'You will both come across and join my party, yes? I'm sorry if you would prefer to have Miss Cunninghame to yourself, Mr. Ironside, but she is, after all, an employee of mine, and I would like to introduce her to one or two people at my table.'
Frank had, by this time, drunk rather a lot of champagne, and he was in a mood to be really expansive and to enjoy himself. Sarah, he had sensed, was in no such mood, and although he deplored it he could, apparently, do nothing about it, and it seemed to him a pity that an evening that was likely to cost him quite a lot should be spoiled because of a lack of co-operation on the part of Sarah. So the party at Saratola's table looked as if they were all bent on having a very good time indeed, and one or two of the younger women were most attractive, in an exciting Portuguese way, and as an American with a lot of American charm he might get on very well with them ... or at least one of them.
By this time he was inclined to look reproachfully at Sarah for being what he described to himself as a spoilsport, when their friendship had begun so promisingly and he was even prepared to grow quite serious about her if she wished. But it was beginning to be fairly clear to him that she didn't wish.
So - somewhat to Sarah's surprise and almost equal embarrassment - he accepted Saratola's invitation with alacrity, and the three of them moved over to be introduced to the assembly at the other table, who were sufficiently good-mannered to conceal any surprise they felt at the suddenness of the introductions. Sarah could not have been absolutely certain about it, but she thought that one of the elder ladies looked at her somewhat askance, and one of the younger ones greeted her a trifle ^coldly. But Frank seemed to go down very well indeed with everybody, and was soon installed between an elderly Portuguese dowager and one of her younger daughters, while Sarah found herself wedged between Saratola himself and a charming white-haired Portuguese aristocrat who behaved towards her as if she was someone very important, and seemed to recall having met her aunt on one occasion, and been considerably impressed by her. Which was not surprising, as most people were impressed by Aunt Constance.
The champagne at Saratola's table was of a better quality than that ordered by Frank, but Sarah made scarcely any inroads on the glass that was set before her. She was acutely aware of her employer seated near to her, and whenever she lifted her eyes he seemed to be studying her in a perfectly courteous manner, but without Very much interest.
His neighbour on his other side claimed far more of his attention, and Sarah was grateful for her elderly Portuguese, for he was someone to talk to who did not make her feel in the slightest degree embarrassed, and after an evening of tension and strange mental torment it was a relief to discuss Aunt Constance and the reason why she had gone to Istanbul, and might be going on from there to somewhere as far afield as New Zealand as soon as she had tired of the Turkish capital.
She had the feeling that Saratola was listening to her conversation with his elderly friend, but he didn't attempt to break in on it, and when the music recommenced it was a member of his own party whom he asked to dance, not her.
The same thing happened again and again ... and still he did not ask to dance with Sarah. Frank danced several times with members of the party, and when he asked Sarah to dance she refused, on the grounds that she was developing a slight headache.
She saw Saratola glance at her, but he did not comment. Her elderly friend, who seemed to have appropriated her by this time, went on talking soothingly, and if she really was developing a headache it vanished Tinder his soothing treatment.
She tried to catch Frank's eye from time to time, and to ask him to drive her home. But Frank was enjoying himself very much indeed, and she knew he was no longer bothering very much about her. She even began to wonder whether he would be willing to drive her home, and if not how she would get there. She could scarcely appeal to her employer to drive her back.
The whole long-drawn-out evening was a kind of agony to her, and she marvelled that the others could all appear to be relaxed and entertained. Her nerves felt like pieces of taut wire, she had a horrible sensation that she was an intruder - despite the efforts of her companion on her right to convince her that she was charming and very English - and when she heard Frank's voice above the hubbub created by all the rest saying something to Saratola about Roberto's tutor - or the non-appearance of the tutor, rather - and Sarah thinking it a good idea that Frank should take over the job of tutoring Roberto for a short while, at least, she was so startled and shocked and disturbed that she actually leapt up out of her seat.
'Frank, I do think we should go back now.'
Frank blinked at her good-humouredly over the rim of his champagne glass.
'Don't be silly, darling,' he said. 'The night is young - as Senhor Saratola observed a short while ago - and I want to hear what he thinks of my idea - or yours, rather! - that I should put young Roberto through his paces and help you out with the children for the fest of the summer! After all, I'm a free agent. I don't want to return to America yet, and I'm qualified. I'm sure .1 could convince Senhor Saratola that I'm highly qualified! And it's a lonely job for you looking after those kids!'
Sarah's eyes swung agonizedly in the direction of her employer.
'Please, senhor,' she whispered, 'I think Frank has had too much champagne. I -1—'
'Would you like to go home ?'
'Yes.'
'Then I'll drive you. My car is outside, and I'm sure my friends will understand.' But he barely glanced at them, as if he was supremely indifferent to what they thought in any case, and on Frank his look barely rested.
'I'm sure you can drive yourself back to your hotel. Ironside,' he said curtly. 'Or you will be able to do so if you leave fairly soon.'
Sarah did not even look towards Frank as she turned from the table. She felt Saratola's hand on her arm, guiding her, and having been spared the ordeal of saying good night to all his friends she walked in a kind of blind trance towards the foot of the flight of stairs that led up to the ladies' powder-room.
Saratola said in a clipped voice:
'I'll wait for you in the entrance,' and then passed on and left her to dab a powder-puff mechanically over her pale, strained face, wipe away a few beads of perspiration from her upper lip and her temples with some tissues she extracted from her handbag, add an unsteady lipstick to her pale lips that she had bitten so hard during the evening that the bottom one felt sore, and then join him in the entrance where he was standing waiting for her with the erectness of a guardsman, and an utterly inscrutable expression on his face.
She accompanied him out into the bat's-wing darkness of the night, and once more she felt his fingers under her arm as he guided her over the uneven cobbles of the narrow side street to the square where his car was parked.
It was the car in which he had brought her from Lisbon, and there was something blessedly familiar and consoling about it. She allowed him to put her into the seat beside the driving-seat, and then waited until he was behind the wheel to say huskily:
'You probably won't believe me, senhor, but I had no idea Frank was going to say what he did. It was certainly not my idea that he should offer to teach Roberto, and in any case, I - I'm not staying. I must ask you to let me go home!'
CHAPTER EIGHT
For a full five minutes after she had declared her intention of returning to England Saratola said nothing. It was true he had some difficulty in extricating his car from the large number of other cars that filled the entire centre of the square, and once free of them he had to negotiate another narrow side lane before they were on the broad coastal road. And then there appeared to be something wrong with his headlights, and he had to pause to adjust them. After which he inquired politely:
'You were saying?'
'I want to go home. I must go back to England!'
The brilliance of his headlights brought the clear stretch of white road up close to their eyes like a challenging white sword blade; and on one side of them the dark sea surged softly and broke in li
ttle wavelets oh the empty beach. What was left of the moon would not rise for another hour, and there was only the light of the stars to illuminate each gentle wave as it broke.
After , the excessive warmth of the Golden Rose Sarah actually felt cool, despite the balminess of the night. It could have been that her nerves were so on edge, and she was aware of such a bleak sensation of desperation deep inside her, that she had some difficulty in preventing her teeth from chattering, and Saratola sensed this, and he glanced at her alertly sideways.
'You are cold?' he asked, rather sharply. 'If so I will stop and get you a rug. There is one in the boot of the car.'
But she shook her head, and her bright hair shimmered in the starlight.
'No, no, I'm not cold!'
'But you shivered!' he protested, decreasing his rate of speed.
'All the same I'm not cold!'
She felt rather than saw him shrug his shoulders as he concentrated on his driving.
'You were saying that you wish to return home to England. Why have you suddenly arrived at this decision?'
'Because I - because I think it would be better—'
'Why?'
She had a handkerchief crushed up tightly in the palm of her hand, and it began to feel so wet that she removed it to the palm of the other hand. His voice was so crisp and cool that it affected her like a slap in the face, and she blundered on without actually realizing what she was saying and knowing only that she had a violent urge to justify herself in his sight, and also to voice some sort of protest because she felt he was treating her as if she had put herself outside the pale of any real consideration from him.
And all because she had accepted an invitation to dinner, and Frank had got a little drunk and said something that he probably would never have said if he'd been quite sober - and he hadn't been misled by Saratola's apparent affability.
But when she thought of what Frank had said she shuddered afresh.
'I only accepted Frank's invitation to have dinner with him because I thought we were to dine at his hotel, and that is in the village, very close to La Cristola. I would never, never have accepted if I'd thought we were going all the way to the Golden Rose. You must believe me, senhor, that I would never have left the children to go so far. I am not irresponsible. I am very fond of the Children, and if any harm came to them while I was absent I would never forgive myself! But Frank drove so fast I - I didn't realize we were leaving the village...
'You must have been very much preoccupied,' he murmured smoothly.
She glanced at him. In the light from the dashboard his face was quite impassive.
She began to feel sick.
'Yes, I was preoccupied,' she admitted.
'Wondering what was inside that package I brought back for you from Lisbon? Thinking perhaps that it might have been a good thing if you had refused your Frank and gone out to dinner with me, thereby maintaining harmony in your job and ensuring that the next time you wished to meet Frank and spend a diverting few hours with him there would have been no objections raised!'
'No, no, of course not!' licking dry lips. 'You've got it all wrong.'
'Then what was preoccupying your thoughts as you were driven to the Golden Rose?'
'I was upset because I would have liked very much to dine with you, and I didn't really want to have dinner with Frank. But he was very insistent, and apart from him I had had no one but the children to talk to for days, and Senhora Delgado didn't think you would be back for ... well, she thought you might not be back for months!'
'Oh, really?'
'And I believed her.' She licked her lips. 'I couldn't think of any good reason why you should return when you were fairly certain the children were being taken care of.'
'But only fairly certain?' he interrupted smoothly.
Remembering the apparent conspiracy in which Frank Ironside had involved her she could only agree with him in a low tone:
'Yes, fairly certain, senhor.' And then her spirits rose and she even felt a surge of anger affect her attitude, and she put back her head and spoke forcefully. 'But I'm sure you know perfectly well that under no circumstances would I neglect my duties to the children. You wouldn't have engaged me if you had ever had any doubts ... and I'm sure you made careful inquiries about me before you did engage me. My Aunt Constance, for instance, was not really surprised when I wrote to her and told her that I would be working for you. She said it was a good thing, and that it had occurred to her before she left Lisbon that I would fit in very well in your household. I wouldn't be surprised now to hear that you had some conversation with her about it before she left.'
'It is true that I did write to your aunt... after I had engaged you to take charge of my niece and nephew,' he admitted. 'But only,' he added, 'because I thought that it was only the correct thing to do. As your only close relative she was naturally concerned about you, and I assured her that you would be well taken care of and recompensed, of course - adequately.'
'You know you pay me far too much,' she said, her spirit quenched again immediately when she learned that he had actually taken the trouble to communicate with her aunt and reassure her about her welfare.
'Carmelita received much less,' he admitted. 'But then she had hardly the same qualifications as you have.'
'Thank you, senhor,' she muttered. A second or so later, when it seemed that they were to be engulfed by silence again, she asked: 'Have you any news of Carmelita? How - how is she?'
'She is to be released from hospital very soon now, but she will not be capable of undertaking strenuous duties for a long time ... and looking after children is a strenuous job, I imagine.'
'So - so it would be awkward for you, senhor, if I left immediately?' she suggested.
He shrugged, and even in the dim light inside the car he struck her as having very shapely, well-held shoulders under the whiteness of his dinner-jacket. And the flower in his buttonhole had not wilted; it was a dark red carnation, and the scent of it kept reaching Sarah's nostrils in waves, and was one reason why her head seemed to spin every few seconds, and it was not always possible for her to think clearly.
'I've no doubt that if I really set my mind to it I can replace you soon enough, senhorita,' he told her. 'Senhora Delgado is quite capable of making herself responsible for the physical well-being of Roberto and Maria. And with the assistance of that useful little maid Inez she should do quite well. But of course, I should have to find someone to take them for walks, and that sort of thing. There are agencies in Lisbon that could probably help me, and a young woman of good family who is also Portuguese might be the best solution.'
'I see,' Sarah said flatly.
He glanced at her for a moment, and then away.
'You are quite sure you wish to go home?'
'I - I think it is best.'
'Possibly. You could be right.'
She bit her lip.
'You really do think it was I who put the idea into Frank's head that he could teach Roberto, don't you, senhor?' she burst out. 'You think I suggested it to him because I wanted him to stay on in Portugal and see him as often as possible? That is what you think, 'Isn't it?'
He did not answer immediately, and she repeated:
'Isn't it?'
Once again he shrugged. They had passed through the village where Frank's hotel was situated, and were approaching the wrought-iron gates of La Cristola, that were standing wide to receive them. They had travelled the distance of the short drive and he had brought the car to rest before the front door, above which the lantern gleamed like a, star, before he answered quietly:
'It is late now, Miss Cunninghame, and I suggest that you go to bed before we discuss this matter, further. In the morning I shall very likely have time to discuss it with you, but if not it can wait until evening. I am going out to lunch tomorrow and may find it difficult to see you in the morning, so try and forget all about it until I can examine the situation critically. And whatever you do don't allow the children to be af
fected by any decision you may think now that you have arrived at!'
'No, senhor,' she answered meekly, and crept quietly but quickly out of the car. She had got the front door open and was half-way across the hall on her way to the staircase before he followed her more leisurely, and she heard him call after her in a voice that was quite unrevealing and depressingly composed:
'Goodnight, senhorita!'
'Goodnight, senhor,' she whispered back.
She went along to look at the children, who were both fast asleep and utterly peaceful, and then she walked lightly to her own room in the rather more distant wing, shut herself into it and locked the door. She knew that there was no danger whatsoever of her being disturbed, but she wanted to do a certain amount of packing before she crawled into bed.
After what Saratola had so coolly said about the simplicity of the method by which he would replace her, and the partial conviction that he had that a fellow countrywoman night be more suitable to take charge of his relatives, she could no longer draw any comfort from the thought that he might not wish her to leave. The fact that he had been willing to take her out to dinner that night was a mere whim on his part, an act of generosity that had appealed to him, because he liked to be fair in all his dealings, and it had no doubt occurred to him that she was leading a dull life at La Cristola.
But his instincts of generosity had been swamped when his pride was offended and she chose to have dinner with Frank rather than him. He had included them in his party because he wanted to humiliate her, and he had humiliated her.
All the way home he had made her feel that he was controlling the urge to humiliate her further, and the knowledge was almost more than she could bear. Perhaps if he had been a little less handsome - a little less the man who had unconsciously filled her thoughts for days - ever since he left the villa for Lisbon, in fact - she would have been less upset, less convinced in her own mind that her entire world was collapsing about her ears, and never again would there be anything in life that would be of the smallest importance to her, and her packing could have waited until morning.
The Bay of Moonlight Page 13
