Man of Destiny (10 page)

Ilse, who would have thought nothing of it if she had been even more scantily clad, said casually: “We just want to say goodnight to Richard. He seems to be making quite a din in his room,” but Dom Vasco was plainly as shocked as Caroline was herself. He stared for an instant, apologised mechanically, and then started to retreat along the corridor. But
Il
se laughed and caught at his arm to prevent him leaving the suite altogether.

“It’s only Caroline,” she said. “She’s obviously been wallowing in a very luxurious bath,” inhaling the fragrance of the bath essence that was certainly filling the nursery suite. “Let’s hope you’ve arranged for some nice-looking man to sit beside her at dinner, otherwise all her efforts will be wasted
!”

Caroline retreated into her room and shut the door tightly. She heard Dom Vasco saying stiffly that of course they shouldn’t have entered like that, Miss Worth wasn’t expecting them to pay a sudden visit, but Ilse wouldn’t have it that there was anything unusual about such a visit.

“I
always
say goodnight to Dicky when I have the opportunity,” she said. “And Caroline should beautify herself at a more reasonable hour. The Marques pays her to look after Dicky, and really she ought to be wearing some sort of a uniform, not dressing for the evening as if she was a guest! However, it’s so difficult to get suitable girls to take charge of one’s children nowadays, and I suppose one must make concessions.”

Her voice died away as she disappeared into the bedroom to say goodnight to Richard, but Dom Vasco obviously remained outside in the corridor, for when Ilse rejoined him Caroline heard him say in a constrained voice:

“Everything all right with the child
?
”

“Perfectly all right.” Caroline
c
ould detect the relaxed note in the recently bereaved widow’s voice; and because she had just been afforded a preview of her in her glittering golden lam
e
dress, with her hair in glorious array on top of her head, and her make-up bland and perfect, she knew how utterly alluring she looked as she smiled up into the face of the dark, distinguished Portuguese who stood beside her in his white dinner-jacket and cummerbund, and perhaps slipped a hand inside his arm—for Ilse always clung to her escorts. “I’ll say one thing for Caroline,” she conceded. “She’s quite responsible when it comes to looking after children, and Dicky took a fancy to her straight away. They get on very well, you know.”

“Yes; I do know,” Caroline heard Vasco reply very quietly, and then the suite door closed with a sharp little click, and she realised that the intrusion was over.

She put away the ear-rings and the pearl necklace that she had been inte
n
ding to wear that night, did her hair in a style that was almost severe, ignored the perfume bottle on her dressing-table, and used makeup sparingly; and when she went downstairs at last she was able to hug to herself the thought that at least there would be no one amongst the guests who would be likely to be dazzled by the appearance of Miss Caroline Worth, the English nursery-gove
rn
ess.

The governess who knew her place, even although she ‘wallowed’ in scented baths, and took time off from her duties in an effort to
mak
e
herself glamorous.

She was the more surprised, therefore, when the Marqu
e
s himself, crossing the hall from his private library to the main
sala,
and looking every inch an aristocrat in his beautifully fitting evening
things
suddenly paused as if in surprise and delight and greeted her.

“Miss Worth! If someone old enough to be your father is permitted to pay compliments, may I say how utterly delightful you look?”

Caroline could hardly believe the evidence of her ears. The Marques was even more distinguished—if that were possible!—than Dom Vasco, but his handsome hazel-grey eyes were alight with honest admiration, and there was something deliciously old-world about the way in which he bowed before her.

“Thank you, Senhor Marques,” she said, and her eyes sparkled back into his in gratitude.

The Marques lowered his voice to a confidential whisper.

“I’ll be honest with you,
senhorita
,”
he told her. “If there were to be no guests tonight, and if I could obey my inclinations, I would do nothing but talk with you throughout dinner, and afterwards. You are English, and I am very, very fond of England. Also you remind me—you remind me of
someone...”

There was a partly reminiscent, partly regretful expression in his eyes as they continued to rest on her, and as he broke off he sighed. She gathered that the ‘someone’ she reminded him of was feminine, and that he had not seen her for some considerable while.

“As it is, we will have our talk some other time.”

Dom Vasco appeared in the hall at the very moment that the first cars started gliding up the drive, and as the butler held open the front door the
Marques
had perforce to turn away to welcome arriving guests. Vasco approached silently over the
marble floor until he was right behind Caroline, who was debating whether to retreat upstairs or to try and gain admittance to the
sola.

“I have an apology to make to you,
senhorita
,”
he said, and because she had already caught sight of him out of the tail of her eye she was able to prevent herself looking startled. “An apology because my intrusion tonight was unwarranted. You had every right to resent it.”

She looked up at him with eyes that widened slowly.

“I didn’t resent it,
senhor
,” she told him. “It was simply that it was unexpected, and I was not in a condition to receive you properly.”

“That’s what I mean. The nursery wing is under your jurisdiction, and visits to it should be authorised by you. Naturally, Senhora de Fonteira has a right to visit it whenever she chooses, but I have no right to do so.”

All at once she felt herself dimpling uncontrollably, and she knew that her eyes were amused.

“If only I had been just a
little
more prepared to receive
you ...
I really had been wallowing in my bath. Senhora de Fonteira was perfectly right about that, but I wasn’t trying to make myself glamorous. It was just that someone gave me a rather special phial of bath essence before I left England, and I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to
use it...”

“And tonight provided you with that opportunity? It was the reason why the nursery wing smelt like the Garden of Allah when we entered
?
”

“Did it?” She glanced up at him with grey-blue eyes that refused to be abashed by the sudden dry look round his mouth, the unconcealed spark of humour in his eyes. “Well, I suppose it did
!
I must
have emptied the entire bottle into the water, which was a mistake ... and extravagant!”

“For a young woman who is not paid to beautify herself
?
”

Her expression grew more rueful, in fact, very rueful.

“Yes; I heard that, too. But Mrs. de Fonteira was right, of
course
...
my main preoccupation is, and should be, with Richard. However, he was in
bed tonight, and I have to have a bath sometimes. It was a pity I chose just that time to have one.”

“Judging by the results—and I am referring more particularly to the glamorising period after the bath—your efforts were by no means wasted,” Dom Vasco observed slowly, and with very definite emphasis, while he took in all the details of the dark blue chiffon, that managed to look infinitely becoming even without anything to adorn it. “I would like to congratulate you,
senhorita,
on combining modesty with charm. No one will mistake you for a guest, because your colouring is completely un-Portuguese; but, on the
o
ther hand, I personally would not mistake you for a nursery-gove
rn
ess. And I am not trying to undervalue nursery-gove
rn
esses in general.”

Caroline felt herself flushing brilliantly. His dark eyes were smiling down at her, and for the first time since she had known him they were full of admiration ... undisguised, utterly confusing admiration.

She felt as if she had started to run up a very steep flight of stairs, and she was out of condition and her quickened breathing made her want to gasp. Her pulses were bounding, her blood seemed to be ra
ring
... and it was all so new to her that she failed to understand it.

Until she forced herself to meet his eyes again. And then it wasn’t so much that she understood; but she began to be afraid that she ought to
understand...

“Thank you,
senhor
,” she , said, and her voice sounded strange and breathless in her own ears.

Dom Vasco lightly touched her bare arm, and indicated the door of the
sala.

“You will find a friend in there,” he said. “Senhorita de Capuchos arrived ten minutes ago. She will be happy to renew her acquaintance with you.”

CHAPTER TEN

IT was an evening quite unlike any evening Caroline had known before in her life. The company was brilliant, the dinner superb, and afterwards the guests remained until a very late hour, drinking coffee in the
sala
and making conversation that was frequently witty, and frequently centred round personalities about whom Caroline knew nothing at all.

She found it necessary to revise her opinion of Portuguese women. They were not all as dull as the types she had met aboard ship, and in Portuguese East Africa. Women like Carmelita de Capuchos, for instance, unmarried, and with neither husband nor
children to anchor their thoughts and prevent outside interests, could be entertaining and vivid, bright as a butterfly and in complete command of the situation when men sought to occupy the floor and steal their limelight from them.

Carmelita had been educated in England and France, and she spoke both languages fluently. She had learned to dress with the flair of a Frenchwoman, and she had as much confidence as Ilse de Fonteira, with the difference that she was basically and exceptionally feminine, and would have scorned to play two roles, as Ilse frequently did.

If she had been married she would have been devoted to her children, and there would have been no need to act a part occasionally. She could live and breathe quite as happily when there were men around as when there were no men around. A man’s admira
t
ion might be important to her, but it was not all
-
important. She was sufficient of a mystery—possibly to herself as well as to her friends—to be
intrig
uing
;
and she had a Mona Lisa-ish type of smile that could always count upon adherents.

As a hostess she was superb. Caroline realised that as soon as she saw her seated at the long dining-table, facing the Marques, and sending him brilliant smiles occasionally, and directing more subtle smiles at Dom Vasco from time to time. The conversation at her end of the table simply flowed, and under the brilliant lights she looked enchanting. Not so much a beauty as a charmer, dressed by someone who knew exac
tl
y how to dress her, and wearing a fortune in jewels on her neck, wrists and fingers.

I
lse, who had chosen golden lam
e
because she knew it exactly matched her hair, began to look slightly less confident than usual before the dinner was a quarter of the way through. She could not compete with Carmelita, and she knew it
... neither socially, conversationally, nor artistically. Her golden lame looked a trifle brash under the lights, and her pale English loveliness was not as exciting as Carmelita’s delicate, faded darkness. Carmelita really did suggest a rose ... a folded white rose. Ilse, despite clever make-up, looked a little older than her twenty-eight years, and there was something very, very slightly full-blown about her.

She found herself allotted the place of honour on the right hand of the
Marques
, and that meant she was some considerable distance away from Dom
Vasco. Even Caroline was closer to him than she was, and between Caroline and the most personable male member of the dinner-party was a very stout
e
lderly lady and a white-haired elderly gentleman, who paid a good deal of polite attention to the English girl, and in that way vied with the serious assistant bailiff, whom she had on her other hand.

On the whole, Caroline enjoyed the dinner, although the amount of food she was expected to consume was quite beyond her. The dishes were endless and most elaborate, and as a result it was a very long-drawn-out and protracted meal.

She actually preferred it when they returned to the
s
a
la
for coffee, and then she could sit and watch Dom Vasco being beautifully polite and attentive to each of the lady guests in turn, while Ilse had to put up with the attentiveness of the white-haired elderly gentleman who had been Caroline’s neighbour at dinner, and Carmelita flirted openly and quite delightfully with the Marques.

It amused Caroline—although she knew it ought really to do nothing of the kind, and she ought to feel sympathy for a fellow-countrywoman—to sense that Ilse was becoming badly frustrated, and that the cool triumph she had expected of the evening was not such a triumph after all.

For one thing, she spoke hardly any Portuguese, never having bothered to learn the language, and the one or two attractive, youngish men who had been invited to meet her had hardly any English to speak of. They looked at her with admiration, stumbled awkwardly over a few sentences, and then left her to the protection of the elderly gentleman, who knowing all about her recent widowhood didn’t honestly expect her to feel the need to be entertained.

All the same, when Carmelita transferred her attentions to Vasco, and started to engage
him
in an amusing duologue, Caroline began to feel a certain sympathy for Ilse. Or rather, she understood the
reason why she was looking more and more withdrawn, and why the elderly gentleman received nothing but clipped answers from her whenever he addressed her.

Dom Vasco wasn’t merely attractive, he was an exceptionally eligible bachelor, a close kinsman of the Marques de Fonteira, and an extremely rich man in his own right. He had no need to hope that one day the Marques would leave him something substantial in his will; he had plenty of his own, and a great deal to offer to the woman he one day made his wife. All the unmarried young women in the district must be secretly hoping that one day he would notice them in a way that would mean he really was beginning to think about marriage
... Unless it was generally accepted that he would marry Senhorita de Capuchos.

But to someone like Ilse, recently widowed and left not very well off, even if it was generally accepted that he was to marry Carmelita the challenge would be there, the insistent thought that he could be
made
to become aware of another woman’s
charms,
another woman’s needs. She was beautiful, and she needed someone like him to provide a background for her beauty—a more fitting one than Portuguese East Africa! And that dark, dangerous attraction of his—his intense, masculine charm—would add something to the conquest that would also add a zest to life. Her life in Portugal!

No d
o
ubt she had the whole thing worked out after meeting him that afternoon, but it hadn’t honestly occurred to her that any dark-eyed Portuguese woman who was no longer in the first flush of her youth could provide a serious obstacle to such newly concocted plans. Carmelita de Capuchos, a
mere cousin, could be overlooked
..
.
until she met Carmelita.

Caroline felt sure she was literally seething with resentment because Carmelita, after all, was a person to be reckoned with. And if she hadn’t been living in a kind of rarefied atmosphere all evening, ever since Vasco’s dark eyes had looked at her, and smiled at her, in such a way that he had practically deprived her of breath, she might have felt greater sympathy for Ilse. She might have been able to forget that he had already revised his opinion of her, and was apparently prepared to treat her as if she was something rather special in the way of an appealing widow for whom every right-minded person would feel sympathy; and she might even have thought that it would be nice for Richard if he could acquire a stepfather who would almost certainly have his well-being at heart, and be a great support to him in the future.

But Dom Vasco’s hand had touched her arm following that look that had set her pulses racing, and although it had been the merest, lightest contact with his fingertips she had wondered why the truth had never occurred to her before
...that one man’s look, and one man’s touch, had, sooner or later, to affect her whole future life.

And apparently Dom Vasco, whom she had started off by
dislikin
g on account of his arrogance, was that man!

Making such a discovery after he had seen her with a shiny face and disordered hair standing in the doorway of her bedroom, while Ilse drove it home to him that she was nothing but a paid employee, was enough to affect the reasoning processes of any young woman who was quite unaccustomed to having anything of the kind happen to her. And Caroline knew that if she actually allowed herself to do so she could even gloat a little over Ilse’s discomfiture
... Although for some extraordinary reason she was not greatly upset by Carmelita’s obvious grasp of the situation.

Carmelita might be intending to marry Dom Vasco, and it was no affair of Caroline’s. But if Ilse thought, after knowing him for such a very short while, that she could marry him...!

Well, that was a different thing altogether. Despite her love for Richard it brought out the worst in Caroline.

Although the main
sala
was large and airy, with tall windows standing open to the night, it grew hot and stuffy after a while. Caroline stole out, unnoticed,
for a breath of air, and as she walked the scented paths she saw other people making their way to the music pavilion which, like the house, was a blaze of light. Carmelita had offered to play the piano, and as she was up to concert platform standard her offer had been seized upon with pleasure. Most of the dinner-party guests accompanied her, and those that remained behind were the elderly ones who preferred to play bridge and gossip. As Caroline, too, ascended the steps of the music pavilion she caught sight of I
ls
e, ahead of her, leaning a little heavily on the arm of her host, and she wondered how much she was looking forward to the performance.

Probably not at all, since it would not place her in the limelight, or do much to draw attention to her as the bereaved widow who had come back to take her place in her husband’s country; and she had already had quite enough of Carmelita for one
evening. Of that Caroline was reasonably convinced.

Not merely was the music pavilion a blaze of light, but it looked almost like a stage set in the deep, purple gloom of the night. Someone had arranged flowers in masses in giant containers, and their heavy sweetness floated in the warmth of the night air and mingled with the exotic scents that came up from the garden. The elegant chairs and couches were grouped together as if it was a concert hall, and the piano had been slightly raised so that it actually stood on a platform. Carmelita, in her gauzy, moth-wing dress of palest pearl-coloured net and floating chiffon, with rubies in her ears and at her throat, took her seat on the piano stool, and Dom Vasco stood beside her to turn over the pages of her music for her.

The
music was already arranged on the piano, so it was not a sudden impulse on her part to entertain the guests. She had plainly thought of it beforehand, and not even the sight of Ilse
,
yawning delicately behind a scarlet-tipped hand, or the Marques lying back a little stolidly in his chair, as if he was not really musical at. heart, seemed to have the power to affect her brilliant smile as she began her op
enin
g chords.

She played Chopin, and Liszt, and Beethoven. Caroline, sitting in a chair at the back of the pavilion, relaxed after the introductory bars of music, and realised that she was in for a musical treat. Senhorita de Capuchos, if she had needed to make money, could have done so easily simply by playing the piano, and her name would have become well known in the capitals of Europe. But she didn’t need to make money, and she played simply for the delight of it, and because it entertained her friends
... And perhaps that was the reason why she was so successful, and why the friends seldom resented it when she broke into one of their evenings and demanded their attention for a while.

Certainly, Dom Vasco seemed perfectly happy turning over her music for her, and as a pair they were perfectly matched with the lights streaming down on them from the crystal chandeliers, and the golden curtains behind them swaying a little in the soft night breeze.

Senhor Luis Rambozi, the assistant estate manager, seemed to think they made an almost perfect pair, and whispered as much to Caroline in his careful English as he slipped into a seat beside her near the conclusion of the recital, and hoped that no one noticed him change his seat.

“She is delightful, yes?” he said to Caroline, and as his quiet eyes rested on her she had the feeling that what he actually wished to do was pay her a compliment, only he was too shy to do so. “These musical evenings are quite a thing when Senhorita de Capuchos takes charge, and as we all firmly believe that one day—”

He broke off and glanced carefully at the two on the raised platform.

“That one day Dom Vasco will induce her to marry him, it will be very pleasant indeed for him, do you not think so,
senhorita
?
Because they are both very musical, and have many other things in common, also. In fact, they are an ideal pair.”

“Then they are not actually engaged at the moment?” Caroline whispered back, thinking that this was an opportunity to satisfy herself on that point at least.

Senhor Rambozi shook his head.

“Not so far as we know,
senhorita.
There has been no official announcement.”

“But you expect a
n
official announcement at almost any time
?
”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“It is up to them, of course. But yes, we expect it. It would be so suitable, you see. And they have known one another for many years.”

Thinking the matter over in her own mind, Caroline did not consider this a convincing argument. Surely, since they had known one another for such a length of time, and if there was any real attachment between them, they would have decided to clinch matters before this
... since they were neither of them growing any younger, and Carmelita was already past her bloom by the standards of the Portuguese themselves
?

For one thing, Portuguese women tended to grow fat as they grew older, and although Carmelita would probably never be fat—at the moment she was almost too sylph-like and slender—she was indisputably past the age when her countrywomen liked to know they were settled and allocated for life.

Under cover of a rather noisy prelude she turned to Luis and ventured to point out:

“If they were in love, surely they would have married long before this?”

He smiled at her. His dark eyes were distinctly amused.

“But in Portugal we do not concern ourselves so much with love,” he told her. “Only with suitability!” Caroline felt suddenly depressed, although the music was triumphant and
filling
every
corner
of the pavilion. Judged by such a yardstick she would have a pretty thin time in Portugal, she thought, for not
many men would consider her a suitable future spouse. She had neither money nor background nor parents, and at that precise moment she felt strangely insignificant.

The only one who had bothered to join her on the back row of chairs was a young man who was probably attracted by her fairness, and the fact that she was so little like a Portuguese girl. And if she was so unwise as to take seriously that gleam of admiration in his eyes, and to think that he might wish to see her again, she would almost certainly court disillusionment.

For in his eyes she must be very unsuitable
... a young woman about whom nobody knew very much.