by Susan Barrie
CHAPTER TWELVE
Inez made frequent excuses after that to look in at the quinta and the newly-weds, and her bright little blue car was often to be seen sitting on the drive at the foot of the flight of steps leading up to the impressive front door.
She usually selected the hour for aperitifs, either in the morning or the evening; but sometimes she arrived immediately after breakfast, and suggested carrying Kathie off to the nearby shopping centre of Torfao, where she could introduce her to a first-class hairdresser, or milliner, or shoe-shop. Kathie usually refused, whereupon Inez decided that she was feeling very lazy and would like nothing better than a morning of idling, and she would spend the whole morning in the gardens of the quinta, looking picturesque in one of the superbly comfortable chairs, with Sebastiao ordering cool drinks for her. Once or twice they went down on to the beach to bathe, but Inez was not enthusiastic about bathing, having the typical Portuguese lethargy that prefers to he about in the sun and look helpless.
And, Kathie had to admit, no one could have looked more attractively helpless than Inez Peniche, in her heavy white silk dresses, or chic black and white, with gem-encrusted bracelets halfway up her arms, and clusters of jewels in the shell-like lobes of her ears.
She had a way of smiling at Kathie — provocatively, sometimes — as if she knew she couldn’t help but admire her, but would have preferred not to do so. And she smiled at Sebastiao as if she knew he couldn’t help but admire her too, and she was determined that he should go on admiring her. At the same time she apologized constantly for troubling them so often, when she was quite sure they wished to be alone.
But, as she said this, her lovely dark eyes would look amused and doubtful, and a little too nakedly questioning — particularly when they alighted on Sebastiao’s face — and when neither of them answered she would he back in her chair and declare they were both very long-suffering.
“But it is so good to have you here with us again, Sebastiao!” She would stretch forth a hand to him, and if he was near enough rest it on his arm. “I can’t tell you how good! And it is so dull since I came back from France! You will just have to put up with me,” and her eyes would plead with him.
Sometimes Sebastiao looked rather awkward, and he would try to remove her hand from his arm without appearing to do so.
“So long as there is no more nonsense about your French lawyer,” he said once, a little brusquely.
Her scarlet lips parted, and her teeth gleamed impishly.
“I honestly believe you are a bit jealous of my poor Etienne, Sebastiao,” she resumed. And then the smile became soft and beguiling, and seductive as well. “But how foolish! It was just an affair.”
“You have too many affairs,” Sebastiao told her.
“True.” All at once she became sombre. “And at heart I am so tired of them — so very tired of them! All I secretly yearn for is an opportunity to settle down with the man I love and be happy!”
As Kathie made an instinctive move as if she would leave them, she looked round at her slowly.
“I wish for lots of children, and to be a wonderful wife and mother. To sink into the background of the home, as my own mother did years ago, and to have few aims that are outside it ... In fact, none at all! Is that what you wish for, Kathie? Is your ambition to provide Sebastiao with an heir, and brothers and sisters to keep him company? As any true Portuguese woman would!” She half raised herself in her chair, as if she was challenging the girl from Eire, where they did not talk openly about these things. “Is it?”
Kathie felt almost dismayed, and the color rushed up over her cheeks and brow in a crimson tide. For one instant she looked at Sebastiao appealingly.
“I — I don’t know...”
Inez uttered an exclamation.
“Then what other ambition can you have? I do not understand.” She lay back again in her chair, but she seemed very taut. “I do not understand this marriage at all, and that is the truth! To me it is the strangest possible marriage, for neither of you appear to be happy in it. Or, if you are, you conceal it admirably!” Sebastiao spoke with dangerous quietness:
“I think that is enough, Inez!”
“Oh!” She made a little petulant movement with her shoulders. “I am not like you, Sebastiao ... I am all Portuguese, and therefore there is no ice in my blood! I am impulsive, and I say things, and I do things...” She spread her hands. “But I realize there are some things I should not say, and now you will find it hard to forgive me.” She went down the steps forlornly to her car, but before she reached it she turned back and appealed to them both. “Tonight is the night of my mother’s dinner party. You will not stay away, will you?”
“I don’t know,” the Marques answered, rather haughtily. “I think it is highly possible that we will.”
But Kathie said with strange quietness and evenness, considering the perturbation inside her:
“Don’t worry. We will come.”
When Inez’s car had disappeared down the drive, Sebastiao walked to the far end of the terrace, and then came back and spoke awkwardly to his wife.
“I’m sorry about that, Kathie.” His dark blue eyes were genuinely concerned. “Inez had no right to talk to you like that.”
Kathie stared across the parapet at the greenness of the lawns, and the darkness of the shrubberies, against , the blue of the sky. She felt curiously deflated just then, as if she was a balloon that had received rather a vicious prick that had taken a lot of unexpected air out of her and she wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do to ward off future pricks. Her fingers clutched at the parapet, and she kept her eyes averted from Sebastiao’s. Sooner or later they would have to discuss Inez ... almost certainly. But not now. She wasn’t in any mood to discuss her now, and there wasn’t a great deal of point in it. Inez wasn’t merely shrewd, she was assembling a number of interesting pointers that all indicated one thing...
“Oh, I don’t know,” she replied at last. “It is bound to be obvious that we’re not a normal honeymoon couple, and Inez realized it immediately she came here and met me. To begin with, I can’t be at all what she expected, and to go on with — we don’t behave like a honeymoon couple!”
He was silent.
She stood there, with the light breeze blowing her flowered frock about her and revealing the delicate outlines of her shape, the whiteness of her accessories emphasizing the curious purity of her skin, and the rich tawniness of her hair. And suddenly she struck him as both youthful and wise — sadly, and even tragically, wise, as if she had been looking into a witch-ball and had discovered the way she might have behaved if circumstances hadn’t rushed her off her feet.
“And I think you rather underlined the fact that we are not a normal married couple when you admitted that you hadn’t any clear recollection of what I wore at our wedding.”
“That was a mistake, of course,” he admitted. “It was a mistake, because it wasn’t what I meant ... I can remember very clearly how you looked at the wedding, and you could hardly have looked more charming!”
“Thank you,” she murmured, but she didn’t smile or look complimented. She merely sounded mechanical. “It doesn’t matter now how I looked, and I don’t suppose it was ever very important. Lady Fitzosborne and my mother both looked as if they were completely deceived about the reasons for our marriage, but we could hardly expect to go on deceiving people. Not people like Senhorita Peniche, and Mr. Bolton.”
He asked in rather a surprised voice:
“You think Bolton wasn’t deceived?”
“I’m quite certain he wasn’t deceived.”
“But confound it!” Sebastiao exclaimed, as if he was suddenly furiously annoyed. “What right have outsiders to seek an explanation for our marriage? It doesn’t matter to them whether we married for love, or whether we were not — in love — or what our feelings were, and are, for one another. And it certainly is no concern whatsoever of a fellow like Bolton, and I’d like to tell him so when he rolls up he
re again!”
Kathie looked at him with large, clear, thoughtful eyes.
“In that case, it isn’t really any concern of Senhorita Peniche, is it? And at least Mr. Bolton didn’t ask me how large a family I intended to provide you with.”
Sebastiao frowned almost forbiddingly, and turned away from her.
“Inez didn’t mean to be rude, and our Portuguese women are inclined to think more about the production of families than you, or any other Irish girl, would. It’s not an obsession with them, it’s their natural bent. And in my case the family is all-important ... an eventual heir, and so forth! To the Barrateira estates...”
“Then you should have married to produce an heir,” Kathie told him quietly. “And I can’t think of anyone more suitable to be the mother of such an heir than Inez Peniche!”
Sebastiao turned back and glanced at her, and his expression was almost startled.
“Why do you keep dragging in Inez’s name?”
“Perhaps because she is so frequently here that I find it difficult to forget her,” Kathie said, and turned and walked in through the open windows to the sala, leaving him alone on the terrace.
That night he waited for her in the shadowy opulence of the hall, and his whole attitude seemed very stiff when she joined him at the foot of the staircase. She was wearing the white silk jersey dress she had worn the night before her wedding, and Lady Fitzosborne’s pearls made her throat look slim and perfect.
The Marques was wearing full evening dress, and it was not the type of evening dress he had worn for formal occasions in London. He wore a white shell jacket and a black silk cummerbund, and the diamonds in his shirtcuffs had the impressive sparkle of those with which his stepmother so frequently adorned her person.
Kathie felt her pulse quicken as she gazed at him, and when she stood at his side, the soft shimmer of the great swinging lantern in the far-away roof of the hall cast a kind of magic aura over both of them. It enclosed them in a golden web of light, in which Kathie’s darker head was a cap of burning metal, and Sebastiao’s wheat-gold one was a singularly beautiful and shapely head for a man.
But only for a bare second or so did they share the warmth of that light, and then Sebastiao looked into Kathie’s eyes to discover whether they held any indications of nervousness, and said with stiff reassurance:
“You need not feel alarmed at the prospect of meeting fresh people tonight. The Peniche family is a particularly charming family, and their friends are all my friends. You will not meet anyone you will not like, and of course they all speak English.”
Which was as well, Kathie thought, since she had acquired only a very few words of Portuguese.
He led her towards the door. Outside his white car waited.
“Is—is Mr. Bolton likely to be there?” she heard herself asking, aware that she was feeling nervous — more nervous, perhaps, than she had ever felt in her life before, for now was an occasion when she might be found out by quite a large number of people, and as a result dark eyebrows would raise themselves, and tongues would wag discreetly when she had left.
This is not a marriage for love, or a marriage for any particular reason that strikes the eye! ... The girl is young and gauche, and very uncertain of herself, and her family could be anything. Very respectable, and possible quite an excellent family ... But she was not born a marquesa! And she is not even certain of her husband ... She looks at him as if she needs his support, but would be afraid to ask for it! And he looks at her when he remembers her, and with nothing more than friendliness!
But, although these thoughts unnerved her in the car, when they actually arrived at the Peniche house, Kathie found that it was not to be such an alarming experience after all. For one thing, Papa Peniche was an extraordinarily kindly and courteous host, and the mother of Inez was a far gentler type than her daughter. She was plump and still pretty, in a Portuguese way, and in common with all the other ladies present — with the exception, that is, of Inez — she wore very, very costly black. Inez had evidently made up her mind to be as arresting as possible, and her slim body was clothed in scarlet.
She came up to Kathie as if she already looked upon her as an extremely close friend, and whispered with effusive gratitude:
“I am so glad you persuaded him to come after all!” Her great dark eyes rolled round with affected timidity at Sebastiao’s nearness. “It was generous of you, when I was so abominably rude!”
But that was the sum total of her friendliness towards Kathie that evening. At dinner she sat between a couple of very personable young men, and flirted outrageously with both of them, and after dinner she disappeared into the garden with one of them, and finally returned to attach herself to Sebastiao. Kathie had the feeling that she had planned to do that all evening.
The Peniche home was dignified and sumptuous, but it lacked a little of the supreme elegance of the Barrateira quinta. Senhor Peniche was a rich man, and very much looked up to locally, but he could not claim as exalted a position as the Marques in the district, and he was not the local lion that Sebastiao was. Kathie became aware of the awe inspired by Sebastiao almost as soon as they arrived, and she realized that as Sebastiao’s wife she need not have worried about her reception. Both she and her husband were behaving with extreme condescension in accepting this dinner invitation — or so it was gradually borne in on her — and the faint reverence in the eyes of bejewelled elderly ladies and beautifully-mannered men (both old and young) considerably surprised and touched her.
Living with Sebastiao she had rather grown away from the thought of him as a young man who adorned a lofty position, and she had certainly never begun to think of herself as sharing that lofty position. But now all at once she became aware that she was a figure of tremendous interest to the unusually large number of guests — for a dinner party which Inez had described as quite informal, and just a gathering of a few friends — who had come there that night for the sole purpose of meeting her. There was nothing critical in their glances, and if most of the women struck her as much more reserved than the women she was accustomed to meet, and few of them had much conversation, she was almost immediately put at her ease by the absence of any feeling of ‘summing her up with the object of discussing her later on’.
Almost certainly they would discuss her, but not, she began to feel quite sure, in the way she had imagined they might discuss her.
The men were attentive in a way that rather charmed her, treating her to an excessive deference, but letting her see by their looks that they thought her an exceedingly attractive young woman. In fact, one or two of the younger followed her movements with lustrous eyes that grew several degrees brighter and more lustrous if she accidentally glanced up and smiled at them uncertainly.
She sat on the host’s right hand at dinner, and afterwards a cousin of Inez ventured to install himself on a settee beside her and sought to entertain her by describing the beauties of Portugal to her. He was a young man who reminded her very much of the glamorous young man who had attended her wedding, and had attached himself to Eileen. He had the same thick black curly hair, eyes that told her a little audaciously that he envied Sebastiao, and a way of speaking English that fascinated her because it was so altogether faultless.
She felt a little ashamed of herself for owning no Portuguese, and her schoolgirl French was rather worse than schoolgirl.
By comparison with these smooth and accomplished people, she was a little raw — or so she began to believe. Every one of them could chatter to her in her own tongue, once shyness or awkwardness was overcome, and Inez spoke several languages, in addition to being able to paint competently and discuss high politics with her father’s elderly friends. And she was far and away the loveliest thing in the room, which contained many priceless ornaments and some portraits of past beauties.
Her cousin Gil was eager to convince Kathie that once she had really settled down she would never wish to leave Portugal, and in his enthusiasm he sat close to her, and looked
at her very earnestly. She was not to know that he had a reputation for seizing every opportunity to ingratiate himself with attractive women, whether married or single, and for that reason he was somewhat frowned upon by his relatives. Inez could have warned her, but Inez was in the garden, making plans of her own, and Sebastiao was putting himself out to be particularly charming to a couple of elderly dowagers.
He glanced across at Kathie one or twice, and frowned. When she had asked him whether Robert Bolton would be amongst the guests he had looked surprised, and then replied somewhat shortly that there was a possibility. He hadn’t realized that Kathie, in her infinite strangeness, and without any of the confidence that a true marriage would have given her, was clinging to the thought of someone like Bolton to talk to, and relieve her shyness. And now, although she had been so well received by everyone present, she still felt curiously lost and alone, with Sebastiao on the far side of the room, and the inferiority complex that had attacked her. And because the young man beside her was so openly admiring — not even sharing Bolton’s surprise because the Marques had married her — and had been to Eire, and knew London very well, and there was a lot to talk about, she went on talking to him just as eagerly as he talked to her, and was unaware that one or two of the stricter ladies present began to look a little surprised.
