White Rose of Love Page 10

  Dom Manoel whitened sharply. His eyes grew very dark as he gazed at her.

  “When I asked you to marry me I was perfectly sincere. A de Romeiro does not offer marriage unless he is sincere!” “But unfortunately you were not free to offer me anything! You were well aware of that when you wrote, weren’t you?—Wrote, instead of putting the offer into actual words while we were still together! In any case, you knew it was a mere formality that was contained in that letter, and it was a formality you need not have inflicted on me!”

  His dark, olive face grew so pale that she couldn’t be certain whether it was anger or some other emotion that was responsible for his pallor, and the slight, rigid stiffening of his shoulders. His eyes began to blaze a little, just as her own were blazing.

  “Perhaps, being English, it never even occurred to you that I behaved badly to you that last night we were together,” he observed rather thickly. “I made a suggestion to you for which I ought to be shot. . . and yet you think I didn’t mean it when I tried to put matters right by asking you promptly to marry me! A formal letter asking you to marry me was the least I owed you! . . . The fact that I wasn’t free was something I proposed to rectify immediately.”

  “At the cost of bad blood between you and the Almeida family,” she commented drily. “You didn’t omit to mention that.”

  A swarthy flush stole up under his dark skin.

  “I mentioned it because I had to . . . Because I’d been up all night trying to think of some other way out, and I couldn’t! Whichever way I turned—whatever I did—I would be dishonoured. But you are the woman I love, and you I had attempted to harm! . . .”

  She turned away her face swiftly, her lips quivering. “But you didn’t have to insult me by offering me marriage! You knew I wouldn’t accept you, and therefore you didn’t have to rub salt into the wounds by underlining it all so heavily that should I through some complete lack of consideration be tempted to consider the proposal your life here amongst your friends would be badly blighted. You didn’t have to make it sound like the ultimate sacrifice!”

  She moved a little away from him, her voice as unsteady as her lips.

  “I showed the letter to Tim. He tore it up,” she said.

  “I see,” he said, very quietly.

  “And I can’t help thinking that, but for the fact that Senhor D’Castelos saw us that night, you would not have felt it so incumbent on you to offer me marriage! You were very quiet on the way home. . . . Running into Senhor D’Castelos like that shocked you! It upset you badly! I’ll admit it would have been better if we hadn’t run into him, but your behaviour on the way home made me feel like a— like a little typist who had been taken out for the day by her boss, and who had had the misfortune to run into his wife while she was still with him! Or his fiancee, or his mother, or—or someone who mattered!”

  She felt his fingers grip her shoulder so fiercely that they hurt her.

  “How dare you say such a thing as that? How dare

  you liken yourself to a-------”

  “In England I should be known as the indiscreet girl friend! The one to be met after dark!” She turned and smiled up at him in a way that made him wince. “And I say it because it’s true! I’ve never felt so cheap and vulgar in my life as I did on that homeward drive. . . . And it was all so unnecessary! I wouldn’t marry you under any circumstances, even if you were free! . . . You are the very last man I would marry! To me you are utterly alien!”

  If he winced again she didn’t notice it. Her voice was rising a little, and she was carried along on a tide of anger.

  “So you see, you have nothing to worry about! You never did have anything to worry about! ... Your Madelena is safe, and your reputation is safe! Your whole future is safe! I shall tell Senhor D’Castelos, if I get the opportunity, that you were being of some assistance to me that night! ... That my car had broken down, or something of the sort, and we had run into one another in the hotel.... I could even pretend that Madelena was with you, or you were waiting for her to join you....”

  “Stephanie, you will say nothing at all to Senhor D’Castelos about that night,” he cautioned her, sternly.

  “You will avoid Senhor D’Castelos--------”

  “I thought I saw him just now down there in the garden. He’s a very good-looking young man, and it’s not easy to mistake him. And if I’m seen talking to him I won’t run the risk of being pointed at as someone who’s trying to prevent

  someone’s marriage taking place. . . .”

  “Stephanie, your voice is very clear, and there are people near us! And I forbid you to have anything to do with Carlos D’Castelos! ... His reputation with women is not all that it should be....”

  “Nonsense, he’s young, and he likes to flirt a little. He says things that are flattering, too, and makes one feel different! If he gave a girl a kiss in the moonlight he wouldn’t feel he had to propose to her the following day!”

  “Stephanie!” Manoel exclaimed, and his voice sounded anguished.

  She smiled up at him mockingly.

  “You take yourself too seriously, senhor ... after all, I’m years younger than you, and I wouldn’t like the Portuguese way of life one bit! In fact, I d frankly hate it! ... I’d rather be free—free to accept the kiss in the moonlight, and compare it with other kisses I ve received! In England, a man who takes a girl out to dinner expects—sometimes!— more than kisses. It s a modern world.... Your world is frankly Victorian.”

  Some guests were departing, and their car was proceeding down the drive to the main gates. They stood waiting and watching until the car rounded a bend in the beautifully kept drive, and then once again Steve felt Manoel’s steely strong fingers gripping her shoulder.

  “If I thought you meant what you have just said,” he told her, “I think I would kill you!” She could have cried out with the pain of his fingers. “If I thought that —when you were in my arms—it meant so little to you that—that any other man! —”

  His voice died away. She glanced up into the darkness of his face with its regular features and thickly lashed eyes that were glinting like the edge of a sword blade with something more violent than natural brilliance, and for a moment she felt almost startled by the revelation of pure primitive emotion that she read in his face.

  Then more people appeared on the drive, and she moved quickly away from him and down the steps of the terrace. She didn’t even say good-bye to him. . . . She merely moved more quickly when she reached the lawns, and as Tim’s car was standing on the drive she made for it. At least she could sit in it until Tim arrived . . . and Dom Manoel would scarcely be likely to pursue her into the open of the driveway.

  As she fumbled with the door handle of the car, and found to her disgust and consternation that it was locked, she heard a voice speak eagerly to her as its owner passed near by.

  “Senhorita Wayne!” It was Carlos D’Castelos, and he approached nearer and offered to try and open the car door for her. “Perhaps it is stuck. The heat does sometimes do that....”

  But she shook her head.

  “I’m afraid it’s locked. My brother has the key, and I’ll just have to wait. . . .”

  “Come and sit in my car,” he begged her. “It will be cooler there—it is in the shade.” But when she shook her head again, and looked as if she could barely conceal her annoyance at being shut out of her brother’s car, and in addition she would have preferred not to be accosted by him, he desisted. “I’m afraid I rather startled you the other night,” he said, with anxious apology. “I had no idea that you and Dom Manoel—”

  “We ran into each other by accident,” she said hurriedly, as if she was repeating a lesson. “He—I— we had no idea that we would find each other there. . . . I think Dom Manoel was hoping that—that Senhorita Almeida would join him. . . . She and her mother —they had been shopping in Lisbon. . . .”

  “Is that so,” Senhor D’Castelos answered, as if it didn’t even strike him as odd that a young wo
man who had spent the day shopping in Lisbon, many miles away from the Quinta Rosa, would find it convenient to make a trip into the mountains—many more miles away still—on the same day (or, rather, evening) in the vague hopes of meeting her fiance at a remote mountain hotel. But his eyes were too shrewd to deceive Steve. “It is odd how one bumps into people unexpectedly. But that particular little hotel is rather a favourite of mine. . . .”

  “Oh, yes,” Steve said stiffly.

  “They do a good dinner there,” the young man continued, hopefully. “Perhaps you found that out for

  yourself ------?”

  “We didn’t stay to dinner,” she told him hurriedly.

  “We? Oh, perhaps your brother was with you. . . .?”

  “My brother was not with me.” This time she sounded vexed as well as slightly caught out.

  His expression lightened. His eyes smiled.

  “Then, even although it wasn’t Dom Manoel who was your escort—and, naturally, it wouldn’t be since he is about to be married in two week’s time!—you were not unescorted?”

  Steve gave an impatient tug at the car door handle. “I was alone until I ran into Dom Manoel. . . . I’d heard about the inn. It’s famous, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” he admitted. His expression grew still more hopeful. “Will you, perhaps, allow me to take you there one night? The floor is famous for dancing.” He added, almost wistfully: “I’d love to dance with you, senhorita.” She felt she had to smile at him with a trifle more warmth.

  “You are very kind,” she said. “But I’m not wildly keen on dancing.” Which wasn’t altogether true, although it depended on the man who was her partner whether she enjoyed it or not.

  “Then, do you like sailing?” he asked. “I have a boat. . . . It is a good boat—new one!”

  “Oh, yes, I like sailing,” she answered with truth. “Will you permit me to take you sailing, senhorita?” She could see Tim approaching, and she answered vaguely. “I promise I will not allow you to capsize! I will be most careful! . . . To-morrow? The day after to-morrow. . . ? Say that you will let me take you out in the Silver Streak!”

  “It is a good name,” she answered, smiling mechanically.

  “And these are wonderful waters for sailing .”

  “Then the answer is ‘yes’?”

  Tim came up, and the young man appealed to him. “Senhor Wayne, I am trying to persuade your sister to let me take her out in the Silver Streak. You know it... ? I bought it only recently, and you were good enough to say you envied me the possession of such a boat. Her outboard motor is the sweetest I’ve known, and she goes like a dream.... I know you take your sister with you in your own boat. . . . Persuade her, senhor, please!”

  Tim glanced at his sister, saw that she looked a little distrait—he had witnessed her meeting with Dom Manoel while he was talking to one of the other guests at the party—and suddenly he spoke almost forcefully.

  “Yes, of course I’ll do my best to persuade her, Carlos,” he promised. “It will do her good, and I’m afraid I’m often too busy to devote as much of my time to a visiting sister as I should. . . . Why don’t you come to lunch to-morrow, and then you could take a trip in the afternoon?”

  Carlos was transparently delighted.

  “Senhor Wayne, I shall be eternally grateful to you! . . . And then, a trifle more diffidently, to Steve: “You second your brother’s invitation, Miss Wayne?”

  “Of course,” she answered. She was perfectly well aware why Tim had suddenly decided it would be a good thing for her to have some distraction, and she smiled a little more wryly. “But I warn you I am not very good with boats. I like to sit and dabble my hands in the water and let other people do the work.”

  “Then that is what you shall do, senhorita.” His handsome dark eyes were sparkling, his teeth were flashing white in his brown face. “I promise you!”

  “And Tim is the only decent cook in our family. He’ll have to cook the lunch.”

  The white teeth flashed still more.

  “I have heard reports of Senhor Tim’s cooking. But I could bring a picnic basket, and we could all share it. ”

  Tim clapped him on the shoulder.

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort, young Carlos. We’ll feed you! ... And don’t believe everything Steve says. She makes a lighter omelette than I do.”

  When he had left them Tim spoke thoughtfully to Steve.

  “He’s quite a good sort, is D’Castelos. . . . Naturally, the local girls love him, and he has a bit of a reputation for fancying himself as Don Juan, but actually he’s quite harmless. He has a rich father, too.” He studied his sister thoughtfully. “I shall encourage him to take you out in that boat of his,” he added.

  Steve turned away and once more tugged at the car handle.

  “Let me in,” she demanded, a trifle pettishly. “I seem to have been standing here for ages.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SO Steve made the acquaintance of the Silver Streak, although that was not its name in Portuguese.

  It was a dainty craft, one of the fastest in the water she had ever known, and certainly it looked very elegant with its white paintwork when it was cleaving a way through the sparkling blue water. By contrast with Tim’s old boat it was a dream to sail in, and Steve was quite ready to say ‘yes’ to testing it out again after her first experience of sailing in the Silver Streak.

  Carlos was something of a surprise to her, for he managed the boat beautifully, and once she got to know him a little better he forgot his dog-like air of devotion and they became good friends. Steve realized that Tim wouldn’t have been at all sorry if they’d become something more than friends. . . . But that was so unlikely that she didn’t even attempt to discuss such a possibility with her brother, although he made more than one attempt to draw her out on the subject.

  After the first day’s sailing she and Carlos were on

  Christian name terms. At the end of a week she felt she knew him very well indeed, and he was her secret slave for life.

  Madelena’s birthday party was celebrated a week before her marriage was to take place. She was twenty, but to Steve she seemed much younger than that.

  She came regularly to the cottage for sittings in the mornings, and Tim as well as Steve took advantage of her visits. In fact, he occupied rather more of her time than Steve did, for the model she was working on was practically finished, and it only had to be sent away for gilding. It was an enchanting head—one of Steve’s best pieces of work—and she decided that she would send it to Dom Manoel and his bride as a wedding present.

  Under no circumstances would she accept any payment for it.

  Tim’s portrait of Madelena promised to be an even better piece of work than the head, and Madelena herself was delighted with it. She wished she could sometimes persuade Manoel to accompany her to the cottage, but he was always full of excuses when she tried hard to persuade him. . . . It made her wonder a little, but she was too unsuspecting to arrive at conclusions.

  Only Steve knew why he didn’t visit the cottage, and Tim had a fairly shrewd suspicion ... in fact, rather more than a shrewd suspicion. He was also becoming so enamoured of Dom Manoel’s future bride that he often wondered why he and Steve had to be treated in this way.

  They were two quite inoffensive people—they gave trouble to no one—and they had fallen in love unwisely. They were the two who would have to suffer, but it was a bit hard. . . . Especially as Steve looked so desperately unhappy these days. Even when she was temporarily light-hearted—or apparently light-hearted —and sailing in the Silver Streak, there was a depth of unhappiness in her dark blue eyes that made Tim wish violently she had never come to Portugal at all, and certainly never met Dom Manoel.

  He supposed that but for the fact that he was dependent on Dom Manoel for his patronage, and therefore at least a part of his income, he would seek him out and tax him with Steve’s unhappiness, for which he was almost certainly responsible.

  And
then Tim remembered that he had offered marriage.... He had been willing to do something unthinkable, according to Portuguese standards, and marry his sister. And it was lucky for him that Steve had turned him down.

  But not lucky for Steve. . . .

  Madelena’s birthday was to be celebrated with a party at the quinta, a very large dinner-party in the evening, and possibly fireworks, or something of the sort. It was the sort of entertainment the Portuguese went in for, and would be on a very regal scale as Dom Manoel was so rich.

  Both Steve and Tim received invitations to the garden-party. No doubt Madelena saw to that. She was growing a little quiet as the wedding approached, and sometimes there was an expression in her eyes which Steve was reasonably certain ought not to be looking out of the eyes of a happily engaged young girl.

  She prattled of ‘Senhor Tim’ to Steve, and seemed to love being at the cottage. Its very smallness seemed to delight her, and on one occasion when she stayed to lunch—Dom Manoel was in Lisbon—and Steve allowed her to help in the kitchen, she looked so utterly content that the English girl thought the contented expression on her face was almost pathetic.

  “Do you think I’ll ever be allowed to handle one of these?” she asked, as she wielded the egg-whisk. “In the Quinta Rosa there, are so many servants that I do not suppose I shall ever find my way to the kitchens.

  Her brilliant dark eyes clouded.

  “Of course, Manoel is very good, and he says that I may do whatever I wish when I am married. . . . I shall be mistress of the quinta! And his house in Lisbon, too! He has a very great house in Lisbon, filled with some of the

  most priceless furniture. But, I don’t know. . . .”

  Her eyes roved wistfully round the kitchen.

  Steve regarded her, thoughtfully.

  Madelena, with a flowered apron tied round her slender middle, was enchanting. She was enchanting in her countless pretty frocks and her elegant suits, but somehow simplicity suited her even more. Steve’s eyes narrowed, as well as remaining thoughtful. She supposed she ought to feel for Madelena a kind of hatred . . . certainly a dislike. But somehow she couldn’t do so. She could only feel increasingly fond of Madelena, and full of an increasing pity for her brother because he was so obviously under her spell.