Passionate Relationship

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…’