Man of Destiny Page 8

  The Marques continued to smile in an urbane fashion at Caroline, as if he had no doubts at all that she was the ideal companion for his great-nephew, and he delivered himself of an expression of opinion that took her completely aback.

  “I understand we are in your debt, senhorita. But for you, and the quality of the attachment Ricardo has formed for you, he might still be enjoying the protection of that excellent taxi-man in whose cab he took refuge when he ran away from the Aviz. That, I’m afraid, was not a very happy introduction to Portugal for our poor Ricardo.”

  Caroline started to stammer awkwardly.

  “It was nothing, senhor ... I beg your pardon,” she corrected herself, colouring in confusion, “Senhor Marquis! Richard didn’t really mean to run away. It was just—just that he felt strange after leaving the ship...”

  “And Dom Vasco is so unused to dealing with young people of his age that he blundered badly? He thought he could deprive him of the softer influences in his life at one fell swoop!”

  Caroline glanced awkwardly at Dom Vasco, and! wondered how best she could defend him. He had made such handsome apology for his early mistake that she felt she ought to go out of her way to clear up any mistaken conception of his attitude, but he didn’t look as if he needed anyone to support him, or justify him with his employer, and was talking earnestly with Ilse de Fonteira and ascertaining whether or not she felt very fatigued after her journey. She had not so far acknowledged Caroline, apart from a faint smile directed vaguely in her direction when the party first entered the hall, but now mention of her son’s disappearance, caused her to whirl round and confront Caroline with anything but a pleased expression.

  “It was too bad of you, Miss Worth, not to keep a better eye on him!” she accused. “You know very well that he is a sensitive child, and it was the first time he and I have been separated. Naturally he felt he had to run away and start looking for me!” Caroline was about to open her mouth and deny that Richard had felt the urge to do anything of the kind, when she caught Dom Vasco’s eyes frowning at her above Ilse’s head. Quite unmistakably he shook his head.

  She choked back the words she had been about to utter, and said instead:

  “Ah, well, it was lucky for us that taxi-man was so conscientious, and that he spoke English.”

  “It was not lucky!” Ilse’s voice was icy. “It might have been lucky for you, but for me it would have been disastrous if—if Richard—”

  She could not go on; her voice became choked, and she dabbed at the rising moisture in her eyes with a lace handkerchief.

  Dom Vasco was plainly disturbed by her distress, but his conscience would not permit him to allow Caroline to go undefended ... just as Caroline had felt it incumbent upon her to defend him.

  “I assure you, senhora, Miss Worth was in no way to blame for that unfortunate incident,” he stressed in his deep, attractive voice. “She was already on her way home to England when the child took it into his head to run after her ... And fortunately,” he added quietly, “she had got no farther than another Lisbon hotel.”

  And for a brief fraction of time his eyes sought, and held, Caroline’s.

  “Oh, well!” Ike exclaimed, trying to smile brightly and to sound as if she was prepared to forgive Caroline, although in her own mind she was not entirely convinced that her negligence hadn’t had something to do with the episode, “the whole thing is over and I’ve no wish to harp on it, particularly as Dicky looks so fit and admirably taken care of. But if anything had happened to him...”

  The Marques intervened, a patient and mildly humorous note in his voice.

  “My dear Ilse, the child looks brown and well, as you yourself have just admitted, so don’t torment yourself by imagining a disaster that didn’t take place. And now I think it will be as well if you go to your room and rest. I understand Vasco has arranged a dinner-party for tonight, so if you are to meet our local friends and acquaintance it is important that you should have an undisturbed hour or so to recover from the journey.”

  This time Ilse brightened genuinely, and Caroline guessed that the idea of a dinner-party appealed to her enormously. It would give her an opportunity to wear one of her spectacular dinner-dresses, and as the amount of luggage she had brought with her from England was far more than she would require for a visit of short duration it was plain she not merely intended to stay for some time, but she had quite a number of spectacular outfits in the hand-made wardrobe-trunks and specially constructed suitcases that were being borne by perspiring servants up the stairs.

  Two other people had entered the hall, and although they were not introduced to Caroline they acknowledged her existence with polite little bows, and smiled at Richard. They were the Marques’s secretary—to Caroline’s surprise a young woman not much older than herself—and an extremely serious-looking young man who had some connection with the estates, and like Dom Vasco was on the pay-roll of the Marques, although socially far below his level.

  While Senhora Lopes tried to control her agitation and get everyone shown to their rooms, Dom Vasco took an almost tender farewell of the widowed senhora, and assured her that he would look forward to seeing her again that evening. And then when she had disappeared round a bend in the graceful staircase, and the housekeeper had given up the unequal druggie of trying to decide which of the two important arrivals, the Marques or his guest, should receive the maximum amount of attention from her, and had gone flying ahead of her along the gallery, Dom Vasco signalled to Caroline that he would like to speak to her for a moment.

  The Marques had disappeared into the sala, where refreshments awaited him, and his secretary and assistant estate manager had followed him into the room. Nevertheless, Dom Vasco lowered his voice, as if the subject he wished to discuss was a delicate one, and required a delicate form of treatment.

  “The Senhora de Fonteira is unlike what I imagined,” he confessed. “And I think it would be as well if you went to her, and took the child...” He glanced vaguely at Richard. “But don’t allow her to become exhausted. See that she rests before dinner.”

  Caroline was not actually astonished, but she was surprised. She had already received the strong impression that before Ilse’s English loveliness, her white and gold charm and her touching femininity—a strong suit of Ilse’s when she wanted to deceive anyone about her actual toughness and resilience—he had gone down rather like a ninepin. But she would never have believed that such a man who had not hesitated to treat her, Caroline, with scant courtesy when first they met, would have succumbed quite so easily and so obviously. It must have been the desolate widow act—the adoring mother act—that had removed several pairs of scales from his eyes and caused him to see an Englishwoman in very much the same light as he saw Carmelita. As someone full of femininity, helpless and appealing ... although on his own admission Carmelita was not helpless. So perhaps Ilse’s effect was even more shattering, something in the nature of a revelation!

  “Very well, senhor,” Caroline replied clearly, and walked away towards the staircase with Richard still gripping her hand.

  Dom Vasco seemed to emerge from a bemused kind of trance and called after her:

  “You will not forget that you are expected to dine with the rest of us tonight, senhorita? Put the child to bed early, and leave yourself time to prepare.”

  She glanced back at him coldly over her shoulder. “I would prefer it if I could have my meal upstairs—”

  Instantly his eyes flashed as if she had annoyed him.

  “That,” he returned, “is not permissible. From now on you will remember that you are not just a nursemaid, you are a companion to Ricardo, and you must be a companion to the senhora, also. She will need you! On every occasion that she is likely to require support from you you must give it!”

  CHAPTER NINE

  BUT Ilse failed to give the impression that she needed much support when Caroline sought her out in the suite of apartments that had been placed at her disposal during her stay in the qui
nta.

  They were three very charming rooms, a bedroom, dressing-room and sitting-room. They had long windows overlooking the gardens, and there were balconies with protective awnings on which she could recline when the sun was hot, or she wished to be alone. The furnishings were positively sumptuous, and even Ilse seemed particularly gratified by them as she stood leaning up against the dressing-table in her white-carpeted bedroom and allowed her eyes to rest on the cascades of satin-damask, and the glimpse of ebony and silver in the bathroom.

  “What a mediaeval set-up!” she exclaimed, when Caroline and Richard joined her. “I feel like the princess in the tower stowed away here, and it’s an ivory tower, too! I’ve an idea I’m going to be unusually comfortable.”

  She had cast her enormous pale pink hat on to the bed, and it lay there like an island of soft rose lost in a sea of embroidered cream-coloured satin. Looking at her, Caroline wondered whether the fact that she was a widow and wore no black had struck even a temporary chord of displeasure in the breast of Dom Vasco. The Marques was so obviously much more easy-going that it might not have struck him in any particularly significant way, although in a country where women wore some sort of black most of the time it could have appeared a little alien.

  Ilse was smoking a cigarette in a long ivory holder, and she was smoking it as if she had not enjoyed a cigarette for some time.

  “Duarte may appear amiable, but he doesn’t approve of women doing this,” she said, crushing out the cigarette beneath her heel on the balcony outside the open window. “But he’s a pleasant surprise, isn’t he?” one corner of her mouth quirking upwards in an amused smile as she glanced over her shoulder at Caroline. “Not at all what I expected, or had been led to believe. I thought he’d be positively doddering, and a perfect martinet. But he’s not. He’s a lamb!”

  She extended a hand to Richard, but there was no repetition of the motherly effusiveness or the frying need that she had displayed downstairs. She ran her fingers through his hair and remarked that he really was looking very fit and well, and then made a thoughtful reference to Dom Vasco while she lighted another cigarette.

  When I caught sight of him on the ship I was astounded,” she confessed. “He looks so frightfully aristocratic that I thought, at first, he was the Marques, and then I realised he was much too young.” She inhaled luxuriously, and her green eyes glowed as if they had been lighted up from within. “Much too young!” she repeated.

  “He is in control of the Marques’s estate, and he also happens to be a relative,” Caroline told her.

  Ilse nodded.

  “Yes; I’ve learned all that since my arrival. Duarte is quite attached to him.”

  “Was it because you—thought he looked rather interesting that you decided to fly to Portugal?” Caroline enquired, without any changing of her expression.

  Ilse smiled at her.

  “You know me quite well, don’t you? I never could resist a handsome man! Carlos was handsome, you know ... that’s why I married him. But unfortunately he never had his fair share of the family fortune.”

  “And what about Mr. Prentice?”

  “I suppose you could say he ditched me.” She looked angry for a moment, and then she shrugged her shoulders. “Ah, well, it didn’t require a great effort to get over him. Even on the ship I was beginning to find that Anglo-Saxon fairness of his a little cloying. I like men to be dark ... my men!” She smiled almost slumbrously at Caroline. “And when I saw you shooting away from the ship with Dom Vasco, and realised how lucky you were to be even temporarily under the protection of someone like him, I was suddenly inspired. I had a right to be cosseted and cared for, too, by my in-laws ... the Marques owed me something. So I wrote warning you that anything might happen, and followed up the warning by booking myself an air flight to Lisbon. The Marques invited me to stay with him in Estoril, and then brought me here. Naturally he thought I was simply burning to see Richard...”

  “I think you succeeded in impressing Dom Vasco with the fact that you’re very devoted to Richard,” Caroline remarked drily, and Ilse looked pleased.

  “Do you think that went down well? He’s such an autocratic creature, isn’t he? And yet he was terribly sweet to me, I thought.” Her face hardened suddenly. “Who is this Carmelita de Capuchos who is to act hostess for us tonight?”

  “A cousin of Dom Vasco, or so he told me himself.”

  Ilse sighed with relief.

  “Only a cousin? Oh, that’s splendid! And probably old-maidish, and not too young...?”

  “I’d say she is in her early thirties, and beautiful in a strange sort of way.”

  “Oh!” The green eyes were not so pleased. “What do you mean by a strange sort of way?”

  “Well, she struck me as being a little like a paper-white rose,” Caroline admitted, because that was exactly how Carmelita de Capuchos had struck her, and was not surprised when Ilse flung away from her and became petulant all at once.

  “By that you mean she’s got a Portuguese pallor, and is probably as dull as ditch-water?” she stated rather than asked. “I’ve seen her type before, in Portuguese East Africa ... and there are probably lots like her within a few miles of this place! That kind of woman doesn’t constitute a menace, unless a man is contracted to marry her. And you haven’t heard anything about Dom Vasco being betrothed to his cousin, have you?” wheeling round and studying Caroline’s face with barely concealed anxiety while she waited to hear whether that was the case or not. Caroline shook her head.

  “I haven’t actually heard that they’re engaged—”

  “Then why do you suspect it?” sharply.

  Caroline felt surprised. Why did she suspect that Carmelita de Capuchos was interested in Vasco in the way a woman does become interested in a man when someone has suggested to her that it would be a good thing if she married him ... one day? Why, although she had met Carmelita only twice, had she made up her mind that there was a woman who had succeeded in making an impression on Vasco—getting past his guard—and that, whether she knew it or not, she had him in the hollow of her hand?

  “I have seen them together,” she replied evasively. “They seemed to me to make a good pair.”

  Which, now that she stopped to think about it, was true enough.

  Ilse made an impatient movement, and rang the bell for the maid to come and unpack her suitcases, and run a bath for her. She had already shooed the girl out twice, because she wanted to be alone; but now she no longer wished to be undisturbed ... She wanted to go ahead with her preparations for the evening, and make certain there was nothing hurried about them, or nothing that wasn’t carefully planned beforehand.

  “Dom Vasco is a very handsome man,” she remarked, “and the fact that he isn’t married proves that he hasn’t yet met the right woman. Without wishing to prove you wrong, I could prove you very wrong indeed! So wrong that you might be surprised ... one day!”

  With a meaning smile she whipped open her beauty-box, and started to remove her make-up. Then she pressed the bell still more impatiently for the maid.

  “That girl,” she declared, “must be deaf!”

  “The staff of the quinta are very good,” Caroline remarked, as she urged Richard towards the door—although, in point of fact, he had been displaying signs of wishing to escape from the room for the past five minutes. “But they’re not accustomed to looking after visitors. There haven’t been any here for some time.”

  Ilse was about to let her go, and then called out to her.

  “If I want to get in touch with you, where do I find you? I’d like to say goodnight to Richard.”

  This was something so new that Caroline could barely conceal her surprise. In the past it was only by accident that Richard saw her before he went to bed.

  “We’re in the old nursery wing, at the end of the corridor,” she said. “The maid will show you the way.”

  Ilse nodded her head, and Caroline and Richard found themselves on the other side of the luxurious bedroom
door. Richard sighed with relief.

  “Now let’s go and play in the garden, shall we?” he suggested. “We don’t seem to have been in the garden at all today!”

  Caroline humoured him for about half an hour, and then took him back upstairs and saw that he had his supper and was bathed before going to bed. Then —leaving the door of his room open so that he could hear her moving about in her room—she started her preparations for the evening.

  She didn’t really want to join the others for dinner. In fact, the more she thought about it the more she shrank from the idea. She had nothing very spectacular in the way of an evening dress to wear, and she felt sure the Portuguese guests—to say nothing of Ilse, when she emerged from her room after devoting the better part of a couple of hours to her appearance—would all be beautifully gowned and groomed, and probably dripping with diamonds. The little she had seen of Portuguese women at night they did tend to give the impression that their entire worldly wealth was concentrated upon their person, even if they invariably wore black—the costliest black obtainable; and as for Ilse, she was like a glamorous butterfly at night, brilliantly beautiful, and enough to make any man find satisfaction in simply gazing at her.

  Therefore it seemed a little pointless that she, Caroline, should be expected to play her part in such a brilliant company. The Marques and his guests could not be expected to notice her, Ilse wouldn’t even bother to notice her, and if the solemn young man who was something in the nature of an assistant to Dom Vasco was placed next to her at dinner—as he probably would be—and expected to entertain her, then neither of them would derive very much entertainment from one another.

  For he looked as if young English governesses were hardly his line of country, and Caroline had so little Portuguese that she probably wouldn’t be able to follow a word he said.

  And it was highly likely he was attracted to the young woman who was the Marques de Fonteira’s secretary, and as they spoke the same language they would prefer to be together.