Passionate Relationship

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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.

CHAPTER THREE (#ucd9b071b-e378-5ba1-8f2f-584629ecc036)

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.’