Man of Destiny (14 page)

The door would never open again ... she felt drearily certain of that. Not even when his anger evaporated. They had been strangely close sometimes since that first moment of their meeting on board
the ship at Lisbon, but now they would never have a chance to be—really close! Her breath caught as
she
thought of all that being
really
close to Vasco de Capuchos could mean, and she wondered now that she had had the strength of mind to make a decision that would cut her off from ever seeing him again.
Home to England ... But she had no home, and England would be a desolation without him. Life would be a desolation without him!

The one thing she felt happy about as, cold and miserable despite the warmth of the night, she undressed and prepared herself for bed, was
that
Vasco had no idea how she felt. If he
had
...
Well, if he had she couldn’t bear it!

In her dreams his voice was calling to her, and it was curiously insistent.

“Caroline! Where are you, Caroline
...
Caroline
!”

It must have been that dream voice that awakened
h
er—that or the strange crackling noise that was happening near at hand.

She sat up dazedly in bed. The room was full of moonlight, but it was also full of smoke. Choking, acrid-smelling smoke that set her coughing, while she groped for her dressing-gown and then tried to fight her way through it to the door.

Outside it was still a perfectly wonderful night, full of the chirping of cicadas and the scent of flowers; but inside the nursery wing of the house the most terrifying thing was happening. The place was on fire, and already there was a loud crackling noise that was growing louder every second, and a roaring and a feeling of intense heat that she felt almost certain would deprive her of her senses unless she could get outside into the long corridor that separated the wing from the main part of the house and breathe the cooler atmosphere. And even then she would have to find the strength to make her way along the corridor and thrust open the outer door.

It stuck sometimes; and at others the handle was difficult to turn. And tonight she might even have turned the key, feeling the need to be quite alone.
She had never forgotten that unfortunate intrusion when Dom Vasco and Ilse had burst upon her while she was still wearing her bath-robe, and literally shining with perspiration, while her hair hung in a wet cloak about her shoulders.

What sort of an impression had she made on Dom Vasco that night
?

The smoke was filling her lungs, and bursting them. That awful roaring sound was in her ears, and her eyes were streaming with water. She staggered out into the corridor, and ahead of her stretched the faded carpet that covered it. Somehow she must reach that outer door, but a billow of smoke surged out from behind her, and she could see nothing and hear only the roaring as it enveloped her like a mantle.

She tripped over the old-fashioned cord of her dressing-gown, and hit the floor with a thud. Dazedly she lay there for a moment, aware that her senses were leaving her, and she was quite literally fighting for the strength to get up on to her feet once more when the outer door burst inwards, and someone picked her up and carried her out into a miraculously sweet-scented night.

There were flowers, and paths, and trees that dripped coolness. There was a flight of steps, and a terrace, and ornamental couches grouped near a piano. There were stars looking in at the windows from a violet-blue sky, and someone who knelt beside her on the marble floor and cushioned her head in the crook of his arm, and said things to her in a slightly cracked and really quite unfamiliar voice, although she knew it was Vasco, and somehow she wasn’t at all surprised.

He had been calling to her in her dreams ... and he had come to her when she needed him most! She declined to sip the brandy he was trying to get her to swallow, but she wanted him to go on t
ellin
g her the things that were meat and drink and life and hope and happiness in its most exquisite
form
...
and far more revivifying than brandy!

“Why did you leave your party?” she asked huskily. “What made you come here, when there was no one here
but
...
me?”

There was a grimy smudge on one of her cheeks, and her hair was singed and disordered. But her eyes were like bewildered blue stars as she gazed up at him. He wiped the smudge from her cheek with an exquisitely gen
tl
e hand, and then bent his head and touched one of the scorched places in her hair with a shaken mouth.

“Because there was no one else here but you,” he replied. “Because I knew that something was wrong ...
terribly wrong! Oh, my darling,” th
rilling
her with the words as she had never been thrilled in her life before, and holding her with the tenderness of
a mother, although she could sense his need to forget how carefully she had to be handled just
th
en
, “it was such a nightmare dinner, and all the time I had the feeling of disaster! It was so strong that in the end I left them all and walked out, and fortunately my car was standing on the drive ... But if it hadn’t been I’d have borrowed one of the others!”

“You were so sure that something was wrong here?
”

“Absolutely sure!” His long fingers stroked her hair. “The bond between you and me must be quite unique, because I felt as if part of me was dying as I turned the car in this direction, and then saw the
f
lames rising against the
sky!
If I hadn’t got here in
time...!”

He stopped, and she saw the muscles of his throat quiver.

She sank against him contentedly.

“But you
did!
And I’m perfectly all
right
...
I really am
!”
She made an attempt to sit up and prove it, but he wouldn’t allow her. He snatched her back hungrily into his arms.

“Lie still, lit
tl
e
one!
Senhora Lopes is bringing a tray of tea for you—very hot and strong and sweet!—and the doctor is on his way. When he has had an opportunity to examine you I’ll feel happier. But I do think I got to you in
time
...
although only just! You must have tripped over something, and were lying on the floor when I got the suite door
open. If only I’d listened to Carmelita about that suite, and had refused to allow you to occupy
it...”

Her eyes were growing brighter and brighter, bearing a closer resemblance to stars with every second that passed, as she kept them fixed on his face.

“I thought you were going to marry her,” she said
simply
...
although what she had intended to do was ask him how the fire had occurred.

He took her face between his hands, and she could feel them trembling as his lustrous eyes searched those lavender-blue stars that told him everything he needed to know that was of any importance to him just then. And such vital importance
!

“I’m going to marry you, my sweetheart—my beloved!—if you’ll have me,” he told her. “That was decided in the beginning, even when I treated you so badly. You should have guessed
!
”

“Oh, Vasco,” she sighed, and there was a bubbling note like laughter in her sigh. “How could I guess when you did treat me so
badly?
...
So very badly! Why, you even tried to get rid of me
!”

That was too much like actual provocation, especially as laughter was glistening in her eyes, and he forgot that she was in a somewhat delicate condition and caught her
cl
ose and forced her mouth to meet his in the fiercest, wildest kiss she had ever dreamed
about
...
and which set her heart thundering and her pulses roaring in her ears, as if the entire house was being consumed by flames around them. Then, when he realised she was gasping for breath, he held her from him for a moment and looked at her with ravaged, night-black eyes.

“I love you, I love you, I love you!” he told her. The eyes lit with flame, and then softened in such a miraculous way that she shivered in a kind of ecstasy. “You are small, and obstinate, and lovely and
adorable
...
and all my life I will love you as no man ever loved a woman before! But you will have to love me,
too
...
and never stop!”

She wound her arms about his neck, and once more
her heart beat against his while his mouth exacted a kind of
toll
...
And then his lips were laid against her eyelids, her cheeks, her hair, and her throat, and all at once they were so tender that it was almost like healing balm.

“My little dove,” he called her, “my precious Caroline
!”

She whispered against his shaven cheek:

“But I was so certain that it was Carmelita—although I like Carmelita! And then I thought it was Ilse—”

“That woman!” he exclaimed, his voice almost brutal in its harshness. “She is the most unsuitable mother I have ever met, stupid, vain, selfish, impossible! When we are married we will have Ricardo with us, and perhaps she will find someone who will marry her and take her back to England, for she is not good for Ricardo.”

That caused Caroline to remember her charge. She was horrified because she hadn’t remembered him before. But Vasco soothed and reassured her. "

“He is safe—quite safe,” he told her. “As a matter of fact, there was never any danger for the occupants of the main house. It is only the nursery wing that has been destroyed. And as Duarte is unlikely to marry I doubt whether it will ever be rebuilt.”

“I like the Marques,” she said softly.

“And the Marques likes
you!”
His face grew a little grim, although his eyes were teasing, as he considered her. “But for me, I think it is true that he might have married you ... or tried to marry you. It would have all depended upon your willingness
!”

Her arms refused to leave his neck. She felt she could never be held close enough to
him

“
You know,” she said, her voice rather more shattered than shaken, “that there could never be anyone but
you!”
She sighed as she gave him her lips. “Only you, Vasco! Always and always, only
you!”

“That is how it had better be,” he replied, and then folded her against his heart as if he was receiving her into a part of his being. The midnight darkness of his eyes was like midnight velvet wrapping itself around her.

“Say it,” he implored her. “Say ‘I love you, Vasco.’ ”

“I love you,
Vasco...!”

Senhora Lopes came in with the tray of tea, and because Vasco did not release Caroline immediately she discreetly averted her eyes. She brought with her the information that the Marques was outside, and Senhorita de Capuchos was waiting,
too ...
to be of assistance to Miss Worth when she needed her. She proposed driving her to her own house for the night, when the doctor had seen her.

Caroline looked down at her scorched dressing
-
gown, and for the first time she realised how wild must be her appearance.

“I have nothing else to put on—” she said, appalled.

But Senhora Lopes, who had poured her tea for her and was ready to support the cup if necessary, smilingly contradicted her.

“Senhorita de Capuchos has everything you need,
senhorita.
But she will not disturb you until you are ready.”

Caroline smiled mistily up at Vasco.

“What tact,” she murmured.

Dom Vasco dismissed the housekeeper with a wave of the hand.

“Supreme tact,” he murmured back. “But that is like Carmelita. You will like her very well when you get to know her. And, until the doctor comes, Senhora Lopes,” barely glancing at her, “no more interruptions!”

Senhora Lopes withdrew immediately, quite unruffled because she was more or less ignored. Outside she confided to her employer, the
Marques
de Fonteira, and to Carmelita, that she did not think Miss Worth’s condition was serious. There would be little for the doctor, when he arrived, to do that Dom Vasco had not already done. And most successfully, apparently!

“I think it would be as well if they are left alone for a while,” she advised, and Carmelita and the Marques exchanged smiles.

“An excellent idea,” the Marques applauded. “Instead of a doctor we should, perhaps, have ordered champagne. When he comes we will get him to drink a toast with us.”