Passionate Relationship
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

ONLY another fifty kilometres or so to go. Shelley had paced herself and her ancient Citroën carefully during the long drive from London to Portugal, but now she was tempted to succumb to the long-suppressed sense of excitement fizzing inside her and put her foot down. But the deep vein of caution that life had bred in her stopped her.

With it came a wave of intense pain and sadness. If only she had made this journey six months ago. If only…

At twenty-four she considered herself long past such vain hopes, but it had been such a shock to discover the truth that in the last few days she had sometimes had difficulty recognising herself.

It was getting close to midday, the overhead August sun throwing sharp shadows across the dusty road as she drove through the centre of yet another sleepy village. Although she had often holidayed on the continent, this was her first visit to the Algarve, and it was not at all what she had expected. True, she was not driving along the coast, but she had not anticipated the degree of timelessness that embraced the land; she had driven past smallholdings of vines and fruit trees, tended by gnarled men and black-garbed women; she had eaten in small dusty squares where the degree of courtesy and courtliness which had accompanied her sparse meals had entranced her.

The Algarve was a land that had once, long ago, known the beneficent and civilising hand of the Moors, a land from which had sprung a race of seagoing adventurers who had carved out for themselves an empire.

Thinking about what she had read about the country helped to quell the nervous butterflies fluttering in her stomach. Nervous? Her? Shelley grimaced faintly to herself, well aware how surprised and even disbelieving her colleagues would be if they could see into her mind now.

She knew that at work she had the reputation of being cool and very, very controlled. Too controlled and withdrawn, in some people’s eyes. She had once been told by one of her university professors that she was far too wary of human contact, too determined to keep her guard up, and she knew that it was true. After getting her degree she had deliberately chosen a large organisation over a small company, wanting the anonymity such an organisation would give her, needing it to preserve her defence systems.

She had risen quickly from her first position and was now head of the department responsible for all the company’s overseas contracts. She had flown on company business to Australia and the States, and even to the Far East, but none of those journeys had given her one tenth of the sense of excitement and fear she was experiencing now. But then this journey was different. It was a journey into her past, a journey to meet the family she had never even known she possessed until four weeks ago.

Even now, Shelley could scarcely credit the fragile chain of coincidences that had brought her on this journey. If she had not refused a date with Warren Fielding, and decided to spend her Sunday in the reading room of a local museum, she would never have seen the advertisement, never have known the truth.

Several men had shown an interest in her over the years, although she couldn’t understand why. Lacking in self-confidence, she could see nothing particularly attractive in the way she looked. She was just above medium height, with shiny, thick brown hair enlivened with copper highlights. Her skin, like her hair, betrayed traces of her Celtic origins, being fair and flawlessly clear. Her eyes were almond-shaped and could change from gold to green depending on her mood.

Since she had known almost as soon as she was able to understand the spoken word that no man would ever want to marry her, she had never been burdened with the need to impress any member of the male sex, and so she chose her clothes and make-up according to her own tastes rather than theirs. Additionally, her crisp, cool manner was one that suited her, rather than being designed to flatter and attract.

Irrationally, or so it seemed to Shelley, some men seemed to find her very indifference a challenge. Warren Fielding had been the most persistent of this breed. An American colleague, he made a point of getting in touch with her every time he came to London, and Shelley had discovered that her best defence against his invitations was simply not to be at home to answer her phone.

Her circle of friends was very small, mainly composed of girls she had been at Oxford with, now all married or working abroad, and hence her Sunday visit to the museum reading room.

What whim had compelled her to start reading the personal columns of the newspaper, she did not really know, but the shock that gripped her when her own name leaped off the page at her was something she would never forget. She had read the advertisement over and over again, wondering why on earth any firm of solicitors, but especially one with such an establishment-sounding name as Macbeth, Rainer & Buccleugh, should want her to get in touch with them.

She had waited until the Wednesday of the following week before telephoning the London number, reluctant to admit to her own curiosity. An appointment had been made for that afternoon, and contrary to her expectations she had discovered that Charles Buccleugh was relatively young; somewhere around the forty mark, with a charming smile and a desk full of framed photographs of his family.

When he mentioned the name of her father her first instinct had been to get up and walk out. Only her self-control stopped her. She had taught herself years ago that it was a hard fact of life that there were countless thousands of children in the same position as herself: unwanted by the men who had fathered them.

It had been from her grandmother that she had learned the sad but common story of her parents’ marriage. Her mother had married against parental advice, and it was no surprise that the marriage had ended as it had, her grandmother had constantly told her. The moment he knew his wife was pregnant, her father had started to neglect the young girl he had married. ‘He disappeared for weeks at a time—told your mother he was looking for a job. But I knew better. I told your grandfather how it would be from the moment she met him. Thank the Lord he didn’t live long enough to see how right I was.’

Shelley knew that her grandfather had died before she was born. She also knew from her grandmother that shortly before she was born, her father had deserted her mother, leaving her alone at nineteen with no one to turn to apart from her mother.

‘Of course, they had been living with us right from the start of the marriage. I insisted on that,’ she had been told. ‘I wasn’t going to allow my daughter to be dragged off to some dirty one-room flatlet. She could have done so well for herself, too. All he was interested in was his drawing. Never even tried to get himself a decent job. Your grandfather and I never approved. Of course, your poor mother was heartbroken when he left, but I’d warned her all along how it would be. Six weeks and he was gone, without so much as a word. You were born prematurely, and my poor Sylvia died almost before you drew a single breath. Four weeks later we heard that your father had been killed in a road accident. Good riddance, I thought.’

Here her grandmother’s mouth would always tighten, and she would warn Shelley against giving her heart to any man.

‘In my day we had to marry,’ she would tell her granddaughter, ‘but for you it’s different. You have a choice. I don’t want the same thing that happened to your mother to happen to you.’

Gradually, as she grew up, Shelley had learned that her grandparents’ marriage had not been a happy one. There had been a long-standing affair between her grandfather and someone else in the early part of their marriage, which seemed to have soured the relationship. Her grandmother didn’t like the male sex, and she had brought Shelley up to feel the same way. As a young child she had felt the pain of her mother’s loss and betrayal as though it had been her own, her vivid imagination all too easily able to conceive the anguish her young mother must have known. And now she was being told that her father wasn’t dead at all, and that moreover, for the last eight years he had been searching desperately for her.

The story Charles Buccleugh revealed to her was almost too astonishing to be true. It appeared that, contrary to what her grandmother had told her, her father’s search for work had been genuine, and that, moreover, he had actually found a job in London. He had written to her mother, giving her the good news, and telling her that he would be coming home to collect her.

It was during that journey that he had been involved in the accident that her grandmother had claimed ended his life. He had been injured, quite badly, so badly that the hospital authorities hadn’t realised he was married until he himself was able to tell them.

Immediately they helped him to write a letter to her mother, telling her what had happened, but the reply he received to it came from her grandmother, informing him that both his wife and child were dead.

He had been too ill to leave the hospital to make the journey home, and a week later he had received another letter from his mother-in-law, advising him that the funerals had taken place and that she never wanted to see him again.

Stricken with grief himself, he could well appreciate that she must blame him for the tragedy, and gradually he had started to rebuild his own life. He had always wanted to be an artist, and with the compensation money he received for the accident he had gone out to Portugal to paint.

Several years later he had remarried—a widow with two children of her own, and then by the most amazing of coincidences he had bumped into an old acquaintance from his home town, who was holidaying on the Algarve with his family. It was from him that he learned that he had a daughter, but by that time her grandmother was dead, and Shelley had gone through a series of foster parents, and despite all his efforts he had been unable to trace her.

Now he was dead, and apparently it had been his dearest wish that somehow his lost daughter was found, hence the advertisement in the paper.

‘There is a bequest to you in his will,’ Charles Buccleugh had told her, ‘but you’ll have to get in touch with his Portuguese solicitors to find out about that. We’re only acting on their instructions to find you, or rather on the instructions of his stepson, the Conde Jaime y Felipe des Hilvares.’

Shelley had raised her eyebrows a little at the title, although she permitted herself to show no great degree of surprise or shock. Under the calm exterior she was showing the solicitor, she was still trying to come to terms with the fact that her grandmother had deliberately withheld the truth from her. She had long ago come to recognise that fact that her grandmother disliked the male sex, but to discover that she had deliberately lied to her about her father’s death was something Shelley was finding it very hard to accept.

All those wasted years…

She said the words out loud without being aware that she had done so as she drove through yet another dusty village. In front of her the road forked, one fork ribboning down towards the coast and the sea she could see glittering under the hot sun, the other reaching higher into the hills.

This was the fork she had to take. It would lead her eventually to the home of the Conde, and presumably the rest of his family. Her family…

All those years when she had ached for a family of her own, a real family, believing she ached for the impossible, when all the time… A different woman would have wept for all that might have been, but that was not Shelley’s way.

As a young child she had been too acutely aware of the fact that in her grandmother’s eyes she was somehow tainted with the blood of her father, and had learned young to hide her feelings and her pain. What she felt now was beyond relief in easy tears. It was too anguished, too tormented with all that might have been.

All those years when she might have known her father and had not. She wasn’t really interested in whatever it was he had left her in his will; that wasn’t what brought her to Portugal. No, what she had come for was to learn about the man who had been her father.

Had he too known this aching anguish that now possessed her? This mingling of bitter resentment and helpless compassion for the woman who had so deliberately kept them apart?

A signpost warned her that she must turn off for her destination, the road running between rows of well-tended vines. Her stepbrother was a wine producer, or so Charles Buccleugh had told her. This could well be his land. Was he, she wondered, as regimented and formal as his vines?

All she knew about her father’s second family was that his stepson was older than she was and his stepdaughter younger. It had been a surprise to discover that her stepmother was half English. What sort of woman would be attracted to a Portuguese conde and a penniless English artist? An unpleasant thought struck her. Could her father have married for money?

She shivered slightly, pushing the thought away. Hadn’t she already decided that it was foolish to prejudge the situation? She knew nothing about her step-family or the life her father had lived here in Portugal apart from the fact that he had continued to paint. Charles Buccleugh had known that much at least. Indeed, he had seemed almost amused by her own tentative questioning on this point, although she didn’t know why.

It had been the Portuguese solicitors in Lisbon who had informed her that her stepbrother wished her to travel to his home. Although his request had seemed a little high-handed, she had been due some leave, and there was no reason why, if she found her step-family in the slightest degree uncongenial, she should not simply get into her car and drive home.

The mingling of anticipation and dread she was experiencing was an unfamiliar sensation. She didn’t normally allow herself to be so troubled by ‘nerves’, but for once her notorious self-control seemed to be deserting her.

The road crested a small hill, and she caught her breath in shocked delight as she had her first glimpse of her destination.

Below her, nestling in the curve of the hills, lay a collection of buildings whose whitewashed walls and terracotta tiled roofs should have looked untidy, but instead looked entrancingly picturesque. So much so, in fact, that Shelley found herself having to blink to make sure she was not daydreaming.

The lines of vines ran straight and true right up to the wall which surrounded the house and gardens, and although it was impossible for her to hear such a sound from so far away, she could almost have sworn she heard the sound of water falling from fountains. In her mind’s eye already she could almost see the interlocking paved courtyards that were so much a feature of Moorish buildings; she could almost smell the pungent aroma of coffee and taste the sticky sweetness of the little cakes so beloved of these people of the south.

Indeed the scene below her was so familiar she could not believe she had never actually beheld it before. Telling herself she was being over-imaginative, she found her handbag and checked that her hair and makeup looked neat and fresh.

The face that stared back at her from the small mirror was reassuringly familiar, her expression faintly aloof and withdrawn, the cleverly tailored cut of her thick glossy hair making it fall in a smooth, controlled curve.

It was only natural that her heart should start to pound so suffocatingly fast as she re-started the car, but because she was so unused to these nervous tremors their effect on her was magnified, causing her to grip the steering wheel tightly.

A narrow road, dusty and uneven, led down to her destination. The white wall surrounding the buildings was higher than she had anticipated, throwing out a dark shadow. The two wooden doors that guarded the arched entrance stood open, and as she drove in underneath it Shelley heard, quite unmistakably, the sound of fountains. So she had been right about those at least!

Seen at closer quarters, the house was larger than she had thought: two-storied and very rambling. Somewhere inside the building a dog barked, but apart from that, no sound disturbed the hot silence of the afternoon.

She had, she realised, arrived at the time of siesta. Without the engine running, the interior of her small car was quickly becoming stifling. Opening the door, she gazed at the heavily studded arched doorway in front of her. In style it mirrored the one through which she had just driven, and she suspected that it must lead into one of the secret interior courtyards so beloved by people of Moorish descent.

Climbing stiffly out of the car, she was half-way towards the door when the clatter of a horse’s hoofs attracted her attention.

The sun was in her eyes as she turned to look at the horse and rider. She had a confused impression of a tall, dark-haired man seated astride an equally large and dark horse before the sharp glitter of the sun made her close her eyes and man and horse merged into the shadows.

Fumbling for her sunglasses, she put them on, and looked up at the rider.

‘Miss Howard, I presume.’

Whoever he was he spoke perfect English, even if his voice did hold a tinge of sarcastic contempt.

Never one to let a challenge slip by uncontested, Shelley raised her head and, using her coolest voice, agreed silkily, ‘Yes, I am she. And you, senhor…?’

‘Your stepbrother, Jaime y Felipe des Hilvares—but you must call me Jaime.’ As he spoke he swung down from his horse, and from round the side of the building a gnarled, bow-legged man came hurrying to take the reins from him and lead the animal away.

Her new stepbrother said something to the groom in Portuguese, the language making his voice far softer and more liquid than it had appeared when he spoke to her. The groom’s face split in a wide smile, his head nodding. ‘Sim, Excelentíssimo… sim…’

Against her will Shelley suffered a sharp sense of shock. She had known of course about her stepbrother’s title, but such a blatant acknowledgement of it was not something she had anticipated.

He looked arrogant, she thought, studying him covertly and trying to quell her sense of suddenly having stepped on to very unfamiliar and alien ground. There was nothing in her background or her present life to equate with this. Contrarily, she decided she was not going to let that put her at a disadvantage. If her stepbrother chose to be supercilious and contemptuous towards her because he possessed a title and she did not, well, he would soon learn that she was not so easily cowed.

‘It is rather hot out here, Jaime,’ she said, ‘and I have had a long drive…’

‘Indeed…and yet you look remarkably cool and fresh.’

He was looking at her assessingly, hard grey eyes studying her slender form in its covering of white top and jeans.

‘We are very honoured that you have at last chosen to visit us, and you do right to remind me that I am being less than courteous in keeping you standing here in our hot sun. Please follow me.’

Again his voice was tinged with sarcasm, his mouth hardening imperceptibly as he moved towards her, his whole manner towards her somehow suggesting that he was holding himself tightly in control, and that beneath that cool polite surface simmered a dislike he was only just holding in check.

But why should he dislike her?

He moved, the sunlight shining sharply across his face, revealing for the first time the high cheekbones and harshly carved features that were another legacy of the Moors’ occupation of the Algarve. His skin was tanned a warm gold, making her all too aware of her own pallor. Her skin was very pale and only coloured very slowly. She felt positively anaemic standing at the side of this dark-haired, golden-skinned man. She also felt almost frighteningly small and fragile. She had not expected him to be so tall, easily six foot with the broad shoulders and muscled body of an experienced rider. As he walked towards the door, Shelley saw that he moved with a coordinated litheness that was curiously pleasing to the eye.

‘I thought you wanted to go inside because you were too hot?’ He was watching her she saw, his expression politely aloof, but his mouth gave him away. It was curled in open, contemptuous dislike. The shock of that dislike drove away her embarrassment at being caught scrutinising him.

His aloofness she could have accepted, even approved of; after all, it was her own response to strangers and acquaintances. But his contempt! The contempt of her peers was something she had never had to deal with. On the contrary, she was aware that most people who knew her held her faintly in awe and accorded her their respect. In her work she had occasionally come across men who affected to despise the female species in its entirety, but her crisp no-nonsense manner soon convinced them that she was not going to be influenced by such anti-female tactics. And anyway, Jaime was not anti-women, not trying to prove some superior male psychology. It was her he despised. She had seen that plainly enough in his eyes. But why?

Warily she followed him into the cool tiled hall. The shutters had been closed to keep out the strong heat of the sun and, momentarily blinded, she missed her step and grabbed instinctively at his arm.

Beneath his shirt sleeve his muscle were hard and rigid, his flesh warm and dry. Her fingertips seemed acutely sensitive all of a sudden, relaying to her his abhorrence of her touch. Even so, he courteously helped her regain her balance.

Perhaps it was the way she looked that he didn’t like, Shelley pondered as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. Perhaps… Abruptly she curtailed her thoughts. What did it matter why he didn’t like her? She had come here for one purpose, and that was to discover the father she had never known she had. Her inheritance from him, whatever it might be, was of secondary and very little importance. She had no assets in the sense that her stepbrother would consider such matters, but she had a well-paid job and had supported herself virtually from the moment she went to Oxford. She liked and felt proud of her financial independence, and whatever her father left would be cherished because he had been the donor, because he had after all cared about her and loved her, rather than for its monetary value.

Several doors gave off the hallway. As he showed her into one of them, Jaime explained that the main part of the house was built round an open courtyard and that most of the rooms overlooked this cool oasis.

‘Through the years more rooms and smaller courtyards have been built on to suit the family’s needs. In Portugal it is the custom for several generations to share a home. This house passed to me from my father when I attained my majority, but naturally my mother and sister make their home with me.’

‘And my father…’

There was a small pause and then he said coolly,

‘He too lived here sometimes, although he had preferred his own house, which is on the coast.’

The note of restraint in his voice made Shelley frown. ‘This house…’

‘I appreciate how anxious you are to discover your father’s financial standing, Miss Howard,’ Jaime broke in harshly, making it plain that although he had given her permission to use his first name he preferred to maintain a cool distance between them by not using hers. ‘But these matters are best discussed with the advogado in Lisbon. I have arranged that he will call here tomorrow to discuss with you all the matters appertaining your father’s will—and now, if you will excuse me, I will get one of the maids to show you to your room. She will bring you some refreshment. We dine earlier here than in Spain, normally about eight in the evening. Again, Luisa will tell you.’

Already he was turning away from her, and incredibly, Shelley realised he intended to walk out and leave her.

Anger battled with trepidation. It was galling to discover how little she wanted to be left alone in this alien environment, no matter how attractive it might be, and no matter how unwelcoming her host.

‘Your mother and sister…’

‘They are out shopping at the moment, but will return in time for dinner.’

He saw her face and smiled cruelly. ‘What is wrong? Surely you cannot have expected to be greeted with a fatted calf? I must say that I admire your…courage, Miss Howard. It is not every child who would only condescend to visit the home of its father in such a blatant quest for financial gain. When I think of his attempts to contact you…his grief…’ He swallowed hard, and over and above her shock at his obvious misconception of her motives, once again Shelley had the impression of intense anger being held tautly in control. ‘No, you are not welcome in my home,’ he continued, ‘and nor shall I pretend that you are. For the love and respect I had for your father I am willing to see that his wishes are carried out. My mother is not here to greet you because she is still suffering desperately from her loss. Your father was the most important person in her life. Why didn’t you come before…while he was still alive? Or was it your inheritance that drew you here and not the man?’

He threw the question at her harshly, but she was too shocked to formulate an answer. Turning on his heel, he left the room abruptly.

Standing in the shadows, Shelley shivered. So now she knew the reason for his contempt. He thought… She took a deep, steadying breath, wondering if she could call him back and tell him the truth, but somehow it seemed to be too much effort. Incredibly, she felt as weak and shaky as though she had just gone through an intense physical and emotional ordeal. She felt almost bruised both inwardly and outwardly.

She would have given anything to drive away from the quinta and never return, but she owed it to her father’s memory to stay. Seen from her stepbrother’s viewpoint, perhaps he and his family had good reason to think the way they did, but surely they might have given her the benefit of the doubt; might have waited, and not pre-judged. The stubborn pride she had inherited from her grandmother urged her to leave now and ignore her father’s bequest, but she had come too far, gone through too much to leave now without accomplishing her mission.

She had come to Portugal with a purpose, and that purpose was to learn about the father that she had not known she had until recently; she was not going to allow her arrogant, judgemental stepbrother or his family to stop her. They could think what they liked of her, but she intended to make it clear to them that it wasn’t avarice that had brought her to their home, unless a desire to learn about the man who had been her father could be classified as a form of greed.

So silently that she almost made her jump, a young girl came into the room.

‘I am Luisa,’ she informed Shelley with a charming accent. ‘I show you to your room, sim… Yes?’

‘Yes, please.’

CHAPTER TWO

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.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.