The Bay of Moonlight Read online

  It was absurd to start emptying drawers in the small hours of the morning, and she knew there was absolutely no need for it. At least Saratola would give her time to pack if he meant her to leave. But the very act of thrusting things into a suitcase while she told herself that by this time the following evening - or rather, early morning - she would have left La Cristola in some way eased the agony of her mind, and after a long day in the open followed by an extraordinarily exhausting and devitalizing evening it was not long before she was able to slip between her sheets and close her eyes in utter weariness.

  'There are agencies in Lisbon that could probably help me,' was her last painful recollection before she fell asleep.

  In the morning she was surprised when she opened her eyes because a leaden weight seemed to press on her, and the weight did not lift while she superintended the children's baths and gave them their breakfast. They wanted to know all about the evening before, and whether or not she had enjoyed herself, but she pretended to have a headache and that finally put an end to their questioning.

  But she was sure when they went away to amuse themselves in the garden that they were looking wisely at one another, and that Maria — who was definitely precocious for her age, and appeared to have acquired quite a knowledge of the way adults behaved under certain circumstances - would say something to Roberto like:

  'Perhaps it was a very gay evening, and they drank a lot of champagne. People always drink a lot of champagne when they go out to dinner!'

  But the one thing Sarah had not done was drink a lot of champagne the evening before, and although she was suffering from quite a chronic headache when she made her way down to the beach and sat forlornly on her usual rock it was nothing to do with the manner in which she had spent the evening before. Or not the manner in which she had enjoyed the evening before.

  As she passed through the house in a crisp sun-suit of pale yellow linen she had been unable to detect any sign of the presence of the master of the place. The villa was Very silent, as it usually was at that hour, and if he was anywhere at all she decided that he was probably in his library, which was kept locked during his absence.

  It was such a beautiful morning that her unhappiness increased positively as she passed through the sunlit hall and out into the unrivalled splendour of a Portuguese morning on the Algarve at a season of the year when none of the vegetation was as yet dried up, and following a spraying by the gardeners the lawns surrounding the villa sparkled as if scattered with diamond points sunder the brilliance of the sun and the blueness of the sky.

  .The sea reminded her of a bed of infinitely blue larkspur. It could not have been bluer, nor more serene, nor had a wider or more splendid sweep once it left the sheltering arms of the bay.

  There were yachts scattered about on the surface of it just outside the harbour, and inside the harbour there were one or two other boats, including a fishing- boat that had been late in returning with its overnight catch.

  It was a morning for a bathe, but she had not brought her swim-suit with her. It was, in actual fact packed away in her suitcase. So, unaware that she looked extraordinarily forlorn in her gay yellow linen, and curiously alone, she sat down on the edge of the rode, removed her sandals and dug her toes into the sand, and sat there brooding on the unkindness of her own particular fate, and the dubious quality of her reactions when she finally arrived back in England, jobless ... and with the need to find herself a job.

  Someone spoke quietly beside her.

  'Good morning, Miss Cunninghame!'

  She spun round on the rock and found him looking at her - the one man above all others who filled all her thoughts. He was wearing a casual open-necked shirt with a silk scarf knotted in the opening, and equally casual but perfectly tailored trousers. He was leaning against the rock and smoking a cigarette, which he cast away and stamped underfoot even as he addressed her.

  Sarah leapt up from the rock.

  'Oh!' she exclaimed. 'I - I didn't know you were there!'

  'I know you didn't.'

  To her astonishment he was smiling, and it was a smile that was full of real amusement.

  'If you had known I was anywhere near at hand you wouldn't have been sitting there calmly contemplating the sea, would you ?'

  She hesitated for a moment, and then shook her head.

  'No, I don't suppose I would.'

  'What would you have been doing? Framing the opening sentences of your ultimatum? And by the way, what is your final word on the subject we were discussing last night? Am I to write you out a cheque for a month's wages, buy you an air ticket and drive you to Lisbon and put you on a plane? Is that what you want?'

  Dumbly - rather like a wounded animal - she stared at him.

  'It - it is for you to decide, isn't it, senhor?' she said.

  'If you can't make up your mind, I suppose it is.'

  'You know, very well that it's really - nothing - to do with me....'

  Her voice was husky, and she could barely get the words out. '

  'Would it surprise you to hear that I've had a visit from your friend Ironside this morning?' he asked her. 'He wanted to set the record straight, as he phrased it, and make it absolutely clear to me that you had nothing - nothing whatsoever to do with his attempt to wangle a job out of me. He didn't really want the job, because he's leaving for Lisbon this morning, and is going home to America next week, because apparently his parents want him to do so. But I'm afraid he's very sad at leaving you, and he asked me to say his farewells to you. Are you very sad because he's going, and you may never see him again, Sarah?'

  But she merely stared at him ... and gradually the colour, that had been absent from her cheeks all morning, seemed to start bounding back into her face.

  'Of - of course I'm not!' she answered breathlessly.

  'You really meant it when you told me he was just a friend?'

  'A Very ordinary friend. An - an acquaintance, I would say!'

  'And you believed Senhora Delgado when she indicated that I might not return for months?'

  She nodded her head.

  'Y-yes, senhor. Yes!'

  'And you missed me while I was in Lisbon?'

  Her misty mauve eyes contracted as she looked at him. It seemed to him that they grew several shades darker, and yet all at once they were many degrees brighter than they had been when she first turned on the rock to discover that he was there.

  'I ... it isn't part of my duties to miss you, senhor she whispered.

  He moved nearer to her. There was no smile on his face, and his eyes were almost black. And while the colour had increased in her cheeks he appeared paler than usual.

  'Why will you not make it Philip?' he demanded. 'Do you dislike the name of Philip ?'

  'Of course not, s— Philip!' she answered.

  'You must know that I think Sarah a delightful name - a name that suits you as no other could! To me it has everything to commend it, just as you yourself have so very much to commend you ... more, more than any woman I've ever met before!' In a matter of seconds his voice, that had been quiet and reasonable before, had become quick and impassioned, and in the darkness of his eyes a flame was dancing. 'I know that it is only a very short time that we have known one another, Sarah, and you may need lots more time to get to know your mind and your heart, but... but my mind was made up irrevocably from the moment I saw you! You may think that odd, but I said to myself that I would marry you, if you would marry me!'

  'Oh, Philip!' she barely breathed.

  He tried to regard her dispassionately.

  'You do not look shocked or startled,' he observed. 'For an Englishwoman possibly quite unaccustomed to making emotional decisions ... for the excellent reason, I hope, that you have never had to make one before! ... and the possessor of a grandmother who refused to marry my grandfather, you look very much as I wish you to look! I have been terrified that I would find you hard to convince, but as the result of the way you are looking at me now - and the way you looke
d when I drove you home last night! - I am beginning to have more courage. If I say that I did not need Senhor Ironside to pay me his visit this morning in order to be convinced that I never had any reason to fear I might have to lose you to him will you be remarkably brave and promise to marry me here and now? Will you promise me never - unless I am with you ! - to go away from Portugal Sarah?'

  She wondered whether it was the brightness of the sun that was affecting her, and the fact that she had neglected to bring her dark glasses with her from the house. Then she dismissed the thought once and for all, and accepted it that it was the brilliance of his eyes in which, had they been pools of dark but brilliant water, she would have been happy to drown.

  'Yes, I promise,' she answered, her voice like the sigh of the wind in the umbrella pines on an early spring day.

  He glanced around him - up the beach and down the beach, and along the beach - then he caught her in his arms and prevented the slight, hysterical laugh that was bubbling up in her throat from escaping from her lips as her head was crushed into the hollow of his neck and he buried his mouth in her hair. But all the same, she had to put the obvious question to him, and she had to know one other thing.

  She managed to free her face from his silk neckerchief long enough to ask the question:

  'The children's mother? Venetia?'

  'What of her?' His voice was anguished, because she was holding him away from her.

  'I thought that you meant to marry her!'

  'You must be mad ... mad as only the English can be!'

  'But you do admire her very much indeed?'

  'Only as a wife and mother. But not my wife, and certainly not the mother of my children! Now, is that all you wish to know?'

  She shook her head. His eager arms were drawing her closer and closer, and she could detect from his look - and it actually seemed to smoulder - that his patience was evaporating with every second that kept them apart. The light-headed and light-hearted thought leapt through her head that the children, should they come upon them suddenly in the shade of the rock, locked in each other's arms, would look at one another very wisely indeed.

  And she hoped and believed they would be pleased.

  'That beautiful friend of yours, Philip ... the one who sent the chocolates to Maria? You said she was the most beautiful woman you had met in your life, and you lunched with her. Who - who is she?' she breathed.

  To her astonishment, and despite the intensity of the moment, he laughed... he actually threw back his sled: dark head and gave vent to a shout of amusement.

  'So you have been jealous, have you, my little one?' he said. 'You have, I hope, been madly jealous, just as I was madly jealous of Ironside when I first saw him accost you! But my beautiful friend is only a child … just a couple of years older than Maria! I have promised that she shall be brought here to lunch with Maria and Roberto one day, and then you can let her see how very jealous you are of her! It might even be wiser if the two of you are kept apart!

  'Oh, Philip,' she breathed again, and this time she let her head lie quietly on his shoulder.

  He looked down at her with a dozen different passionate fires blazing in his eyes, between his thick eyelashes. He caught her chin in his hand and forced her head backwards until he could read her thoughts and see the reflection of his own image in the misty blueness of her eyes, and seeing himself so clearly could anile with infinite satisfaction. And then he lowered his mouth very deliberately to hers, and almost brutally he kissed her.

  Their first kiss was unlike anything Sarah had ever expected of a kiss before. It left her feeling as if a thunderbolt had come hurtling out of the sky and passed so close to her that it scorched her... And when his violent mood changed to one of gentleness and a tenderness that melted her bones she knew that this was one moment in her life for which she had been destined from the beginning, and that however much she might have attempted to avoid it she couldn't. It was the very purpose of her life, and would in future become the essence of it.

  He rubbed his cheek gently against her hair and whispered to her in Portuguese:

  'My little one ... my darling! I will make you so happy that you came to Portugal... and each time we come back here to the Bay of Moonlight you will be happier than before, and that much I promise you!'

  He lifted her hand and carried it up to his cheek and held it there for a moment, then examined it as if for a particular purpose.

  'Yes, I think I made no mistake about the size. But we will prove that in a moment! I want you to come back with me to the house and I will show you the presents I brought back for Maria and Roberto, and I will also show you the one important present I bought for you. You may think I was being over-confident, my darling, but it was not really that. I couldn't, of course, be sure of you until you indicated to me as you have just done that I had not made a mistake. And the stone is so very perfect, and of course it had to be a sapphire ... with your eyes!' He touched than gently with his fingertips, and then kissed them.

  'Stone ... sapphire?' she murmured bewilderedly, looking up at him.

  'A ring, my dear one. Your engagement ring!'

  Maria and Roberto came running down the beach towards them, and he stood waiting with his arm about Sarah's shoulders until they reached them. Maria's eyes were big and round, and she burst out breathlessly:

  'Senhora Delgado said you were back, Uncle Philip ... and I wanted to find Sarah!' she added.

  He smiled at his niece benignly.

  'Here is your Sarah. Take a good look at her, for she is here to stay!' Roberto fairly whooped with delight. 'And in the house there are a large number of parcels that are to be divided equally between all three of you. Shall we return at once and look at them, or shall we stay here quietly on the beach and wait for a more convenient moment?' His eyes met Sarah's, and the dancing fires were back in his ... the revealing fires. 'This is a wonderful moment in my life,' he declared, just a trifle unsteadily. 'Shall I send the children away and tell them to play, and shall we stay here for just a little longer...? You and I!'

  But she shook her head. Maria had slipped a hand into hers, and was tugging at her.

  'The children are anxious to receive their presents,' she said. 'And I—' with a catch in her voice - 'am anxious to see mine!'