Sarah simply could not believe the evidence of her ears. And then when it did finally penetrate to her understanding that he was actually offering to take her out for the evening she could have wept. Instead she gasped ... and it sounded as if she was quite horrified.
'But I'm meeting someone else, senhor! I - I already have an arrangement to - to dine with someone—'
'What!' She could tell that it was his turn to doubt the evidence of his ears, and his whole expression underwent a lightning change., 'But this cannot possibly be so! The children—'
'They're upstairs in bed.' She gulped. 'They're quite all right. Inez is sitting near them, and Roberto is leaving the door of his room open so that - that Maria...' Her voice ended in a faint thread of sound. It actually seemed to her that he had turned pale under his tan, and she had never seen such bleakness in a pair of dark eyes before. If a light had been ruthlessly quenched and the world plunged into darkness she could not have felt more shaken.
He remained standing very upright and very near to her, and then he walked away. He picked up one of the smaller packages from the table, opened the door of the safe and put it inside. Then he turned and confronted her.
'And who is this "someone" with whom you are dining tonight, senhorita?' he asked.
She allowed herself a moment before she answered.
'Mr. Ironside. Frank Ironside.'
'Your American friend?'
'I - we - we're not exactly friends....'
'So he followed you here?'
'Yes.'
'When?'
'A - a few days ago.'
'And you have seen much of him since his arrival?'
It was a kind of catechism he was putting her through, and for the first time she resented it. Her head went back and her chin up.
'Not a great deal. We have met on the beach.' Truthfully she added: 'He took us for a short drive.'
'My niece and nephew and yourself?'
'Yes, senhor.'
He walked to the door and then paused before he reached it. Without looking at her he asked:
'And you are meeting this - young man tonight? Where?'
'He is waiting for me - or he should be waiting for me,' glancing automatically at a clock on the mantelpiece, 'outside the villa gates. I - I didn't think you would approve if he came right up to the house, senhor,' she added lamely.
He glanced at her in some amusement - a cold and cutting amusement.
'You are considerate, senhorita,' he told her, with the utmost dryness. 'By returning home when I did and holding you up in this manner I suppose I have interfered with your arrangements, but I do not wish to detain you any longer.' He flung the door wide. 'I wish you a pleasant evening, Miss Cunninghame - a very pleasant evening! But in future, if you remain in ,my employment, I trust you will at least consult me before making any firm arrangement to dine with a young man friend ... particularly one for whom I have already professed a certain amount of distaste. Now, good night, senhorita!'
And he bowed stiffly as she passed him in the doorway.
She thought she was to be allowed to cross the hall on her own, but he was at the front door, and had it wide open for her before she reached it. An electric lantern that hung above the door glowed brilliantly as he switched it on, and as the light streamed down the drive she could see a car drawn up and the figure of Frank Ironside pacing impatiently up and down beside it just inside the wrought-iron gates that were standing open to the whiteness of the cliff road.
Philip Saratola smiled tightly.
'Mr. Ironside is counting the minutes,' he said. 'Do not prolong his agony, senhorita!'
And then he was watching her walk quickly, on numb feet, away down the drive, to be greeted by Frank within a few yards of the gates.
'What's up?' he asked. 'Has your employer been reading you the riot act for going out and leaving his precious relatives? I see he's back!'
Sarah clambered into the seat beside the driving-seat of his hired car, and she recognized dimly that it was a smarter car at night than it was in the daytime ... perhaps because the night was kind to it. Frank had provided a light rug for her knees, in case the cool breeze from the sea should chill them, and he himself was looking Very smart in a well-pressed suit and an immaculately collared shirt. His fair hair shone in the starlight, and there was a whimsical expression on his face ... as if he realized, or suspected, that she had had to fight for her freedom.
The only thing he didn't know, and couldn't possibly suspect, was that now that she had got it she didn't want it in the least, and in fact she was so profoundly upset by the past ten minutes that she hardly knew how to answer Frank when he spoke to her;
She knew now why she had been counting the moments - and she had quite literally been doing that! - until Saratola's return. When she saw him standing in the hall as she descended the stairs of La Cristola, wearing the latest addition to her wardrobe, and feeling horribly uneasy because she knew very well that he wouldn't approve, her heart actually gave a vigorous leap ... and but for the fact that she was surrounded by an aura of guilt she would have run down the stairs and perhaps betrayed rather too much of the pleasure she felt at his return.
For that was precisely what she did feel... pleasure. Even an acute form of pleasure!
And she hadn't realized before that he was quite so devastatingly handsome, and that in a white dinner- jacket he wasn't merely the answer to every maiden's prayer - or every maiden in her right senses! - but for her there never would be anyone else who could cause a kind of havoc amongst her senses, and cause her breath to remain suspended in her throat while she looked at him.
Just looked at him! And tonight she could have been dining with him ... sitting opposite him at a table in the Golden Rose, which was a night spot farther along the coast that she had dimly heard of, although she never expected to visit it. It had such a reputation that people for miles around visited it. It was famous for its food, and its wines, and its music. Not that she was in the slightest degree interested in food and wines ... but music! And the opportunity to dance with the one man in the world who had apparently come hurrying back from Lisbon for the express reason that he wanted to dance with her!
She couldn't believe it. There must be some mistake. But in any case, even if it was true, and she wasn't making a mistake, he would never book a table at the Golden Rose for the two of them again; and he would never again admit that he wanted to dance with her!
Frank drove a trifle soberly at first, for he sensed that she was either coping with an exaggerated sense of guilt or Saratola really had vented a good deal of his annoyance on her. Whatever it was she looked as if her spirits were temporarily very much under eclipse, and he put it down to her rather over-developed sense of duty, and decided to allow her time to throw off her depression, or her sense of guilt, and get her to their destination as quickly as possible. Once there the lights and the music - and, possibly, his own company! – would do the rest. He was quite optimistic about the evening that stretched ahead.
They swung off the cliff road to sweep through the village - and Sarah never even noticed that they didn't stop at his hotel — and then on to join the cliff road again where it began partially to encircle the bay, and by this time the sky was as dark as a dusky velvet mantle, and the stars appeared to be hanging close above the sea. There were shore lights, too, that were like long tentacles composed entirely of diamonds stretching for miles along the coast, and the villages they passed through without Sarah becoming aware of them were bright with their own sets of illumination, and lively with people wending their way to the principal source of entertainment - a cafe above which the bright lights flashed and winked, and through the open doors of which bursts of chatter and laughter and music escaped.
Almost every village was rendered a trifle hideous by over-loud bursts of music ... from juke-boxes, accordions, local orchestras. Only one or two villages were dark and silent, and the darkest and the most silent of all - save for the wa
shing of the tide on the beach below the walls of the houses - was the village in which Frank brought his car to rest.
They had nosed their way down a narrow lane that was an off-shoot of the main village street, and where the car lights failed to pierce the shadows they were thick and dark as ebony. Here and there a light showed through the window of a house, or a lantern gleamed above a doorway, but only very faintly ... until they entered a square where a lot of cars were parked, and it was here that Frank parked his car, too.
He walked round swiftly to help Sarah alight, and she looked at him in a faintly puzzled fashion. They had been driving for dose upon half an hour, but this was the first time she became aware of what was happening around her.
'Where is this?' she asked. 'I thought we were going to have dinner at your hotel?'
Frank smiled at her.
'Follow me,' he said, and then led the way back along the silent street which opened out on to the square and finally paused at the head of a flight of steps. He took her arm. 'Be careful,' he warned, 'the steps are steep, but there will be plenty of light when the door is opened.' Even as he spoke some people emerged from it, and with them came a burst of dapping and the melodious twanging of a guitar. They appeared to be in a bright hallway that was lushly draped and carpeted, and on the wall facing them was a twinkling sign - an amber sign which read: The Golden Rose.
Below the sign there was a great mass of yellow roses ... heavily scented roses that seemed to charge the atmosphere with perfume rather than mingle with the Other perfumes that were floating in it, such as agar smoke and exciting female essences distilled in faraway Paris. A girl in a glittering lame dress, with a golden rose in her hair, indicated to Sarah where the ladies' powder-room was, but she had no coat or cloak with her, and she did not think she needed to re-touch her face.
In actual fact she was too bewildered to even think about bothering with her make-up.
'But this is—?' she half whispered to Frank, who took her arm and smiled as he led her forward down another short flight of thickly carpeted stairs.
'The Golden Rose? Yes. Have you heard of it? I think most people who come to the Algarve get to hear of it sooner or later, and I heard of it a couple of days ago. I thought you'd enjoy it here much more than you would if I stood you dinner at that dreary hotel of mine, which is rather worse than second-rate. In any case, it's a change for you . . . and a change for me!' He beamed at her behind the back of the waiter who was conducting them to their table. 'It's a long time since I went night-clubbing. How about you?'
'I've never been to a night-club before in my life,' Sarah admitted, and wondered how she would have been feeling if he had brought her here without the knowledge that Philip Saratola was at La Cristola with the two children. However shaken she might still be as a result of her interview with him, it was a comfort to her to know that he was there ... and that the children were safe because he was there.
If he had not returned, and Frank had brought her all this way, she would have insisted on being taken home immediately.
As it was, she was in no mood for a festive evening, and she was afraid Frank had already gathered that. Nevertheless, he did his best to arouse in her a spirit of don't-careness, and a determination to enjoy herself, and ordered champagne with their meal. Sarah caught a glimpse of the menu and was horrified by the prices on it, and she tried to dissuade Frank from ordering all sorts of things that were highly-priced on the menu just because he was in the mood to be extravagant.
'Don't worry.' He reached across the table and patted her hand. 'I'm not exactly a pauper at the moment, and I'll be able to settle the bill when it's presented. Besides, why shouldn't we have the best on the menu? And who would offer a girl who looks like you second- best?'
Sarah had been glancing around her, and it seemed to her that the room was filled to capacity with beautifully dressed women and their escorts. They were not the holiday-making crowd that she had anticipated. They were searchers after diversion with large bank balances, and quite a lot of them were obviously Portuguese. They were the kind of men and women she had lunched and dined with in the hotel in Lisbon, and about whom her Aunt Constance had so often made remarks such as: 'Of course, they're a very good family ... a very old family! One has only to look at that dress to know who designed it. ...' And 'I always feel happier when surrounded by the best people!'
These were the 'best people', and the women were besprinkled with costly jewellery. Many of them wore black - the black that Portuguese women seem to love instinctively - and many of them had sun-tans and superb make-up and an air of being a trifle disdainful even of these surroundings.
There was a band playing softly on a raised platform at the far end of the room, and a shining space for dancing. The tables were all flower-bedecked and the lights so discreetly arranged that even the plainest woman present looked attractive, and the really beautiful quite shattering.
Sarah glanced down at her black silk suit and realized that she had chosen the wrong thing for the Golden Rose. What she was wearing was a cocktail suit, and this was an excessively smart night-spot ... but then of course she hadn't had any idea that she would be dining at a place like this.
'I'm not dressed properly,' she said to Frank, who had been admiring her aloud. 'You should have warned me that you intended to bring me here!'
'And if I'd done so would you have come?' He smiled at her quizzically. 'As far as this?'
She shook her head.
'No, I wouldn't, and I can't stay very long now that I'm here. You'll have to take me back just as soon as we've finished our meal.'
'All right, darling,' he soothed, 'I'll take you back if your conscience is troubling you.'
But his quizzical look grew rather more thoughtful as he studied her across the table.
He insisted that they dance between courses, as everyone else was doing, and although Sarah enjoyed dancing she was out of practice, and tonight she knew that she could enjoy nothing. All she wanted to do was to get back to La Cristola.
The heat of the room grew intense after a time despite whirring fans and much advertised air-conditioning, and although she barely sipped at her champagne Sarah's head grew confused. The music was haunting, and the singer, a Spaniard, disturbed everyone with passionate love songs ... the perfumed air seemed to quiver with the intensity of his despair and his pathos. Sarah looked round at the widely opened windows, and wished it was possible to open them wider. Then she caught sight of a newly arrived party taking their seats at a table not very far removed from the one at which she and Frank were seated, and her heart practically stood still when she recognized her employer amongst them.
He was obviously the host, and he was urbanely directing the ladies to their places, and organizing the men so that there was no confusion and each one of his female guests was in the charge of a dinner-jacketed escort who would probably dance with her later on.
They were quite a large party - an impressively large party, in fact - and the women were all smiling and delicately powdered, with melting pansy-dark eyes and rather brilliant mouths, and their dresses bore the sort of label inside them that Aunt Constance would have approved. The men ranged from being elderly to quite young, and they were all plainly on excellent terms with their host, and all very conscious of the honour he had done them in inviting them out for the evening.
Sarah, once She had recovered from the shock of her surprise, wondered what had happened to the original table that had been reserved for herself and Philip Saratola ... and why he had thought it necessary to enlarge it to such an extent when he had determined not to cancel his booking.
She heard Frank give an exclamation when he caught sight of them, and when she looked round again at him he grinned at her a trifle drily.
'So much for the children!' he exclaimed. 'At least Senhor Saratola is not baby-sitting tonight!'
He certainly was doing nothing of the kind, and from the relaxed expression on his handsome - quite strikingly han
dsome in that variegated throng - face he was not even thinking of his niece and nephew. He was not even thinking of Venetia, their mother. And he was certainly not thinking of her, of whom he had not yet caught sight.
Or so she believed ... until he passed her on the way to the dance floor with a slender Portuguese beauty who was looking up at him adoringly, and smelled divinely of French perfume, and paused to murmur in her ear:
'Enjoy yourself, Miss Cunninghame! The night is young! Perhaps later on you can be induced to join our party ... you and, of course, your friend!' glancing obliquely at Ironside.
'Well, I'm damned!' Frank exclaimed, when the two had passed on. 'He doesn't even look annoyed, and from your tragic expression when you joined me tonight I thought the world had come to an end!'
Sarah bit her lip. She considered his use of the word 'tragic' was extraordinarily apt. But of course she couldn't tell him so.
'Come on, let's dance!' He .held out his arms to her, and it was their turn to make their way to the dance floor. It was the third time they had danced together, but this time Sarah couldn't even pretend to enjoy it; her feet dragged and she felt quite stupid as they went through the motions of the samba ... which Philip Saratola was performing very adroitly and with a decided Latin grace with his partner only a few feet away.
She wondered, wildly, if it had been an excuse-me waltz would he have cut in and asked her to dance?
His eyes were smiling and extraordinarily serene, and when she met them their expression did not alter. When the music ended he took his companion lightly by the arm and guided her back to their table, and then he returned to Frank and Sarah's table and bowed very slightly as he issued an invitation:
The Bay of Moonlight Page 12