and bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement. Daidre said hello and asked should she come back? “If you’re in the middle of a lesson…,” she added. What she thought was, Leave it to Aldara to have found a male teacher of delectable appearance. He had the large dark eyes and thick eyelashes of a Disney cartoon hero.
“No, no. We’ve finished,” Aldara said. “We were at the point of merely entertaining ourselves. Did you hear? Don’t you think we’re very good together?”
“I thought it was a recording,” Daidre admitted.
“You see?” Aldara cried. “Narno, we should play together. I’m much better with you than I am alone.” And to Daidre, “He’s been lovely about giving me lessons. I made him an offer he could not refuse, and here we are. Isn’t that the case, Narno?”
“It is,” he said. “But you’ve much more the gift. For me, it is practise continual. For you…you merely need encouragement.”
“That’s flattery. But if you choose to believe it, I won’t argue. Anyway, that’s the part you play. You’re my encouragement, and I adore how you encourage me.”
He chuckled, raised her hand, and kissed her fingers. He wore a wide gold wedding band.
He packed his guitar into its case and bade them both farewell. Aldara saw him to the door and stepped outside with him. They murmured together. She returned to Daidre.
She looked, Daidre thought, like a cat who’d come upon an endless supply of cream. Daidre said, “I can guess what the offer was.”
Aldara returned her own guitar to its case. “What offer do you mean, my dear?”
“The one he couldn’t refuse.”
“Ah.” Aldara laughed. “Well. What will be will be. I have a few things to do, Daidre. We can chat while I do them. Come along, if you like.”
She led the way to a narrow set of stairs whose handrail was a thick velvet cord. She climbed and took Daidre up to the bedroom, where she set about changing the sheets on a large bed that took up most of the space.
“You think the worst of me, don’t you?” Aldara said.
“Does it matter what I think?”
“Of course, it does not. How wise you are. But sometimes what you think isn’t what is.” She flung the duvet to the floor and whipped the sheets off the mattress, folding them neatly rather than balling them up as another person might have done. She went to an airing cupboard in the tiny landing at the top of the stairs and brought out crisp linens, expensive by the look of them and fragrant as well. “Our arrangement isn’t a sexual one, Daidre,” Aldara said.
“I wasn’t thinking?”
“Of course you were. And who could blame you? You know me, after all. Here. Help me with this, won’t you?”
Daidre went to assist her. Aldara’s movements were deft. She smoothed the sheets with affection for them. “Aren’t they lovely?” she asked. “Italian. I’ve found a very good private laundress in Morwenstow. It’s a bit of a drive to take them to her, but she does wonders with them, and I wouldn’t trust my sheets to just anyone. They’re too important, if you know what I mean.”
She didn’t want to. To Daidre sheets were sheets, although she could tell these likely cost more than she made in a month. Aldara was a woman who didn’t deny herself life’s little luxuries.
“He has a restaurant in Launceston. I was there for dinner. When he wasn’t greeting guests, he was playing his guitar. I thought, How much I could learn from this man. So I spoke with him and we came to an agreement. Narno will not take money, but he has a need to place members of his family?and he has a very large family?in more employment than he can provide at his restaurant.”