by Susan Barrie
Bridie wheeled.
“But he was in love with Hildegarde!”
“Perhaps he thought he was. It could have been nothing more than infatuation.”
“Then you think Inez....?”
“I think he has always loved Inez. The whole district is as certain of it as I am, and they expected trouble as soon as they heard that he’d married me. Robert expected trouble, and he tried to warn me the first day we met.”
“I know.”
Kathie smiled suddenly, with genuine warmth, at her sister.
“I’m so glad about you and Robert, Bridie, and I hope you’ll live happily here in Portugal. It’s a wonderful country to be happy in...” Then she caught her breath, and desolation welled over her, for she knew that she would never be happy in Portugal. “And now, if you won’t feel I’m pushing you out, I do wish you’d leave me alone for a bit. That sun was so hot ... It’s made me feel quite exhausted.”
Bridie moved to her on tiptoe, and felt alarmed by the younger girl’s pallor.
“Try and have a good sleep,” she advised. “And I’ll bring you a tray of tea myself about four o’clock.”
The next day Kathie seemed more or less restored to normal, save that she was peculiarly quiet, and peculiarly poised. All her young-girl timidity and uncertainness seemed to have fled away from her, and while the others looked on at her anxiously, she was cool and remote, and appeared not to have any need whatsoever for sisterly sympathy, or Robert Bolton’s ill-concealed concern.
Sebastiao still wore his strange, aloof mask, and it would have been difficult for anyone to gather whether he was anxious about his wife, or whether more pressing concerns were preoccupying him.
Inez didn’t make her appearance until evening, and then she arrived in a whirl of golden draperies, her arms full of multi-colored roses, to enquire after Kathie’s health. She was escorted by her cousin, Gil Peniche, and it appeared they were going out to dinner, and Gil was driving her in her new birthday car.
She offered the roses to Kathie as if they were a peace-offering, and declared that her birthday picnic had been quite spoiled by Kathie having to miss so much of it. Her smile was tight as she said, with her attractive Portuguese accent:
“It was so very unfortunate, and we were all quite desolate that you had to leave. I’m sure poor Sebastiao didn’t enjoy himself as much as he might otherwise have done because he was so anxious about you.” The inference was that Kathie had marred Sebastiao’s day for him.
Sebastiao himself said nothing, and Inez turned on him one of her brilliant, enquiring smiles, and asked: “When are you taking Kathie to Lisbon to let her see what has been done to the house? I am so very anxious to hear what she thinks of my color schemes, and so forth. I’ll admit that you gave me carte blanche to do exactly as I pleased, but until we have Kathie’s approval I shall feel that I might have failed in some way.”
Sebastiao seemed to stiffen, and become very erect.
“I gave you carte blanche?”
“Yes, darling.” She moved to him and touched his arm gently. “Don’t you remember we discussed the whole thing, and you thought it would be safer to leave everything to me? — Besides, of course, saving Kathie a lot of bother! I know quite a lot about interior decorating, and you have absolute confidence in my taste, and we agreed I should select the new pieces of furniture. I found some enchanting examples of French Empire — the very best of that period! — for Kathie’s sitting-room, and for your room, I...”
Sebastiao’s back was straight as a ramrod, and it gave her pause.
“Is that what you were doing in Lisbon recently?”
“Yes, darling,” she repeated. She went closer still to him. “Possibly there has been some mistake, but I don’t think so. You cannot have such a very short memory that it is impossible for you to recall the observations you made about Kathie. You said that you had known her such a little while you had no idea what her taste was like, and emphasized how inexperienced she was, and how different her background until she married you. You appealed to me to do everything I could to help fit her for her new position ... And of course I agreed, because I realized that you had great difficulties to face up to! A wife acquired on an impulse...” She put her hand up to her mouth, and pretended to look appalled. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that!”
“You have already said so much that anything more cannot do very much harm,” Sebastiao observed, his jawline very tight. “I think you had better go, Inez, and I think also that your examples of French Empire furniture had better be returned to wherever it was you purchased them.”
But she shook her head.
“Oh no, Sebastiao,” she said gently, but firmly. “They look so well where they are now, and it would be a pity to separate them from my perfectly delightful color schemes. And something else that you said about Kathie has just returned to my memory ... Something about the situation resolving itself, and the arrangement being only temporary! Of course, we both knew that ... You and I knew it!...”
She turned and directed a look of undisguised, sparkling dislike at Kathie, and her cousin Gil, who had accompanied her into the quinta, turned dark red under his tan. Bridie and Robert Bolton both looked so completely taken aback that Kathie could have felt amused if amusement had been possible, but Sebastiao looked grimmer than she had ever seen him.
“Will you please go, Inez?” he repeated.
Inez went, her golden draperies rustling round her, a certainty of triumph in the very way she moved, and especially the tilt of her chin. When there were just the four of them Bridie opened her mouth as if to say something heated, but Robert checked her. He saw Kathie rise from her chair and move a little vaguely in the direction of the door, and he opened it for her, and smiled at her warmly as she passed out.
“Have a little rest before dinner, Kathie,” he suggested, as if that was her only reason for leaving the room. “You’re looking much better than you did yesterday, but you must take things easily for a few days.”
Kathie smiled vaguely, and behind her Sebastiao called sharply:
“Kathie, come back! I want to say something to you in front of your sister!”
But Kathie went on up the stairs as if he hadn’t spoken.
Later she rejoined the others for dinner, but in the formal atmosphere of the dining-room there was no opportunity for Sebastiao to say whatever it was he had wanted to say. And after dinner, while Bridie and Robert walked on the terrace in the last of the sunset’s afterglow, Kathie once more slipped away to her room, and this time she locked her door, and determined not to open it to anyone — not even Bridie.
Bridie couldn’t understand how she felt at that moment. No one could understand! ... All through dinner she had tried to look completely normal and natural, yet her world had crumbled into ruins, and she couldn’t see anything ahead of her. Sebastiao had discussed her with Inez ... It wasn’t enough that he was in love with Inez, he had had to say slighting things about her, his wife! For she was his wife!... She bore his name ... He had married her, and he had asked her to marry him without receiving any encouragement whatsoever from herself. He need never have asked her, and if he hadn’t she would have been spared all this anguish of suffering that was making life unbearable for her now.
‘You appealed to me to do everything I could to fit her for her new position!..’ She might have been some insensate thing they were discussing! ‘A wife acquired on impulse!...’ How often had he regretted that impulse while he and Inez were alone together, and sought her reassurance that it was a mistake that needn’t go on for ever. A marriage that was no true marriage could always be annulled. He must have been thinking of that when he admitted the arrangement was only temporary, but the fact that he was a gentleman at heart, as well as by birth and breeding, had caused him to shrink from the thought of hurting Kathie too soon.
No doubt he had said that they would have to be patient. But Inez didn’t find it easy to be patient!
Well ...
Kathie drew a long, rather shuddering breath as she stood before her window, and below her Bridie and Robert paced the terrace. She knew now what she had to do to wipe out all the impulsiveness, the lack of wisdom, the crass stupidity, that Sebastiao had been guilty of when he married her. It should be quite a simple matter for him to regain his freedom, and for her the world was wide ... There must be some remote corner of it where she could learn to forget, learn to live anew, learn to shut her ears to those taunts about her background.
And one day, she said to herself, as she stood clutching at the heavy silk drapery that flowed beside the window, she might even marry again ... She might forget Sebastiao entirely!
Might!
She put a hand up to her mouth to still its sudden shaking, closed her eyes because of the sick sensation of despair inside her. When she forgot Sebastiao, with his golden hair and blue eyes, she would be a different Kathie from the one who stood beside the window! She would be a Kathie without the power to think and remember, feel hurt to the core of her, and mentally tired. She would be a Kathie who had ceased to exist!
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
At midnight that night the house was very still, and the silence suggested that everyone had gone to bed. Bridie had stolen to Kathie’s door and whispered goodnight to her, but Kathie hadn’t answered, thinking it better to allow her sister to believe she was fast asleep in her bed. The luxurious bed with the velvet canopy above it!
Robert must have gone home long ago, and Sebastiao ... Sebastiao could be sitting in his library downstairs, or possibly he too had gone to bed.
Gone to bed to think out his problem, and how it could be solved without offending his Portuguese ideas of correctness, and his Portuguese dignity! And without having too shattering an effect on Kathie!
But Kathie had already written two little notes, and they were propped up on her dressing-table. One was for Bridie — and she hoped very much that this sudden upset wouldn’t prove harmful to her sister’s future, although she had great faith in Robert, and he wouldn’t let her down. The other was for Sebastiao, and in addition to explaining that she thought this way out she was taking would obviate any unpleasantness between them, she asked him — as a reward (it was the only way she could phrase it!) for making his path clear for him — to deal generously with her mother and Eileen, and not let them feel any swift repercussions. For herself she asked nothing, except that he would make no attempt to get in touch with her, and refrain from attempting to force any part of his possessions upon her.
She had enough money to last her for a little while, and when that was expended she would get a job.
She thought a little hysterically, as she sealed the flaps of her letters, that there must be lots of jobs for ex-wives who had never really been wives at all!
The letters written, she packed a single suitcase, and sat down in a chair to wait for morning. She didn’t dare to get into bed, because she might really fall asleep, and her head felt so heavy, and her eyes ached so much with unshed tears, that once sleep claimed her she wouldn’t want to be aroused from it for a very long time. And she had to steal out of the house when it was still barely light, pick up a taxi on the road to Torfao — if she was lucky enough to find one cruising about at that hour! — and be driven into Lisbon to get the earliest reservation on a flight to Eire she could get.
On arrival in Eire she didn’t quite know what she would do, but in emergency there was always Lady Fitz ... Lady Fitz would understand!
She sat hunched up in her luxuriously comfortable chair while the dark hours lasted, and outside the garden was sweet with dew, and all the cool, sweet smells of the night. Occasionally she dozed, and then she came awake with a little jerk, to hear a clock chime, or a cock crow out of turn in some far-away rustic enclosure, or merely the sleepy murmur of the sea. The agony of coming awake was worse each time, and finally she washed and did her face, and changed into something suitable for a journey. Then she stole out on to her balcony and looked down into the shadows of the garden.
In another half-hour there should be a streak of light in the sky, and she waited for it to appear with the sensations of one who was waiting for a sign. She drew a long, ragged breath when at last the light spread in all directions, and the whole of the sky towards the east became a sea of flame. She looked down into the garden, taking her last long look at the paths, the maze of walks, the sloping terraces, the fountains that splashed in their tiled basins. And, as she was turning away, she heard a movement below her.
Her breath was arrested, suddenly she was afraid. Nothing must stop her now ... She wouldn’t have the courage to do this again.
And then a voice called up to her urgently:
“Kathie!”
She fled into her room, and then, as the voice called again — even more urgently — returned to stand on the balcony. She-gripped the rail with trembling hands and looked downwards to see her husband standing on the terrace, still wearing his white dinner jacket, his golden hair lank and plastered with dew, his face white and haggard. His blue eyes besought her even as he pleaded with her.
“If I come up to your room will you let me in, Kathie?”
“But...” She was startled by the whiteness of his face in the shadows of the garden, the slightly cracked note in his voice. “What are you doing down there?”
“Like you, I’ve been waiting for the dawn.” He flung out appealing hands. “Kathie, let me come up!”
“Very well,” she said, and moved across the floor to turn the key for him when at last she heard him scratching lightly on her door. He came into the room with a hesitating tread, his blue eyes black with strain, his firm mouth not particularly firm. He saw the suit-case lying open in the middle of the floor, the letters propped on the dressing-table.
“So you were going,” he said.
“Yes.”
They stared at one another, and she was appalled because even his dinner jacket was damp with dew, and his face was so haggard.
“You must have been out there for hours,” she said.
“I have. I wonder you didn’t hear me, walking up and down. I thought that if I was underneath your balcony, at least I was near to you! And I knew you wouldn’t let me in if I came knocking on your door!”
“Oh, Sebastiao,” she said. And suddenly she was running anxious hands over the sleeves and shoulders of his jacket. “You ought to get this off at once. You’ll catch a cold! You ought to have a hot bath!” The sentences came in jerks. “Sebastiao, let me run a bath for you!...”
Suddenly he smiled, wearily, but with a decided touch of whimsicality.
“Do you remember that once before — a long, long time ago it seems now! — you recommended me to take a hot bath? And I suggested you might run the bath water for me. We weren’t married then ... We are married now!”
The color came rushing to her cheeks until it scalded them.
“Yes; we’re married now! But—but, Sebastiao!...”
“And we’re going to stay married!” he declared roughly, and snatched her into his arms. “Oh, Kathie,” burying an eager mouth in her hair, “whatever rubbish you’ve written in those schoolgirl letters of yours they’re going to be torn up unread, and for putting me through a night of torture I’m going to punish you severely! So severely that,” his voice becoming muffled, “you won’t ever dare to torture me again!”
Kathie wondered whether this was all part of a moment of wild wishful thinking during the blackest night she had ever lived through in her life, and she put back her head and looked up at him. Her eyes, big and bemused and wondering — and heavily underlined by shadows — hung upon his. If only he could somehow convince her that she wasn’t dreaming!
“But I don’t understand, Sebastiao,” she whispered huskily. “I thought ... I’ve always thought...”
“I know.” His arms held her so fiercely that her delicate bones were in danger of sustaining at least a few cracks. “And the truth is that I’ve loved you from the moment I aske
d you to marry me, Kathie, although I didn’t fully realize it until we got to London and you were so sweet and adorable in the midst of so many new things! I wanted to go on buying you things for the sheer pleasure of seeing your eyes light up, and when I bought you your engagement ring they didn’t merely light up, they looked completely happy! ... Oh, darling,” pressing unsteady lips to the whiteness of her forehead, “if only I could have believed you were happy when we went on that particular shopping expedition it would have meant so much. Much, much more than anything else has ever meant to me.”
“But I was happy,” she confessed, fastening her hands about his arms and lowering her cheek to the dampness of his dinner jacket — oh, please, don’t let me wake up! she was praying silently — “and it was the day I knew I was in love with you, too. Desperately in love! That was why I chose the sapphire ring. Because it reminded me of your eyes!”
She hid her face and quivered all down the length of her after this admission, and for a second or so he could say nothing. Then his voice vibrated with feeling.
“Kathie, I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t know whether you were beginning to like me, or whether it was merely that you were determined to put up with me — for your father’s sake. And on the night before we were married you told me so bluntly that it was only for your father’s sake that you were marrying me that I didn’t dare to give you the news about his state of health. I thought you would just go back to Eire and leave me flat!”