The Bay of Moonlight Page 8

  'Good morning!' he called out to her, when she drew near enough to hear him. 'I was fairly certain it was you, but of course I couldn't be quite certain! Did you enjoy your bathe ?'

  She nodded, wishing she could somehow lay hands on her towel without drawing his attention to the fact that it also contained various items of her clothing.

  'Yes. It was wonderful. The water is so warm!'

  'And you do not find the sun too hot as yet?'

  He was regarding her a little critically ... not, she realized, her perfectly respectable swim-suit - and how glad she was that she had not yielded to the temptation to don a bikini! - but her bright head from which she had just ripped the bathing cap, and her smooth, fair English face that was all wet with sea-water.

  She blinked the drops from her lashes, and realized that very , soon now, as the late spring marched forward into full summer, she would have to wear dark glasses for most of the time that she was out of doors. Her Anglo-Saxon fairness was not proof against the power of this sun, and he knew it, and that was why he - so dark and strikingly attractive in his brief crimson bathing trunks - was regarding her almost with a frown in his eyes.

  'No. But I expect I will do in a week or so's time.'

  'You'll have to be rather more careful, and I would recommend that you bathe a little earlier, or else late in the afternoon.'

  'I will.'

  She dived past him up the beach to her towel, and when she returned to him she was almost completely obscured by it, while he was still sitting on the rods and smoking his cigarette.

  He made room for her on the rock, and offered her his cigarette case, but she shook her head.

  'I thought I saw you slip out by the side door this morning.' He smiled at her. 'I was already taking the air.'

  'I - I didn't see you.'

  'I know you didn't.' His smile grew rather amused but his eyes were resting on her very intently, and he was plainly fascinated by the way in which she rubbed her hair with a corner of the towel. She had some difficulty in doing this without depriving herself of the protection of the towel, and she wasn't quite sure whether it was because she was under the impression that the Portuguese, like the Spanish, disapproved of exhibitions of feminine flesh on the beach ... or anywhere else except in their own private apartments; or whether it was because he was her employer, and his eyes were not like other men's and stared quite frankly in the most embarrassing moments, although she was quite sure it was never his intention to discompose her. But whatever it was she did ardently wish that he had not caught sight of her slipping out through the side door of his house, and if he intended to enjoy a bathe himself he would not hesitate to leave her alone on the beach in order to do so.

  'I'm sorry I didn't bring a spare towel with me,' he said. 'As a matter of fact, I haven't brought a towel with me at all, or I'd offer it to you.'

  'Thank you.' She turned delightfully pink under her light coating of tan, and the strong sunlight brought out all the beauties of her hair, and the way it clung moistly to her smooth forehead could have been responsible for his complete lack of consideration, and his apparent determination not to look away. 'I - I can manage very well,' she assured him, dabbing at the baby hair on her nape.

  'I was watching you while you were out there in the sea,' he told her, indicating the almost navy-blue water with the binoculars, 'and it seemed to me that you're quite a strong swimmer. As a matter of fact, I also observed you yesterday morning while you were putting the children through a short course of aquatic behaviour. Maria is as yet somewhat nervous in the water, but Roberto has a strong breast-stroke. I think you will be good for him and encourage him to greater efforts.'

  'Thank you,' she said again, somewhat taken aback by his admission that she had been under inspection the previous day while imagining him taking little interest in their activities on the beach ... and it must have been before he set off to lunch with his friends.

  'Yes; Maria is rather afraid of the water, but Roberto has little fear of anything. One day he will develop into a very athletic and extremely bold young map, I would say.'

  'Bold only in the sense that he will never lack for courage, I hope you mean,' his uncle remarked.

  'Yes, of course. Even now he is a perfect little gentleman, and I can't imagine him changing very markedly in that respect.'

  'I sincerely hope not.' Saratola frowned. 'With his background and the kind of forebears that he has it should be literally impossible for him to be anything else.'

  'Of course,' she agreed demurely.

  He glanced at her quickly, suspicious of her demure tone and thinking he detected a spark of amusement in her mist-mauve eyes.

  'Does it surprise you so much that a Saratola should have few actual weaknesses?' he demanded, in a tone of complete arrogance, 'And by weaknesses I mean that he will never depart from a code of behaviour, however great the temptation. His mother's family are a very highly respected English family, but it is from the Saratolas that he draws his strength ... and will continue to do so.'

  'You are quite sure of that?' she asked, with a kind of naive innocence. 'I mean, just supposing that in his mother's family there have been occasional lapses, and that it is her blood that flows most strongly through his veins? After all, he looks like her!'

  'Looks are nothing whatsoever to go by,' the Portuguese declared while his nostrils flared slightly with obvious annoyance. 'That Roberto resembles his mother is just an accident. It is his father that he undoubtedly takes after.'

  'Then his. lather was a typical Saratola? No. weakness of any kind?'

  Once again he turned and looked at her, and this time she thought he frowned. She had nothing really to go on, but from occasional remarks the children had dropped she had already gathered that their father had resembled Maria very closely ... and Maria was undersized, highly-strung and not particularly courageous. If Roberto had looked like Maria he would have had serious difficulties to cope with at the outset of his youthful career, and without wishing to be spiteful she could not help but feel convinced that it was to his mother, with her lovely Saxon fairness, that he owed his splendid and captivating looks.

  However, Philip Saratola was an extremely handsome man. Glancing at him rather nervously while he frowned at her, she was absolutely sure that there was little or no weakness in him ... and certainly none that he would acknowledge himself. He might have a softer side arid she had thought that she had seen it when they first met - but if he had he was not particularly proud of it himself, and it was subject to the mood that possessed him at the moment, and could be easily controlled if he wished to control it.

  She could not, in fact, imagine him falling wildly and unreasonably in love with a woman, and marrying her for no other reason but that he was in love with her.

  And then she remembered that he was her employer, and that it was no part of her duties - or in her own best interests - to antagonize him. So she said something hurriedly about Roberto undoubtedly having exceptional qualities despite the fact that he was so small, and amongst those qualities was a capacity for accepting discipline that warred with his sturdy independence, and it was almost certainly because he was Portuguese. English children - particularly modern English children - did not take so kindly to discipline, and at Roberto's age very few of them had such excellent manners. He really was a nephew the Senhor Saratola could be proud of.

  The Senhor Saratola stared hard at her for a moment, and then he smiled broadly.

  'You are attempting to remedy your mistake, senhorita,,' he said, 'and put salt on the tail of the ogre before it is too late? You think otherwise I might bite you!'

  It was her turn to look slightly taken aback, and then she dimpled in a fascinating way and agreed that the thought had occurred to her that she was being indiscreet.

  'Not unnaturally you want your nephew to take after your family,' she said.

  'And if he does not I shall blame it on you for encouraging in him certain tendencies that are pecul
iarly Anglo-Saxon,' he warned her. Then he reached out a hand and lifted an end of the towel so that it covered her shoulder rather more adequately, and treated her to a curiously disturbing display of his beautiful even white teeth. 'If you wish to disappear behind that rode where you have left your clothes and put them on I will wait for you here,' he said.

  She blushed scarlet There was an unmistakable twinkle in his dark eyes - in fact, a positive sparkle of amusement - and the cool way he revealed he knew perfectly well she had undressed on the beach robbed her of her composure for a moment.

  'There is no need for you to wait for me, senhor,' she assured him. 'If you are going to bathe—'

  'I have changed my mind. I can bathe at any time.

  and I have not brought my towel with me. Yours is too inadequate to be shared between the two of us. And I wish to return with you to the villa.'

  'Oh!' she said.

  He glanced at his wristwatch.

  'It should not take you more than two minutes to slip into the somewhat limited supply of clothing that is awaiting you higher up the beach, and when you are ready and we have returned to the house - and I have had an opportunity to don a few clothes, also - we will all four breakfast together, and after that I propose to take you and the children for a drive,' he surprised her by telling her. 'Tomorrow I have to return to Lisbon, and I thought that today I should devote to my small relatives - and to you, Miss Cunninghame! He continued to smile at her almost challengingly. 'Didn't I hear Roberto calling you Senhorita Sarah yesterday?'

  The scarlet blush was receding slowly from her cheeks, but she cautiously admitted that she had given Roberto permission to make use of her Christian name if he wished ... and that, of course, went for Maria as well.

  'Then I will not be the odd man out. I will call you Senhorita Sarah as well! And occasionally - if you don't mind - I will make it simply Sarah, which is an English name I find most agreeable, and suits you for some reason that is not yet entirely clear to me.'

  She blushed again.

  'Of course you can call me Sarah if you want to, senhor,' she said.

  His eyes twinkled.

  'What a pity that it would be bad for discipline, otherwise I might feel tempted to ask you to call me Philip,' he amazed her by admitting casually. 'Not that I think Philip is an excessively agreeable name, but it might simplify the position between us. You so obviously find it difficult sometimes to remember the senhor.'

  And if he hadn't been smiling at her in the way he was she would have been half afraid that he was reproving her for occasionally omitting the formal 'senhor.'

  They had a very pleasant drive after breakfast, and in fact it was so pleasant that Sarah found it difficult to believe that the Philip Saratola who drove them and was so exceedingly amiable that he might have had some special reason for wishing them all three to thoroughly enjoy their outing was the same Philip Saratola who had driven them all the way from Lisbon.

  He pointed out every feature in the landscape that was likely to appeal to Sarah, while insisting that she sat beside him at the wheel while the children shared the back seat between them and bounced up and down like corks every time they saw something that interested them - such as a laden donkey drawn up beside the road and refusing to budge although its driver was frantically waving his arms and growing crimson in the face with his efforts to get it to change its mind; and a village band parading in the central square, and a sea of wild flowers spreading like a tidal wave in the dim coolness of a wood. They saw so many wild flowers during the course of that drive that Sarah, as well as the children, began to yearn for the opportunity to gather some of them, and take them home with them; and here again Saratola proved extraordinarily obliging, and pulled up and sat smoking a cigarette behind the wheel while his three delighted passengers waded knee- deep amongst the flowers and gathered as many as they possibly could in the time at their disposal.

  When they moved on again the car was a bower of flowers, and as the ones that Sarah had gathered were the same deep blue as her dress, and might almost have been a part of it as she sat with them on her lap, her employer glanced at her more than once with a slight smile in his eyes - an appreciative smile, as even she realized - and remarked that she ought to wear that particular shade more often.

  'It suits you,' he observed. 'It suits you so well that I feel I've a little bit of the wood in the car.'

  She thanked him.

  'You have more than a little bit of the wood, senhor. If all these flowers survive by the time we reach home we shall require so many vases in which to display them that Senhora Delgado will probably be hard put to find them for us.'

  'I shall fill my bath with mine,' Roberto declared from the back seat. 'And if there are any left over I shall put them in Sarah's room.'

  His uncle smiled whimsically over his shoulder at him.

  'So it is Sarah now, and no longer Senhorita Sarah,' he exclaimed. 'I must say, Roberto, you are cementing your friendship with Miss Cunninghame very rapidly!'

  In a quieter voice, for Sarah's ear alone, he added:

  'But just now you addressed me once more as senhor. I thought that this morning we arranged things differently?'

  She frowned at the flowers in her lap.

  'Do you think that, from the children's point of view and discipline it would be a good thing if I accepted it that you do not object if we depart from formality ... senhor?' she asked.

  He frowned, and his frown was rather more noticeable than hers.

  'Perhaps not,' he agreed.

  'Then I would prefer it if I might continue to be formal with you, Senhor Saratola.'

  He shrugged his shoulders. Apparently his good humour was unimpaired, but the frown lingered just the same.

  'As you wish,' he said. 'But that does not mean I may not call you Sarah.'

  They stopped at a cafe for ice-creams, and' he was urbane and affable as he had been since they left La Cristola, but Sarah had the distinct impression that he was not pleased. He told Roberto that he was to behave himself while he was in Lisbon, and if his tutor should arrive during his absence he was to co-operate with him and work hard, and Miss Cunninghame would decide how much leisure he was to be allowed. He tweaked Maria's ear and said she, also, must be good, and that he would bring her a new doll when he returned from Lisbon. It was just possible he would have news of their mother's return when he saw them again, and that, he was sure, was a crumb of information that he felt sure would please them.

  Actually, it evoked no response of any kind. Neither of the two children seemed to be consumed with eagerness to see their mother again.

  On the way home Sarah was occasionally aware that her employer's eyes left the road and that they dwelt on her for an instant; but when she looked round swiftly there was no expression in them that revealed what he was thinking. She did gradually receive the impression that he was thawing towards her again, and he talked to her quite entertainingly of Portugal and the life of its wonderfully attractive countryside. She rather gathered from one or two things that he let drop that he expected to be in residence in his principal house in the autumn, and he seemed also to think it quite likely that she and the children would be there, and that they would participate in the celebrations attending the grape harvest.

  He was obviously very knowledgeable about the processing of grapes and production of wines, and Sarah gathered that some of the finest grapes in Portugal were grown on his estate, and the wine that he bottled was highly thought of throughout the world. Last year had been a bad year, but this year was likely to be an exceptionally good year, and therefore the wine would be of very high quality indeed.

  'When I return again from Lisbon I will see that you taste it,' he said. 'I dislike very much your habit of drinking fruit juice on all occasions. If you are to live in Portugal you must do as the Portuguese do, and become knowledgeable about such matters as the country's wines.

  'I will have to initiate you not only into the processing, but the
art of appreciating truly good wine,' he said. 'On that I must insist.'

  She glanced up at him in some surprise.

  'It all depends on how long I remain in Portugal, doesn't it, senhor?' she suggested. 'I mean, if I am to be here for only a few months - which is very likely as the children are soon to go to school - my stay in Portugal will not be a very lengthy one. In fact, it will be for only two or three months if you plan to make arrangements for schools in the autumn.'

  Saratola frowned again - and he could do so very blackly at times, she had already noticed - and pressed his foot on the accelerator so that the car fairly leapt over the smooth surface of the road.

  'Is that a threat, Miss Cunninghame?' he asked, extraordinarily tight-lipped. 'A threat to desert me if arrangements are not made for the children's schooling by the autumn?' She felt, and looked, a little startled by the idea. 'Of course I will not desert the children!' she exclaimed, while they bounced up and down in pleasure in the back of the car. 'But you did make it clear, senhor, that Roberto is to go to school in England, and Maria—'

  'Yes, yes, yes,' he exclaimed, as if he was suddenly impatient, and to the delight of his small blood relations the car fairly hummed over the road. 'But today is a day for enjoyment, not to thrust school down Roberto's neck! And neither I nor her mother have yet made up our minds that boarding-school is a good thing for a child such as Maria!'

  Sarah decided to fall silent. She had quite obviously said or done something that had annoyed him extremely.

  They all four lunched together at the villa, and then the children were released to play in the garden, while Sarah read a book on the balcony of her room. Afternoon tea was not a regular habit at La Cristola, but Sarah was always supplied with it, and she found it waiting for her as usual on a table in the beautiful main sala, where the portrait of Venetia brooded over everything, when she went to look for it.