by Susan Barrie
“We’re the Cinderellas,” Robert said. “I don’t mind” — but the look in his eyes told her he minded very much watching the handsome young Portuguese going through the motions of the tango with Bridie — “but I think it’s a bit hard on you.” As she protested his eyes went to Inez and gleamed with dislike. “I wish that young woman would get married,” he said curtly, and as Kathie looked round at her husband and the girl he had known all his life giving a far more faultless exhibition of the way the tango should be danced than Bridie and her partner were capable of, and looking so absolutely suited to one another in every way — and happy to be together! — her eyes, too, went cold and distant, and she turned hastily to Bolton and said something in a choked voice that brought his hand swiftly across the top of the table to press hers.
“I wish I’d never come to Portugal!” were the words that left Kathie’s trembling lips; but all Sebastiao saw was the Englishman’s hand reaching so undisguisedly for hers, and his wife’s bright, averted head. He didn’t see the sudden tears that welled in her eyes, her quivering lips. But Robert Bolton was shocked by them.
“Come outside,” he said, and in the shadows of the verandah that overlooked a typical Portuguese garden, full of moonlight and darker shadows and heart-rending flower scents, Kathie fought to regain control of herself. But she didn’t need the handkerchief Bolton slipped into her hand.
“I’m all right,” she said, standing very slim and straight beside him, and looking almost ethereal in her white dress. “I’m only shocked to think that I nearly behaved very stupidly!”
Robert studied her gravely through the bat-wing gloom.
“You didn’t behave stupidly, Kathie. But I wish you hadn’t married Sebastiao ... He’s a little like the sphinx, and I’ll confess I haven’t the least idea what he really wants of life, but in spite of appearances I wouldn’t say it was Inez! Don’t forget he could have had Inez long before he married you if he’d wanted her! It’s all too painfully obvious that she wants him—and on almost any terms! I’m surprised that he doesn’t realize that people are not quite blind!”
Sebastiao appeared in the window behind them, and he was looking as black-browed as he had once looked before.
“If you don’t want to dance, Kathie, I think we’d better go home. In fact, it’s high time we all went home!”
Kathie looked at him with strange dignity.
“I haven’t had very much opportunity to dance,” she said, quietly. “Robert isn’t keen on it, and you’ve been very much preoccupied.”
Instantly Sebastiao held out his arms. His blue eyes grew less hostile, and his white teeth gleamed in a half- humoring smile.
“Then we’ll dance now, Kathie my sweet — you and I! They’re playing a waltz. If you remember, we waltz well together,” and she knew that he was reminding her of the one night when they had escaped into a world of strange, temporary half bliss that had been the one taste she had had of anything approaching it since their marriage. “Come along, Kathie!” he repeated, softly.
But with the picture of him dancing so very recently with the beautiful Inez still before her eyes — all but cheek to cheek, and so much a part of one another’s arms — she turned curtly away.
“No; I’d rather go home!”
“Very well, we’ll go home!” he said, and there was an icy chill in his voice.
At the end of that week Inez had her birthday, and the picnic planned by her mother to mark the occasion was a great success. Actually, it was more like an informal garden party, and the guests disported themselves in the grounds of the Peniche home. There were vast quantities of food served at little tables in the shade of trees, or under the protection of awnings, and although the heat at midday was intense, no one seemed to wilt or find formal clothes trying. Papa Peniche even wore morning dress, and apart from finding it necessary to mop his forehead fairly frequently, was in his usual urbane mood. His wife rushed around trying to have a few words with each of the numberless guests, and her black dress made Kathie feel almost faint with heat, and not one of the young people dared to make their appearance in slacks or an open-necked shirt or sun-top.
Inez looked completely enchanting — and as cool as an English summer morning — in rose-colored linen, and the usual elbow-length gloves she affected when she wore short sleeves. And as usual she held a parasol aloft, and peeped at all her masculine admirers from the shade of it.
She had received so many presents that it took her a long time to thank all the donors personally, but her upbringing dictated that this had to be done, and she did it with the most engaging smile on her face. She had received a new car from her father, and her mother’s present sparkled in her ears—huge pearl earrings that swayed against her neck, and had separate clusters of rubies attached to them.
Sebastiao had made no mention to his wife of the present he was giving to Inez and Kathie saw it for the first time when she thanked them both prettily for what she described as ‘the one present she would treasure all her life.’
It was an unusual ring, a huge moonstone mounted in a heavy gold claw, and almost too unwieldy for her slender finger. But as she displayed it for Kathie’s benefit she explained:
“It belonged to Sebastiao’s mother, and he knew that I’ve always wanted it. It was the one piece of jewellery, amongst a vast collection of jewellery that she left to him, that I coveted. I believe,” she added softly, as she stole a glance at his face, “that it was her betrothal ring, wasn’t it, Sebastiao?”
“Yes,” he answered, with the minimum of expression in his voice, and then greeted someone else who was passing at the moment, and was introduced to someone else. And Kathie, of course, had to be presented as well, and she found herself drawn into a circle of new acquaintances.
There was no time to dwell upon the somewhat singular fact that Sebastiao had never before permitted her to see his mother’s betrothal ring, or that it had not been amongst the contents of any one of her several jewel-boxes when they had been brought out of bank vaults for her inspection. He has obviously had it in his own possession, and as the sun beat down fiercely with relentless warmth, she did wonder for a moment whether it was the ring that had sealed his own betrothal to Hildegarde. That would explain the reason why he had waited to part with it ... why he had only parted with it now to Inez.
Inez who was part of his life, who had the power to make him forget care, and who could become an inextricable part of his future if only there was no one to whom he owed a husband’s loyalty ... No young woman who had been born Kathie Sheridan, and was now Kathleen de Barrateira!
Kathie managed to detach herself from Sebastiao’s protection at last — she was sure he must find it irksome having her always at his side — and to her relief Bridie and Robert Bolton loomed up in her path, and took her to be revived with a cooling drink in a marquee-like erection. But Kathie had no intention of spoiling the day for her sister, who was looking absolutely lovely in cool flowered silk, and by this time she was well aware that Robert Bolton enjoyed gazing at Bridie, although he never asked her out — probably because he thought Kathie would return to a state of spiritual loneliness without her. And the Peniche garden party was an excellent opportunity for them to lose themselves together, and for Bridie to discover whether she was becoming as intrigued by Robert Bolton as he obviously was by her.
So, having been partially revived by the cool iced lime, Kathie allowed herself to be caught up by a little press of people making for the buffet, and then slipped out of the marquee. For a while she wandered amongst flower-beds and in green groves of ilex, but even in the shade the heat pursued her, and a headache with which she had started the day became more than she could stand. She looked round blindly for some way of escape, and remembered the long line of cars in the drive. If she could find Sebastiao’s and slip into one of the rear seats she could close the door and be free from the necessity to answer smiles and nods — free from the faint but unmistakable looks of surprise because, marri
ed only a few weeks, she was alone, and her husband was no doubt devoting himself to the lovely daughter of the house, the girl he should have married — and everyone had once upon a time expected him to marry!
The colors of the flowers blurred before her eyes, the harsh, brazen blue of the sky made her eyes ache. She managed to find the long white car, and luckily the doors were not locked. She stole into a corner like an animal in pain seeking instinctively to be alone, and lowering her head in her hands in an abortive attempt to prevent faintness overcoming her was temporarily released from a knowledge of things about her as a brief blackout descended on her.
When she once more became aware of the warm interior of the car, of the tinder-dry feeling of the leather seat on which she was crouched, she also heard voices, and one of them was speaking urgently, while a hand grasped the handle of the door and turned it.
“Sebastiao, we’ve got to talk! ... This is our only opportunity! I can never get you alone nowadays, and when I visit at your house Kathie is there!” There was a small note of venom in her voice. “How I hate her, Sebastiao, and how mad you were to marry her! Not only is she the wrong type for you, but it was the cruellest thing you could do to me ... to us both! Somehow you have got to be free of this stupid thing you have done!...”
Then Sebastiao’s voice spoke sharply and even more urgently.
“Kathie! ... What are you doing here? Why aren’t you...?” Then, as she looked up at him dazedly, her face chalk white. “Kathie, what’s wrong? What’s wrong?” he repeated, a violent note of alarm in his voice.
“It’s nothing,” she whispered. “Just the heat.”
“Oh, Kathie!” His voice was gentle, tender, sympathetic. “And you’re here all alone!...” He reached into the car and lifted her, and carried her away in his arms along the intricate maze of paths until they reached the house. Then, in the coolness of Senhor Peniche’s library — the first room they came to, with windows opening out on to the terrace — he rang the bell for assistance, and a maid brought restoratives, and what Kathie needed more than anything else — a glass of iced water. When she had sipped it, with Sebastiao kneeling on the floor beside her and the couch on which she lay a little of the normal color came trickling back into her face, and she managed a smile at him.
“I’m all right now! And I’m so sorry I’ve been such a nuisance.”
He stroked the heavy bright hair from her brow, and looked at her with a blaze of tenderness in his dark blue
eyes.
“As if you’d ever be a nuisance!” he said, “I’m to blame, because I don’t take proper care of you, or realize that this heat could be too much for you.” He looked up to see Inez standing in the opening of the french windows, but he ignored her. “I think the best thing I can do is to take you straight back home,” he said to Kathie, “and you can spend the rest of the day quietly in bed. I’ll stay with you.”
“But you’ll come back?” Inez said, appealing to him from the french window. “You’ll come back for a little while? Remember, it’s my birthday!”
Her dark eyes were haggard, haunted with her desire to be alone with him.
He hardly seemed to notice her as he carried Kathie out into the sunshine once more.
“My wife is not well,” was all he said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Kathie spent the rest of the day in her room, but she wouldn’t hear of Sebastiao remaining at the quinta with her, and forgoing the rest of the celebrations in honor of Inez’s birthday.
They were to go on until evening, and would culminate in a dinner party for the most favored and intimate friends of the Peniches. Inez undoubtedly looked upon Sebastiao as the most intimate friend she possessed — something far more important than a friend! — and without him her evening would be ruined. Kathie was now so certain of this that she turned an obstinate face to the wall in her little boudoir — Sebastiao had deposited her on a settee near the window — and insisted that she would prefer to be alone.
Sebastiao stood at the foot of the settee and looked at her with eyes that were strange and dark.
“But I can’t leave you, Kathie,” he protested. “I don’t want to leave you!”
She lay staring at the wall with its cool green panels, and the delicate chinoiserie figures.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “You are a very old friend of the Peniche family, and naturally they want you there.” She shut her eyes tightly as she thought of Inez saying, as if frustration was destroying her balance: “Sebastiao, we’ve got to talk! ... This is our only opportunity! I can never get you alone nowadays, and when I visit at your house Kathie is there!” Her eyes flew open, but she declined to look anywhere near her husband. “Of course you must go, and I want you to go, and I hope you will allow me to remain undisturbed for the rest of the day. I haven’t the smallest desire to talk to anyone — except Bridie, when she comes back.”
Sebastiao still stood looking down at her, and he thought the color was very slow in returning to her clear, pale skin. He bent forward and touched her hair.
“Please, Kathie, I won’t talk, if you’ll let me sit here with you. I won’t do anything at all to disturb you.”
At that she turned round slowly on the settee, and looked up at him with unfamiliar brown eyes that were full of distaste.
“Do I have to be quite blunt?” she asked quietly. “I don’t want you here!”
He straightened. She thought that his face suddenly resembled a mask, a stiff, cold, affronted mask.
“Very well, I’ll go! And I’ll ask Bridie to come and see you as soon as she gets back.”
But Bridie stole in very soon after his departure, and closed the door. She moved across the room to Kathie.
“Darling, how are you feeling?” she asked. She looked both worried and perplexed. “Robert and I were awfully anxious about you, and we decided to say our farewells and get back here as quickly as we could. I’ve just passed Sebastiao in the corridor. He looked like a thunderclap. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Kathie answered, too weary to conceal her weariness. “I told him he wasn’t to ruin Inez’s birthday celebrations for her, and he’s gone back to do duty for us all. Inez won’t mind, so long as she has him.”
Bridie sat down on the foot of the settee, and looked suddenly very much enlightened. She produced a stick of frozen eau de Cologne from her handbag and ran it over Kathie’s damp brow, bringing a faint smile of gratitude to Kathie’s pale lips.
“Listen, darling,” Bridie said softly. “Robert and I have discovered that we like one another very much, and if things turn out right for you we shall marry some day. But Robert is insistent that things must turn out right for you before we even think about letting other people know what we plan. Apart from you, of course! I don’t think he’s very hopeful ... where you and Sebastiao are concerned! You see, there’s Inez...”
“There has always been Inez,” Kathie said drearily. “Long before Hildegarde.”
“And Hildegarde was Sebastiao’s first wife?”
“Yes. The one he was in love with.”
“Then you knew that he wasn’t in love with you when he asked you to marry him?”
“Yes.” A wan smile stole into Kathie’s eyes. “He was quite honest about everything — except, I think, Inez. He wanted a wife to protect him from other women — you know, Eileen’s type! — and he picked on me as the most likely person to become that wife because I was unlikely to make any demands. In return he promised to do things for Daddy.” Her face puckered. “But Daddy never needed him to do things.”
“Poor Kathie,” Bridie said, very, very gently, and laid a sympathetic hand over hers. “I always wondered, of course, because it was so plain he wasn’t in love with you, and it was all so sudden, and everything was fixed up so quickly.” She paused. “When did you fall in love with him? Before or after you were married?” Kathie spoke slow words of truth.
“Before. I realize now — and I’ve realized it for weeks —
that not even for Daddy would I have married him if I hadn’t been in love with him. It must have been one of those things that happen to people without their knowledge ... after only a single look!” She shut her eyes again, and saw Sebastiao in the Garden Room at Mount Osborne, and knew that that single look had been much, much more than enough. Her heavy eyelids fluttered tiredly, and there was a gleam of self-mockery between the thick eyelashes with the bright golden tips. “So, you see, I only got what I deserved. Sebastiao didn’t want a wife who would embarrass him by falling in love. He already had Inez!”
“I think that’s rather a — dangerous thing to say,” Bridie commented, and walked to the window and stared through the slats of the sun-blinds at the brilliant garden below the windows. “And I don’t altogether agree with Robert. The situation isn’t hopeless...”
“It isn’t hopeless for Inez,” Kathie said quietly, as if she had been giving a lot of thought to the matter, in spite of her inert appearance. “That is to say, things can be put right for Inez! She’s loved Sebastiao a long time. He should never have left her and married Hildegarde.”