Master of Hearts (21 page)

still more. She had lost her handbag, and had no handkerchief, and her gloved fingers were not enough to cope with them, so the Conde passed her his huge, immaculate linen handkerchief.

He asked in a voice that was tight and unlike him:"Did he hurt you?"

"You're quite sure?"

"Quite—sure!"

He uttered a smothered expletive, and then demanded:

"But, why . . .? Why . . .?"

She made a helpless little gesture, and he snatched the handkerchief out of her hand and turned on the roof-light to look at her. Her face was drowned, and her eyes blurred and bitterly unhappy, so he swore outright this time, and then switched off the roof-light and caught her close to him.

"Don't cry, beloved!" His voice shook. "I can't bear it."

"Oh, Miguel!" She turned and buried her face against him, and he shut his eyes as he felt the silken softness of her hair stray over his face, and when she lifted her face for a moment the wetness of her tears streaked his cheek. "Oh, Miguel! . .. If you hadn't come!"

She was shaking so violently that he had to do something to still the trembling, and he turned her face up to his and kissed her long and passionately, and with a kind of desperation, on the lips. She gave a little choked sigh and relaxed against him, and he murmured to her tenderly:

"Forgive me for being such a brute to you, my heart! But if you knew how I felt when I came upon you just now — and realised that it was you yourself who had placed yourself in such a situation of danger! Kathleen, why in the world did you do such a thing? Why were you wandering about aimlessly in the less reputable part of the town at this hour of the evening? Have you no sense?"

"I lost my way," she told him, and added feebly: "Anyone might lose their way!"

"But, why were you in Amara at all?—Alone?" "I was given the afternoon off."

He bit his lip.

"Weren't you also given to understand that I was coming home?"

"Yes." She drew a little away from him. He had no right to put her through this inquisition when he was the one who was to blame for everything — for the fact that she had been in danger, and had still to face up to grim reality! "Yes—your sister told me! And she understood perfectly about my needing the afternoon off!" She bit her lip and looked away from him. "In any case, how did you—f-find me? And why did you come to look for me, or was it just an accident?"

"It was no accident." His voice was stern, and it was plain he couldn't understand her unmistakable shrinking away from him. He tried to draw her back into his arms, but she resisted him strongly. "Fernando Queiroz, who apparently ran into you in the town, came straight back to the quinta and told us you were alone amongst a mass of holidaymakers and testa-excited locals, and that you had said you were meeting your brother and sister-in-law, but he didn't believe it. He said you had run away when he tried to bring you home, and because it all sounded highly suspicious I telephoned your brother. And he, of course, admitted at once that there was no plan to meet either him or Senhora O'Farrel! So—"

"So?" once more rather feebly, and not daring to meet his puzzled, hurt eyes in the gloom of the car.

"So I set out at once to search for you! And mercifully I did find you!"

There was a deep, spreading silence in the car, and she received the impression that he, too, had started to shake a little . . . At any rate, his hand was not in the least steady as he reached for a cigarette and lighted it. The flame of his lighter made it perfectly plain that his fingers were fumbling a little, and when

they crushed out the cigarette almost immediately in the ash-tray she knew that he had no real idea what he was doing.

"Kathleen! If anything had happened to you! . . ." His voice made it necessary for her to steel her heart.

"And what of Senhorita Albrantes?" she asked very quietly. "Didn't she object to your leaving her to come dashing out to look for me?"

"Carmelita?" With a fresh cigarette extracted from the box fitted into the dashboard he turned and looked at her. "But why should Carmelita object? In any case, I left her in Paris — or just outside Paris! With her husband!"

"With her—husband?"

"Of course." His voice was almost deadly quiet, and suddenly deadly calm. "With whom else would she wish to stay when she has only just married him? Carmelita is very much in love, and unlike you she is not the type to fall out of love after a month's separation! As the years pass I imagine her love will grow stronger, and in any case it will never die," the quiet voice vibrating a little, "because we Portuguese are not like you English. Our affections become fixed, and yours do not! That, at least, is what you are striving to make plain to me, isn't it?"

Kathleen wondered whether her experience in the street just now had unhinged her mind a little. What was Miguel saying to her, and why was his tone so reproachful? Bitterly reproachful! . . What was he accusing her of?

"Miguel, I—" And then she gasped. "Miguel, did you say that Carmelita is—is married?"

"That is what I said." But his aloofness was like a wall between them. "She was married in Paris only a few days ago. I would have been home earlier but for the fact that there were difficulties in the way of the marriage until we managed to smooth them out, and after that it was a very hurried affair. Carmelita's

mother did not attend, for she has never approved, but I as the head of our house was able to deputise for her! . . . I know that it was the right sort of marriage for Carmelita, and for that reason I gave it my support. I even flew back to Lisbon shortly after we left here for consultations with various legal people. I was the only one Carmelita could depend upon to act for her."

Kathleen sat as if she had been rendered temporarily stupid, and quite tongue-tied. The Conde went on:

"Years ago, when we were both very young, Carmelita and I were unofficially betrothed to be married. But it would never have done. We were not in love, and we would not have been happy. Also, the family tie was too close. That sort of thing is not good."

Kathleen put her hands up to her face and kept them there. With her remorseful eyes hidden she managed:

"But how was I to know? You were so devoted to her, and she was here so frequently! . . . You told me weeks ago that you had made up your mind to marry!" She lifted her head and looked at him through the dimness with anguished eyes. "And your sister said—"

She could feel him become stiff and alert on the seat beside her.

"Yes? What did my sister say?"

"She said that you—" she moistened her lips—"that you and Senhorita Albrantes had gone to Paris to shop for your wedding! That it had all been arranged ages ago, and everyone knew! She said that you were not a philanderer, but occasionally a pretty face caught your eye, and—and mine had done that!" Humiliation rushed over her as she recalled the afternoon when Dona Inez had said that, "And, naturally—"

"Naturally?" he insisted, no thawing affecting the remote coolness of his tone.

"Naturally, I thought that you—that that was all I did mean to you!" She clasped her hands tightly in her lap, and looked down at them with an abject droop to her shoulders. "How could I be certain of anything else?" she enquired in a whisper.

"You couldn't," he agreed. "I had told you I loved you, but that apparently didn't mean very much! I had told you the period of our separation would be as brief as I could make it, but that, too, didn't mean very much! What sort of a plan did you think I had for you?" the harshness of his voice grating on her. "Did you decide that at the same time that I was making plans for my marriage — in Paris, with Carmelita! —I was also making plans for you? Not such respectable plans, of course—"

"Oh, don't!" she begged him, in a whisper.

She felt his hands on her shoulders, gripping them brutally.

"I would like to shake you, Kathleen," he told her, in a hard tone. "I would like to shake you for your lack of faith, and — perhaps! — your lack of love!"

But that was too much for her. She had endured quite a lot of mental agony that afternoon, and on top of it she had been frightened out of her wits and roughly handled. Now he was obviously capable of handling her just as roughly, and he was cruelly deriding her at the same time. A storm of resentment rose up in her, and she threw off his hands. She put out her hand to the door handle and grasped it, fully determined to leave the car once she had said her say.

"It's easy for you to talk like that," she cried, in a choking voice. "You go away for nearly a month, with someone you admit you were once expected to marry, and expect me to disbelieve your sister when she tells me something that I haven't the slightest reason for disbelieving! You did tell me you loved me, you did kiss me—" catching back an unsteady breath, "but why should a mere nursery-governess place a great deal of importance in that? You also said that I wouldn't understand if you explained, and that you had your obligations . . . You said nothing to give me any confidence while you were away, and you didn't even bother to write to me! I didn't know you were coming back until this afternoon, and I felt I wanted to get right away from the house—"

"But Inez knew I was coming back several days ago! She could have told you then! . . I particularly requested her to do so!"

"Inez!" she choked, and fumbled blindly with the door handle. The tears were once more streaming down her cheeks, and she felt she wanted to die.

But his strong fingers closed over hers and removed the door handle from her clasp, and he drew her forcibly back into his arms. She no longer had the strength to fight, and she sobbed pathetically against the front of his light grey suit.

"Kathleen," he said gently, tenderly stroking her hair, "I realise now that I am entirely to blame! I should have told you more that last night in the garden; at least enough to give you absolute confidence in the future . . . Our future! Oh, my darling," appalled because she had obviously suffered, "men are clumsy, and I seem to have been particularly so! I didn't write because we none of us wanted Carmelita's marriage plans to leak out, and it seemed pointless just to send a few lines and say how much I adored you! That could wait, I thought, until I got back to you, when I would prove my adoration! And I was quite certain you would never have a doubt about it!"

"I didn't until—until! . . ." But she couldn't go on, and he finished for her, grimly:

"Until Inez behaved like a serpent in Eden! She knew very well why I had gone to Paris, but she is angry with me for refusing to allow her to set up an establishment of her own. But now she can do so without delay — any type of an establishment so long as she is away from you! She can go to an hotel straight away if she wishes . . . And take the twins with her!"

"Oh, no," Kathleen begged, "not the twins! They have been my only consolation during this past dreadful fortnight!"

"Then we will keep the twins," smiling at her tenderly but anxiously. He once more put on the roof-light and peered at her gravely. "Darling, how can you

love me when I have failed you so badly? Or perhaps," a little unsteadily, "you don't still love me?"

"I shall always love you, Miguel," she told him, pressing her face against him so that her voice was muffled, which made it seem all the more intense. "That was the dreadful part of it when I — when I thought you weren't serious!"

"Not serious?" He crushed her to him so fiercely that she thought her ribs would crack. "If I am not serious about you no man has been serious about a woman since Time began! I love you with my heart and soul, mind and body, and the one thing I crave is to call you my wife . . . Kathleen, my wife! Oh, darling, darling! . ."

And then wildly he was kissing her, and she kissed him back with the utter desperation of one who had never dared to believe that bliss like this would enfold her again.

Later they drove slowly back to the quinta, but before they did so he astounded her by admitting:

"Your sister and brother knew how I felt about you from the very beginning! Or almost the beginning! That morning after they came to dinner I called on them, and asked your brother's permission to think seriously of you. But I was so uncertain of you at that time that I begged them not to let you know, and to let matters take their course. But if I hadn't exacted that promise from them your sister-in-law Peggy could have put you out of a great deal of agony during these past weeks!" He was furious with himself. "Why did I behave so stupidly."

"Yes, why?" she asked quietly, looking at him sideways. "When I was ready to fall at your feet like an over-ripe peach from the moment you began to treat me like a human being!"

"Oh, sweetheart," he exclaimed, and groaned. "I've been the one at fault all along! But the future will make it up to you!" He glanced at his watch, and realised it was getting late. None of the noises of Amara

penetrated to their quiet retreat. "We must get back and reassure your brother and sister about your safety! And then I think we will invite them over to drink an engagement toast in champagne! And tomorrow I will find out how quickly we can be married . . ."

He felt her nestle shyly into his arms, and kissed the top of her golden head adoringly.