by Susan Barrie
There was a definite pause, during which Kathie was certain her husband thought swiftly behind his remote face, and then suddenly decided to be amiable once more. He leant forward and offered the other man his cigarette case, and the diamonds that formed part of the crest flashed in the sunlight that found its way beneath the leaves.
“Inez was looking very well,” he observed.
“Oh, very well.” Again Bolton agreed. “She has only just returned from France, and we have all missed her as much as we missed you. She appears to have got herself involved with some sort of a French lawyer. Papa Peniche is not pleased.”
“I told her the affair could come to nothing,” Sebastiao said with emphasis. “That is quite definite.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” This time Bolton did not agree, and he spoke with almost drawling emphasis. “When one is young and in love, one doesn’t like to be continually thwarted. Inez will soon be past her bloom, and it is high time she took a husband. I know nothing about this French fellow, but if she’s keen on him, and he’s keen on her, there shouldn’t be any obstacle. She has money, even if he hasn’t any.”
“There are other considerations besides money,” Sebastiao said coldly. “In Portugal we allow ourselves to be guided by them.”
“When you were in Eire, I wonder whether you allowed yourself to be guided by the way they do things there?” Robert enquired rather whimsically. “You are half Irish, and now you have an entirely Irish wife!” Kathie was glad when they made a move to the terrace, where the sun was still falling in a golden flood, and there was a certain amount of relief in having drinks brought out to them, and a new angle given to the conversation. But it turned to the subject of Inez just before Bolton took his departure.
“You must have dinner with us one night soon,” the Marques said, his good humor restored. “Or what about having lunch with us tomorrow? Inez, as a matter of fact, is coming to lunch, and you could make up a fourth. Could you manage tomorrow?”
“The very thought of meeting the charming Inez is enough to make it impossible for me not to manage tomorrow,” the artist replied, smiling, however, at Kathie as he did so. He held out his hand, and she put her slim fingers into it — she felt the warmth of his fingers as he clasped hers closely. “And I shall look forward very much to meeting you again so soon, Kathie. Very much!”
A little glow of pleasure enclosed her heart.
“I think Sebastiao is very lucky!”
“I think he’s very nice,” Kathie said softly to her husband, when he had departed down the terrace steps.
Sebastiao glanced at her with a quizzical gleam in his eyes.
“How many men have you met in your life, Kathie, whom you could describe as ‘very nice’?” he wanted to know.
She thought for a moment.
“Do you mean simply ‘very nice’?” she asked at last, “or ‘nice’ in a particular way?”
“ ‘Nice’ in a particular way,” he answered to that. “Not ‘fatherly nice,’ or ‘cousinly nice’, or even ‘nice’ in the way of a close friend — of the opposite sex, of course! But someone who appeals to you, who has the attraction of the opposite sex, is personable, and capable of making you want to see him again. How many men have you know who could wear a label like that?” Kathie looked thoughtfully at him. Suddenly she colored, and looked faintly confused.
“I don’t think there has ever been any other man apart from...”
“Yes?” he enquired softly.
“Well, apart from you. And — and Mr. Bolton!”
“So you do wish to see Robert Bolton again!” dark blue eyes narrowing to mere dark blue slits.
Kathie examined the delicate tips of her fingernails. “It wouldn’t matter to me if I never saw Robert Bolton again,” she said, as if she was stating a simple truth. “Why should it? When he is just a ‘nice’ man?”
“But I am your husband, and I am ‘nice’, too!”
“Oh!” She turned away, suddenly filled with impatience. It wasn’t fair, this baiting her, when all he ever wanted to be to her was someone she looked upon as ‘nice’! If she suddenly told him that she was in love with him, and that he had long passed the stage at which there was any ‘niceness’ in him, what would he do! How would he react?
She could imagine him coming over all cold hauteur, and reminding her of the terms under which they had married. The ‘bargain’ they had entered into!
She shivered at the thought of ever seeing that look on his face that had altered it when he was suddenly annoyed by something Robert Bolton said.
The lunch party next day was quite a success, although it was the first at which Kathie had ever presided as hostess in her own home.
It was true that she had had absolutely nothing to do with the arrangements for the meal, and that each course as it appeared was as much a surprise to her as it was to the guests. She wasn’t responsible for anything, the food or the wines or the service, the table decorations or even the seating arrangements, which, however, were obvious. She had Robert Bolton on her right hand, and Sebastiao had Inez on his right.
Inez looked exactly like an orchid that had been deprived of its cellophane wrapper. She wore hyacinth blue, and even her shoes were of hyacinth blue suede. Her stockings were the sheerest Kathie had ever seen, and a diamond bracelet clasped her slender right ankle as well as her slender left wrist. For a luncheon engagement she wore a great deal of jewellery, and the diamond flowers in her ears matched the brilliance of her great dark eyes. Her make-up was exotic and lavishly applied, which was a pity when she had such an unusually perfect skin.
Nevertheless, she was the loveliest thing Kathie was quite sure she had ever seen in her life, and by comparison with her the new Marquesa de Barrateira felt drab and ordinary. Her dress was moss green with a piping of white, and she had some plain pearl studs in her ears. The only other item of jewellery she had permitted herself was her engagement ring, and it sent out shafts of blue fire from the whiteness of her hand.
Robert Bolton looked a good deal of unconcealed admiration at her when he first saw her, and during the course of the meal he told her that he was going to request permission of her husband to paint her one day. She had the sort of coloring that simply cried out to be consigned to canvas, and he wanted to be the man to add her to the collection of feminine portraits in the possession of the Marques. They were all members of the Barrateira family, and she was now a member of that family, and naturally her portrait must hang amongst them.
“In the Long Gallery at the Quinta de Barrateira,” Bolton said. “It is quite a famous gallery. Have you seen the Lisbon house yet?”
“No, but I’m expecting to do so before long. Sebastiao wants alterations carried out on one of the wings, and we are going to make a decision about them when we — when our honeymoon is over!”
“I feel very guilty about barging in on a honeymoon couple,” the artist said softly.
Kathie tried not to reveal too much embarrassment as she smiled.
“As a matter of fact, my father died very suddenly the night before our wedding, and that has rather — upset things,” she admitted. “I mean, I was very upset.”
“Naturally,” he murmured, but his eyes flickered strangely as he gazed at her. “However, a trouble shared is a trouble halved, and I’m sure Sebastiao was the right one to offer you all the sympathy you needed. It probably had the effect of drawing you even closer together.”
Kathie thought of the night when Sebastiao had not only carried her up to her own room, but sat beside her once she was in bed, under the impression that she was fast asleep. He had held her hand, and she had felt his eyes watching her — deeply tender and understanding eyes, as she knew they were, even although her own eyes were closed.
Had they drawn closer together on that one night, only to slip apart again the following day?
Involuntarily she sighed, and then caught back the sigh as she realized that Bolton was watching her closely, and waiting for her to sa
y something. She said, almost too hurriedly, and without any conviction: “Y-yes, of course! Of course!” she repeated.
Sebastiao looked along the table and regarded them both questioningly.
“I was telling your wife that I am going to persuade you to allow me to paint her,” Robert Bolton explained suavely. “You must add her to your collection at the Quinta de Barrateira, and I think, as she is such a very new wife, she should be painted in her wedding dress. I can’t imagine anything more becoming than white and the traditional orange blossom and so forth to the Marquesas skin and eyes — and, of course, hair! She has the loveliest hair I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“That was what I told her the very first time we met,” Sebastiao recalled, a little dreamily, staring at Kathie. Then he smiled a little peculiarly. “But Kathie didn’t have a traditional wedding dress. I think she wore white, and she had a fetching little cap like a Juliet cap on her head, but we were married in a register office, and...”
“You think she wore white?” There was a certain quiet amazement in the Englishman’s voice.
Inez’s eyes grew wider — throughout the meal so far they had hung upon the Marques’s face with a soft look in them that was rather like the softness in the eyes of a gazelle — and then developed an extremely thoughtful look. She studied Kathie across the table, and then turned all her attention once more to the host.
“You think she wore white?” she echoed Robert Bolton. “But of course, you know what she wore, don’t you, Sebastiao?” with gentle reproach. “No man could be so blind as to be unaware of what his bride wears on her wedding day!”
Sebastiao refused a dish that was offered him rather curtly, and then thrust away a vase of flowers as if it offended him and impeded his vision.
“Of course I know what Kathie wore,” he declared with impatience. “But I’m not prepared to swear I took in all the details. Would any man do that — on his wedding day?”
“Can you remember what Hildegarde wore?” Inez enquired softly, from close beside him. “I remember you wrote me after the event that it was a superb white lace that had belonged to her grandmother, and you were going to insist that she had her portrait painted in it as soon as you could get in touch with a top-ranking artist who would undertake the commission! I remember poor Robert wasn’t feeling very good at the time, so you didn’t ask him to undertake it.”
Robert sent her a most peculiar look.
“ ‘Poor Robert’ wasn’t accepting commissions at that time,” he said, a little stiffly. “And in any case, Sebastiao and his bride were on the other side of the world.” Then he turned to Kathie. “But this isn’t in very good taste, I’m afraid, this discussion about what you did or did not wear, and what someone else apparently did wear.” His eyes were kind as he saw that she was flushed, and her eyes were downcast. “Shall we talk about something else for a change? Do you think you’ll find it easy to settle down in Portugal? Once all the novelty and the freshness has worn off, I mean!”
“Of course she will,” Sebastiao said, from the head of the table, and he seemed to be trying to force Kathie to look up and meet his eyes. But she was quivering with hurt because he had been guilty of such an indiscretion as to state publicly, in the hearing of two of his oldest friends, that he ‘thought she wore white at her wedding’ ... And Inez had reminded him, also publicly, that he had been so impressed with his first wife’s wedding dress that he had wanted to have her painted in it! All that was understandable, considering what she knew about her own wedding, but need he have been so casual...? Need he have given Inez the opportunity of looking politely sorry for her?
Inez made matters just a little worse as they rose from the table to take coffee on the terrace by saying softly, for Kathie’s ear alone:
“I wouldn’t allow yourself to be upset, my dear! Men are not like us, you know, and they have to be terribly impressed before they really take things in.” Her glorious dark eyes looked with a shade of mockery into Kathie’s. “Terribly impressed! And by that, of course, I mean, incapable of thinking of anything else!”
Kathie poured out the coffee, and Inez lay back in her long chair and looked as sleepily content as a cat that has found its way home at last. The Marques seemed suddenly withdrawn all at once, his eyes inclined to rest broodingly on Kathie as she handled the delicate porcelain cups with considerable natural grace, and Bolton handed them round. But Inez placed a pleading hand on his arm, and he looked round at her. She smiled at him as if his temporary neglect wounded her, and by degrees she got him to talk about his plans for the Quinta de Barrateira, and his alterations to the wing in which he planned to have his own and Kathie’s apartments; and by the time Bolton asked Kathie if he might show her a corner of the grounds from which one could obtain a fantastically beautiful view, and she accompanied him down the steps of the terrace, the two left behind had their heads close together as if color schemes were important to both of them, and not of very much importance to anyone else; and because Inez thought that French Empire furniture was much more attractive than any other, Sebastiao had to be convinced of it too.
If she had been going to live in the reconditioned wing with Sebastiao the matter could not have been of more importance.
As they walked across the crisp surface of the lawn towards a maze of shrubberies, beyond which the grounds sloped sharply to the slumbrous sea that slapped murmurously below them, Kathie could hear Inez’s lovely clear voice saying with insistence:
“But, Sebastiao, you must listen to me! I have a flair for this sort of thing, and in any case it’s important...” Important to whom? Kathie wondered.
Robert took her elbow when they drew near a flight of steps, and he guided her gently down them. At the foot there was an inviting garden seat, backed by a cascade of tumbling blossoms, looking right out to sea, and the air was heavy with the scent of the blossoms. Kathie found herself manoeuvred into position so that she could look right down on the brilliant expanse of ocean, and above them spread the incredible arc of blue sky to which she was not yet accustomed.
“If you come here when the moon is at the full, or to watch the dawn break over the sea, it’s unforgettable,” Bolton said.
Then they sat down side by side on the garden seat, and he offered her a cigarette which she declined. When his own was glowing brightly at the tip, he studied it thoughtfully, and then he asked as if he was asking something entirely casual:
“Why did you marry when you did, Kathie? And above all, why did you marry Sebastiao?”
She was so taken aback that she couldn’t attempt to answer for several seconds. Then all she could manage was a counter-question.
“Why shouldn’t I have married Sebastiao?”
“Because I don’t think he’s at all ideal for you. Because he hasn’t got over his first marriage yet, and in some ways he’s still adolescent. He doesn’t quite know what it is he wants from life, but he’ll find out one of these days — and then, perhaps, it’ll be too late!”
Kathie suppressed a tiny shiver at the words.
“Sebastiao is thirty-seven,” she said. “He’s old enough to know what he wants from life.”
“And you are?” Robert looked at her gently.
“Twenty-four.”
“You don’t look it,” Robert told her. “You look much younger. And it’s because you look younger — and because in some ways I feel that you are younger — that I wish you hadn’t married Sebastiao. I’m quite sure it wasn’t his possessions that attracted you, or even the thought of becoming a marquesa. Whether or not you’re in love with him is your affair, but I think you should have been warned about Inez. Inez wants him, you know!”
Kathie turned sideways and looked at him, startled.
“But she’s in love with a Frenchman called Etienne!”
Bolton smiled.
“I’ve no doubt she’s been amusing herself with a Frenchman called Etienne. But she wants Sebastiao! She always has wanted him, and at one time I could have s
worn that he wanted her. They had outgrown their boy and girl devotion to one another, and it looked like developing into something much stronger. Everyone close to them was as certain of it as I was ... But he went off to Austria for a holiday without her, met Hildegarde, and married her. It was extraordinary!” Kathie’s fingers hurt her a little as she dug them into the hard wood of the seat. Her heart was beating with quick, apprehensive thumps.
“But all that is now over,” she said quietly.
“Is it?” The artist gazed at her, and frowned. “I wish I could be absolutely certain ... I mean, I wish I could be certain about Inez! That she really is in love with this Frenchman! But I’ve sat at lunch with her today, and watched her with Sebastiao, and I don’t think she’s changed. You’d have to take a very firm line about her, you know. She’s a Portuguese girl of good family — in fact, excellent family! — but she hasn’t been brought up strictly. Her father pretends to be strict, but he isn’t really, and her mother is quite futile. They allowed her to be educated in Switzerland, and she’s wandered all over the Continent. Her affairs have been numerous — trifling affairs! — and Sebastiao used to be very upset because he insisted that she was allowed too much freedom. Now the amount of freedom she has received is likely to recoil on himself, if he isn’t very skillful — and, of course, you!”
Kathie said firmly, as if she was quite certain of it: “Sebastiao is completely honorable!”
“I agree,” Bolton murmured. “Blue-blooded family, and all that — always do the right thing! But what you have to ask yourself is how comfortable — how happy — is it going to make you to look on at him doing the right thing!”