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‘You’re being extremely good about it,’ Calum said, his lean features breaking into a warm smile. ‘But you must let us make it up to you. Perhaps we could——’
But Francesca broke in, ‘I know; you must join us for dinner tonight!’
Calum looked momentarily taken aback, but recovered quickly and smiled. ‘Of course. Won’t you join us for dinner, Miss Dean?’
It was what Tiffany had hoped and longed for, but she immediately protested, ‘Oh, but I couldn’t. I——’
‘But you must,’ Francesca broke in. ‘We need someone to liven us up. Chris, come and persuade Tiffany to stay,’ she commanded imperiously.
But Chris said, ‘It will be dull with all the family there.’
‘That’s why she must come. Tiffany, please say you will.’
Pushing Chris’s obvious reluctance out of her mind, Tiffany laughed and indicated the bathrobe. ‘But how can I possibly?’
‘Oh, that’s easily solved. I’ll ring a boutique in the town and tell them to bring up a selection of gowns for you to choose from. They should be here before too long,’ Francesca said with all the confidence of a girl who only had to lift a phone to always get what she wanted. ‘Now, you don’t have any excuse, so please say that you’ll stay.’
But Tiffany looked at Calum for reassurance, saying, ‘I’m sure you really don’t want an outsider at a family party.’
She got what she wanted. ‘There will be others there beside ourselves. And you’ll be very welcome, Miss Dean.’
Giving him one of her best smiles, she said, ‘Well, if you’re sure…’
‘Quite sure. It will be a great pleasure.’
‘Then I’d love to stay. But only——’ she gave him a
sparkling, playful look ‘—if you’ll promise to call me Tiffany and not Miss Dean.’ She imitated his deep voice, making Calum laugh.
‘It’s a bargain. I’ll go and tell the caterer to change the table setting.’
‘And I’ll ring the boutique.’ Calum went out and Francesca went over to the phone, but glanced at Tiffany and Chris and then said, ‘The number is in my address book upstairs. Will you excuse me while I go and make the call?’ And she hurried away.
Not wanting to be left alone with Chris, Tiffany said, ‘I’ll wait upstairs.’ She went to follow Francesca out of the room, but got caught up in the skirts of the robe and had to hitch it up.
As she made for the door, Chris said, ‘You’re wasting your time, Tiffany.’
Pretending not to understand, she said over her shoulder, ‘See you later.’
But Chris said sharply, ‘You won’t catch Calum.’ She stopped, closed the door, which she had half opened, and turned to face him, leaning against it.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Chris laughed unpleasantly. ‘You know exactly what I mean. Calum fell for your trick, but he’s much too clever not to see through you eventually—even if no one tells him.’
He had jumped to the wrong conclusion, but it was impossible to tell him the truth; he would only have her thrown out that much more quickly if he knew she was trying to get a story on his cousin. ‘Are you—are you threatening me?’ she said unsteadily, the future looking a long, empty prospect again.
‘No.’ Chris straightened up from the arm of the settee on which he’d been sitting and came over to her. ‘Just warning you that you’ll be wasting your time.’
Tiffany thought of bluffing it out, but one look into Chris’s eyes told her it would be no use. She didn’t admit anything, but instead raised large, pleading eyes to his. ‘Things have been tough for me lately. You wouldn’t begin to understand…’ Her fists clenched. ‘I—I deserve a break.’ She broke off, her voice unsteady.
Chris’s mouth twisted sardonically, and she didn’t think that she’d got through to him at all. But he amazed her by giving a shrug and saying, ‘If you want to make a play for my cousin, then go ahead. Try your luck. But you’ll be disappointed.’
‘You mean you’ll tell him anyway,’ she said bitterly.
Slowly Chris shook his head. ‘No, I won’t tell him.’
Her eyes widened. ‘But you said…Why won’t you tell him?’
‘I won’t need to.’ He put a hand under her chin. ‘And maybe it will amuse me to watch you try.’
She stared at him, realising that he was playing with her. Her chin came up. ‘All right—so watch.’ Then she turned and walked out of the room with as much dignity as bare feet and a bathrobe could give her—which wasn’t much.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_405cd906-a249-5559-b742-a1475922e4a6)
FRANCESCA had told the boutique to send not only evening gowns but a choice of day clothes too. The assistant who had brought them was deferential to say the least. ‘The Princess told us your size, senhorita, and that you were fair. I am sure you will find something here that you like.’
Tiffany was sure of it too; all of them looked good on her, and any one of the dresses, she was equally certain, would have put her in hock for the rest of her life. Not that any of the clothes had anything so vulgar as a price-tag attached. Wondering fleetingly if she was supposed to pay for the dresses, and deciding not to worry about it, Tiffany chose a chic blue shorts suit to wear for the rest of the day and a stunning black velvet cocktail dress to wear that evening. Luckily the boutique had also sent shoes and evening bags, so she was able to put a whole outfit together.
Francesca came in just as the assistant was packing up all the clothes, and applauded Tiffany’s choice. ‘Mmm. Nice. I wish I could wear those shorts suits, but my legs are so long I look ridiculous in them.’ Patently untrue, of course, but it was a kind thing to say. ‘Put the things on my account,’ Francesca said offhandedly as the woman left.
‘Oh, but really…’ Tiffany made a half-hearted protest, comfortably sure that it would be overborne.
It was. Francesca lifted a hand to silence her. ‘No, please. My pleasure. Let’s go down, shall we?’
She was still wearing the flame outfit, and strode ahead down the corridor towards the stairs. After they’d gone about twenty yards, Tiffany called out, ‘Hey! Do you always walk this fast?’
Pausing at the head of the staircase, Francesca laughed. ‘Sorry. All my family are so tall that I suppose I’m not used to slowing down.’
‘From what you said earlier, you don’t seem to see much of them,’ Tiffany remarked, coming up to her.
‘Not as much as I’d like to. Especially Chris; he always seems to be somewhere I’m not, if you see what I mean.’
‘Don’t you live in Portugal?’
‘No. I have an apartment in Rome, but at the moment I’m renting a house near Paris. And you?’ she asked as they reached the bottom of the stairs and moved towards the sitting-room again. ‘Do you live in Oporto?’
‘Yes, I’m sharing a place with friends,’ Tiffany returned, wondering what Francesca would think if she knew that ‘sharing a place’ really meant that someone she used to work with smuggled her in and out of an attic room shared with three other girls, and that Tiffany had only a sleeping-bag on the floor to call her own.
The room was empty, but the windows opened on to the garden and they could see Calum outside on the terrace, talking to the caterer again. The two girls went out to sit at an ornamental table and Calum brought the woman over to them.
‘Francesca, do you have any further instructions for Mrs Beresford on the party at the quinta?’
‘Yes. Would you excuse me a moment, Tiffany?’
The other girl moved away and Calum sat down beside Tiffany. He smiled. ‘I see you found something to suit you.’
‘Yes—much better than the bathrobe.’
‘But you looked very pretty in it.’
She smiled at him under her lashes, having got the answer she wanted from him. ‘Thank you.’ Resting her chin on her hand, she looked at him attentively and said, ‘Tell me; what is a quinta?’
She already knew, of course, but it was a good enough opening gambit.
‘A quinta is the Portuguese word for farm or estate. It’s where we grow the grape-vines for the port wine. I’m surprised you haven’t come across it before.’
‘But you see, my phrase-book only gives English to Portuguese; when it’s the other way round I’m stuck.’
Calum laughed. ‘I’ll have to find you a two-way dictionary. That’s if you’re going to be here for very long?’ He made it a question, which was a good sign.
‘I don’t have any immediate plans to leave. But you were telling me about your quinta; does it have a name?’
‘The company owns several in the Alto Douro—that’s the Upper Douro valley. Er—you do know that the river that runs through Oporto is the Rio Douro?’
‘Oh, yes, I do know that,’ she assured him with amusement in her eyes.
He nodded and gave a small smile. ‘Our principal vinegrowing estate is called the Quinta dos Colinas—the farm of the hills. That’s where we’re holding another bicentennial party, for all our workers and their families.’
‘Do you actually make the wine at the quinta?’
‘Yes, but by very modern methods. We no longer have workers treading the grapes to extract the juice.’
Tiffany’s nose wrinkled a little. ‘Why not?’
Reaching out, Calum tapped the end of her nose. ‘For the very reason that you just did that! No one would buy the wine if they thought it had been trodden by the great feet of peasant workers. People are too particular today; everything must be done by hygienic methods.’
There was a slightly disparaging note in his voice which Tiffany picked up and used as a cue to say, ‘I suppose so, but treading the grapes sounds much more romantic. Have you done it yourself?’
‘Yes, but many years ago now.’
‘Do you stand in a big tub to squash them? How high do they come up?’
‘Not a tub, a big stone trough or tank. And on most people the grapes would come up to their knees, but on you I think it would be a little higher,’ he remarked, looking at her legs.
‘How unkind of you to remind me.’
‘Do you dislike being short?’
‘It’s often a great disadvantage,’ she admitted.
‘I really can’t see why you should think so.’
It was a nice reply, a compliment without going overboard. Tiffany began to realise that Calum must be more experienced with women than she’d thought. His reputation in Oporto wasn’t that of a playboy—that title was reserved for Chris. From what she’d heard of him, Calum was the serious type, hard-working and rather reserved. He was also one of the most eligible bachelors in the town. Rich, very good-looking, well-bred—what girl could ask for more? And he was in his thirties—high time he went looking for a wife. But that wife would have to be fair, to carry on the Brodey tradition. Everyone knew that, so all the dark-haired girls, the brunettes and the redheads, sighed and left him alone, certain they would be wasting their time if they made a play for him. And there weren’t too many blondes in Portugal, which was why Tiffany had thought him inexperienced. But that, of course, was stupid: even if the girl he eventually married had to be a blonde, that didn’t stop him gaining experience with all the others.
He started to describe the first grape-treading he had been taken to, as a baby, still in his mother’s arms. ‘It’s a tradition, you see. It’s supposed to get wine-making into our blood.’
Behind them, Chris came out on to the terrace and overheard. Pulling out a chair, he turned it round to sit astride it, his arms along the back. ‘But all it did was to give us a taste for wine from an early age. At least, it did in my case.’
Annoyed that he’d interrupted her tête-à-tête with Calum, Tiffany hid it behind a smile. ‘I’m not surprised. But obviously it didn’t work with your father.’
Chris raised an eyebrow. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Someone at your party said he was an artist, that he wasn’t part of the family firm,’ she said quickly, inwardly cursing herself for making such a stupid slip.
Calum nodded. ‘That’s so, but he still appreciates a good wine.’
Chris gave her an amused look. ‘Who was it told you he was an artist?’ he asked, guessing her thoughts, wanting to needle her.
But Tiffany was a match for him. ‘Wasn’t it you?’ she said sweetly. A glint came into his eyes, but she turned quickly back to Calum. ‘Are you interested in art, Calum? I’m afraid I know very little about Portuguese painters but I went to an exhibition recently at the museum. Did you go to it?’
‘Yes. As a matter of fact our company was one of the organisers. A group has been formed to try to sponsor and encourage contemporary painters. Not that I agree with everything they do.’
‘You don’t like modern art?’
They got into a discussion on the subject, and she was on safe ground here because she really had been to the exhibition—when she’d read that Calum was one of the sponsors—and had also done a lot of reading since. She didn’t overstate it, but could see that Calum was impressed by her knowledge. It was hard, though, to keep up her end of the conversation when out of the corner of her eye she could see Chris watching her, a sardonic curl of amusement to his lip, knowing exactly what the score was.
It was almost a relief when Francesca came back to join them and the conversation became general. She sat in between Calum and Chris, and they began to swap family stories and information, talking about people Tiffany had never heard of. Tiffany got to her feet. ‘What time is dinner?’
‘Oh, dear, don’t let us drive you away, Tiffany. I’m sorry; it’s just that we haven’t seen each other for so long,’ Francesca said, putting up a hand to stop her. ‘We didn’t mean to bore you. Chris, why don’t you take Tiffany for a walk round the garden while I catch up on Calum’s news? I’ll get round to you later.’
‘Oh, no, please. I’d just as soon——’
‘But I insist,’ Chris broke in. ‘Francesca can tell me all her secrets later.’
‘What makes you think I have any secrets?’
Chris bent to kiss her cheek. ‘You always have—and until some man comes along who can tame you you always will.’
‘Hark at the man! A psychologist now,’ Francesca scoffed. ‘I’ll have you know I’ve decided to marry Michel.’
‘Congratulations. I’ll give it six months.’
‘Six months!’ Francesca exclaimed indignantly.
Chris gave her a contemplative look. ‘No, perhaps you’re right. Three months should have you bored to tears and walking out on him.’
Picking up a cushion, his cousin threw it at him, then pointedly turned her back. Chris chuckled and walked away, but Tiffany noticed that Francesca turned her head to look after him, a strange, desolate kind of look in her eyes.
Tiffany didn’t want to be alone with Chris, was afraid that he would taunt her again, and had already decided that as soon as they were out of sight of the others she would make an excuse and leave him. But when they reached the far end of the lawn he said, ‘I don’t think you’ve seen the rest of the garden, have you? Let’s go this way.’
‘Thanks, but I’d really like to have a bath and change before dinner.’
Tiffany went to turn away but he reached out and put a firm hand under her elbow. ‘There’s plenty of time yet. Come and see the fruit garden.’
His grip was firm and Tiffany knew he wasn’t about to let her go. She gave him an angry glare but had to go with him.
At the end of the ornamental garden there was what looked to be a very high, dense hedge sloping down the hill on which the house stood, but she was amazed to find that it was actually two hedges with a path that descended by flights of stairs between them. The hedges met overhead, giving a cool, shady walk, with occasional shafts of sunlight where there were openings into the garden. Stone seats were set into arbours and there were marble statues of wood-nymphs on plinths, the white stone standing out against the deep green of the hedges.
