Master of Hearts (5 page)

"You won't go away again, will you?" Jerry wasn't interested in the remote possibility of his uncle returning and finding him where he was, but he did want to make certain his schemes—or, rather, his and Joe's—were about to receive their just reward. "You're going to stay with us now, aren't you? For a long, long time!"

"I'll stay if I'm permitted until Rosa returns."

He chuckled.

"Rosa won't return, because we frightened her. We used to jump out on her when she didn't even know we were anywhere near, and she's so fat that she quivers like jelly when she's startled! We put things in her bed—crawly things!—and hid in her cupboard amongst her clothes! She said that we spoiled her best black dress."

Kathleen smiled in the darkness, but she couldn't help feeling a certain sympathy for Rosa.

"So that was why her mother was taken ill, and she had to go home and nurse her?"

"Yes." Jerry chortled as if Rosa's unnecessary journey had afforded him much secret amusement. "So, you see, she won't come back!"

"It would be a fitting punishment for you and Joe," Kathleen told him, trying to sound severe, "if she

screwed up her courage and did come back! After all, this was probably a very well-paid post!"

"What is a well-paid post?" Jerry wanted to know, but his voice was suddenly sleepy, and he nestled against her as if he was fully prepared to remain where he was for the rest of the night. "Do you think I could go to sleep here?" he enquired. "It's very comfortable, and I like the smell of you. My Mama smells nice," stifling a yawn, "but Rosa smells of garlic!"

All at once Kathleen realised what a foolish thing she was doing by allowing Jerry to be there. She must hustle him back to his room straight away. It only needed her to be caught out yet again in irresponsible conduct of this sort for the doors of the quinta to be thrown wide to her, however badly someone was needed to look after the twins.

"No, of course you can't stay here," she said quickly. "You must be a good boy like Joe, and go back to bed at once!"

She attempted to urge him off her lap, but he clung like a limpet and it was more than she could manage to dislodge him. She had already experienced the strength of his wiry arms and hands, and now all at once she felt alarmed.

"Jerry," she pleaded, "I'll carry you back to bed! Just tell me how I can find your room. . ."

"Not until you've told me a story," with sleepy obstinacy. "One of those stories my Daddy used to tell me . . . about dragons and things!"

The darkness was wrapping them about, and the whole house was as still as a pool. She thought with a sensation of helplessness, while sudden weariness dragged at her own limbs and a sort of mental inertia clamped down on her, that the only thing she could do was tell him a story that would send him quickly to sleep, and then carry him back to his room. Somehow or other she would have to find it without help or direction.

She began on the story of Beauty and the Beast, and no sooner was it finished than he insisted on

another. He sounded drowsy, but as inflexible as ever,

and she retailed the adventures of Simon the Pieman.

"Want dragons," he insisted, as autocratic as his uncle, and wearily she told him about St. George and the Dragon. But apparently he was well versed in details she knew nothing about, and his constant interjection threw her out altogether. It had been a somewhat unusual day, with an emotional strain about it because she had been expecting to say goodbye to her closest relatives within a matter of hours, and then on top of it there had come the demand for her assistance. For several hours she had sat in a cramped position alone in a silent room, and now she was fighting drowsiness herself, and her brain began to feel as if it was made of cotton wool.

Jerry mumbled something indistinctly, and she thought how warm and cuddlesome he was in spite of his sharp little bones. His head was stirring gently with the rise and fall of her slim breasts, and one of his hands was tucked confidingly inside one of her own. Without quite realising what she was doing she drew him closer, rested her cheek against his unmanageable red hair and closed her eyes.

The warm breeze from the window stirred her hair, and the cushions against which she allowed her tired body to relax were very soft and yielding. She opened her eyes and made an effort to insist that that was all for tonight about dragons, but Jerry was asleep, a sudden leaden weight in her arms, and try as she would she couldn't stop her eyelids closing.

When finally a bright light dazzled her, and she opened them dazedly, she couldn't for the life of her think where she was. A tall man was standing looking down at her, wearing a white dinner jacket. There was a crimson flower in his lapel, and a crimson silk handkerchief was tucked negligently just inside one of his immaculate sleeves. He was extremely dark, and his eyes confused her.

With a stunning sensation of shock she realised the crime she had been guilty of.

"I'm sorry. . . . I'm so terribly sorry, I fell asleep!" he stammered.

The Conde de Chaves bent over her.

"You'd better let me take him," he said, in an expressionless voice, and removed Jerry's dead weight
f
rom her lap.

THE following morning Kathleen breakfasted alone in the window of her pleasant room, and then the maid who seemed to have been deputed to wait on her requested her to follow her. Kathleen both looked and felt extremely uneasy, and a little bewildered. The maid had no idea why uneasiness pressed upon her as if it was something that could be experienced physically as well as mentally, and she led the way along numerous thickly-carpeted corridors until at last they arrived at a series of airy, pastel-tinted nurseries.

Nothing more—nothing more capable of consolidating alarm. Just a big Day Nursery, and an even bigger Night Nursery, with bathrooms and a kitchen for the preparation of childish meals. And in the Day Nursery Jeronimo and Joseph were busily waving cereal spoons, while 'Old Maria,' as they called her, selected a couple of deliciously ripe nectarines from the dish of fruit on the table and prepared one for each of them.

Joseph thrust aside his cereal bowl at sight of Kathleen, and let loose a whoop of delight. Jeronimo smiled at her conspiratorially, as if he understood that they shared a secret and that at all costs it must remain so.

But Kathleen thought wryly that the repercussions would catch up with her before very long. This was just a respite—this glimpse of the children's quarters; and while she waited for the second summons that would sever her brief connection with the quinta she went round helping Maria put away books and toys that had been scattered about carelessly the day before, and between them they restored something like order to a room that had recently been redecorated and furnished at considerable cost.

There were delightful water-colours on the walls, birds and flowers executed with exquisite precision on the door panels, and huge glistening cupboards for the

reception of the twins' possessions. And it said something for the generosity of their uncle that they seemed to have numerous possessions as costly as everything else that surrounded them.

Maria really was old, and she had difficulty in bending her rheumaticky limbs to pick up woolly dogs and stray railway engines from under inconvenient side tables, and the children shrieked with delight every time her joints creaked protestingly and she uttered a little agonised grunt. Kathleen smiled with something of an effort because they were in such high spirits, but she had already recognised that they were a slightly inhuman pair who might require the sternest dealing with in time. She herself was not likely to have to deal with them at all after the night before, but because they had taken a tremendous fancy to her they were moderately amendable to her wishes, and when she told them to stop laughing at Maria they stopped.

Maria shook her fist at them.

"They are the Devil's children," she said, and shook her head at Kathleen. "I wish you joy of them, senhorita!"

Kathleen was convinced that the joy would be short-lived. Last night the Conde—possibly because she had been utterly unable to defend herself, awakened from sleep as she had been—had said little to condemn her for encouraging his nephew to leave his bed at night, but his very silence had spoken volumes to Kathleen. That, and the way he had taken Jerry from her.

She had stumbled to her feet, and tried to rub the sleep out of her eyes. The glow of light in the room still confused her.

"I am so sorry, senhor! . . ." But her apologies were a trifle inarticulate. "I can't think how it happened. . . ."

"Perhaps if you would be so good as to lead the way," he returned quietly, "we can restore him to his bed without it becoming necessary to wake him."

"Of course, senhor!" Somehow she got the door open, and stood aside for him in the corridor. "But as I don't knew the way won't you, please, go ahead?"

"You don't know the way?" His eyebrows ascended. "You have not yet made acquaintance with the nurseries?"

"No, senhor."

"But, how does it come about that this child . . .?" His black eyebrows knitted for a moment as he looked down at his sleeping nephew, and then he gazed expressionlessly at Kathleen. "No matter. Explanations can wait. Follow me and hold open the door when I request you, and I still think this amazing infant can be placed in his bed undisturbed."

Kathleen obeyed him, and it seemed to her that they passed along endless miles of softly-lit corridor before they finally reached a distant wing of the house where the Night Nursery door was standing open, and Joe was slumbering like an angel in his own little pastel-blue bed.

The lighting was so dim that it was scarcely lighting at all, but it was sufficient to prevent the boys from experiencing alarm if they wakened in nightmarish agitation. Jerry was slid expertly into his bed by his uncle, and Kathleen just as expertly arranged the covers over him, so that he never once stirred. And then the two adults stood for a moment looking down on the small freckled face that was so peaceful and angelic in sleep—possibly more so than that of Joe, who had nothing at all on his conscience—and finally stepped back into the sable shadows beyond the reach of the nightlight.

The Conde didn't speak, as he moved to the door, and Kathleen followed him. Outside it she realised that he was looking down at her.

"The child came to look for you?"

"Yes." She made a little gesture with her hands. "But, it was only because—because he thought he heard my voice! Or Joe thought he heard it. . . . And then he wanted me to tell him a story."

"And you both fell asleep."

"Yes."

It was such a dreadful confession that she could hardly get the word out.

Miguel de Chaves' face remained absolutely expressionless, but he placed the tips of two fingers under her elbow and guided her back along the corridors. Outside her room she turned to him, wishing her brain felt more alert and more capable of framing sentences that would put her contrition into words, but he gave her no opportunity to say anything, and merely asked rather curtly:

"Filippo looked after you well when you went down to dinner?"

"I didn't go down to dinner, senhor. I had a tray sent up to my room."

"You—what?" There was no doubt about the frown that creased his brows this time.

"I had a meal on a tray in my room. It was all, and more, than I wanted."

"But that was entirely opposed to my instructions!" She sensed trouble for somebody—possibly Filippo! —and elaborated swiftly:

"It was a beautiful arranged tray! And I have such a pleasant room that I shall be very happy to have my meals there." She could have added, If you decide against booting me out in the morning!

But the Conde was plainly displeased.

"In this house people do not have meals in their rooms unless an indisposition confines them to them," he told her. "In future you will dine always in the main dining-salon, although your charges are too young to behave properly at table. And now I would advise you to go to bed."

"About tonight, senhor—"

"We will discuss that in the morning," he said brusquely, and turned on his gleaming heel and left her.

And now it was morning, and Kathleen was beginning to feel like a prisoner who was to learn of her

sentence when the judge felt disposed to put her out of her agony.

The children finished their breakfast, and then demanded to be entertained. Jerry had a model aeroplane which he wanted her to assist him to reduce to its component parts, while Joe had a weakness for jig-saw puzzles, and brought out a pile from one of the capacious cupboards. Neither of them were interested in Lessons, and seemed to think it a waste of time to attempt to read any one of the numerous books that were neatly arranged on the white-painted shelves. They were familiar enough with the pictures, and as Joe explained:

"Mama reads to us when her head is all right. Rosa can only read Portuguese."

Jerry celebrated the departure of Rosa by snatching all the Portuguese books off the shelf and scattering them far and wide.

Kathleen recognised that even if she was permitted to stay, her task—if she was to gain any real control over these tumultuous twins—was to be no easy one. And the thought added to her uneasiness as she waited for the second summons of the morning, which when it finally came set her heart beating as if it was carelessly attached to the end of a string that dangled down inside her.