by Ives, Averil
"It is," the second redhead admitted, and treated her to a wide, engaging grin that showed a gap in the middle of his top teeth. He added a trifle nasally, and also a little huskily, as if he had a permanent frog in his throat: "But we watched him go out in his big black car, and we knew he wouldn't be back for some time because he said to Filippo before he went that the lady would have to be asked to wait. Are you the lady?" he wanted to know, with sudden interest.
"I—" Kathleen bit her lip. So that was it! The Conde had been called away, and his servant had forgotten to inform her that she would be kept waiting. Or perhaps she hadn't clearly understood what the man had said, because at that time her knees had been shaking a little and she had been far from certain that she ought to have come at all. Now she couldn't help feeling thankful she had come, because someone would have to do something about the mess these two had created.
"Never mind unimportant things now," she said; "but let's get down on our knees and pick up these bits, shall we?" With a delighted shriek the two flung themselves down beside her, and it became a scramble to pick up the bits of torn letter. Jerry (or Jeronimo, as she found out later the elder of the twins' name was) became so excited that he fairly rolled on the floor in his enthusiasm, while Joe (named simply and solely after his American father) fought anyone who got in his way when he was after a particular fragment.
The sounds of their laughter and their shrill, eager voices must have reached far beyond the door that admitted to the ante-room, but Kathleen could do nothing to check the hysterical fervour once she had started it, and as soon as all the pieces were collected she tried to calm them down by telling them they would have to change the blotter. At once they fell upon it, and in the tug-of-war that ensued, each twin wishing to be the one who would actually remove the stained blotting-paper and reveal the virgin white beneath, they once more fell upon the floor, and Kathleen got tripped up by their threshing legs and arms and went down, too. Which caused such a
shriek of merriment that every other sound — save that which might have been caused by an explosion — was muffled by it.
Jerry thought this was the best fun he had had for a long time — certainly the best fun any adult had afforded him since his father died. And he wound his thin arms about Kathleen's neck and kept her down on the rich gold carpet beside him, his strength astounding her because at a glance he looked a mere scrap of a boy; while Joe reached frenziedly for the blotter and began blissfully tearing off white strips. And it was while all this was taking place that the door that had been left standing partly open was suddenly thrust wide open, and a man stood observing them in utter silence.
Jerry was the first to realise he was there, and he uttered a gasp of genuine horror. Kathleen took advantage of the sudden relaxation of the small arms about her neck and struggled to her feet, her spun-golden hair ruffled and her cheeks brilliantly flushed, and Joe said simply, in an awe-stricken voice:
"It's Uncle Miguel!"
"Get to your feet, Jeronimo!" a stern, cold voice requested, and Kathleen wondered whether she had ever heard quite such a remote masculine voice before. "And you, too, Joseph!"
Both boys obeyed him with alacrity, but as if they felt the need of some support they reached instinctively for Kathleen's hands.
"I'm afraid I haven't the pleasure of your acquaintance, senhorita." Grey eyes that were a surprise in such an infinitely dark face gazed straight at Kathleen, and she doubted very much whether he would ever look upon her acquaintance as a pleasure. "I must also add that I didn't expect to find anyone at all in here, least of all a young woman who looks as if she might well be English!"
"I am English," Kathleen heard herself admitting in a whisper.
His level dark brows ascended.
"It is not possible that you are the sister of Senhora O'Farrel?"
Kathleen felt as if she ought to bow her head as she made yet another admission.
"I am Kathleen O'Farrel, senhor, and I came here especially to see you!"
"I find that so hard to believe that you must forgive me if I look as if I doubt your word!" His voice was soft, sibilant, and every syllable received a delicate emphasis. And every syllable was as cold as melting ice. He was beautifully dressed in a cream silk suit, and she wished Peggy had warned her that he was shatteringly handsome, for somehow his type of looks affected her rather like a shock. It wasn't so much the darkness, the perfect features, the strange lustre of the thickly-lashed grey eyes; it was the impression of arrogance and domination, the soft-pedalled message of strength and virility that his tall, elegant shape gave out as he stood there framed in the doorway to the ante-room.
A Portuguese aristocrat who was so unmistakably an aristocrat that there couldn't be a circumstance that could camouflage it from the world. And although he probably wasn't much more than thirty the bleakness in his eyes had nothing to do with youth, or anything approaching an ability to understand youth.
Kathleen pushed back the tumbled hair from her brow, and thought with a sudden surge of resentment that although she had been caught out in a situation that seemed sadly against her, it wasn't fair that he should look at her quite like that.
"I can't change my name to oblige you, senhor, and — strange though it may seem! — I did come here to be interviewed by you!" She bit out the words with a frustrated feeling of impotence. "But of course I understand you almost certainly feel an interview is scarcely necessary now!" She attempted to free her fingers from Jerry's and Joe's small, clinging hands, but they wouldn't let her go. "Your nephews," looking down at them, "were under the mistaken impression that your desk
needed tidying" (what else could she say to defend them?), "and I came in here to—to---"
"Assist in the process of tidying? with an insolent suavity in his voice that made her flush more hotly than ever, while his eyes never left her face.
"Yes, I—I mean, I realised they were being overenthusiastic, and I—"
"You need say no more, senhorita." He seemed to be standing aside in the doorway, to make it possible for her to leave them altogether if she wished—and had the sense! "I can only agree with you that an interview does seem a little unnecessary under the circumstances, and thank-you for having waited so long! Your sister's desire to be of assistance to me is much appreciated by me, but my nephews are already in the charge of a young woman who seems every bit as capable of handling them as you — from the brief opportunity I was afforded of studying you all together! — have given evidence of doing. And I can only repeat that it would be a waste of time to go into the matter further!"
"Thank-you, senhor, I understand perfectly!" But as she wrenched free her hands and walked past him the colour in her face was burning so painfully that her cheeks felt actually as if they were on fire.
He bowed his head.
"I am concerned that you have had to waste so much of your time It is a pity because my nephews are beyond the discipline of any ordinary young woman, as I now realise."
"What nonsense!" she exclaimed, turning on him. Her blue eyes blazed her contempt at him. "They are perfectly normal children who must feel half smothered by the atmosphere in this house! Children require to run free, and above all to be understood. Particularly when they've just lost a parent! And I've no doubt your Portuguese nursemaid is as little capable of understanding how they feel, uprooted as they have been, as you yourself apparently are!"
She bit her lip until the blood spurted, and she felt herself trembling with the indignation that had taken
possession of her. The Conde's eyes grew colder and infinitely more remote, but the iciness of his displeasure had little effect on her.
"My recommendation to you is that you send them to school.. . Anywhere out of this house! And if they've got any relatives in America why not send them back there, if their mother can't bestir herself and look after them herself? In England a young widow would feel grateful for the compensation of two little sons."
Then horror rushed over her as
she realised what she had said, and Jerry rushed after her and caught her by the arm.
"Was it you who were going to look after us? Was it really you? Oh, but Uncle Miguel mustn't let you go!" His bottom lip started to tremble, and he looked appealingly at his uncle. "You won't let her go, will you?"
"Silence!" his uncle thundered, and any ordinary boy would have been petrified by the cold ferocity of that order.
But Jerry merely rubbed his eyes and explained: "We didn't know it was her!"
"You didn't know it was me," Kathleen said gently, ruffling his hair. "Something ought to be done about your grammar, but I'm afraid there isn't time now."
"You don't mean you really are going?" Joe asked, sidling up and capturing her other arm. He, too, looked perturbed. "It would be fun if you could make Uncle Miguel let you stay! I didn't mean to kick you when you were under the table just now, but I'd have kicked harder if it had been Rosa. She's fat and dull, and I don't like her!"
"It isn't fair to kick people just because you don't like them," Kathleen murmured to him, and then once more freed herself from clinging hands and moved purposefully towards the door.
She knew that two pairs of greenish-hazel eyes followed her regretfully, but in the Conde de Chaves eyes there was no relenting as he stepped forward to hold open the door for her. Unfailingly polite, he bowed his sleek dark head once more as he said:
"It was good of you to come, senhorita." But she was certain he merely despised her for her stupidity in imagining for one single instant that she was good enough to take entire charge of the nephews of a Portuguese nobleman. Rosa might be fat and dull, but at least she was Portuguese, and she would never have had the effrontery to criticise his sister, and certainly not himself! The additionally bleak look in his eyes was undoubtedly there because she had been so unwise as to let her tongue run away with her. "I understand you are returning to England," staring at her neatly-shod feet, as if they pleased him more than anything else about her. "I wish you a good journey," with the utmost formality.
"Thank-you, senhor. It is almost certain to be a perfectly smooth journey," she returned, with an arctic quality about her clear English voice that was certainly a match for his own.
And then she turned to say goodbye to the boys, and a wave of concern for them rushed over her. They looked so small and unwanted standing there in the doorway to the magnificent library, and once she had left them alone with their uncle there would be no one to put in a good word for them.
"Please, senhor," she begged suddenly, her voice all soft, womanly pleading, one slim, tanned hand with lightly polished nails actually extended a little towards him, "you won't be too harsh on them, will you? For tearing up your letter, I mean, and — and being a bit of a nuisance! After all, they are young!"
His thick eyelashes lifted, and for an instant she thought she saw a look of surprise in the eyes themselves. And then they actually glimmered with something . . . Surely it couldn't be a flickering of humour? It might have been her imagination, but his handsome mouth appeared to twitch slightly at one corner before he straightened his well-held shoulders, and said softly:
"I will bear it in mind that you have put in an appeal for them, senhorita! And I will not actually flay them alive!"
Then he was conducting her across the hall, with its baroque staircase and shining marbles, and although he didn't appear to watch her as she ran down the steps and joined her brother in his antiquated car she had the feeling that he did. Possibly from one of the side windows, for it was a manservant who closed the door.
"Well?" Shane asked, smiling at her as he let in his clutch. "How did it go? When do you start?"
"I don't," Kathleen answered ruefully. "I was a dismal failure. It's England, Home and Beauty for me!"
On the verandah of their little white-walled villa, as they sipped their coffee after lunch — the sort of lunch, Kathleen thought regretfully, she wouldn't be enjoying much longer, with fresh fruits and exciting dishes that were always extremely appetizing — Peggy shook her head in a sort of dull amazement, and declared that she simply didn't understand.
"I'd have said you were the perfect answer to the Conde's problem," she mused. "And, dash it all," she added, with a touch of indignation, "I think he might have taken you on after I bothered to telephone!"
"And I delayed my departure to England!" Kathleen reminded her. "You realise, now, that I shan't catch that plane from Lisbon!"
Peggy looked rather pleased than otherwise.
"As to that, I didn't want you to go, and now I think you ought to stay another week. Do try and persuade her, Shane," she added, turning to her husband.
Shane lay back in his chair and looked at his sister rather quizzically.
"It's up to Kathie herself," he murmured. "She may have an ardent admirer awaiting her return in London!"
"If she has, I'm the King of China's daughter!" Peggy exclaimed scoffingly, and then looked at Kathleen reproachfully. "Why do you never do things like other young women of your age?" she demanded. "At twenty-two, and with your looks, you ought to be beset by admirers! But I suppose it's the old story, and you're waiting for some unlikely Mr. Right to come along and sweep
you off your feet? Don't you know that in this day and age, with bags of competition and an acute shortage of males who're even willing to think about matrimony, that's simply asking for a lifetime of spinsterhood!"
Kathleen coloured delicately, as she always did when her sister-in-law got on to this favourite subject of hers, but she managed to infuse humour into her voice as she replied:
"Perhaps I'll enjoy being a spinster all my days. Perhaps I'm even looking forward to it!"
"Rubbish!" Peggy declared. "No woman wants to be a spinster if she can avoid it."
"Then perhaps I really am waiting for Mr. Right to come along. And if I'm as delectable as you're always trying to make me out to be he won't hesitate to grab hold of me when he does appear!"
Peggy looked at her thoughtfully.
"You're delectable all right. You're quite lovely. You and Shane have glorious colouring." She looked at her husband appreciatively, and then back again at her sister-in-law. "And in your case, Kathie, you have the air of a Dresden Shepherdess. Sometimes you don't even look quite real. Perhaps that's one reason why our hearty English males have refrained from stampeding you. You're a thought too fragile for the hard-working man who needs someone to fend for him on occasion."
"It's a deceptive fragility, as you should know by this time," Kathleen said, smiling. "I'm tough enough underneath."
"Plainly the Conde thought you were a little too tough," Peggy remarked regretfully. "It's a pity he found you under the table with his nephews. You probably struck him as a kind of Paddy-the-next-best-thing, and he couldn't see you disciplining those precious twins. However, I'm sure he's wrong."
"So am I," Kathleen agreed, seriously. "I thought they were precocious but lovable."
"They sound quite abominable," Peggy said, laughing. "I'm not at all sure I'd want the charge of them myself."
"I'm very certain I'll never have the charge of them," Kathleen, with the wry note in her voice that had been there when she admitted her failure to her brother, observed with a peculiarly keen regret stirring in her. "The Conde was quite firm."
"A pity," Peggy remarked again. She looked more closely at her sister-in-law. "What did you think of his looks?"
"I was more struck by his arrogance," Kathleen answered, not altogether truthfully. "I thought he was detestable."
"Yet all the unmarried women in the district are dying to marry him, and their mamas lay traps for him. In Lisbon, I believe, it's the same. He's a very much sought-after bachelor, and it isn't only because of his wealth and rank. He's reputed to have a certain charm."
"I can't believe it," Kathleen said, and she said it so firmly that Peggy decided to drop the subject. But she didn't drop her insistence that Kathleen should stay for another week, and in the end, because Shane, too, urged tha
t there was no real reason why she should rush back to England, and so far as he was concerned it would be delightful if she made up her mind to remain with them forever — or, at any rate, until she contracted that marriage Peggy was always hoping for — Kathleen agreed to stay on. Shane brought out a bottle of champagne and they toasted one another on top of their coffee, which was a little odd but very pleasant in the cool shade of the verandah.
And Kathleen had a curious sensation as if she had received a reprieve because she was staying, and the blue sky and the bluer sea and all the rest of the magnificent display of colour would be hers for another seven days. But she repeated to herself when she went to bed that night, and looked out at the stars, and thought of two lonely small boys in the Quinta Cereus — which, as she knew, meant Queen of the Night, or Nightblowing Cereus, a huge water-lily like blossom of waxen beauty — that the Conde de Chaves was probably the most unpleasant man she had ever met in her life.
Unpleasant, and brutal. For there had been something quite ruthless about the way he had despatched her about her business, and ignored the appeals of his nephews.
CHAPTER THREE
IT was surprising how quickly that extra week passed. Kathleen took advantage of every moment of it, and the weather remained perfect. She bathed and sun-bathed, careful not to offend the local inhabitants by wearing her sun-suits on the beach, but doing so in a corner of the O'Farrel varandah.
Portuguese women, she had discovered, were at all times extremely correct. She doubted whether they ever laid aside their formality while there was any danger of a public eye being focused on them. Such things as slacks were never worn by even the youngest amongst them, and black was a popular colour for both day and evening wear.
