Master of Hearts (18 page)

"Are you quite sure you have not a greater liking for Fernando than you pretend? Are you quite sure that the quality of his admiration — which you seem

very certain about! — is not in itself one of the main

causes of your present and unmistakable unhappiness?"

"I am not in the least unhappy! I—!" Kathleen rose, and in a fever of resentment moved nearer to him in the window. "How can you be so stupid as to imagine for one single, solitary instant—you, a man who should have some practical commonsense and discernment!—that I would allow myself to be made unhappy because a philanderer like Fernando Queiroz should choose to affront me at a moment when I wasn't feeling at all like being insulted? If you hadn't come along when you did I would have boxed his ears"!—her blue eyes flashed indignant sparks—"and I wouldn't have allowed Dona Inez to get away with her indiscretions by placing the blame on me if I had felt as I did when I first came here!"

Suddenly she paused, shocked by the realisation of how much she had almost certainly revealed by that last turbulent admission; but the Conde was not going to allow her to get away with anything unexplained.

"You mean that when you first came here it didn't matter to you whether you stayed or departed the following week?"

"Something—something like that . . ." She turned away, wishing the lights, although discreet, were a little less searching.

"And now it is important to you that you should stay here? You do not wish to leave us?"

She hung her head, feeling and looking almost painfully confused.

"I have just begun to settle down . . ."

"Exactly," he said, softly. No longer was there any suggestion of a frown between his infinitely black brows, and his eyes were suddenly as dark as sloes, and very brilliant, under his thick black eyelashes. "You have just begun to settle down, and Queiroz has nothing to do with that melancholy which makes your eyes so heavy tonight. And they are heavy!" bending his head and peering into them gently.

Instantly she lowered them—her sole form of protection against him just then—and he took her arm and led her towards the window.

"It is airless in here, and we will walk a little," he suggested quietly. "Tomorrow I shall be far from here, so we will seize the opportunity to stroll for a while tonight."

She allowed him to guide her out on to the dimly seen path, and because the moon had not yet risen the garden was a very shadowy place indeed. But here and there the starlight lay like mother-of-pearl on the colourful mosaic over which they trod, and the shadows of trees and shrubs were inky-black against the jewel-studded night sky. There was the gentle music of falling water, and water that was being caught and held in a marble basin; and in the ornamental goldfish pools there was an occasional plop as a wakeful occupant rose to the surface, and then dived back again to the green, unseen depths. And not very far away the sea was breaking murmurously on the white beach, and the tang of it was invigorating rising above the perfume of the flowers.

Kathleen didn't have to bother about where she placed her feet, because the Conde's hand was strong and sure beneath her elbow, and his low voice in her ear was all the guidance she needed. Even her heartbeats had slowed so that she could breathe more easily, and a nightmarish cloak of unhappiness had slipped away from her.

For the moment this was enough—and more than enough! And the only wish of which she was capable was that the garden stretched into illimitable distance, and that she and the man who suddenly seemed so much nearer to her in spirit need never return to the house. Or, if they had to return to it, it could be with this sudden unexpected bond between them
undisturbed
and unbroken. This blissful, light-headed bond!

This almost complete harmony! .. .

Miguel stopped suddenly in the middle of a grove of ilex, and the harmony became really complete when

he released her arm and took both of her hands, and in that narrow tunnel of scented darkness she felt his lean, firm fingers pressing hers tightly.

"Kathleen—" his voice seemed strange, and moved, and a little husky, as hers had been earlier in the evening—"Kathleen, there is something that I must know! The way you looked tonight—the way you have looked for days!—had it anything to do with the fact that I am leaving here tomorrow?"

She dared not answer him, so she caught her breath. Her fingers began to hurt as his fastened about them almost cruelly.

"I tell you that I must know!" he insisted. "In fairness to us both, Kathleen, if it is so please tell me!"

She didn't need to tell him then—not in so many words. She forgot Carmelita and the white satin damask that was being made up into a wedding-gown; the fact that Miguel was to accompany her to Paris, and that shopping for a wedding was the main pretext for the visit. She forgot everything but the note of urgency she had detected in his voice, and the inexpressible dearness of him as he stood there so close to her. She made a tiny movement as if she would clutch at him, and instantly his arms were about her, and he was holding her so close that she could feel the violent thudding of his heart, and the tremor that ran through him as her whole slight body yielded to him immediately.

"My darling, my little one!" he breathed into the soft gold hair that strayed over the front of his jacket.

"And you would have kept it from me! You would have let me go without this knowledge!"

He put his fingers under her chin and lifted it, and a pale beam from the late rising moon found an entrance through the clipped ilex and showed him her eyes, swimming with wonder.

"Don't you know that that would have been cruel?" he said, and bent to cover her mouth with his own, fiercely, possessively, ardently and triumphantly.

Kathleen could only cling to him, quite certain that none of this was actually happening, but terrified at the same time to attempt so much as a single word that might shatter the glorious illusion. Never in her whole life had she dreamed that a man's lips taking toll of her eager, tremulous ones could fill her with such ecstatic happiness, or that his tender murmurings in Portuguese could cause her bones to melt so that her being seemed to become fused with his. And not merely fused with his, but inextricably a part of him.

Never, never, after this delirious experience would she ever possess any identity of her own, or have any real existence apart from him! She might live, but she would never be really alive, not as she was alive now, with his kisses descending on her pale, bemused face and banishing the pallor, transforming the whole soft area of her smooth cheeks into a rosy blush unseen in the starry darkness!

At last he rested his cheek against her hair, and strove for speech—practical, necessary speech.

"Tomorrow I shall be gone away from you," he said, "but before the Wine harvest I will be back! That will be in two or three weeks time. They will pass, my little one, because everything that has to be endured passes in time, and then there will be the bliss of our reunion!" Once more he tilted her chin, and strove to look deeply into her eyes. "I love you so much, little English Kathleen! . . . So much!" he repeated, his voice shaking.

She clung to him despairingly, because he had mentioned separation.

"And I love you, too! . . . Oh, Miguel, I love you, too!" She told him, not even noticing that she had made use of his Christian name; but he did, and he laughed softly and triumphantly against her ear.

"So it is not always to be senhor! . . . Never again will it be senhor!"

He bent and pressed his lips to the starry eyes, kissing them almost reverently.

"I shall dream of these moments when I am away from you, dear heart! But, as I have said, the time will pass—and I shall think of you waiting here for me, perhaps longing for me!" His arms strained her to him, and she suffered exquisite agony, but would gladly have endured it for the rest of her life if only this magic interlude need never end. "Kathleen, you must understand that I have to go, otherwise nothing would induce me to leave you! Not now!"

Carmelita, Carmelita! . . . The name leapt up at her, but somehow she couldn't get it to pass her lips.

"There are certain things we have to do—obligations we cannot escape, and this happens to be one of them! If I could make you understand I would go into details here and now, but I doubt very much whether you would do so very easily. You are English, and you think differently about these matters . . . I am aware of that! But, English or Portuguese—or any other nationality under the sun!—when love comes it will not be denied, and that is how it is with us, my darling! We belong—I think we must have belonged in the very beginning, only we were too stupid to grasp at once the enormity of the thing that had happened to us!—and all these weeks have been wasted, and there is so much to make up! That is why it is so hard that we have to part now!"

Carried along on the stream of his words, uttered in a low, impassioned voice, Kathleen could only feel more and more bemused, and she couldn't even begin to grasp at the significance of them—that he loved her as much as she loved him, and the separation that loomed ahead of them would be a thing of mutual agony. And she wasn't capable of attempting to probe anything at all just then.

"Must we part, Miguel?" she heard herself whispering in a kind of anguish, and he laid his dark cheek against her flushed one, and said sadly that there was no help for it.

"It is unavoidable that we part, sweetheart. And it is just as unavoidable that I go to Paris. So many things

in Life are unavoidable!" and he sighed and let her go.

Paris! . . . Carmelita! She looked at him fearfully.

"You are so lovely, my dear one." He lifted her hands and kissed them lingeringly, turning the soft wrists over so that his lips might lie against the spot where the eager pulses pounded. "You are a white flower of loveliness, and these delicate fingers hold my heart. Remember that while I am away, and whenever there is a moment of doubt! Miguel de Chaves has placed his heart in your hands, and that much of him you will possess always!"

She didn't know how to answer him, and she didn't even know how to thank him for his gift. But her lips trembled, as a violent reaction after so much sudden emotion swept over her, and he saw it and bent and kissed them tenderly.

"You are tired, sweet one, and all this has been rather much for you, on top of your sad little evening! And now you must go back to the house and to bed, and I want you to sleep and forget everything until the morning."

"But—in the morning you will be gone!" she faltered despairingly. "Won't I even see you in the morning, Miguel, before you leave? Won't you at least come up to the nurseries and say goodbye to the children?"

"In the morning I shall be gone before ever you are awake—I hope!" He touched her eyes gently with his sensitive finger-tips. "These lovely eyes need sleep!"

She never remembered very clearly that return to the house, except that she knew his hand was once more under her elbow, and this time they both knew it had a right to be there. She had hurled herself into his arms at the first sign that he wanted her to be there, and what more natural, before they finally parted, than that he should gather her into his arms and kiss her with deep passion that once more melted her bones? In fact, the responsive passion that flamed through her veins was rather frightening to one who had never experienced anything like it before, and when at last he

put her gently away from him—before they emerged on to the open space before the house—she was trembling and uncertain and by no means clear-headed enough to frame coherent speech.

"Goodnight, my heart," Miguel said. "And au revoir!" he added, softly.

Kathleen crossed the floor of the library without seeing any of its opulent magnificence, and half-way up the stairs she heard the french windows through which she had passed in a daze close quietly.

Miguel had followed her into the house, but in a few hours he would have gone away from it. The house would seem unbearably empty!

THE next morning there was a rose on her
breakfast tray
—a glorious, dark red bloom, heavy with scent—and the maid explained that the head gardener himself had requested her to see that it was delivered to Miss O'Farrell.

That was all . . . No message, no word. But Kathleen's heart leapt, and all in a moment she was wonderfully, blissfully happy, because the rose, she knew, was Miguel's thought—an expression of his love, which after all was real and not just part of one of her dreams during the night.

And somewhat to her surprise, she had slept all night. She had expected to lie wakeful, thinking of the Conde, determined to be awake when he took his departure in the early morning. She had thought that

from her balcony she might catch a glimpse of him--a discreet glimpse, that would offer him no embarrass—

ment—but the waves of sleep had rushed up over her, and she had been quite unaware of the moment when the man she loved so much left the house.

But the rose was like a reviving draught, a burst of hope. It didn't seem to matter, when she held it in her hands and pressed it to her face, that so much that was unexplained had tormented her the night before. The trip to Paris that was so essential, and Carmelita--Carmelita and the white wedding-gown!