Man of Destiny (11 page)

And then, as she glanced towards the platform for an instant, she was surprised to see Dom Vasco looking straight down the length of the music-room and hard at them. He appeared to be frowning a little.

As soon as the music ceased, and while everyone was applauding wholeheartedly—everyone, that is, except Ilse—he walked to the back of the room and pointedly singled out Caroline.

“
Is it not a little late for you,
senhorita
?
” he asked politely. “If you would like to retire we will excuse you, you
kn
ow.”

She felt her face grow hot as his cold eyes rested on her, and in their dark, distant depths there was nothing to recall that look he had given her earlier in the evening. It had probably suddenly occurred to him that she was the one alien figure in the pavilion,
the only one who had no real right to be there—although it was he himself who had insisted that she should join them at dinner. And now he wished to dismiss her, and he was doing it as politely as he knew how. By suggesting that it was late for her
...
the English governess who was unaccustomed to moving in social circles such as this, and was probably feeling out of it in any case.

Or perhaps he was a little afraid Senhor Rambozi might become involved with her, since he had dared to vacate his seat beside a plump young woman who was some sort
o
f relative, and might one day be intended for a wife.

“I’m sorry,
senhor
.”
She stood up. “If I have stayed too long...” But the words seemed to stick in her throat. It was cruel of him to make her fe
el
small in front of so many people.

And then Ilse created a diversion, and attracted the entire attention of the room to herself.

She had been looking almost painfully bored while the piano music filled the room, and for the last few minutes she had been fanning herself vigorously as if the heat was too much, and it was threatening to overcome her. And now at the precise moment when Caroline was engaging Dom Vasco’s attention, and preventing him devoting some small portion of it to herself, she dec
id
ed to faint.

She stood up,
cl
utching at the
shining
rope of pearls that encircled her throat.

“It
’
s so terribly hot in here
!
If someone will h
el
p me out into the air...!”

But before even the
Marques
, who was nearest to her, could guide her in the direction of the open windows she had slumped against
him
and it required a very prompt move on his part to prevent her slipping to the floor and lying there in a graceful heap at his feet.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

BUT the Marques was a very slender man, and Ilse was a very well-built young woman, despite her gleaming golden shape. It was Dom Vasco who came to his rescue and swung her up into his a
rm
s as if she was no more than featherweight, and then bore her practically over the heads of the guests out into the reviving sweetness of the night, and a convenient padded garden chair that was one of several on the terrace.

Dom Vasco laid Ilse very gently in the chair, and then looked round sharply for someone who could fetch him brandy. Caroline was nearest to
him
and so she received his instructions.

“There is a flask in my car which is still
s
tanding
on the drive. R
un
swiftly and get it.”

But Ilse opened her eyes and protested that she didn’t need any brandy. She looked about her vaguely.

“It was the heat! It was so hot in there...” Dom Vasco’s face was very close to her own, and she looked up into it and smiled apologetically. “You must forgive me! I don’t normally do things like this, but there was the journey today, and—and perhaps I’m a little exhausted—”

“Of course,” he said, soothingly. “I understand.”

“And recen
tl
y I’ve been very upset
... The parting from Dicky, you know!”

“Of course,” he said again, as if he really did understand.

Carmelita had deserted the concert platform, and was now offering practical advice as she bent over Ilse. With attractive womanly sympathy she assisted her to a sitting position, and then started to fan her vigorously with her own lace-edged handkerchief.

“A glass of wine,” she suggested. “A glass of wine would almost certainly revive her, and there are refreshments in the music-room.”

“Go and get a glass of wine, Senhorita Worth,” Dom Vasco ordered in a clipped voice, and Caroline sped back into the pavilion to obey his behest.

There were not many people left in the music-room, but there was a large side table completely covered with decanters and glasses, and she poured something that looked most likely into one of the delicate crystal wine-glasses, and took it back to the terrace where, by this time, the entire audience seemed to have congregated. She thrust her way through the press, and put the wine-glass into Dom Vasco’s hand. He frowned as he glanced down at it, and rebuked her swiftly.

“This is not wine! This is liqueur! Surely you know the difference
?
”

The Marqu
e
s intervened, in a firm voice.

“Senhorita Worth was not to know.” He lifted a finger and his secretary stepped forward immediately. “A little of the burgundy,
senhorita,
if you please!” Caroline hung back, her face burning under cover of the night, and Ilse recovered quickly. Once the wine was brought, and she sipped a little of it, she declared that there was absolutely nothing the
mat
ter with her. If Dom Vasco would allow her to hold his arm she could walk back to the house
... But she hung on to his arm pathetically when she stood up, and her face was pale as it would normally have been
with the brilliant shine of the chandeliers in the music-room pouring forth and bathing her in quite a flood of light. Her green eyes looked up at him languidly, and she whispered that it was such a comfort to have a man’s arm to lean on.

“I don’t think anyone realises how much I miss—Carlos!”

And some bright tears of weakness welled over and ran down her cheeks.

Dom Vasco was visibly affected, and he suggested that she should allow him to carry her back to the house. Ilse protested that it was quite unnecessary, and then caught sight of Caroline in the group confronting her.

“But if Miss Worth would go back and make certain Dicky is all right it would make me happier,” she declared faintly. “The nursery wing is so cut off, and he is a
l
one—”

“Go, Miss Worth,” Dom Vasco ordered curtly.

This time it was Carmelita who raised a protesting voice.

“But the house is full of servants, and the child will be perfectly all right! It’s absurd
...”

And then her voice died away as she realised that Caroline was already on her way back to the house, and despite further protests Dom Vasco lifted Ilse into his arms and bore her back to the house.

Caroline reached it well ahead of them, and not merely her face, but her ears and throat were still burning fierily. It was the last time, she vowed to herself, that she would allow Dom Vasco to induce her to leave Richard at night, or indeed at any other time, unless his rightful guardian, the
Marques
de Fonteira, insisted on it. In fact, unless she was to be ground between the upper and nether millstone, with
Ilse and her current admirer both approving different systems of treatment where Richard was concerned, she would have to get the Marques to issue a kind of final edict, which would either support her or go against her, and in any case leave her with some clear ideas as to the methods approved by him.

As it was, she was liable to be attacked on two sides, and after being coolly humiliated in front of a large party of guests, at an hour of the evening when she was not prepared for it, or in the best state of mind to cope with it, she could only think feverishly that it must not occur again.

She would see the Marques in the morning, or she would send in a special request to have a word with him. And if he refused to support her (although from the little she had seen of him so far he seemed to her to be eminently reasonable) she would have no alternative but to ask to be replaced.

And if Ilse was going to be a guest at the
quinta
for some time, and enter into serious competition with Carmelita de Capuchos for the right to look upon Dom Vasco as her property, then it might be a good thing if she asked to be released in any case!

She looked in on Richard before she went to her room, and he was sleeping peacefully. She sent a message by a maid who was still on duty to Ilse, letting her know that her son was perfectly safe and well, and that there was not the smallest cause in the world for her to worry about him at that late hour of the night—or rather, morning, for it was close upon one o’clock by this time, the service of dinner not having begun until it was nearly ten o’clock—and then shut herself in her
room
and went to bed.

It was only after she had been in bed for about a
quarter of an hour that she remembered that Richard liked her door to be open as well as his, and she slipped out of bed and opened it.

In the morning her mood of resentment was still strong, and it was not improved by Ilse sending for her and asking her to search through her things for a particular belt and stole that went with a certain outfit.

“We’re going for a drive this morning, and I want to look my best.” She was still lying in bed in a black chiffon nightdress, and although she had been up so late the night before there was nothing in the least exhausted-looking about her appearance, or anything that could really justify her desire to be waited on. “You might hand me my breakfast tray, too. That silly girl thought I’d like to have it out there on the balcony, and strong sunlight is simply ruinous for my complexion.”

Caroline handed her her tray, and saw her comfortably settled against her piled up pillows. Then she searched for the belt and stole, and when she’d found them Ilse asked her to wash out a pile of stockings in the bathroom.

“
I don’t trust that girl—” apparently the only way m which she intended to refer to the maid. “She’s got such clumsy hands she’d probably snag them.”

She examined the contents of the breakfast tray, and disgustedly pushed aside everything but the fruit-juice.

“As if I’d eat
breakfast
, anyway,” she remarked.
“
A lot of starchy rolls and sickly preserve! I discarded that habit long ago, when I found out they didn’t eat eggs and bacon in hot countries. But you can pour me a cup of coffee, and hand me my cigarettes ... They’re over there on the dressing-table.” Caroline poured the coffee and handed the
cigarettes, and then asked whether it was the Marques who was taking her for a drive.

Ilse inhaled smoke languidly, and her green eyes grew faintly amused. She lay back luxuriously and fluttered her long eyelashes as she looked upwards at Caroline.

“No, darling, not the Marques. I find him a pet, but I don’t think he’s taken quite such a fancy to me as he has to you. At dinner last night he told me he thought you were a very charming young woman, and I could safely leave Richard in your care.” This was the first time since Caroline had entered the room that she had mentioned Richard’s name. “And Dom Vasco agrees that you’ve made a hit with the old boy. A pity he isn’t younger, and you might—I say
might
!—if you were clever enough, lead him to think of matrimony.”

Caroline’s face flushed.

“How ridiculous
!”
she exclaimed.

Ilse smiled.

“Oh, of course if I thought you were capable of making up to him I’d send you packing at once. But I know you’re not. You’re what I would describe as a ‘nice’ girl—nice, and English, and homely at heart.
I told Dom Vasco as much.”

“Why?” Caroline asked, resentment m
akin
g her voice quiver.

Ilse flicked ash from her cigarette into the flowery porcelain saucer of her coffee cup.

“Because we happened to be discussing you, my dear, and we’re neither of
us
entirely
certain that you’re right for Richard. You look after him very well in a way, of course, and he’s got a childish crush on you, but school might be the answer as soon as we can get it fixed. You can then go home to England, and if the
Marques feels tempted to embark on matrimony a
gain
he must pick someone older than you are, and less likely to provide him with an heir,” introducing a deliberate note of flippancy into her voice. “And of course we can’t have the Marques producing an heir and doing Richard out of his rightful inheritance!” Dom Vasco’s own words, Caroline thought, at an early stage of their acquaintance
... And it was Dom Vasco who was always talking of
sending
Richard to school. So undoubtedly they had been having quite a serious talk, largely concerned with Richard.

She turned away from the bed, collecting
another
pair of cobwebby stockings on her way to the bathroom. They were lying in the middle of the carpet, and she stooped to pick them up.

“So it’s Dom Vasco who is taking you for a drive, is it
?
” she said, although she had no need now to have this confirmed.

“Yes, isn’t it sweet of him?” Ilse decided she had better begin making preparations for the day ahead if she was not to keep the Portuguese autocrat waiting, and gravitated to the edge of the bed. “And Richard, too, if he wants to come
... But I told him I didn’t think he’d want to leave you,” with a gently jibing note in
her
voice.

Caroline groped for the bathroom door handle, and mechanically turned on the taps at the basin in preparation for washing the stockings. So Dom Vasco had not suggested that she should accompany Richard! That would spoil the atmosphere of a family party!

She returned to the nursery wing, and took Richard down into the garden. There was no one about at that hour, and the Marqu
e
s obviously hadn’t left his quarters. She was turning over and over in
her mind what she would say to him if she did accidentally run into him before lunch, and whether it might not be far and away the best thing for herself—and ultimately Richard, since he would have to do without her sooner or later—if she asked to be relieved from the position of Richard’s governess almost immediately, when Dom Vasco’s car—the long, lithe, dust-coloured one this morning—swung in between the main entrance gates and tunnelled its way up the drive.

Unfortunately for Caroline Richard had deserted her, and she was alone on the steps leading up to the front of the house, with no excuse to seize him by the hand and drag him indoors to wash his hands, or anything like that. She had to maintain a dignified attitude while Vasco alighted from his car and accorded her an extremely friendly bow, and even smiled at her as if he found her a pleasing sight on such a morning.

“Good morning, Miss Caroline!” It had ceased to be Miss Worth unless he was out of humour with her. “You look as if you slept very well after the entertainment last night! How did you enjoy Senhorita de Capuchos’s piano-playing? I feel sure you must have thought it excellent.”

“It was,” Caroline replied, aware of a stiffness in her throat that made the words sound curt, and without even attempting a smile.

Dom Vasco put his head on one side and regarded her a lit
tl
e whimsically.

“Is it possible you did
not
sleep so well after all?” he asked. “Or has Ricardo been giving you trouble, and are you at this moment vexed with him?”

She shook her head.

“No,
senhor,
I am not vexed with Richard.”

“Then with me? Is that it?” smiling rather more indulgently, and looking very dark and distinguished and handsome as he stood there confronting her in the sunshine on the drive, a dark grove of ilex trees behind him showing up the pristine whiteness of his impeccably tailored suit. “Because I thought you knew more about wines, and could distinguish between cognac and one of our finest burgundies? However, as the
Marques
pointed out to me afterwards, it was very thoughtless of me
... a young woman who doesn’t normally partake of wine even at meals! But the moment was urgent, and I’m afraid I was somewhat agitated. I offer you my apologies, Caroline,” and his voice was suddenly deep and quiet, and should have convinced her that he was sincere.

But she turned away.

“No,
senhor
, it was nothing like that,” blushing because she had given herself away.
“I
t was nothing at all!”

He leaned against one of the stone pillars at the foot of the flight of steps, and looked up at her intently.

“Was it because I interrupted your conversation with Senhor Rambozi last night?” His tone was not so urbane; his face more expressionless. “I was amazed when I saw him leave his seat beside the young woman we all hope will be his wife one day, and join you in the back row of seats in the music-room. And the two of you appeared to be conducting some kind of whispered conversation while Ca
r
m
el
ita was still playing. It struck me as a trifle rude, if nothing more.”

She was amazed. “I’m sorry,
senhor
—”

“Forget it.” His face was as cool as hers had been. “Only in future, until you are aware of the
state of the relationship that exists between a man and a woman—particularly when they are young—whom you have just met at a dinner-party, or any other type of function, do not immediately leap to the conclusion that he is free to pay you attentions! He may well be free, but that sort of thing is not done in Portugal.”

She stared at him.

“But, Dom Vasco, you don’t think—?”

“I have told you, we will forget it!”

She grew furiously angry all at once.

“How dare you talk to me like that, when I’ve done nothing to deserve it?” She drew her slight form up to its full five foot three and a half inches, and even the golden hairs on the back of her neck seemed to bristle. “Senhor Rambozi slipped into the seat beside me at the concert without my even having noticed that he had made a move, and as to him being engaged to some young woman who certainly did not sit next to him at dinner, for he sat next to me, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Her voice quivered with her indignation. “And as to a whispered conversation—”

Suddenly she remembered what they had been whispering about, and the colour that had been steadily mounting under her clear skin deepened with a little rush.

“Well?” Dom Vasco enquired, a hard gleam of mockery in his eyes.

“If we were whispering—it was nothing important ...” she stammered.

“But you admit that you were whispering?”

“We were discussing—someone.”

“Extremely polite, when Carmelita was playing as I’ve seldom heard her play before,” Vasco com
m
ented, and the amount of condemnation and disapproval in his voice made Caroline feel as if she had been reduced to a mere grain of dust on the front door steps, instead of a young Englishwoman in uncrushable turquoise linen who disliked putting a foot wrong because she, too, had a sense of the fitness of things. “I hope that in future you will behave better when invited to share in our entertainments. And I hope that you will be more discreet in your dealings with Senhor Rambozi.”

Caroline realised that now was her opportunity to state with all the stiffness and correctness she could muster that she would prefer it if she could be allowed to go home to England, and that now that Senhora de Fonteira had arrived she could take charge of her own child. But he had put her in a state of guilt, and she could not find the words. He had made her feel that, compared with him and his friends, she was a brash young English girl who had never been taught how to behave in polite society, and the injustice made her bite her lower lip and try desperately to think up a crushing sentence or so that would not merely reverse his opinion, but make him feel that he was the one who had behaved badly ... who was something in the nature of a cad!

But while she was frantically searching for the words he said something that made it more or less impossible for her to give utterance to them just then.

“Will you let Senhora de Fonteira know that I am waiting for her,
senhorita
—” He looked deliberately away from her, as if other matters of more vital importance than she could ever be to him were already occupying his mind—and the fact that they were back on the
‘
senhorita
’
basis convinced her of his annoyance. “She is expecting to be taken for a
drive, and although I do not wish to rush her
I
have an engagement for two o’clock this afternoon
that
will not permit me to be late for lunch.”

“Of course,
senhor.
I—I’ll let her know...”

She turned to run blindly into the house, but Ilse herself made her appearance at that moment, and a complete transformation came over him and he was ail bows and charmed smiles once more.

He went forward and bent over
Il
se’s delicately gloved hand, kissing the inside of her wrist, which the glove left uncovered, and enquiring solicitously after her health. The fact that she looked positively radiant, in lime green and white, with a large hat and parasol to help maintain the illusion in the strong sunlight, convinced him that she really had recovered from her fainting fit of the night before.

He placed her in the back of the car, and explained that, as it was his intention to show her something of the countryside, he had thought it best if they were chauffeur-driven.

“Of course.” She smiled up at him in agreement, delighted because she would have his full attention. “It is a pity that Ricardo is not to accompany us.” He glanced round at Caroline, who felt unable, for some reason, to desert the scene of her humiliation. “Where is he, Miss Worth? Could you find him quickly? I think we should take him with us.”

Ilse attempted to dissuade him, but unless she was to appear unwilling to have her son with her she knew she had to sound a little half-hearted. And Dom Vasco’s mind was made up. Caroline was despatched to find Richard, and to make him presentable in as short a time as possible so that he could accompany his mother and his great-uncle’s man of affairs on a tour of the estate. And the fact that Ilse looked a little less dewy-eyed at the prospect of the drive did not, apparently, strike the Portuguese.

“Perhaps Miss Worth could come with us,” she suggested, thinking that the two of them could sit in the front beside the chauffeur.

But Dom Vasco shook his head very firmly.

“No, I think not. I think that for once we will have the boy to ourselves,” and that somewhat surprising ‘to ourselves’ restored Ilse’s confidence in herself, and her ability to achieve what she set out to achieve if only her will was strong enough. And she remained consistently beautiful and appealing!

She waved a hand to Caroline before they set off down the drive, but Dom Vasco did not so much as turn his head as the car glided away. Richard looked thoroughly uncomfortable and unhappy seated between his mother and the tall, dark man who seemed to wield such a lot of power over his destiny, and might wield more power in the future—if he became his stepfather.

As they drove away, and she saw that strong dark chin rigidly averted from her, and realised that his dark eyes were probably s
milin
g bleakly at Richard
.
Caroline thought of him for the first time as a man of destiny
...
a man who could make or mar other people’s lives. Richard’s life, very possibly Ilse’s life would be re-shaped by him, and her own—her own would lie in ruins from this time forth!

She had offended mortally, and she would not be forgiven. The unnecessary cruelty about that insistence on taking Richard with them, and leaving Caroline behind, was a very clear indication of that.

She wandered aimlessly into the house and back to the nursery wing, and the remainder of that morning she spent trying to do something about the
general state of comfortlessness that existed in the nursery. She rearranged Richard’s books on the shelves, and put his most recent presents on view. She went down into the garden and brought back flowers for the vases, and then she went along to the bathroom and attempted to take a shower. But the heating apparatus was faulty, and the shower merely released a few drops on to her head, and finally practically blew up.

She reported this to the housekeeper, and was given the reassurance that something would be done about it. But Senhora Lopes was so concerned with ensuring the comfort of the principal guest, and the Marques de Fonteira himself, that Caroline was reasonably certain little would be done until the novelty of having the Marques in the house had worn off a little.