Making such a discovery after he had seen her with a shiny face and disordered hair standing in the doorway of her bedroom, while Ilse drove it home to him that she was nothing but a paid employee, was enough to affect the reasoning processes of any young woman who was quite unaccustomed to having anything of the kind happen to her. And Caroline knew that if she actually allowed herself to do so she could even gloat a little over Ilse’s discomfiture ... Although for some extraordinary reason she was not greatly upset by Carmelita’s obvious grasp of the situation.
Carmelita might be intending to marry Dom Vasco, and it was no affair of Caroline’s. But if Ilse thought, after knowing him for such a very short while, that she could marry him...!
Well, that was a different thing altogether. Despite her love for Richard it brought out the worst in Caroline.
Although the main sala was large and airy, with tall windows standing open to the night, it grew hot and stuffy after a while. Caroline stole out, unnoticed, for a breath of air, and as she walked the scented paths she saw other people making their way to the music pavilion which, like the house, was a blaze of light. Carmelita had offered to play the piano, and as she was up to concert platform standard her offer had been seized upon with pleasure. Most of the dinner-party guests accompanied her, and those that remained behind were the elderly ones who preferred to play bridge and gossip. As Caroline, too, ascended the steps of the music pavilion she caught sight of Ilse, ahead of her, leaning a little heavily on the arm of her host, and she wondered how much she was looking forward to the performance.
Probably not at all, since it would not place her in the limelight, or do much to draw attention to her as the bereaved widow who had come back to take her place in her husband’s country; and she had already had quite enough of Carmelita for one evening. Of that Caroline was reasonably convinced.
Not merely was the music pavilion a blaze of light, but it looked almost like a stage set in the deep, purple gloom of the night. Someone had arranged flowers in masses in giant containers, and their heavy sweetness floated in the warmth of the night air and mingled with the exotic scents that came up from the garden. The elegant chairs and couches were grouped together as if it was a concert hall, and the piano had been slightly raised so that it actually stood on a platform. Carmelita, in her gauzy, moth-wing dress of palest pearl-coloured net and floating chiffon, with rubies in her ears and at her throat, took her seat on the piano stool, and Dom Vasco stood beside her to turn over the pages of her music for her.
The music was already arranged on the piano, so it was not a sudden impulse on her part to entertain the guests. She had plainly thought of it beforehand, and not even the sight of Ilse, yawning delicately behind a scarlet-tipped hand, or the Marques lying back a little stolidly in his chair, as if he was not really musical at. heart, seemed to have the power to affect her brilliant smile as she began her opening chords.
She played Chopin, and Liszt, and Beethoven. Caroline, sitting in a chair at the back of the pavilion, relaxed after the introductory bars of music, and realised that she was in for a musical treat. Senhorita de Capuchos, if she had needed to make money, could have done so easily simply by playing the piano, and her name would have become well known in the capitals of Europe. But she didn’t need to make money, and she played simply for the delight of it, and because it entertained her friends ... And perhaps that was the reason why she was so successful, and why the friends seldom resented it when she broke into one of their evenings and demanded their attention for a while.
Certainly, Dom Vasco seemed perfectly happy turning over her music for her, and as a pair they were perfectly matched with the lights streaming down on them from the crystal chandeliers, and the golden curtains behind them swaying a little in the soft night breeze.
Senhor Luis Rambozi, the assistant estate manager, seemed to think they made an almost perfect pair, and whispered as much to Caroline in his careful English as he slipped into a seat beside her near the conclusion of the recital, and hoped that no one noticed him change his seat.
“She is delightful, yes?” he said to Caroline, and as his quiet eyes rested on her she had the feeling that what he actually wished to do was pay her a compliment, only he was too shy to do so. “These musical evenings are quite a thing when Senhorita de Capuchos takes charge, and as we all firmly believe that one day—”
He broke off and glanced carefully at the two on the raised platform.
“That one day Dom Vasco will induce her to marry him, it will be very pleasant indeed for him, do you not think so, senhorita? Because they are both very musical, and have many other things in common, also. In fact, they are an ideal pair.”
“Then they are not actually engaged at the moment?” Caroline whispered back, thinking that this was an opportunity to satisfy herself on that point at least.
Senhor Rambozi shook his head.
“Not so far as we know, senhorita. There has been no official announcement.”
“But you expect an official announcement at almost any time?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“It is up to them, of course. But yes, we expect it. It would be so suitable, you see. And they have known one another for many years.”
Thinking the matter over in her own mind, Caroline did not consider this a convincing argument. Surely, since they had known one another for such a length of time, and if there was any real attachment between them, they would have decided to clinch matters before this ... since they were neither of them growing any younger, and Carmelita was already past her bloom by the standards of the Portuguese themselves?
For one thing, Portuguese women tended to grow fat as they grew older, and although Carmelita would probably never be fat—at the moment she was almost too sylph-like and slender—she was indisputably past the age when her countrywomen liked to know they were settled and allocated for life.
Under cover of a rather noisy prelude she turned to Luis and ventured to point out:
“If they were in love, surely they would have married long before this?”
He smiled at her. His dark eyes were distinctly amused.
“But in Portugal we do not concern ourselves so much with love,” he told her. “Only with suitability!” Caroline felt suddenly depressed, although the music was triumphant and filling every corner of the pavilion. Judged by such a yardstick she would have a pretty thin time in Portugal, she thought, for not many men would consider her a suitable future spouse. She had neither money nor background nor parents, and at that precise moment she felt strangely insignificant.
The only one who had bothered to join her on the back row of chairs was a young man who was probably attracted by her fairness, and the fact that she was so little like a Portuguese girl. And if she was so unwise as to take seriously that gleam of admiration in his eyes, and to think that he might wish to see her again, she would almost certainly court disillusionment.
For in his eyes she must be very unsuitable ... a young woman about whom nobody knew very much.
And then, as she glanced towards the platform for an instant, she was surprised to see Dom Vasco looking straight down the length of the music-room and hard at them. He appeared to be frowning a little.
As soon as the music ceased, and while everyone was applauding wholeheartedly—everyone, that is, except Ilse—he walked to the back of the room and pointedly singled out Caroline.
“Is it not a little late for you, senhorita?” he asked politely. “If you would like to retire we will excuse you, you know.”
She felt her face grow hot as his cold eyes rested on her, and in their dark, distant depths there was nothing to recall that look he had given her earlier in the evening. It had probably suddenly occurred to him that she was the one alien figure in the pavilion, the only one who had no real right to be there—although it was he himself who had insisted that she should join them at dinner. And now he wished to dismiss her, and he was doing it as politely as he knew how. By suggesting tha
t it was late for her ... the English governess who was unaccustomed to moving in social circles such as this, and was probably feeling out of it in any case.
Or perhaps he was a little afraid Senhor Rambozi might become involved with her, since he had dared to vacate his seat beside a plump young woman who was some sort of relative, and might one day be intended for a wife.
“I’m sorry, senhor.” She stood up. “If I have stayed too long...” But the words seemed to stick in her throat. It was cruel of him to make her feel small in front of so many people.
And then Ilse created a diversion, and attracted the entire attention of the room to herself.
She had been looking almost painfully bored while the piano music filled the room, and for the last few minutes she had been fanning herself vigorously as if the heat was too much, and it was threatening to overcome her. And now at the precise moment when Caroline was engaging Dom Vasco’s attention, and preventing him devoting some small portion of it to herself, she decided to faint.
She stood up, clutching at the shining rope of pearls that encircled her throat.
“It’s so terribly hot in here! If someone will help me out into the air...!”
But before even the Marques, who was nearest to her, could guide her in the direction of the open windows she had slumped against him and it required a very prompt move on his part to prevent her slipping to the floor and lying there in a graceful heap at his feet.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BUT the Marques was a very slender man, and Ilse was a very well-built young woman, despite her gleaming golden shape. It was Dom Vasco who came to his rescue and swung her up into his arms as if she was no more than featherweight, and then bore her practically over the heads of the guests out into the reviving sweetness of the night, and a convenient padded garden chair that was one of several on the terrace.
Dom Vasco laid Ilse very gently in the chair, and then looked round sharply for someone who could fetch him brandy. Caroline was nearest to him and so she received his instructions.
“There is a flask in my car which is still standing on the drive. Run swiftly and get it.”
But Ilse opened her eyes and protested that she didn’t need any brandy. She looked about her vaguely.
“It was the heat! It was so hot in there...” Dom Vasco’s face was very close to her own, and she looked up into it and smiled apologetically. “You must forgive me! I don’t normally do things like this, but there was the journey today, and—and perhaps I’m a little exhausted—”
“Of course,” he said, soothingly. “I understand.”
“And recently I’ve been very upset ... The parting from Dicky, you know!”
“Of course,” he said again, as if he really did understand.
Carmelita had deserted the concert platform, and was now offering practical advice as she bent over Ilse. With attractive womanly sympathy she assisted her to a sitting position, and then started to fan her vigorously with her own lace-edged handkerchief.
“A glass of wine,” she suggested. “A glass of wine would almost certainly revive her, and there are refreshments in the music-room.”
“Go and get a glass of wine, Senhorita Worth,” Dom Vasco ordered in a clipped voice, and Caroline sped back into the pavilion to obey his behest.
There were not many people left in the music-room, but there was a large side table completely covered with decanters and glasses, and she poured something that looked most likely into one of the delicate crystal wine-glasses, and took it back to the terrace where, by this time, the entire audience seemed to have congregated. She thrust her way through the press, and put the wine-glass into Dom Vasco’s hand. He frowned as he glanced down at it, and rebuked her swiftly.
“This is not wine! This is liqueur! Surely you know the difference?”
The Marques intervened, in a firm voice.
“Senhorita Worth was not to know.” He lifted a finger and his secretary stepped forward immediately. “A little of the burgundy, senhorita, if you please!” Caroline hung back, her face burning under cover of the night, and Ilse recovered quickly. Once the wine was brought, and she sipped a little of it, she declared that there was absolutely nothing the matter with her. If Dom Vasco would allow her to hold his arm she could walk back to the house ... But she hung on to his arm pathetically when she stood up, and her face was pale as it would normally have been with the brilliant shine of the chandeliers in the music-room pouring forth and bathing her in quite a flood of light. Her green eyes looked up at him languidly, and she whispered that it was such a comfort to have a man’s arm to lean on.
“I don’t think anyone realises how much I miss—Carlos!”
And some bright tears of weakness welled over and ran down her cheeks.
Dom Vasco was visibly affected, and he suggested that she should allow him to carry her back to the house. Ilse protested that it was quite unnecessary, and then caught sight of Caroline in the group confronting her.
“But if Miss Worth would go back and make certain Dicky is all right it would make me happier,” she declared faintly. “The nursery wing is so cut off, and he is alone—”
“Go, Miss Worth,” Dom Vasco ordered curtly.
This time it was Carmelita who raised a protesting voice.
“But the house is full of servants, and the child will be perfectly all right! It’s absurd...”
And then her voice died away as she realised that Caroline was already on her way back to the house, and despite further protests Dom Vasco lifted Ilse into his arms and bore her back to the house.
Caroline reached it well ahead of them, and not merely her face, but her ears and throat were still burning fierily. It was the last time, she vowed to herself, that she would allow Dom Vasco to induce her to leave Richard at night, or indeed at any other time, unless his rightful guardian, the Marques de Fonteira, insisted on it. In fact, unless she was to be ground between the upper and nether millstone, with Ilse and her current admirer both approving different systems of treatment where Richard was concerned, she would have to get the Marques to issue a kind of final edict, which would either support her or go against her, and in any case leave her with some clear ideas as to the methods approved by him.
As it was, she was liable to be attacked on two sides, and after being coolly humiliated in front of a large party of guests, at an hour of the evening when she was not prepared for it, or in the best state of mind to cope with it, she could only think feverishly that it must not occur again.
She would see the Marques in the morning, or she would send in a special request to have a word with him. And if he refused to support her (although from the little she had seen of him so far he seemed to her to be eminently reasonable) she would have no alternative but to ask to be replaced.
And if Ilse was going to be a guest at the quinta for some time, and enter into serious competition with Carmelita de Capuchos for the right to look upon Dom Vasco as her property, then it might be a good thing if she asked to be released in any case!
She looked in on Richard before she went to her room, and he was sleeping peacefully. She sent a message by a maid who was still on duty to Ilse, letting her know that her son was perfectly safe and well, and that there was not the smallest cause in the world for her to worry about him at that late hour of the night—or rather, morning, for it was close upon one o’clock by this time, the service of dinner not having begun until it was nearly ten o’clock—and then shut herself in her room and went to bed.
It was only after she had been in bed for about a quarter of an hour that she remembered that Richard liked her door to be open as well as his, and she slipped out of bed and opened it.
In the morning her mood of resentment was still strong, and it was not improved by Ilse sending for her and asking her to search through her things for a particular belt and stole that went with a certain outfit.
“We’re going for a drive this morning, and I want to look my best.” She was still lying in bed in a bl
ack chiffon nightdress, and although she had been up so late the night before there was nothing in the least exhausted-looking about her appearance, or anything that could really justify her desire to be waited on. “You might hand me my breakfast tray, too. That silly girl thought I’d like to have it out there on the balcony, and strong sunlight is simply ruinous for my complexion.”
Caroline handed her her tray, and saw her comfortably settled against her piled up pillows. Then she searched for the belt and stole, and when she’d found them Ilse asked her to wash out a pile of stockings in the bathroom.
“I don’t trust that girl—” apparently the only way m which she intended to refer to the maid. “She’s got such clumsy hands she’d probably snag them.”
She examined the contents of the breakfast tray, and disgustedly pushed aside everything but the fruit-juice.
“As if I’d eat breakfast, anyway,” she remarked. “A lot of starchy rolls and sickly preserve! I discarded that habit long ago, when I found out they didn’t eat eggs and bacon in hot countries. But you can pour me a cup of coffee, and hand me my cigarettes ... They’re over there on the dressing-table.” Caroline poured the coffee and handed the cigarettes, and then asked whether it was the Marques who was taking her for a drive.
Ilse inhaled smoke languidly, and her green eyes grew faintly amused. She lay back luxuriously and fluttered her long eyelashes as she looked upwards at Caroline.
“No, darling, not the Marques. I find him a pet, but I don’t think he’s taken quite such a fancy to me as he has to you. At dinner last night he told me he thought you were a very charming young woman, and I could safely leave Richard in your care.” This was the first time since Caroline had entered the room that she had mentioned Richard’s name. “And Dom Vasco agrees that you’ve made a hit with the old boy. A pity he isn’t younger, and you might—I say might!—if you were clever enough, lead him to think of matrimony.”
Caroline’s face flushed.
“How ridiculous!” she exclaimed.
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