Читать книгу Passionate Relationship - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 6

THE village lay just below the thick belt of pine forest that clad the lower slopes of the hills, and as the road dipped, Shelley saw the sea, impossibly blue for the Atlantic, reflecting the colour of the cloudless sky.

After the welcome shade of the forest, the white glare of the sun bouncing back off the houses in the village made her wince. In the small square, groups of people sat outside the one pavement café.

One or two people eyed her curiously as she climbed out of her car, but in the main she was courteously ignored. The Portuguese as a nation were much more withdrawn and aloof than their other Latin cousins.

She sat down at one of the empty tables and a waiter came to take her order. Despite the dust thrown up by the traffic that went through the square the tables and chairs were immaculately clean. Shelley ordered a lemonade and tentatively asked the waiter if he knew the way to the Villa Hilvares, as the lawyer had told her her father’s property was called. To her relief the waiter obviously understood and spoke English, and quickly gave her the directions she needed. It seemed that the villa was a little way out of the village, overlooking the sea.

There had been more than a slight flicker of curiosity in the waiter’s eyes when she had mentioned the villa’s name. Since it took its name from her stepbrother’s family and had once belonged to them, Shelley guessed that they were probably quite well known in the area as local landowners.

Although she had accused Jaime of not wanting any of the family property to pass out of his hands. Shelley knew really that she had probably done him an injustice. He was far too proud a man to be betrayed by such a vulgar vice as greed. Not that it mattered. She had already instructed the lawyer to draw up the papers which would enable her to return the villa, and the income that would come to her from the rest of her father’s bequest, to Jaime and his family, and she had asked him to forward them to her solicitors in London. She would be back there sooner than she had anticipated. She had come to Portugal with such high hopes—ridiculously emotional hopes, she derided herself now. Anyone with an ounce of common sense would have realised that she wouldn’t be welcome. But her stepfamily hadn’t known the truth…

Moving restlessly in her seat, she tried to banish Jaime and his family from her mind. Someone on the next table ordered a sandwich, and Shelley suddenly realised how long it was since she had eaten. it took her ten minutes to catch the waiter’s eye, but when he eventually returned with her order, she found the coffee he had brought her tasted hot and invigorating and the ham roll was deliciously fresh.

It was six o’clock when she returned to her car. The directions the waiter had given her were easy to follow, and she found the villa at the end of a narrow, untarmacked road.

Like the quinta, it was built primarily in the Moorish style, its wooden shutters closed and a large arched wooden doorway blocking her entrance. She should, of course, have realised that the place would be locked up. With a let-down feeling, Shelley stared at the white walls and shuttered windows, filled with a sense of depressed frustration. She would find nothing of her father here outside this shuttered, empty house.

This part of the Algarve was renowned for its sandy beaches, and less than a couple of miles further down the beach Shelley saw that someone was constructing a large hotel. It was a strange sensation to realise that this land she was standing on actually belonged to her. In Portugal the beaches were all the property of the nation, but the villa and several acres of land that went with it were apparently hers.

It was no good. She felt no sense of ownership, of belonging. If she could have gone inside the villa…or even perhaps seen some of her father’s work. But she had too much pride to go back to the quinta and ask.

The sun was dipping into the sea, sinking slowly. Soon it would be dark. She ought to head back to her car and drive down the coast, otherwise she would never find a hotel where she could spend the night, but something father had lived here in this land, in this very building, but she couldn’t picture him here. She didn’t even know what he looked like, she reflected bitterly. Her grandmother had destroyed the wedding photographs after her mother had died.

Coming here had been a stupid impulse, a waste of time. She turned round abruptly, tensing in shock as she saw the man watching her.

‘Jaime!’

She wasn’t aware of saying his name, only of the intense panic locking her muscles. A confrontation here with this man was the last thing she wanted.

‘I hoped I might find you here.’

Something had changed. He no longer looked quite as austere, and his eyes when they met hers held both regret and remorse.

He stood within an arm’s length of her, but made no attempt to touch her.

‘What can I say?’ He spread his hands in a gesture that was totally continental.

‘Why did you not tell us, querida?’ His voice sounded rough and tired. ‘Had we known…’

‘You would still have resented me,’ interrupted Shelley curtly. ‘You wanted to believe the worst of me, and now that you’ve discovered that you were wrong, you’ve followed me here to apologise. But it’s not my feelings that concern you, but your own, your own pride. You don’t give a damn about me, or my pain; all you’re concerned with is your own precious pride.’

‘You are wrong. I am concerned about you; but I am not the only one to be guilty of the sin of pride. I believe it is your pride that leads you to punish us by leaving us with our burden of guilt by not allowing us the opportunity to make amends. Your father was one of the best men I have ever known, and I have always considered myself more than fortunate to have him as my mentor in the place of a father with whom I never got on. Since you share with me the sin of pride, I am sure you must know what it does to me to know that my gain, my good fortune, was your loss, your unhappiness.’

Ridiculously, his words softened her resentment and made her eyes prickle with tears. She turned away from him, glad of the concealing blanket of dusk.

‘I grew up believing him dead. I only wish…’ She broke off and stared blindly at the dim outline of the villa. ‘I thought I might find something of him here…I don’t even know what he looked like…’ Her control threatened to desert her completely, and she knew she couldn’t stay here any longer. The dusk which earlier she had welcomed now seemed to promote a dangerously weakening intimacy.

‘I must go…I have already told the lawyer to draw up papers returning the villa to your family. I don’t want it… I…’

She had her back to him and prayed that she could get to her car without him seeing that she was in tears. It was years since she had cried. She never cried, and yet here she was…

She tensed as she felt his touch on her arm and pulled violently away from him, but inexplicably, as she moved away, his body blocked her path, his hands cupping her face and tilting it so that he could look into her tear-drenched eyes.

‘Ah, querida, do not hide your tears from me. Do you not think that I have wept for him too?’

Incredibly, she was held fast in his arms, being comforted by the soft murmur of his voice and the gentle stroking caress of his hands as she sobbed out her pent-up anguish and pain against his shoulders. This was what she had always wanted, she recognised numbly—this safety…this caring, this reassurance of strong arms around her.

‘Come, let us put aside our differences and start again, little sister. Come back with me to the quinta now. My mother was most concerned for you. It is still not done in this part of the world for our young women to wander alone at night.’

She wanted to protest, but it was like struggling against a heavy drug.

‘My car,’ she reminded him, but Jaime was already leading her away from the villa.

‘José will drive it back for you. Tomorrow we will come back with the key and I shall show you round the villa. If it is that you genuinely do not wish to keep it, then I shall buy it from you at its market price. No…say nothing now…it is something we will talk about later when we are both more ourselves.’