Читать книгу Passionate Relationship - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 6

BY accident rather than design, Shelley didn’t make it to the dinner table at eight o’clock. Instead, it was gone ten when she finally surfaced from a deep but unrestful sleep. The brief span of time it took for her to recognise her surroundings was accompanied by a downward lurch of her stomach and a sense of growing despondency.

She had come to Portugal with such high hopes, and foolishly romantic ones, she realised now, ruthlessly exposing to her own self-criticism the folly of her ridiculous longings for a family of her own—the sort of family that comprised brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins, the sort of family she had heard colleagues bemoan times without number, the sort of family, she had told herself staunchly when her grandmother died, that she did not need.

Dreams took a long time to die, she recognised emptily, but last night hers finally had. She was not welcome here in Portugal. Even once the misconceptions surrounding her reasons for coming to Portugal were sorted out, she would still not be welcome. Her pride demanded that she didn’t leave the quinta until she had made it plain to Jaime exactly why she had come, but her pride also demanded that no matter what apology he might make, no matter how he might seek to make amends for misjudging her, she would hold him at a distance.

He wasn’t what she had wanted in a stepbrother anyway. It was impossible for her to ever envisage him in a brotherly role. That overwhelming aura of sexual magnetism of his would always be something she was far too much aware of. She shivered a little, goosebumps forming on her flesh as she remembered the contemptuous way he had looked at her.

Outside her open window she could hear the sound of crickets, the warm air stirring the curtains, reminding her that she was now in a foreign country.

She felt thirsty, and far too keyed up to go back to sleep. Her cases were neatly stacked on a long, low chest; someone had emptied them while she slept. Opening the wardrobe, she took out a slim-fitting cotton dress.

She managed to find her way to the top of the stairs without difficulty, but once down in the hall was totally confused as to the whereabouts of the kitchen. Her throat, which had felt merely slightly dry when she first woke up, now felt like sandpaper and, calculating back how long it had been since she had last had a drink, she suspected she might be suffering slightly from dehydration.

She felt more vulnerable and unsure of herself than she could remember feeling for a long time. The years in foster homes had taught her well how to guard herself against the hurts unwittingly inflicted by others. It had been a long time since anyone had been allowed to hurt her, and even longer since she had cried, but today she had come perilously close to experiencing both.

The sharp sound of a door opening made her jump, her face setting in lines of cold rejection as she saw her host striding towards her.

‘So, you have decided to grace us with your presence after all. A pity you did not deign to join us for dinner.’

The insolent contempt in his voice banished all her good intentions not to let him provoke her into further hostilities. Acting with an impulsiveness that later would shock her, Shelley responded curtly. ‘Why should I? You obviously know exactly what I’m here for, so, as you’ve already made abundantly plain, there is scarcely any need for the normal civilities between us.’

She saw that something in her cold words had caught him on a sensitive spot. A wave of dark colour—probably anger rather than embarrassment—stained the tanned skin, his eyes glittering with suppressed rage. She had once read somewhere that these Moorish Portuguese were a very proud and correct race, and she judged that he would not appreciate her criticism of his reception of her.

Spurred on by her success, she added dulcetly, ‘You’re obviously a very clever man, Jaime, to be able to analyse so correctly and assess the reactions of others without meeting or knowing them.’

This time he had himself well under control, only his voice faintly clipped and harsh as he responded, ‘You flatter me, I’m afraid. In your case very little intelligence was needed; one merely had to look at the facts. A daughter who refuses to make herself known to her father until after his death, when almost miraculously she suddenly appears on learning that he had left her something of value; who would not even have given herself the trouble of coming out here at all if I hadn’t insisted that she did. Why did you never make any attempt to trace your father? While you were a child I can see that you must have felt bound by your grandmother’s desire not to see him, but once she had died—and I understand from the enquiries instituted by the lawyers that she died when you were fourteen—surely then you must have felt some curiosity about your father, some desire to find him?’

Her heart was pounding so heavily she could hardly breathe. It was plain to Shelley that Jaime had no idea to the real truth: that her grandmother had brought her up in the belief that her father was dead. But the same stubborn pride that had helped her endure so much as a child now refused to allow her to ask this man for his understanding or pity.

Instead of telling him the truth, she said curtly, ‘Must I?’

The absolute contempt in his eyes fuelled her anger, pushing her through the barrier of logic and caution to the point where she heard herself saying huskily, in a voice vibrating with emotion, ‘And by what absolute right do you dare to criticise me? You know nothing, either about me or about my motives in coming here. You are unbelievable, do you know that? You have the arrogance to criticise and condemn me without even trying to discover the facts; without knowing the first thing about me!’ Her eyes flashed huge and dark in her too-pale face, the violence of her emotions draining her last reserves of energy. She was literally shaking with the force of them, knowing that she was no match either physically or emotionally for this man, but driven to defy him.

‘I’m not staying here another minute!’ her voice rising now, her strength rushing away from her. ‘I’m leaving—right now.’

She turned sharply on her heel, her thirst forgotten, her one desire to leave the quinta just as soon as she could, but her flight was arrested by the hard fingers gripping her arm.

‘Be still!’

The rough shake that accompanied the hissed words almost rattled her teeth. She turned to look at him with loathing, shocked into immobility as the door he had come through suddenly opened and a woman stood there.

‘Jaime, querido, what is going on?’

She spoke in English, but even without that, Shelley would have know that this fair-haired woman could not be Portuguese.

So this was her father’s wife…her stepmother. As she looked into the delicately boned, fragile face, Shelley recognised the grief and pain in it. Yes, this woman had loved her father. A lump of cold ice formed round her own heart, the pain she had suffered as a child gripping her in a death hold as she met the worried blue eyes that looked first at her and then at Jaime.

‘Miss Howard seems to want to leave us,’ Jaime told his mother curtly. ‘I am just about to impress upon her the inadvisability of such a course of action. For one thing the village has no guest house or hotel, and for another, the advogado arrives tomorrow morning to discuss with her those matters relating to her father’s estate which concern her.’

Now, for the first time, her stepmother was forced to look at her. Up until now she had been avoiding doing so, Shelley recognised bleakly.

‘So you are Philip’s daughter. Your father…’ Tears welled in her eyes and she turned her head away. Jaime released Shelley’s arm to go to his mother’s side, his obvious care and concern for her so much in contrast to the way he had spoken to and touched Shelley that she felt her resentment and misery increase.

Part of her longed to burst out that it wasn’t fair, that she hadn’t been responsible for the split with her father, that she had suffered too, but caution and pain tied her tongue. She was not going to reveal her vulnerability in front of this man. He would enjoy seeing her pain… Oh, he would cloak his enjoyment with a polite semblance of concern, but deep down inside he would enjoy it.

The door opened again and a young girl came out. In her stepsister the Portuguese strain was less obvious than it was in Jaime, but she had her brother’s dark hair and olive skin.

Jaime said something to her in Portuguese, and after flicking a brief glance at Shelley she gently led her mother away.

‘I strongly advise you against leaving here tonight,’ Jaime told her coldly when his mother and sister had gone. ‘Of course, if you insist then I cannot stop you, but as I mentioned earlier, the advogado arrives tomorrow morning; there will be much he will want to discuss with you.’

‘And a great deal I shall want to discuss with him,’ Shelley told him fiercely. ‘Very well, Excelentíssimo.’ She let the title roll off her tongue with bitter sarcasm. ‘I shall stay until I have seen him, but believe me, your hospitality is as unwelcomely accepted by me as it is given by you.’

Before he could say another word she turned on her heel and went back upstairs. She was still thirsty, but she was damned if she would ask him for as much as a glass of water. God, how she hated him! When she got into her room she found that her nails had dug so deeply into her palms that they had left tiny crescent-shaped marks.

She was just on the point of getting back into bed when she heard a brief knock on the door. Stiffening slightly, she stared as it opened inwards.

The sight of her stepbrother carrying a tray of tea and sandwiches was the last thing she had expected. Her eyes rounded hugely as he carried it over to the bed and put it down beside her.

As though he sensed her shock he drawled mockingly, ‘You might be unwelcome among us, but it is not our policy to starve our guests.’

Her mouth almost watered at the thought of a cup of tea, but a coldly gracious, ‘Thank you,’ was the only acknowledgement of his thoughtfulness that she made. In truth, she was too shocked to say anything else. That he should actually think to provide her with something to eat and drink after the row they had just had totally astounded her, but then perhaps his Latin temperament was more accustomed to such heated exchanges than hers. And yet he had not struck her as a temperamental person; far from it. She had received an initial impression of a very cool and controlled man indeed.

‘My mother asks you to forgive her for not greeting you personally, but, as you will have seen, she is still suffering from the effects of your father’s death.’

‘Unlike me, you mean?’

The hostility was there again, his eyes burning their message of bitter contempt into hers as he leaned towards her, palms flat against her mattress.

‘You said it, not I,’ he told her coldly. ‘But since you have said it, you leave me free to comment that I do find your very obvious lack of grief rather…disturbing.’

Shelley could have told him that she had cried many tears for her father over the years, and more since learning the truth, but her grief was a very private thing, not something she could easily find relief for. She could have told him that, unlike his mother, she had no one to turn to, no shoulder to cry on, no firm supporting male arm to comfort her. Instead she said mockingly, ‘I’m surprised to learn that anything or anyone can disturb you, Jaime, least of all someone as insignificant and unworthy as myself.’

‘Unworthy, maybe, but insignificant, never.’

Shelley caught her breath as her heartbeat suddenly accelerated wildly. He was insinuating that he found her sexually desirable—but surely that was impossible? For no reason at all she felt acutely conscious of the fact that she was in bed and wearing her nightdress, even if it was a very sensible cotton affair without the slightest pretensions to being provocative. For one inexplicable and totally appalling moment she found herself wondering what it would be like to be held in those sinewy male arms, to feel that cynical, masculine mouth caressing her own. The treacherous direction of her thoughts shocked her into tensing back, her eyes widening with shock.

Appallingly, as though his mind too had travelled along the same intimate lines, Jaime raised one hand and touched her face. The sensation of the hard pads of his fingertips against her skin made her jerk back in horror, her reaction registered by the hard gleam in his eyes.

‘Unpleasant, isn’t it?’ he agreed softly. ‘But then nature does so enjoy playing these little tricks on us. For all that I, in my role as your father’s stepson, despise and dislike you, as a daughter, as a man I cannot avoid knowing that I would very much like to discover if all that fire and temper you have inside you would be there if we were together in bed. Lust is a tremendous leveller, but you need not worry; for both our sakes I intend to make sure that neither of us gives in to such an unseemly desire.’

Did he really desire her, or was he just trying to intimidate her? Surely it must be the latter?

Wordlessly Shelley watched as he got up and walked to the door. There were a thousand things she should have said to him, the most important of which was an instant denial that she felt the slightest degree of desire for him, but inexplicably she had said nothing.

It was no wonder she hadn’t slept well, Shelley reflected tiredly, studying her reflection rather grimly, and wondering what she should wear for this morning’s meeting with the advogado. Something cool, and yet not too casual; clothes were important. As she had quickly learned in her business life, it was impossible to be judged quite erroneously, simply on the manner of one’s dress. At home she would have had no problems. One of the elegant tailored outfits she wore for work would have done admirably, but she had not brought them with her.

Now that she had met her formidable stepbrother, she could see that that had been a mistake. Had he met her when she was dressed in her businesslike grey pinstripe suit instead of in casual jeans and top, he would not have dared to talk so insultingly about wanting to go to bed with her.

The hand applying her eyeshadow wavered slightly, and she cursed under her breath. With the morning had come a return of her normal self-control. Indeed, she found it hard to accept her own emotional outburst of the previous evening. Obviously it had been brought on by tiredness and shock. With hindsight she could see that it had been on the cards that her father’s second family would resent her. When Jaime accused her of being motivated by greed he was no doubt unaware that his erroneous assessment of her gave her the suspicion that his own motives might not be completely untainted by that same vice.

It stood to reason that for her father to leave her something must mean that that same something couldn’t be left to any members of his new family, and yet surely, with all the wealth so obviously possessed by Jaime and his family, they could hardly resent whatever small trifle of remembrance her father might want to leave her?

But then the rich were notorious for their meanness. As for Jaime saying he desired her… Her hand shook again, and she steadied it, frowning fiercely at her own reflection. No doubt that had simply been something he had thrown at her to disarm her. A man with his brand of sexuality and good looks could scarcely be unaware of his effect upon her sex. No doubt it amused him to pretend some fictitious feeling of desire for her.

Did he think her so stupid that she was not aware of his contempt, or of the fact that even if he did genuinely desire her, his own pride would ensure that that desire was quite ruthlessly stifled?

A knock on her door made her jump, but it was only the maid, who had come to collect her breakfast tray.

‘The Conde asks me to say to you that Senhor Armandes will be here in half an hour.’

Shelley waited until she had gone to continue her toilet. Her bedroom had two large windows, one overlooking the vine covered hillsides and the other, a large enclosed courtyard. She could have had her breakfast on the balcony that overlooked this courtyard, but she had purposely stayed in her room. She had no wish to look down from her balcony and find herself under observation by her stepbrother, and one quick look into the courtyard earlier on had shown her a table set for breakfast.

Stoically, she had refused to allow herself to be hurt by the fact that she had not been invited to join the family for breakfast. They did not want to welcome her among them; very well, that would be their loss and not hers. She had no real need of them, and if they chose to leap to completely unfounded conclusions about the fact that she had not made contact with her father before his death, well then, let them.

Her watch told her that she had still fifteen minutes to wait until the advogado arrived, and she was determined not to set foot out of her room until he did. Once she had spoken to him she intended to leave the quinta just as quickly as she could. Her bags were already packed. Unable to sleep, she had risen early before Luisa arrived with her tray and had soon packed away everything that the maid had so carefully hung up the evening before.

It was pointless regretting the lack of the chilly formality of her business outfits, but she had had the forethought to bring a tailored linen suit with her, and she put this on now, frowning a little over the soft mint green colour, unaware of how poignantly the easy fit of the skirt showed up her recent weight loss.

Make-up was a wonderful disguise, she decided grimly, glancing at her watch and carefully removing the last of her personal belongings from the room.

Calculating how much petrol she had left in her car and how far it was to the last garage she had passed on her drive occupied the last few minutes before she heard a polite knock on her door.

‘The advogado is here,’ Luisa told her shyly when she opened it.

She could see the maid glancing past her, her eyes widening as she saw the suitcases on the bed.

‘I shall be leaving shortly, Luisa,’ said Shelley coolly. ‘Thank you for looking after me so well.’

She suspected it would be considered bad form for her to offer the girl a tip, but she had bought herself a new bottle of perfume before leaving home and luckily it was unopened. She would leave it as a present for the girl, whose open-mouthed surprise betrayed that she had expected Shelley’s visit to be of a much longer duration.

‘If you will just direct me…’

Collecting herself, the girl said hurriedly, ‘The advogado is in the Conde’s study. I will show you the way.’

As she followed the maid Shelley realised that there must be more than one flight of stairs to the ground floor of the house, and then wondered if it had been built along the Moorish lines of separate wings for various members of the household.

The stairs led down to an elegant hallway with three doors off it. Luisa knocked briefly on one of them and stood back, indicating that Shelley was to go in.

At first glance the room was faintly intimidating, full of heavy, dark furniture and lacking in light, but as her eyes accustomed themselves to the dimness Shelley recognised a richness to the furnishings that muted its heavy authority. A French window gave on to a small and obviously private courtyard—the sacred preserve of the males of the family, she thought sardonically as she turned to face the other occupants of the room.

There were only two of them: Jaime, and another man who she guessed must be the advogado.

She was not really surprised at the absence of her stepmother and sister, but she wondered a little cynically how her father would feel if he knew how completely her new family had thrown her to the wolves, or rather to the panther, for it was that beast of prey who most reminded her of her arrogant and dangerous stepbrother.

‘Ah, Shelley, let me introduce you to Senhor Armandes. I shall leave it to him to explain to you the intricacies of your father’s will, where it touches upon your inheritance.’ He turned and said something in Portuguese to the lawyer, who looked grave and bowed over Shelley’s hand.

Resentment shook her. It was all right for her arrogant stepbrother to misjudge her if he wished, for she did not intend to allow the lawyer to labour under the same misapprehension.

The moment the door closed behind her stepbrother, she launched into impetuous speech.

‘Please, let us both sit down, so that we will be more comfortable,’ suggested Senhor Armandes, gently interrupting her before she had said more than half a dozen words.

Unwillingly subsiding into a chair, she waited for him to sit down, and then, leaning across the desk, declared in impassioned tones, ‘Before you say anything to me about my father’s will, I want to make it plain to you that no matter what he has left me, I intend to renounce all claim to it. As far as I am concerned it is enough that he held a place for me in his memories and in his heart. I don’t want or need any tangible evidence that he cared for me.’ All the anguish she had suffered since her arrival at the quinta rose up and overwhelmed her, obliterating her normal control. Emotion suspended her voice, and she had to pause to blink away tears and get herself under control.

She continued grimly, ‘I realise that…that certain people believe, quite erroneously, that I deliberately withheld myself from my father. That isn’t true.’

Quietly and logically she went through the tragic circumstances surrounding her separation from her father, and her own upbringing in the belief that he was dead. Once or twice she sensed that the lawyer was going to interrupt her, and saw quite unmistakably the shock and compassion in his face.

‘Please, don’t feel sorry for me,’ she said huskily. ‘As far as I’m concerned it’s enough to know that my father cared. That’s the only thing any child has the right to expect from its parents. Nothing else matters.’ She bit her lip and added softly, ‘I can’t tell you how much I wish I’d learned the truth before he died, but the couple he met here on holiday who told him about me had actually moved away from the town where I lived with my grandmother. They didn’t realise that she had died and that I was in foster-care, and of course my father couldn’t know that my grandmother registered my surname as her own. It was quite by chance that I spotted the advertisement.’

‘It is a tragedy,’ the lawyer said heavily, shaking his head. ‘Your father…’ He shook his head again, and smiled at her. ‘I can only say that had he known you, I am sure your father would only have loved you more—were that possible. I think it is true to say that he was, in his last years, haunted by his need to find you, but obviously God willed it otherwise.’

Bleakly Shelley wished she could share the lawyer’s simple faith. It would make her own anguish somewhat easier to bear.

Glancing at her watch, she said quietly, ‘I’m afraid I have taken up an awful lot of your time. I must…’

She made to rise, but the lawyer reached out and urged her back into her chair.

‘Please sit down and listen to me. I understand and sympathise with everything that you have told me, but you know, you mustn’t throw away something of considerable value through emotionalism.’ The look he gave her was both direct and compelling. ‘You understand that this family have been clients of mine for many years. I, like them, have witnessed your father’s struggles to find you. They say that to know all is to understand all, so please be patient with me and allow me to explain to you a little of the family’s history.’

Since there was nothing else she could do, other than to walk rudely out of the room, Shelley settled back in her chair with a faint sigh.

She wanted to tell the lawyer that she didn’t entirely blame Jaime for the conclusions he had leapt to. What she was running away from wasn’t his contempt and dislike, but her own reaction to it. She had never ever experienced such a strong reaction to any man, never mind one as hostile as Jaime, and that disturbed her. Every ounce of feminine instinct she possessed urged her to leave, now, while she still could.

Instead, she had to sit and listen while the lawyer embarked on what threatened to be a very long story.

‘You must understand that when the Condessa first met your father she was a lady suffering under a tremendous burden. Her late husband, the father of Jaime and Carlota, had been killed while playing polo. Their marriage had been the traditional one arranged by their families. When she married Carlos he was a comparatively wealthy young man, but on the death of his grandfather shortly after their marriage, he started to speculate unwisely, and by the time Carlota was born he was on the verge of bankruptcy. Carlos was a man born out of his time, much addicted to the expensive sporting hobbies of the wealthy,’ The lawyer’s mouth pursed slightly, as though he were remembering old arguments. ‘I tried to warn him, but he would not listen to me. Of course he had told his wife nothing of his financial affairs, so when he died and the truth was revealed, the Condessa had no idea where to turn. It was decided that she should sell her house in Lisbon and this quinta, and that she and the children should live in a small villa the family owned not far from here on the coast. The house in Lisbon was sold almost straightaway, but this quinta with its neglected vines…that was a different matter. The late Conde was not a man who was at all interested in the husbandry of his land.’

Was there a shade of disapproval in the lawyer’s voice? Shelley suspected so.

‘So it came about that the Condessa and her children went to live in the villa on the coast, and it was there that she met your father. You will know, of course, that he was a painter. It was just about this time that he had started to make a name for himself, and in fact it was I who introduced them. Your father was also a client of mine, and one who I must say showed a shrewd judge of a good investment. There are, of course, those who would say he was lucky, but there is more than luck involved in the making of a fortune from what is commonly called speculation.

‘At the time when I introduced him to the Condessa, your father was already a comparatively wealthy man, but it was still his painting that was his first love. He asked the Condessa’s permission to paint the villa, and I believe it was from that point that the romance developed.

‘It was your father who advised the Condessa against selling the quinta, and who nurtured Jaime’s interest in the land and the vines. You will have gathered by now that Jaime was very devoted to your father. It was your father’s money and his investment in the land that enabled the quinta to become profitable again. On their marriage he also bought from the Condessa the villa, which has remained in his name ever since.

‘It is this villa that he has left you in his will, plus a small share in the profits of the quinta. You must not feel in accepting this bequest that you are in any way depriving the Condessa or her family in any financial sense. Your father made ample provision for the Condessa and her children in his will…’

‘And yet still my stepbrother resents the fact that I was left something.’

Shelley said it under her breath, but the lawyer heard her, his expression faintly wary as he interrupted quietly, ‘I think you will find that the Conde’s resentment springs not from the fact that your father chose to leave you something, but from his own ignorance of the true facts. He sincerely believes that you chose to ignore your father’s existence, as indeed did we all. None of us had any idea that you were as ignorant of his existence as he was of yours. We have all misjudged you, Miss Howard, but through ignorance rather than malice. Once the Conde knows the true situation…’

‘No…’ Seeing the surprise on the lawyer’s face, Shelley softened her sharp denial with a brief smile.

‘I don’t want to discuss any of this with the…with my stepbrother yet. I would like some time to come to terms with what you have just told me, but I still feel that the villa is rightfully the property of the Condessa and…’

‘No. It is rightfully yours,’ intervened the lawyer firmly. ‘I admire the independence of spirit that leads you to reject such a gift, but think, if you will, of the future, Miss Howard. One day you will marry and have children. In refusing the gift that your father leaves you, you are refusing it on their behalf as well. You cannot know what life has in store for you. When the Condessa married the Conde, no one could have known what was in store for her. She was marrying an extremely wealthy young man, and yet…’

‘It is different nowadays,’ Shelley told him stubbornly. ‘Women are not dependent on their husbands any more. I do not want the villa, senhor,’ she told the lawyer, unable to explain to him that she still felt as though the villa rightfully belonged to the Condessa and her family. She was glad that her father had remembered her, that he had loved her, and she genuinely wanted nothing else.

Illogically, even now, understanding the reasons why, it still hurt that she had been rejected by her father’s family. It was pride that had kept her from telling them the truth; she acknowledged that just as she acknowledged that it was a measure of how deeply she had been hurt that she was unable to forgive Jaime now. Instead of rejoicing in the fact that he had loved her father, she felt deeply resentful of it; resentful of the fact that her father had been there for him, while she…

‘You will know that the Condessa is English,’ the lawyer continued. ‘On her father’s side at least, but her mother was Portuguese, and came home to her parents when her husband was killed in the early stages of our last world war. Jaime is, I think, much more his mother’s son than his father’s. He and Carlos never got on. Carlos resented him, I think, and his childhood was not a happy time for him. You have much in common, you and he, even if neither of you knows it yet.’

He was interrupted by a maid carrying a tray of coffee. There were three cups on it, but when Jaime came in on the heels of the maid, Shelley stood up and excused herself. She saw Jaime frown as she walked to the door, but he made no move to check her.

She had spoken to the lawyer and there was nothing to keep her here now. Her cases were in her room, but it was an easy task to carry them down to her car, which she found by asking the old man who tended the gardens what had happened to it.

It had apparently been parked in the quinta’s stable-cum-garage block. At another time she would have lingered to admire and stroke the silky coats of the horses she glimpsed as she walked past their boxes, but she was too intent on what she intended to do.

Two days ago it would have been impossible for her to imagine leaving anywhere without saying goodbye to her host and hostess, but her stepbrother and his family would feel no regret at her going. It was shaming to feel such an intense wave of desolation, something she should have been far too adult to experience.

Her car started first time. The petrol tank was a quarter full, plenty to get her to the nearest garage. As she drove away from the quinta she resisted the impulse to look back, and yet thirty kilometres on, when she came to the place where the road forked, she found herself taking the fork that led down to the coast.

She had given in to the craziest impulse, and yet she knew she couldn’t leave the Algarve without at least seeing the villa her father had left her.

Luckily the lawyer had mentioned the village in which it was situated, and she had remembered the name. That quick glance at the map in the garage, supposedly to check her bearings, had shown her that she could easily reach the village by late afternoon; there were several large hotels dotted along this part of the Algarve coastline, or so she remembered from her guide book, and surely she could find a bed for the night in one of them before continuing her journey home?

A tiny voice warned her that it was folly to go to the villa, but she couldn’t resist the impulse to see it. Perhaps there she would find something of her father, some sense of him that she could cling to in the years ahead.