Rick guided her down to the car, and once she was in it she lay back with a relaxed sigh of fleeting pleasure. For this was more to her taste than the warmth and the slight confusion and the noise of the room they had left. She told herself that she probably wasn’t the type to enjoy a whole evening dancing with a personable male, or else she was tired after her visit to Lisbon. But this sweet-scented night that was all about her was something that anyone could enjoy, however tired.
As she lay back against the seat she felt the light breeze stir her hair, and in her ears was that lazy, murmurous slap of the sea piling gently on to the white beach below. The beach itself gleamed ghostlike in the gloom.
Rick smiled as he glanced at her before he started up the
car.
“Care for a little run?” he asked.
Although it was rather late she couldn’t resist the temptation to prolong this pleasure a little, and she answered softly:
“It would be rather nice.”
So they drove along the coast road for several miles, and saw the lighthouse winking beyond the point, and heard again the musical voice of the sea when they sat watching it for a few minutes in silence before returning by the way they had come. By this time Lois felt soothed and charmed, and it seemed to her that her evening had after all contained a good deal of pleasure. She thanked Rick impulsively, as once again he started up the car, and once again he turned and smiled at her as if she were someone very young who amused him just a little, and aroused in him a curious sentiment of something like tenderness as she lay against the seat.
“I think you’re feeling happier now, aren’t you?” he said.
“Happier?”
“Yes. Dom Julyan’s arrival on the scene rather spoiled things for you, and I’ve quite definitely decided that you don’t like Donna Colares.”
“But,” she assured him, hastily, “there’s absolutely no reason why I should dislike her. . . .”
“Isn’t there?” His sideways smile was gently skeptical. “No reason at all?”
She sat clasping her hands tightly together in her lap, and felt concerned because to him she was obviously very transparent indeed.
They swept between the open wrought-iron gates of the quinta, and Enderby helped her out of the car at the foot of the imposing flight of steps leading up to the front door. The moon had long since waned, but the starlight was brighter than any starlight Lois had ever known at home in England, and as she stood on the drive it silvered her dress and made her curls look as if they were literally entangled with starshine. Rick Enderby stood looking down at her from his superior height, and then he put out a hand and gently lifted her chin, looking into the wide grey-blue eyes.
“Happy dreams,” he said, “and if you feel like it we’ll repeat tonight’s performance.”
She was about to say something in answer, but he bent and lightly brushed her lips with his own, and they were cool, hard, pleasant masculine lips. And then, with a feather’s touch, the same lips skimmed over each of her eyes in turn, one long forefinger stroked her cheek, and he stepped back just as a big car came silently to rest behind them.
Lois saw, as if nothing that was happening was quite real, Dom Julyan get out of the car, and the only thing she was thankful for just then was that he was alone. To have glimpsed amusement in Donna Colares eyes would have been too much at that moment.
“Extracting the final shred of enjoyment from your evening, Miss Fairchild?” Dom Julyan remarked, and even Enderby looked amazed because of the icy coldness of his voice. “You disappeared an hour or more ago, so I imagined you were back in your room by now.”
“I’m sorry if you think I’ve kept her out rather too late,” Rick said, but his tone was affable and quite unruffled.
“Not at all.” Dom Julyan opened the door, and stood aside for Lois to enter. She waved a final good-night to Rick, and then found herself entering the hall timidly, half afraid of the golden gleams of the swinging hall lantern that would reveal to her the expression on her employer’s face.
But he merely said coldly:
“Goodnight, Miss Fairchild,” and she knew because he called her Miss Fairchild—and only a few hours before he had called her Lois! —that he was very displeased with her indeed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE following morning she sat on a seat in a very cloistered corner of the garden while Jamie tried to catch a butterfly that had more than once settled on the back of his hand.
It was quite early in the morning, and the garden was very peaceful, and very shady at that hour. A bank of mauve flowers behind her dripped petals on to the seat, and the carefully clipped green hedge confronting her had a wide arch cut in the middle of it through which she could see a round pool with a graceful piece of statuary rising out of the tiled basin that held the water. There were some bright fish in the water, and tiring of his pursuit of the butterfly that persistently evaded him Jamie went through the arch to have a word with the fish.
It was one of the things he enjoyed doing, trailing his hand in the water in a playful attempt to eaten one of them, and he always gave a little gurgle of delight when one leapt through his fingers.
Lois watched him carefully, and warned him not to bend too far over the basin, for there was always the danger that he might fall in, particularly when his balance was not too good. Even if he fell in he could do little harm to himself apart from getting his clothes thoroughly soaked, but since it was her job to make sure that no minor accident befell him Lois issued her warning more than once.
But she was feeling anything but happy this morning, and her voice sounded a little flat. Shortly after breakfast a note had been brought to her from the master of the house stating in a very few words that he wished to see her punctually at noon. The note also stated that at that hour he would be in the library.
Lois looked at her watch, and she realized that there was a full hour to go yet before she could present herself in the library. She knew that when twelve o’clock struck her heart would be knocking almost painfully, but the hour to be lived through seemed interminable, because it was her nature to get unpleasant things over and done with as quickly as possible. To let them ‘simmer’, as some people preferred, and ward off the evil moment, had the effect of making her a bundle of nerves, and in her imagination life got completely out of hand, and the situation was black from every angle.
On the present occasion she didn’t need her imagination to prepare her for an interview she would remember. Dom Julyan’s face the night before had warned her that the episode on the drive would not be overlooked, and that she would be asked some very pertinent questions.
It would be useless to say simply that she had been taken quite by surprise when Rick Enderby kissed her goodnight, and that in any case there was nothing in the least offensive in his kisses. They were the result, she felt sure, of aa sudden affectionate upsurge that was almost paternal, or brotherly. Perhaps an attempt to console her because she had looked unhappy.
But to offer such an explanation to Dom Julyan would be to see his black eyebrows ascend coldly, and he would almost certainly remind her that whatever the reason for the kisses the foot of his front doorsteps was not the place for them—not when she was employed as a governess, and the household in which she was employed was Portuguese.
She thought she heard a car turn in at the drive gates and proceed up the drive, and she wondered whether perhaps it was Dom Julyan returning from Alvora, or an early call on one of his many friends. She distinctly heard a car door open and close, and then for ten minutes there was complete silence—the drowsy silence that had hung over everything before—and Jamie gave up catching fish to return to a pursuit of his butterfly.
Lois was afraid she was hardly a very bright companion for him this morning, and she was just on the point of getting up and suggesting a short walk when a voice behind her caused her to turn, and round the bank of mauve flowers came a tall, slightly arrogant male figure.
‘
‘Don’t move!” Duarte Fernandes requested her, standing still to admire her. She was wearing a white dress with some scarlet poppies on the skirt, and as the skirt was very full it was spread all over the seat. She removed it hastily as he came near to sit down, and he smiled oddly. “Anything less like a governess than you look this morning I have yet to meet,” he told her. “In this country governesses of your type are practically nonexistent, and even in England they must be rather rare.”
“You startled me,” she protested, deciding to ignore the rest of his speech.
“Did I?” His brown velvet eyes wandered over her soft curls, and then over the whole slender length of her in a way that brought a quick flush to her cheeks. “I felt I had to see you again this morning, and when I asked for you at the house Josie told me you were somewhere in the grounds with your charge. I’ve wasted several minutes looking for you, but to come upon you like this is a reward in itself.” “You—you asked for me at the house?” She was faintly aghast, for she was in trouble enough, and another male caller asking especially for her—even if he was Donna Colares’s brother—could do little to minimize that trouble.
“Of course. Why not?” He was obviously amused by her concern. “You’re not a servant to be forbidden ‘followers’— isn’t that the way you put it in England?—and Gloria was quite insistent that I should get to know you as quickly as possible. At first, as I confessed to you, I rather resented having you thrust at me, but now I could kick myself because I let that fellow Enderby make a date with you before I had a chance.”
Lois looked away from him, and he could tell by her stiffness that she was very much the reverse of being pleased to see him.
“Did it annoy you a little because I didn’t fall over myself to make your acquaintance?” He offered her a cigarette, and at sight of the expensive gold case he held in front of her she shook her head. He might be a medical student, but he was a very wealthy medical student who was probably only playing at learning medicine, because there would be no reason why he should have to practise it later on.
“I wasn’t to know that you were as charming as you are, and as I’ve more or less given you to understand my family are always trying to persuade me to marry some girl and settle down. I’m not in the least anxious to settle down—at least, I don’t think I am—and when I do it won't be with one of the local beauties I’ve known from childhood! You
English have a far more sensible way of approaching marriage than we have—you allow it to be an adventure, not a dreary consummation of something that’s been hanging over you from your cradle!”
Lois was inclined to agree with him about that, but she wouldn’t, of course, say so. Instead, because she had to say something, she asked:
“Have you ever been in England, Senhor Fernandes?” “The name is Duarte,” he replied, softly. “And, yes, I think I can say I know England fairly well. I had two years in a London hospital.”
So that explained why he spoke English without any trace of accent, and without even the slight but noticeable touch of formality that characterized Dom Julyan’s method of making use of her language.
“I was also sent to school in England when I was ten, and stayed over there for a year or so.”
"I see,” she murmured, inspecting her fingers. “Then that is why you have such an excellent command of English idiom.”
“To you, who have seen little so far but the formal side of Portuguese life, I should be something of a relief,” he commented.
Lois looked through the arch and saw that Jamie was once more back on the brink of the pool, and she called to him:
“Take care, Jamie! Your papa will not be at all pleased if you catch a chill as a result of falling in the water!”
Jamie looked back at her and laughed, showing his little white teeth. He nodded his head in a polite manner to the newcomer, but that was all the notice he took of him, and Duarte ignored him.
“A child like that,” he commented, in an aside to Lois, “always puts my back up a little when I think of my own, rather grim, early days. I had no attractive governess to keep an eye on me, and amuse me when I felt bored. I was packed off to school when I couldn’t do much more than toddle, and it was my sisters who were allowed to stay at home, and had all the fuss made of them.”
“But, then, presumably, you were completely sound in wind and limb?” Lois remarked, with a touch of asperity, and no sympathy at all for the sorrows of ms childhood.
“True,” he agreed. “But even if I hadn’t been,
I doubt whether I would have been cosseted.”
“You forget that Jamie is an only child, and motherless,” she said just as stiffly.
“Oh, no, I don’t!” he assured her. “I happen to be well aware of my sister’s plans, and if it’s left to her Jamie won’t be motherless much longer!” There was a lazy smile in his eyes as he looked sideways at her. “Perhaps it has already struck you that Gloria has plans? She and Julyan have known one another for years, you know, and she’d like to be mistress here. But, one thing I can tell you, when—and if—she becomes mistress here, Master Jamie will be packed off to some suitable establishment that will receive him with almost as little compunction as I was!”
Lois felt horrified suddenly. Although she had more or less made up her mind that it was only a question of time before Donna Colares became Donna Valerira, the impression she had so far received of the curiously fascinating widow had done nothing to fill her with any forebodings where the son of Dom Julyan was concerned. Donna Colares had actually seemed to be fond of him, and with that wide, generous, impulsive mouth she was not a cold personality. And Jamie was such an attractive child. . . .
“You mean,” she asked, with a disturbed note in her voice, “that she isn’t fond of children?”
“Not other people’s children—very few women are, you know! ” Then, as she sat looking at him in concern, he bent forward and picked up her hand, and examined the delicate finger nails. “But let’s forget other people’s children, Gloria and everyone else, and talk about us! Will you let me look after you on the night of the picnic? My father’s birthday picnic? It should be quite good fun, because there will be heaps of guests, the moon will be at its full, and Gloria is very clever at planning all the details for that sort of thing. I will call for you in my car. You will wear one of these pretty dresses of yours
that make you look so very English, and ----------------- ”
But at that point, just as Lois succeeded in wrenching away her hand which he had exerted a good deal of masculine strength to retain firmly in his own, he was interrupted by a sharp, childish scream, and Lois leapt up and raced beneath the arch to discover Jamie sitting, as she had more than once feared, up to his waist in water in the tiled basin of the pool.
“Oh, darling!” Frantically she bent over him to null him out, but once his initial surprise had passed he looked up at her and actually laughed.
“It’s beautifully cool, Lois,” he gurgled. “And there’s a fish in my lap! . . .”
But a shatteringly quiet voice behind them demanded: “What is this, Miss Fairchild? Aren’t you capable of
preventing my son from falling in the pool?”
Lois's face was scarlet as she turned after fruitlessly striving to lift Jamie out of the pool—and the weight of the support on his undeveloped foot made this a physical impossibility so far as she was concerned. Duarte made to go to her assistance, but Dom Julyan put him arrogantly aside. He bent over Jamie and with ease—but to the sad detriment of his exquisitely tailored light grey suit—lifted him clear of the water, and then set him in the middle of the smooth green turf that formed a complete surround to the pool.
Jamie, still enjoying his experience, although he was soaked to the skin, beamed complacently up at his father, and Lois cried almost hysterically:
“I’ll get you inside at once! You’ll have to be dried and changed without delay, or you’ll catch cold. Oh, darling, how on earth did it happen ... ?�
�
“Yes—how on earth did it happen?” Dom Julyan echoed her words, in the coldest voice she had yet heard from him. “Perhaps you are not aware, Miss Fairchild, that my son’s incapacity makes accidents of this sort very likely to occur, and for that reason, amongst others, you were engaged to look after him! It is your duty to see that they do happen!” “I’m terribly sorry,” Lois managed, but beyond that speech seemed to have dried up in her throat, and she hardly knew what she was doing.
“Oh, I don’t think he’ll take any harm,” Duarte attempted to pour oil on the troubled waters by observing. “Not if you get his clothes off pretty quickly, give him a hot drink, and perhaps put him to bed for a short while.”
“Thank you, but we do not require any advice from you on the subject of what should be done next.” Dom Julyan returned, as if he was peaking behind clenched teeth. Once more he lifted Jamie in his arms, but before carrying him across the lawn towards the house he turned a blank, hard face on Donna Colares’s brother. “If that is your car all but blocking the driveway, Duarte, I’d appreciate it very much if you’d remove it. Other people may wish to call here during the course of the day, and at the present moment it’s impossible to get anywhere near the front entrance.”
“I’m sorry,” Duarte murmured, but he didn’t look in the least sorry, and his eyes actually sparkled with amusement as he looked towards Lois and made a faint shrugging movement with his shoulders.
But Lois had no time to waste on him—she had even forgotten his existence, and in those moments— the most humiliating moments in the whole of her life she afterwards decided, when she looked back upon them—she even wished that she might throw herself in the pool, and that it was deep enough to cover her and her humiliation, as she hurried after her employer across the lawn.
Later that day, when Jamie was perfectly dry and freshly clothed, and playing with an electric train set on the floor of the big day-nursery, she sat in the opening of the glass doors that gave admittance to the balcony outside, and pretended that she was reading a book.
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