Master of Hearts

by Ives, Averil

  All through dinner she had been dreading the moment when she must make that request to leave the table — her throat dry with secret agony, because time was running out, and she would probably not see him at all in the morning. But now, all in a moment, she had received a small reprieve, and she was to see him in the library! Whatever it was he had to say to her —probably some instructions about his nephews, or possibly a caution about Fernando Queiroz — didn't much matter, because the important thing was that for a brief island of time they would be alone together, without even Inez's cynical, watching eyes to mar the dearness of those moments.

  And, she thought, with a catch in her breath, even if he did caution her about Fernando they would be dear!

  He watched her walk across the hall before he closed the door of the dining-room, and she thought she heard Dona Inez say something in a bright, amused voice. before the door finally clicked. And she even thought she heard him answer his sister, a trifle sternly.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  WHEN she entered the library in response to his quiet "Come in" he was standing before the open window, looking out into the night. All the exquisite scents of the garden were flooding into the room, and the atmosphere seemed almost heavy with the many and conflicting perfumes. A great bowl of waxen blooms on the desk added their incense to the already highly charged atmosphere.

  The Conde turned and looked at Kathleen. She was wearing a simple black dress with little or no ornamentation, and her fair hair was coiled neatly on her neck. The man frowned, noting that she looked older — and somehow wiser — than when she first came to the Quinta Cereus, less than a couple of months before. Her blue eyes were not as straight gazing, and they seemed underlined by shadows — and there was a resigned look about the set of her lips.

  The Conde asked abruptly:

  "You are not happy, Kathleen?"

  He had never called her Kathleen before, and she

  wondered whether her ears were playing her tricks. "I am perfectly happy, senhor!" she answered. Miguel frowned again.

  "Must I always be senhor?" Then he turned back to the winodw, and the set of his shoulders seemed strangely impatient. "I suppose that is how you will always think of me!"

  Kathleen felt her knees begin to tremble again, but before they could affect her whole body with weakness the elegant black-and-white shape in the window wheeled and put her hastily into a chair, and he apologised for his tardiness rather curtly.

  "You must forgive me, Miss O'Farrel! I have been somewhat preoccupied all day today, and now there are several things I want to say to you — ask you!" He offered her his gleaming cigarette-case because he

  knew she smoked occasionally, but she shook her head. Speech seemed to have dried up in her throat, and it was such a white and slender throat that his eyes seemed attracted to it as if by a magnet when she swallowed noticeably. "You will not? Then perhaps a small glass of wine? You are not quite yourself tonight, are you?"

  "I am perfectly all right, senhor," she assured him with slight huskiness. "Perfectly all right!"

  But there was a definite crease of anxiety between his brows as he accepted her assurance.

  "In that case will you please tell me why you have been avoiding me so much lately?"

  "Avoiding you?" Her eyes swept up to his face, and in the softly-lit library she was quite unable to conceal the fact that he had startled her. "But, why should I avoid you, senhor?" she prevaricated. "Surely that is entirely your imagination? You are my employer .. . You have been — kind! — to me! . . . There is absolutely no reason why I should avoid you . . ." her voice trailing off.

  "None that I, personally, can think of," he agreed drily. "In the beginning I was perhaps a little harsh with you . . . I gave you a certain amount of cause to dislike me! But I had hoped that we had got beyond that early misunderstanding and were now capable of appreciating each other's good qualities." He smiled a little wryly. "Possibly you do not think I have many good qualities, but I have discovered what a capable young woman you are, what an earnest and reliable young woman — so different to my first conception of you! And even that was affected by the extreme femininity of your appearance!"

  She said nothing, but her heart was pounding, and he stepped back and lighted himself a cigarette, frowning over the operation as if he, too, were quite unlike himself, tonight, and he had a problem he wished to get to the bottom of.

  "Miss O'Farrel—Kathleen!" He said her name again, quite clearly and distinctly. "Is it because I interfered

  on that night when you met young Queiroz in the corridor that you have learned to dislike me afresh?" She gasped.

  "But I don't dislike you!" Unwarily she rushed on. "I don't dislike you in the very least . . . And you can't really believe that I met Senhor Queiroz in the corridor that night by appointment! It was just an accident . . ."

  He was staring hard at her.

  "I had already gathered that," he admitted.

  "And although you saw him kissing my hand that was merely a cover-up for a—for a—"

  "An even more compromising situation?" She thought his sensitive nostrils were dilating a little. "That much, also, I had already gathered!"

  "Then . . ." She stared at him helplessly. "Surely you recognised that the sort of kiss Senhor Queiroz —snatched! — was the sort of kiss he would have bestowed upon one of your maids, in similar circumstances, if she had attracted him enough!"

  "I think not!" The Conde's mouth was grim and displeased. "Even Fernando — young though he is — would not confuse you for an instant with one of the maids! And if he waylaid you it was because you attracted him enough to make the risk of being interrupted while he was proving the attraction was quite worthwhile. Inez, for instance, might have come along that corridor instead of myself!"

  Kathleen turned away her face, not willing to involve his sister.

  "So you do realise the form of attraction it was," she said rather bitterly.

  The Conde once more walked to the open french window, and as he looked along one of the pale paths which led deep into the garden, and his cigarette smouldered unheeded between his fingers, he asked as if the words offended his lips:

  "Are you quite sure you have not a greater liking for Fernando than you pretend? Are you quite sure that the quality of his admiration — which you seem

  very certain about! — is not in itself one of the main

  causes of your present and unmistakable unhappiness?"

  "I am not in the least unhappy! I—!" Kathleen rose, and in a fever of resentment moved nearer to him in the window. "How can you be so stupid as to imagine for one single, solitary instant—you, a man who should have some practical commonsense and discernment!—that I would allow myself to be made unhappy because a philanderer like Fernando Queiroz should choose to affront me at a moment when I wasn't feeling at all like being insulted? If you hadn't come along when you did I would have boxed his ears"!—her blue eyes flashed indignant sparks—"and I wouldn't have allowed Dona Inez to get away with her indiscretions by placing the blame on me if I had felt as I did when I first came here!"

  Suddenly she paused, shocked by the realisation of how much she had almost certainly revealed by that last turbulent admission; but the Conde was not going to allow her to get away with anything unexplained.

  "You mean that when you first came here it didn't matter to you whether you stayed or departed the following week?"

  "Something—something like that . . ." She turned away, wishing the lights, although discreet, were a little less searching.

  "And now it is important to you that you should stay here? You do not wish to leave us?"

  She hung her head, feeling and looking almost painfully confused.

  "I have just begun to settle down . . ."

  "Exactly," he said, softly. No longer was there any suggestion of a frown between his infinitely black brows, and his eyes were suddenly as dark as sloes, and very brilliant, under his thick black eyelashes. "You have just
begun to settle down, and Queiroz has nothing to do with that melancholy which makes your eyes so heavy tonight. And they are heavy!" bending his head and peering into them gently.

  Instantly she lowered them—her sole form of protection against him just then—and he took her arm and led her towards the window.

  "It is airless in here, and we will walk a little," he suggested quietly. "Tomorrow I shall be far from here, so we will seize the opportunity to stroll for a while tonight."

  She allowed him to guide her out on to the dimly seen path, and because the moon had not yet risen the garden was a very shadowy place indeed. But here and there the starlight lay like mother-of-pearl on the colourful mosaic over which they trod, and the shadows of trees and shrubs were inky-black against the jewel-studded night sky. There was the gentle music of falling water, and water that was being caught and held in a marble basin; and in the ornamental goldfish pools there was an occasional plop as a wakeful occupant rose to the surface, and then dived back again to the green, unseen depths. And not very far away the sea was breaking murmurously on the white beach, and the tang of it was invigorating rising above the perfume of the flowers.

  Kathleen didn't have to bother about where she placed her feet, because the Conde's hand was strong and sure beneath her elbow, and his low voice in her ear was all the guidance she needed. Even her heartbeats had slowed so that she could breathe more easily, and a nightmarish cloak of unhappiness had slipped away from her.

  For the moment this was enough—and more than enough! And the only wish of which she was capable was that the garden stretched into illimitable distance, and that she and the man who suddenly seemed so much nearer to her in spirit need never return to the house. Or, if they had to return to it, it could be with this sudden unexpected bond between them undisturbed and unbroken. This blissful, light-headed bond!

  This almost complete harmony! .. .

  Miguel stopped suddenly in the middle of a grove of ilex, and the harmony became really complete when

  he released her arm and took both of her hands, and in that narrow tunnel of scented darkness she felt his lean, firm fingers pressing hers tightly.

  "Kathleen—" his voice seemed strange, and moved, and a little husky, as hers had been earlier in the evening—"Kathleen, there is something that I must know! The way you looked tonight—the way you have looked for days!—had it anything to do with the fact that I am leaving here tomorrow?"

  She dared not answer him, so she caught her breath. Her fingers began to hurt as his fastened about them almost cruelly.

  "I tell you that I must know!" he insisted. "In fairness to us both, Kathleen, if it is so please tell me!"

  She didn't need to tell him then—not in so many words. She forgot Carmelita and the white satin damask that was being made up into a wedding-gown; the fact that Miguel was to accompany her to Paris, and that shopping for a wedding was the main pretext for the visit. She forgot everything but the note of urgency she had detected in his voice, and the inexpressible dearness of him as he stood there so close to her. She made a tiny movement as if she would clutch at him, and instantly his arms were about her, and he was holding her so close that she could feel the violent thudding of his heart, and the tremor that ran through him as her whole slight body yielded to him immediately.

  "My darling, my little one!" he breathed into the soft gold hair that strayed over the front of his jacket.

  "And you would have kept it from me! You would have let me go without this knowledge!"

  He put his fingers under her chin and lifted it, and a pale beam from the late rising moon found an entrance through the clipped ilex and showed him her eyes, swimming with wonder.

  "Don't you know that that would have been cruel?" he said, and bent to cover her mouth with his own, fiercely, possessively, ardently and triumphantly.

  Kathleen could only cling to him, quite certain that none of this was actually happening, but terrified at the same time to attempt so much as a single word that might shatter the glorious illusion. Never in her whole life had she dreamed that a man's lips taking toll of her eager, tremulous ones could fill her with such ecstatic happiness, or that his tender murmurings in Portuguese could cause her bones to melt so that her being seemed to become fused with his. And not merely fused with his, but inextricably a part of him.

  Never, never, after this delirious experience would she ever possess any identity of her own, or have any real existence apart from him! She might live, but she would never be really alive, not as she was alive now, with his kisses descending on her pale, bemused face and banishing the pallor, transforming the whole soft area of her smooth cheeks into a rosy blush unseen in the starry darkness!

  At last he rested his cheek against her hair, and strove for speech—practical, necessary speech.

  "Tomorrow I shall be gone away from you," he said, "but before the Wine harvest I will be back! That will be in two or three weeks time. They will pass, my little one, because everything that has to be endured passes in time, and then there will be the bliss of our reunion!" Once more he tilted her chin, and strove to look deeply into her eyes. "I love you so much, little English Kathleen! . . . So much!" he repeated, his voice shaking.

  She clung to him despairingly, because he had mentioned separation.

  "And I love you, too! . . . Oh, Miguel, I love you, too!" She told him, not even noticing that she had made use of his Christian name; but he did, and he laughed softly and triumphantly against her ear.

  "So it is not always to be senhor! . . . Never again will it be senhor!"

  He bent and pressed his lips to the starry eyes, kissing them almost reverently.

  "I shall dream of these moments when I am away from you, dear heart! But, as I have said, the time will pass—and I shall think of you waiting here for me, perhaps longing for me!" His arms strained her to him, and she suffered exquisite agony, but would gladly have endured it for the rest of her life if only this magic interlude need never end. "Kathleen, you must understand that I have to go, otherwise nothing would induce me to leave you! Not now!"

  Carmelita, Carmelita! . . . The name leapt up at her, but somehow she couldn't get it to pass her lips.

  "There are certain things we have to do—obligations we cannot escape, and this happens to be one of them! If I could make you understand I would go into details here and now, but I doubt very much whether you would do so very easily. You are English, and you think differently about these matters . . . I am aware of that! But, English or Portuguese—or any other nationality under the sun!—when love comes it will not be denied, and that is how it is with us, my darling! We belong—I think we must have belonged in the very beginning, only we were too stupid to grasp at once the enormity of the thing that had happened to us!—and all these weeks have been wasted, and there is so much to make up! That is why it is so hard that we have to part now!"

  Carried along on the stream of his words, uttered in a low, impassioned voice, Kathleen could only feel more and more bemused, and she couldn't even begin to grasp at the significance of them—that he loved her as much as she loved him, and the separation that loomed ahead of them would be a thing of mutual agony. And she wasn't capable of attempting to probe anything at all just then.

  "Must we part, Miguel?" she heard herself whispering in a kind of anguish, and he laid his dark cheek against her flushed one, and said sadly that there was no help for it.

  "It is unavoidable that we part, sweetheart. And it is just as unavoidable that I go to Paris. So many things

  in Life are unavoidable!" and he sighed and let her go.

  Paris! . . . Carmelita! She looked at him fearfully.

  "You are so lovely, my dear one." He lifted her hands and kissed them lingeringly, turning the soft wrists over so that his lips might lie against the spot where the eager pulses pounded. "You are a white flower of loveliness, and these delicate fingers hold my heart. Remember that while I am away, and whenever there is a moment of doubt! Miguel de Chaves h
as placed his heart in your hands, and that much of him you will possess always!"

  She didn't know how to answer him, and she didn't even know how to thank him for his gift. But her lips trembled, as a violent reaction after so much sudden emotion swept over her, and he saw it and bent and kissed them tenderly.

  "You are tired, sweet one, and all this has been rather much for you, on top of your sad little evening! And now you must go back to the house and to bed, and I want you to sleep and forget everything until the morning."

  "But—in the morning you will be gone!" she faltered despairingly. "Won't I even see you in the morning, Miguel, before you leave? Won't you at least come up to the nurseries and say goodbye to the children?"

  "In the morning I shall be gone before ever you are awake—I hope!" He touched her eyes gently with his sensitive finger-tips. "These lovely eyes need sleep!"

  She never remembered very clearly that return to the house, except that she knew his hand was once more under her elbow, and this time they both knew it had a right to be there. She had hurled herself into his arms at the first sign that he wanted her to be there, and what more natural, before they finally parted, than that he should gather her into his arms and kiss her with deep passion that once more melted her bones? In fact, the responsive passion that flamed through her veins was rather frightening to one who had never experienced anything like it before, and when at last he

  put her gently away from him—before they emerged on to the open space before the house—she was trembling and uncertain and by no means clear-headed enough to frame coherent speech.

  "Goodnight, my heart," Miguel said. "And au revoir!" he added, softly.

  Kathleen crossed the floor of the library without seeing any of its opulent magnificence, and half-way up the stairs she heard the french windows through which she had passed in a daze close quietly.

  Miguel had followed her into the house, but in a few hours he would have gone away from it. The house would seem unbearably empty!