The Wings of the Morning Page 6

  Kathie studied it.

  “Why not?” she asked, as if it was important that she should wrest from him all his secrets.

  He sighed.

  “Because I wish to avoid entanglements — emotional entanglements! The young woman in question is beautiful, full-blooded and much admired, and she would most certainly desire a normal marriage.” He started to fumble for his cigarette-case, and then put it away again. “Kathie, I don’t think I’m explaining myself very well.” He once more gripped her hands. “You are unlike anyone I have ever met, and with you I feel I could have a happy companionship. You could rescue me from my dark moods, as you did on the very day I arrived here, and in return I could do quite a lot for you. There is your father to be helped, and I promise you I would do everything for him. He craves for the sun, and he should have as much sun as we could provide him with.”

  She swallowed, abject humiliation rushing over her.

  “You are trying to buy me because you feel safe with me.”

  “Perhaps,” he agreed. “But I am also hoping you are going to be sensible and not disappoint good friends like Lady Fitz. Your father, too ... He confided in me that he has always wanted you to marry before your sisters, and to marry well, and now you can marry very well indeed.” There was nothing boastful about his speech — it was simply that he was aware of the benefits he would be bestowing. “You will be a marquesa, free of petty tyrannies, free for the first time in your life to express yourself and be yourself, with all the money you could possibly want to spend. And you will be safe from contracting some stupid marriage with some stupid young man who will tell you that he loves you — and where will love get you, anyway? It will either break your heart, or one day it will just filter out. Love is like that, you know!”

  He stared almost broodingly at the slim fingers he held.

  “But it is an experience,” she whispered. “Without it is one ever quite — complete?”

  At that he smiled swiftly, with a touch of tenderness. “My sweet Kathie, if you are incomplete, then I prefer to keep you that way! I will strive hard to keep you that way! And, as for me, love is something that is over and done with — for always!” He sounded as if he was making a vow. “So say that you will marry me, and let us go into Lady Fitz and my stepmother and tell them what we plan to do.”

  She felt herself beginning to tremble. How could he have made her such an astounding proposal? — How could he offer her anything so outrageous as a loveless marriage? Not even a real marriage!... And expect her to be dazzled by all his possessions and say ‘Yes’ without a moment’s pause. It was proof that he didn’t really realize what he was doing ... And then she thought of her father, doing crossword puzzles in his grim little study, under the iron control of her mother who never allowed him any pocket-money to speak of, although she bought Eileen endless new clothes. She thought of him stuffing his pipe with tobacco that was doing him harm, and coughing, coughing all the time ... thinking wistfully of the sun.

  “What would you do for my father?” she heard herself asking in a voice that was quite unlike her normal voice.

  “I would send him on a prolonged cruise ... he and your mother, if she wished to go. I would buy him a house somewhere where sunshine would never fail him, and where he could hear the surf piling on to a golden beach, and never a whisper of mist would set off that wretched cough of his! And I would make him financially completely independent of your mother. He, too, should have as much money as he wanted to spend, and if he preferred it, someone to keep house for him instead of your mother. She might wish to devote herself to Eileen and Bridie...”

  “Couldn’t they all be — together?” Kathie heard herself asking; and then she shut her eyes because it was such a fantastic plea to be making, and everything was so fantastic just then that she was not even quite sure she was awake.

  Sebastiao lifted her hands and kissed them lightly.

  “Bravo, Kathie! You are going to be sensible, and indeed I wouldn’t permit you to be anything else! I have already made up my mind that we will be married without delay!”

  Lady Fitz embraced her with a fervor that proved she could not be more pleased, but the Marquesa de Barrateira maintained her hard poker face. She had been prepared for this betrothal by her stepson, but now that it had happened, she had to keep a tight control of her own feelings.

  All she said, when Sebastiao formally presented Kathleen Sheridan to her as his future wife, was:

  “I hope that you will prove a good wife, senhorita!” And to Sebastiao: “I wish you all happiness, my son, but greatly fear you will bitterly regret this thing you have done!” And then she stalked from the room.

  Kathie was taken home to Little Carrig by Sebastiao in the car, and by this time she felt she was living and moving in a dream. Lady Fitz’s pearls still clung to her neck, for her godmother had declined to allow her to part with them, and the diamante buckles were still winking on the black satin slippers attached to her feet. Perhaps it was the sight of these unusual adornments that first warned Mrs. Sheridan that something unusual was afoot, even more than the fact that her daughter was accompanied by the Marques.

  She had just sent Eileen to bed with a couple of aspirins, for the girl had been sulking all evening and had developed a headache, and Bridie was reading something very sombre by a Russian writer. The atmosphere in the faded sitting-room was by no means cosy, and the fire was merely smouldering on the hearth. Gerald Sheridan had just put his head inside the door and announced that he would go to bed too, when Kathie turned the handle of the front door — which was never bolted or barred — and walked in.

  Behind her walked the Marques, his warm expensive duffle coat over his evening things. His golden head glittered in the feeble rays of light in the hall.

  Mrs. Sheridan, thrown into a flutter, said rather breathlessly:

  “Oh, do come in!” She was not at all sure how one addressed a Portuguese marques, and then recollected that Kathie had called him senhor. So she added, “It is extremely good of you to bring Kathie back, senhor.”

  “Not at all,” he responded, and then decided to drop his bombshell without delay. “Kathie has agreed to become my wife, and we are hoping that you will permit us to get married at once.”

  Mrs. Sheridan had had a trying evening, and all at once she felt a little faint. She stammered:

  “Kathie! ... Your wife?”

  Gerald Sheridan moved forward and took Kathie into his arms. He looked down at her lovingly.

  “You don’t need me to say how happy I am for you, do you, Mavoureen?” he said.

  Kathie swallowed, but could say nothing. There were bright tears on her lashes as she looked at him. She had the key to a golden door for him, and if she never did anything else with her life, or in any other way justified her existence, then it was enough. In that moment she felt that it was more than enough, and she clung to her father as she had done as a child, and knew that he was the only person in the world for her to cling to. The only one who would ever want her to cling!

  Her mother rallied to the occasion in a quite remarkable fashion, and once she was convinced that this was not a situation evolved by an overwrought brain — and really, sometimes Eileen was very tiresome and self-centred, and she was a little afraid she was likely to reap the whirlwind where her consistent spoiling of Eileen was concerned — she too went straight to her daughter and hugged her as if she was the only child who had ever brought her joy. Which was probably true in that moment!

  For how many women ever live to see their daughter — their youngest daughter! — become a marquesa? That it was not an English title didn’t matter at all, for there was glamor about a Portuguese one, and in any case, Kathie would never lack for material possessions. One had only to look at Sebastiao de Barrateira to realize that he was slightly more than vulgarly wealthy.

  The Marques permitted himself to be kissed by his future mother-in-law, and his future father-in-law shook his hand, but was too choked by
emotion to say anything. All at once it had struck him that Kathie would be going to live in Portugal, and what would he do then? He hadn’t the least idea in the world that it was what he would do then that had influenced her decision.

  Bridie was even more taken aback than her mother, but she recovered just as quickly. To her the advantages of a sister who was a marquesa became immediately and gloriously clear.

  Only Eileen slept upstairs in her bed and knew nothing of what had happened until the morning, when the excitement had reached an even higher pitch. By then the significance of Kathie’s extraordinary good fortune had really and truly sunk in, and Kathie was the pride of Little Carrig.

  But while Eileen was still asleep, Kathie stood by feeling lost and bewildered, only certain of one thing, and that was that her father was genuinely proud of her. He no doubt thought the Marques was in love with her, but the irony of that passed her by in her strange, dreamlike state.

  She was aware of a bottle of champagne being brought out from somewhere, and her health and her future toasted ... hers and her future husband’s. And then Sebastiao put her gently into a chair, and said that she looked rather white. Actually, she was all eyes — all large, frightened, bewildered eyes — and she had never been the centre of so much attention in her life, and she wasn’t sure that she liked it.

  “Drink it up, Kathie,” the Marques said, lifting her untouched glass to her lips. “It’s what you need!...” His deep blue eyes twinkled a little. “Don’t you like champagne? In Portugal we drink pink champagne, and you’ll have to get used to it.”

  Kathie’s eyes scarcely varied their expression, but she sipped obediently at her glass. She was aware of her mother and sister watching her, secretly exercised in their minds as to how she had brought such a state of affairs as this to pass, and her father trying not to look too proud.

  She didn’t mind how proud her father looked, for he must never learn the real truth, but her mother and Bridie were shrewd, and it was only a matter of a very short while before they found out that this marriage she was contemplating was to be no ordinary marriage. And then she felt certain they would despise her a little. She went with Sebastiao into the hall when he left, and under the swinging hall lamp he lifted her chin with his brown forefinger and looked sympathetically into her eyes. “Don’t worry, Kathie,” he said, softly. “In a few days it will all seem quite rational and real.” And then he kissed her lightly where a feathery end of red-gold hair curled on her forehead. “Goodnight!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Kathie went with Lady Fitz to London, following in the wake of Sebastiao, who left two days earlier with his stepmother.

  It was Lady Fitz who persuaded Mrs. Sheridan to forgo the pleasure of equipping her daughter for her marriage to the Marques and stay behind in Eire. A fat cheque, extracted from Sebastiao for the purpose of overcoming injured pride, made persuasion easy. Lady Fitz wanted to be the one to see Kathie properly outfitted for her great adventure — and, moreover, she insisted on paying for the outfit — and Mrs. Sheridan could go shopping in Dublin, with Bridie and Eileen to assist her to make a big hole in the cheque.

  Kathie’s relief at being alone with her godmother was tremendous. She was quite certain she couldn’t have borne it if her own mother had insisted on accompanying her to London, and she had had also to put up with the constant watching eyes of Bridie and Eileen, and their advice about clothes.

  Bridie, being a model, would have expected her to follow her advice to the letter, and Eileen would have been undisguisedly envious of everything that was chosen. Kathie would have felt sick and revolted, longed to tell them the truth about everything, and begun to be so in dread of the future that under the pressure of coping with too much might have been capable of something rash. Or wise?

  She could never make up her mind whether she was being supremely rash, or whether she was extraordinarily fortunate, as everyone insisted that she was.

  But with Lady Fitz it didn’t seem to matter whether she was rash or fortunate. Lady Fitz asked no questions, was apparently perfectly satisfied with one thing only— and that was the fait accompli. A gamble had been brought off which she had thought it remotely possible might be brought off, and that with the utmost expeditiousness; and now she was looking forward to a wedding between her two favorite godchildren.

  Lady Fitz always went to Brown’s Hotel when she was in London, and to Brown’s she took Kathie. They had a quiet couple of rooms on the second floor of the hotel, and Sebastiao and his stepmother had a very fine suite at Claridge’s. Seeing it for the first time Kathie was almost alarmed by the thought of the wealth the man she was to marry must possess. The bill for his suite when it was presented would stagger anyone who hadn’t unlimited means, and she was suddenly rather frightened by the thought of unlimited means. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to indulge in every whim, and never to know a moment of anxiety concerning finance. Finance had always been such a problem in her own home life, unpaid bills such a source of quarrels and unhappiness.

  How often had she seen her father looking almost furtive and unhappy because of a bill that had suddenly presented itself, and his knowledge that her mother wouldn’t spare him for incurring it? And since her mother was by no means a wealthy woman, perhaps she had had a certain amount of right on her side!

  But now she seemed to have escaped from the world of bills, and instead she was caught up in a world of absolute luxury. She and Lady Fitz dined most evenings in the Claridge’s suite, and frequently they lunched there. Delicate sprays of gardenias and even orchids were delivered at Brown’s for Kathie to wear in the evenings, and their rooms on the quiet second floor were a bower of roses and carnations. She understood that it was her fiancé who was responsible for these floral tributes.

  He collected them in a taxi and accompanied them on their shopping expeditions, and frequently he displayed a good deal of interest in the actual purchases. When there was some hesitation over a white or a deep cream evening dress for Kathie, he chose the cream. It blended with the warm cream of her skin, he said, and was sheer perfection with the dark red of her hair. She blushed as he said this, and found the thoughtful gaze of his blue eyes disconcerting. He seemed to be discovering new points of interest about her, possibilities he had overlooked. And suddenly his whimsical smile confused her.

  “I once said you were beautiful, Kathie, and then I took it back,” he recalled. “I now say you’re very beautiful! Isn’t she, Lady Fitz?”

  Lady Fitz walked across to Kathie and touched her cheek. The salesgirl had disappeared to fetch the alteration hand, and Kathie was looking very slim and young in the cream dress — young and a little forlorn, somehow. Lady Fitz felt quite a pang about her.

  “Kathie has the kind of looks I admire,” she said very softly. “She has something more than mere beauty, something that will last.” She turned the girl to face herself in the tall mirror. “There you are, my dear,” she said, even more softly. “The future Marquesa de Barrateira! How soon do you think you will get used to yourself in that role?”

  Kathie was suddenly petrified by the thought. She would never get used to herself in such a role — of that she was certain — and it suddenly struck her as ludicrous that she, out of all the attractive young women in the world, should have been selected by Sebastiao to play such an important part. She who had led such a quiet and sheltered existence amongst the green hills of Eire, and had never attended a grander dance than the O’Shaughnessy dance that was held every year on the twenty-sixth of April.

  And this year she would miss even the O’Shaughnessy dance — had already missed it! For it had taken place two nights ago, while she was having dinner at Claridge’s with her fiancé, a marques, and in Dublin Eileen had probably forgotten all about it too in the excitement of buying new clothes! How much stranger could life become?

  She glanced across at Sebastiao, to see how he took that gentle question of her godmother’s; but he was frowning, and looking all
at once rather withdrawn and cool — somehow not particularly pleased — and she wondered whether it was because in his heart he resented any woman — for whatever the reason — filling the role of his own beloved Marquesa! The adored Hildegarde, who had been his wife for such a little time!

  He turned away, and as he strode across to a window and looked down frowningly on the London traffic, she was certain that Lady Fitz had aroused a welter of unhappy emotions within him. His face looked brooding, unhappy, dark and disturbed beneath that incredible cap of golden hair.

  Another day he took her to buy an engagement ring, although his stepmother hinted dourly that something from her own collection of jewellery would do admirably for such a purpose. Sebastiao replied to that that one day Kathie would have all the Barrateira jewels — and apparently there were well-filled coffers of them in the safe custody of a Lisbon bank — but for the present occasion something entirely new and chosen by herself was what was required.

  Kathie was almost too nervous and overcome even to attempt to decide upon what she would like when confronted with a West End jeweller’s finest collection of gems. There were diamonds in unusual settings, impressive emeralds and rubies, a sapphire that reminded her of Sebastiao’s eyes, and an exquisite pearl ring surrounded by tiny diamonds and mounted in platinum. There was also a very fine opal ring, which fascinated her, but of which she was afraid. Opals were unlucky.