House of Storms (3 page)

'I've only ever worked at the office,' Debra replied, not really intimidated by Zandra who, despite her mocking tongue, had a certain fascination which seemed to be a family trait. 'This is my first venture as a private secretary.'

'Then you're new to an Old Line family?'

'Yes, Miss Salvador.'

'We have our roots in the rollicking days of the corsairs who used to sail into Cornish waters and take whatever plunder they could lay hands on, including any likely-looking females. You may have heard how Bride's Cove came to get its name?'

Debra broke into a smile. 'Yes, your brother once wrote a book about your famous ancestor.'

'Infamous,' Zandra corrected. 'The daring Don Rodare became a sea rover because in Spain he climbed a certain royal balcony and visited a lady he shouldn't have visited. Following that escapade he had to make a bolt for it, so he took to the high seas and became as successful at pillaging as he had been at seducing ladies in high places.'

'Zandra,' her mother spoke in a flustered way, 'I wish you and Jack weren't so fond of bringing up the subject of that man.'

'I thoroughly admire the memory of the rogue,' Zandra laughed. 'I'd like to have known him, and 1 like to think that Rod and I have some of his genes in us.'

'Rodare certainly has,' Lenora agreed. 'I'm in no doubt that your half-brother has inherited a number of his traits. I'm relieved that Jack is more like my family.'

Upon mentioning her son, Lenora's eyes grew moist and she drew a lace-edged handkerchief from the white cuff of her well-tailored dress and touched it to her nose. 'Jack was always such a clever boy and I pray that Dean will take after him. Clever men, unfortunately, do have a tendency to make mistakes about women, it's a well known fact.'

Debra found herself silently agreeing with this observation, for men of intellect did seem drawn to girls who were the opposite. But the name Rodare conjured an image of the Don. Though Nanny Rose had chatted about the family, she hadn't mentioned that Jack had a half-brother. As he didn't live at Abbeywitch, he was probably married and resident elsewhere.

It was certainly a fascinating family . . . rather like the cast of a play, its members a little more handsome and assured than their audience.

'Have you formed an opinion of Abbeywitch?' Zandra's voice suddenly broke in on her thoughts, edged by the condescension of someone who had grown up in grand surroundings and took them for granted.

'It's fascinating,' Debra replied. 'I've been told that sections of an ancient abbey have been built into it.'

'Perfectly true. The fireplace in the drawingroom is constructed from abbey stone, and some of the bedroom terraces are paved with it. And Jack's den, where you are working, is actually the cell where the priest of those days had his living quarters. We're rumoured to have a ghost, and a cousin of Mama's insists that she has seen it, but she's a rather dotty old dear who has never had a man in her life so she's inclined to get odd notions. She probably looks under the bed before getting into it in case there's a man hiding there.'

'That's no way to speak of Cousin Cora; she's a sweet woman and we all dearly love her.' Lenora glanced at Debra. 'Is your family living, Miss Hartway?'

'My mother is, madam. She lives with her husband in Canada on their farm and they're very happy. My father died when I was very young, that's why I feel for your little grandson. It's sad to lose a parent.'

Lenora Salvador seemed not to think so where Pauline was concerned, the tightening of her lips conveyed this.

'Poor Mama, you'd like to forget that Jack ever knew Pauline, wouldn't you?' Zandra brushed her fingers through her hair, her eyes glittering darkly. 'You'd like her memory to be swept away just as her ashes were that day Jack stood on the headland, at the very brink of the cliffs, and let the wind carry her ashes out to sea. It was pure theatre . . . he and I very definitely have drama in our veins, whereas Rod has the call of Spain . . . the deep southern heart of Spain.'

'His mother was Spanish so it comes naturally to him.' Lenora spoke rather waspishly. 'She was a Spanish gipsy and she danced in a
taberna
—it should have been Rodare rather than Jack who got entangled with Pauline.'

'Hmm, they would have suited each other,' Zandra said thoughtfully, 'except that Rod is more shrewd about women; they have one hell of a job catching him, he's too fly.'

'Anyway, it's a painful subject.' There was an edge to Lenora's voice. 'I bear the girl no grudge, but she wasn't one of us!'

Debra flinched from the cutting words . . . could none of these people at Abbeywitch have liked Pauline? Did they regard themselves as so Old Line that a girl from the chorus line was beyond acceptance? Or was it possible that Mrs Salvador was incapable of accepting any wife that her son brought home? She had spoken of a girl called Sharon whom she had deemed worthy of Jack, yet would she have turned against her had he made Sharon Chandler his wife?

Zandra clicked her lighter and lit a cigarette, puffing smoke into the air. Her mother tut-tutted and waved the smoke away from her. 'Do you have to smoke in here?' she demanded.

'I need to smoke, Mama. You may not have vices, but you must accept that your son and daughter aren't so saintly.'

'I don't pretend to be saintly,' a faint flush came to Lenora's face, 'but smoking is such a disagreeable habit and you're an actress and you should take more care of your throat, not to mention your lungs—you know what the habit does to people!'

'I know what not smoking does to me.'

Zandra wandered to a window where she stood in profile against the sunlit panes of glass. 'I wonder when Jack will decide to come home—has he written to you, Mama?'

Her mother shook her head. 'My son will come home when he's ready.'

Zandra gazed out of the window, smoking rather moodily and framed tall and striking against the glow of the sun. Debra couldn't help thinking that she should have been wearing a flowing robe instead of fashionable culottes.

'What if Jack was to bring home a new wife,' she suddenly said.

There was a palpable silence and then Lenora answered her daughter frostily. 'One must hope not!'

'All the same, Mama, it's a possibility we can't ignore. Jack does have an infant who needs a mother.'

'I'd never forgive him!' Lenora gasped. 'Not a second mistake!'

Debra sat there astounded by the statement. She had never heard such a selfish utterance and couldn't help but wonder if this woman had been on board the yacht the night her daughter-in-law had fallen into the sea.

'If you've finished your tea, Miss Hartway, you can go.' Lenora Salvador spoke abruptly to Debra. 'I assume you find your working and sleeping quarters satisfactory?'

'Yes, Mrs Salvador, I've everything I require.' Debra rose to her feet, murmured a polite good-afternoon and made her way out of the solar, leaving mother and daughter to speculate further on Jack Salvador's whereabouts and plans for the future.

Debra went downstairs in a thoughtful mood. . . she would have to ask Nanny Rose if Jack's mother had been a guest at that fateful party. She didn't bother to hide the fact that she had disapproved of Pauline, and Debra suspected that she was the kind of woman who might bear malice towards someone whom she thought of as being beneath her.

As Debra crossed the hall in the direction of the working den, as it was called, she found her gaze drawn to the towering portrait of the founder of the house. The dark eyes beneath the emphatic brows seemed to hold Debra to attention . . . there was proud dominance and a hint of devilry in that Spanish face.

Don Rodare de Salvador, whom Zandra had admitted to admiring, and whose ways her mother had said were inherited by the half-brother.

As the days passed and Debra established a working routine that no one interfered with, it dawned on her that she had been accepted by the
eminence grise
of the house and wasn't going to be discharged from Abbeywitch because she jarred on Lenora Salvador. A woman very much of her generation and class, who had also developed a prejudice against any young female who might affect her son Jack the way Pauline had.

Debra was faintly amused, for she was aware that in her neat shirts and skirts, with her hair in its chignon, and wearing the hornrimmed spectacles that she needed for close work, she looked about as sexually threatening as a dove on a fence.

Thank heaven for it! She found Abbeywitch fascinating, and it made such a break to be working away from the sweltering city now that summer was coming. She didn't dare to hope that the job might become permanent, but she could look forward to a few weeks of bliss beside the sea, waking in the mornings to fresh air and only the sound of the seabirds, lifting and settling on the water, moving up and down like toy birds as the long waves curled towards the cove.

The den itself was a secluded room right at the far end of the hall, its high walls panelled with Spanish leather that was stamped with gothic crosses in saffron and black. Books and scripts and cassettes were stacked upon shelves in units that stood away from the walls, and the desk where Debra worked was in a big bay window that let in light that didn't quite penetrate to the far comers of the room, and sometimes she would glance up from the typewriter with the oddest notion that a pair of eyes were watching her while she worked.

Not forgetful of what Zandra had said, that long ago this room had been a cell where a priest had lived, Debra felt a sense of disquiet, but she kept it to herself. She didn't want to be labelled by Zandra as another dotty spinster who looked under her bed at night in case a man was hiding there.

It was odd hearing on tape the voice of a man she had never met. Jack Salvador had a deep and deliberate voice and if she closed her eyes he seemed to be in the room with her. She had no idea what he looked like for his books never carried a picture of him on the back of the jacket. In his view it added a sense of suspense that his readers had to imagine the way he looked. He never went in for self-advertisement and didn't appear on television in order to promote his books. Nor did he give interviews to newspaper and magazine columnists.

He didn't need to do any of that, in Debra's opinion, for he was an enthralling writer and she had already written to Harrison Holt to inform him that he wasn't going to be disappointed by the new book. It wasn't only colourful and packed with detail, but it was romantic as well, as if Jack's feelings for Pauline had filtered into the story and added impact to the interludes of passion.

His own love story was ended ... he the man of intellect who had fallen beneath the spell of the showgirl whose attributes were physical rather than mental.

A tragic romance, doomed to last but a short while, its setting here on Lovelis Island as dramatic as anything Jack Salvador had portrayed in one of his novels in which he interweaved historical fact and fiction. It gave Debra a sense of satisfaction to be working on his book.

She didn't see a great deal of Mrs Salvador and her daughter, and this was something of a relief. They were a rather disquieting pair, and Debra preferred to take her meals with Nanny Rose rather than sit constrainedly at the oak table in the dining-room where the chairs were very upright, matching the formality that the matriarch insisted upon at the evening meal.

At the present time, Zandra had several of her theatrical friends staying at Abbeywitch, though they were absent most of the day, rehearsing a play at the Iseult Theatre on the mainland.

On Saturday afternoons Debra felt at liberty to go down to the cove, where she swam and lazed in the sun, disturbed by no one but the birds, securely aware that she couldn't be overlooked because of the guardian cliffs. They jutted in a brow above the beach, too high to shade the sands from the sun but making it impossible for the casual observer to gaze down on her, where she lay on her beach towel acquiring the tan that every town girl dreams of.

Debra had written to inform her mother that her stint as a private secretary on an island was turning out well, and that the house she was living in was built on high cliffs above the ocean. She had described little Dean to her mother, a grand little chap with his deep blue eyes and his infectious chuckle, too young to be aware that his young mother had lost her life in the glittering, churning sea which held such dark memories for Jack Salvador that he couldn't bring himself to come home until he could accept that he was never going to see Pauline again and hold her in his arms.

Pauline's death had been called an accident, but Debra wondered if a spiteful hand had pushed her into the sea while the dance music played. If she cried out the sound would be drowned by the music, and according to Nanny Rose the party on board the yacht had included Jack's mother. Family friends had gathered to celebrate Zandra's birthday, so Mrs Salvador had been persuaded to join the party, a lively one with not only dancing on deck but fireworks whizzing out over the ocean.

Down on the beach Debra would gaze at the water and wonder at the secret that the sea kept to itself. All that was left was a man's grief, and it would be a long time before the child of the marriage was old enough to ponder the mystery of his mother's death. By then the passage of time would have eroded the poignancy of it all, as the sea itself eroded the rocks along the shore and gradually turned them to sand.

After her swim Debra would stretch out and relax, lulled by the sound of the surf as it shuffled and foamed among the rocks. The sun-warmed air trapped the tang of the sea and the wafting scent of the ling and gorse that hung at the cliff edge, along with the white samphire and the figwort. The seagulls swooped, mewing like lost cats, their wings spread gracefully against the sky.

Debra had drifted off to sleep with the caress of the sun on her body, and it was her skin's awareness of shadow that awoke her. Her eyes fluttered open and she stretched her limbs with lazy indolence, which changed to sudden shock as her gaze focused on the figure which blocked out the sun by standing with long legs straddling her recumbent form.