by Susan Barrie
Kathie stooped first to pick up the rose, then she looked down at Sebastiao; He was wearing a rough terry-towelling dressing-gown, and a towel was tucked underneath his arm. His eyes were a blaze of blue in the sunshine.
“Come down and join me for a bathe,” Sebastiao called. “It won’t be too hot for another hour.”
Kathie hesitated, and then fully realizing that it was him, for the first time she blushed. She blushed because she was standing there in a gossamer robe that was more like a wisp of cloud-wrack draping her, and her bright hair was tousled just as she had sprung out of bed. And she was holding the white rose as if it was something precious, and she could hardly believe it was for her, and altogether she made quite a memorable picture for a man to gaze at, even if he was not in the least susceptible.
“You startled me,” she confessed, her golden brown eyes all golden-brown confusion. And then she retreated for her dressing-gown and came back to him. “What did you say about — about a bathe?” she asked.
Sebastiao smiled.
“I said it won’t be too hot for another hour. Come down!” he reiterated.
She slipped into a yellow swimsuit and a white beach- robe, and joined him on the terrace. He gave her an extraordinarily warm smile, and then reached for her hand and led her through the garden. When they arrived on the beach they plunged into the sea, and all Kathie’s wretched mood of the night before fled away from her, and once more she was on the brink of something new and exciting in her marriage to Sebastiao.
A faintly possible brink that needed only a miracle (and miracles did happen!) to provide her with undreamed-of happiness, and transform every waking moment for her.
In this mood she forgot Inez — and if she remembered her at all it was only to feel complacency because Inez couldn’t swim; she could only look decorative on the edge of the shore, with a sun umbrella spread open above her, and a bottle of sun-tan lotion on the sand beside her to prevent any possible harm to her skin.
But Kathie could swim — strongly and effortlessly — and so could Sebastiao. They were a perfect pair in the water, and away from the land and all its civilizing influences they behaved like a couple of contented seals, with no other thought but to challenge one another to races, and follow each other on to sun-warmed rocks and sit there with the sea-water drying on their bodies. Kathie’s was a delicate white body that would never really tan, but would always resemble a graceful piece of ivory; Sebastiao was splendidly fit, and without any surplus flesh on his body, and he was tanned by the sun in many corners of the world.
As they sat there with the steam rising from the rocks, and the early morning coolness vanishing even as they sat there, and a whole expanse of glittering ocean with a warm, oily swell immediately before their eyes, Kathie was aware of her husband’s gaze resting on her occasionally with a queer sort of intensity. At other moments he gazed at the sea, and she wondered whether he thought of those bright Bahaman waters where his happiness had come to an end.
Where an adored woman had been snatched away from him.
The thought made her grow restless, and she turned as if she would leave the rock. But he put out a hand and grasped her wrist.
“Don’t go yet, Kathie! I like being alone with you.” She gazed at him, almost as if he had startled her, and he said a little doggedly:
“Is that so strange? You’re my wife, and you’re very, very lovely! This morning, when I stood watching you on your balcony, I thought you were the loveliest thing I’d ever seen. You made me hold my breath, and I even hesitated to throw that rose at you, although I picked it especially for you!”
The rose! ... She had stopped to place it in water before she joined him on the terrace, and when she went back to her bedroom it would be there waiting for her. True, it was a white rose, and not a red one — but it was her rose, and he admitted he had picked it especially for her!
She found she couldn’t meet his eyes when he lay sideways on the rock and gazed at her. All she could think was that it was unlike her not to have snatched up a dressing-gown before she stepped out on to the balcony, and if she had known that he would be there watching her, she would at least have combed her hair. She was afraid she had looked very tousled.
But he smiled as if he read her thoughts.
“You looked adorable ... Kathie!” He bent forward and ran his fingers up one of her slim bare arms. “Will you believe me when I tell you that one day our marriage will work out? It will! ... And we’ll know the reason why you couldn’t say no when I asked you to marry me, and why I knew I was going to ask you to marry me on that very first afternoon when you turned on the electric fire for me in Lady Fitz’s Garden Room!”
Kathie couldn’t say anything, and she felt his fingers closing more firmly about her arm. He looked at the creamy hollows in her shoulder — the one that was nearest him — and suddenly he bent and rested his lips against them.
Kathie felt as if an electric shock sped up and down her arm, and her shoulder was suddenly on fire. She managed somehow or other to scramble to her feet, and he stood up as well. His blue eyes seemed to be all dark pupil, but the thickness of his lashes and the direct rays of the sun screened this from her.
“I’ve written to ask Bridie to come out here and join you for a while,” he told her. “I think you are too much cut off from your own people, and Eileen can accompany your mother on the cruise. Bridie will be good for you.”
But Kathie was almost dismayed. He had told her he liked to be alone with her, and now he was going to put a member of her family between them — and one, moreover, as shrewd as Bridie, who would gather immediately that things between them were not as they should be! She nearly said, “Oh no, no!” but the memory of his kiss wouldn’t let her. She was still too confused by that kiss to know quite what was happening to her.
He swung her up into his arms and lifted her off the rock, and carried her across the sand to where they had left their beach-robes. He draped hers round her, and then went up the path to the quinta. And all the way he had his arm resting lightly along her shoulders.
“And now to breakfast,” he said softly, when they reached the terrace. “On your balcony, I think,” looking up at it almost with affection.
Usually they breakfasted alone on their respective balconies, but this was a new departure. Kathie felt as if the whole of the day must be perfect after this.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
For the next few days they saw nothing at all of Inez, but Robert Bolton, when he came to see them, told them she was in Lisbon.
“I thought you knew,” he said, looking rather hard at Sebastiao. “She told me she had something to do for you in Lisbon.”
Sebastiao looked almost bored.
“Did she? Oh, well, perhaps I did ask her to do something.”
Bolton turned his attention to Kathie, who seemed to have bloomed a little since he saw her last. Her brown eyes smiled at him, and there was a kind of tranquillity about her as she lay in her chair, an assurance. She was obviously settling down, and her father’s death was affecting her much less as the days passed. She would never forget him, but the anguish of grief was passing. And she hadn’t got that lost look about her that she had when he first met her, as if she would never be quite sure how, or why, she came to Portugal.
“You’re looking very well, Kathie,” he told her. “I believe Portugal is going to suit you.”
“Of course it is,” Sebastiao said complacently. “Kathie has never lived in the sun before.”
In the sun before...? Bolton wondered, thoughtfully, what did he mean by that? That she had never been accustomed to large doses of sun, or that, for the first time in her life, she was getting what she wanted? A husband’s love, and a husband’s tenderness, and a husband’s passion? The artist didn’t believe it. Kathie was not unwakened, but she was as inexperienced as she had ever been, with no real knowledge of life at all. He was as certain of that as when he first saw her.
Then what was lapping her
about with contentment for the moment? The promise of happiness in the future?
His eyes grew grave as he watched her, and when the moment for parting came he pressed her hand.
“Don’t forget I’m going to paint you one day,” he said.
“But not yet.” Sebastiao spoke quite sharply. “Kathie is to be left alone for the present.”
“I have no intention of asking your wife to pose for me yet awhile,” Bolton returned a trifle enigmatically. And he added even more enigmatically, “She is not ready to be painted yet!”
That night Sebastiao took Kathie out to dine at a little restaurant in Torfao, and afterwards they danced together. It was the very first time she had been held in his arms on a glistening floor, while a band played soft sambas and rumbas and tangos, and the experience made her feel light-headed. In London they had done one or two things together, and had gone sight-seeing in company with Lady Fitzosborne and the Dowager Marquesa, but they had never done anything but look on at dancing. In Lisbon there had been one night when they had visited a cabaret, but they had not danced. Now, when she was being lulled by a strange sort of happiness—or that promise of happiness she was hugging to herself!—she discovered that her husband was a perfect dancer. And although she might not have done so veil with anyone else — owing to lack of experience — he obviously found her a very satisfactory performer too, for he told her so as they circled the floor, and the lowered lights made the setting seem dreamy and unreal.
“You were born to dance, Kathie,” he whispered, against her hair. “Why haven’t we done this before?” The orchestra was one of the finest along the coast, the night was warm, and the sound of the sea came in through the open windows. The floral decorations filled the air with an exotic aroma, and so did the fragrance of cigarette smoke and after-dinner cigars. Champagne corks continually popped, and white-coated waiters weaved their way amongst the tables.
Sebastiao led Kathie back to their table, and she knew that quite a few pairs of eyes watched them. He was such an arresting figure in his white dinner jacket, with his golden hair and dark skin, and she realized that it was probably very well known that he was the Marques de Barrateira. She herself was wearing the loveliest dress she had ever worn, and the one most suited to her looks. It was water-lily green, with a frosting of diamante on the bodice and the single shoulder-strap, and Sebastiao had insisted on her wearing a little of the Barrateira jewellery. Most of it had gone away to be completely re-set, but a pair of diamond bracelets with some emeralds flashing in the midst of the white fire had been just right for her wrists, and a matching pair of earrings. They were all she wore, and her neck was quite bare, and creamily perfect. Sebastiao had always seemed fascinated by her neck, and his eyes were on it now as her own eyes glowed at him across the table.
Then he met the glow of the brown eyes, and smiled with a tinge of amusement.
“I believe you were also born to make other women stare at you, Kathie,” he remarked. “Every woman in this room must be envying you the way you light up after a single glass of champagne and a few dances.”
He poured more champagne into her glass — it was pink, and caught all the rays of light in the room.
“I’ve never had very much opportunity to dance,” she admitted. “But I love it.” She thought, and all the women in the room are envying me the wedding ring on my finger, because it’s so obviously new, and links me with you! He led her out on to the floor again. This time she seemed to melt into his arms, and his blue gaze softened. She was so slender and unsubstantial, and the crown of her shining head was on a level with the tip of his chin. When he looked down he could see the white shoulder gleaming at him, and the gentle curve of her breasts. His eyes didn’t merely soften, they altered their expression entirely; but she didn’t see it because she was staring dreamily at his own shoulder, covered by the immaculate white dinner jacket.
She was thinking that if she never had another perfect evening in her life, this would be something to remember. Just the two of them, dancing ... and the knowledge between them that they were man and wife! It probably didn’t mean a thing to him, but to her it brought the stars into the room, and the shimmer of the moonlit sea, and the thick scent of all the night-blossoming flowers. It was sheerest, pulse-quickening magic. Frightening magic! Uneasy magic when it might never be anything more than magic!...
Sebastiao looked down into her dazed brown eyes, and he smiled at her very gently.
“Had enough?” he asked. “Shall we go home now?”
She nodded.
“Yes. If you think we should.”
“It’s late,” he said.
In the car she sat beside him at the wheel, and she hadn’t any need of anything round her shoulders, the air coming through the windows was so soft and warm. It reminded her of the caress of silk, and in itself was intoxicating. Portuguese nights were warming up with the approach of June in a way that English nights never did, and they were too languorously beautiful to waste indoors. Or so Kathie thought, in a slightly light-headed and regretful way, as the long white car approached the quinta. She wanted to go on and on through the night, with Sebastiao beside her, and not part from him outside the door of her room.
But outside the door of her room she was suddenly curiously anxious to part from him. He couldn’t persuade her to have anything to drink, so he took her by the shoulders and swung her round to face him. The light in the sitting-room was discreet and veiled, for there was only a tall standard lamp switched on, and the upper part of his face was in shadow, but she could see his faintly smiling mouth, and the hard white gleam of his teeth. His chin was very noticeable, too, square and strong and inflexible. Suddenly she had the feeling that the smiling mouth was not really smiling at her ... That he was smiling at some thought of his own, and if she could see his eyes they would reveal a strange mixture of emotions. Regret, perhaps — almost certainly regret, because she wasn’t someone else — and memories ... And indecision, a faint gleam of something that was not interest, but was definitely concerned with herself, because she was a woman, and attractive ... and she was his wife!
Suddenly she felt almost terrified as his hands went on gripping her shoulders, and a sick sensation of revulsion swept over her. It wasn’t enough for her that she was a woman, and his wife ... It never would be enough! She would have to be the woman, or nothing —nothing at all! Just Kathie, who was a daily companion and would one day have to entertain his guests, and behave like a hostess in her own home. Kathie, who had a sympathetic way with her, and was easy to live with, and was keeping him safe from entanglements. Or was she?
She gave an uneasy twist, and he let her go, and then switched on another, more powerful light. Now she could see his eyes, and they were very darkly blue, and glittering, and questioning ... Perhaps a little surprised!
“You did enjoy tonight, didn’t you, Kathie?” he asked quietly.
She nodded.
“And we’ll repeat it ... Of course we’ll repeat it!” He moved close to her once more, but she backed a little. He frowned. “You looked so lovely, Kathie, and I’m sure everyone thought I was an exceptionally fortunate man to have you for a wife. I could feel eyes glued to your wedding ring, and other eyes resting on my back. They were all saying the same thing. Where did you find her? Not here in Portugal, for she could only be a part of a very cool emerald isle where they breed young women like her!” He was smiling at her now, warmly, coaxingly, with a sparkle of gay humor. “Half dryad, half flesh and blood, and wholly disturbing! Kathie, you can’t think how much I approve of myself because I married you! It was probably the only sensible thing I’ve ever done in my life!”
But at the glow that came into her eyes, the distinct caress, she drew back still farther. She was still retreating when he caught her by the hands and drew her forcibly up against him.
“You seem to forget that we are married, Kathie,” he said huskily.
At that she felt so angry that she twisted all ways to a
void him. It was he who had walked out on to the balcony on her wedding night and left her without any real knowledge of what he expected of her. It was he who had slept composedly only a few yards away from her on that same night, and greeted her in the morning as if he had acquired a new, young sister instead of a wife. And it was he who had reminded her, only a few nights ago, that their marriage had been for reasons that had nothing to do with the normal reasons a couple elected to spend their life together.
“I want to go to bed,” she said, with breathless insistence, as his hard, firm fingers bruised her wrists. “I’m tired, and I want to go to bed!”
He was holding her hands high up on his shoulders, so that she could grasp the lapels of his jacket if she wished, and she could see the blaze of his blue eyes as they came nearer. He was laughing at her, in addition to being quite determined to frustrate her efforts to escape, and there was something bruising and bewildering about his soft laughter, and something that filled her with panic about his unruffled determination.
But in spite of the laughter his voice grew huskier.
“I’ve wanted to do this all evening, Kathie,” he told her, and bent his head until his lips had fastened over hers. Still holding her without touching any part of her save her hands, he caused the bright head to sway backwards and her fingers automatically to clutch at him as he withdrew his mouth and pressed it against each of her eyes, the lovely cream throat, the pale exposed shoulder, and finally took possession of her mouth again. When at last he let go her hands and slid his arms round her she was trembling as if nothing could ever induce her stop doing so, and her eyes were blind with hurt. And wide with wonder.
