Authors: Violet Winspear

House of Storms (14 page)

BOOK: House of Storms

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'Exactly. When I marry I must settle here at Abbeywitch or renounce my right to the property. Only a saint or someone insane would give up his birthright, so I shall abide by the terms of
padre's
will and make my home here with my bride.'

Debra listened and decided that Rodare had to be insane and she was about to make some kind of a protest when he tightened his arm so powerfully around her and gave her such a warning look that she bit back her protest and bewilderedly wondered why he should make such a statement to Lenora.

What on earth was he doing . . . was he protecting his Spanish standards of honour because his stepmother found him in the bedroom of his brother's typist?

But I'm not a typist, Debra thought indignantly. I'm an editor, and a good one, and I'm not putting up with this nonsense!

She was about to speak out when Rodare silenced her in the most effective way ... he planted a kiss on her mouth. Then imperturbably he returned his attention to Lenora, rising to his feet so he towered over her.

'It's high time that I took a wife and settled down,' he said. 'As the saying goes, a man without a wife becomes selfish while a woman without a husband becomes fastidious. What is the matter, Lenora? How disapproving you look.'

'Can you wonder?' She cast an icy look at Debra, sweeping her eyes over the disorder which Rodare had caused. 'I refuse to believe that you seriously mean to marry someone who is employed in the house! I know you have an odd sense of humour, but you are going a little too far, Rodare. The girl might take you seriously!'

'I hope she does,' he rejoined. 'You are taking me seriously, are you not, Debra?'

Debra met his eyes and she wondered what he would do if she did take his crazy proposal seriously. She decided to give him a dose of his own medicine and said softly: 'Of course I am, Rodare. I can't wait to marry you.'

Something flickered in his eyes, but his face remained imperturbable. 'There you are, Lenora, you have your answer. Debra is all eagerness to become my wife.'

'I daresay she would be,' Lenora snapped back at him. 'You happen to have money and land and she probably set out to be seduced by you from the moment she laid eyes on you. You've allowed yourself to be taken in just as Jack was, and you'll live to regret it. For heaven's sake, Rodare, pay her off and let her go!'

Debra flinched and realised that the joke had gone far enough. 'Mrs Salvador,' she started to say, and was brusquely interrupted by Rodare.

'Perhaps, Lenora, I should suggest that you leave Abbeywitch if you can't bring yourself to live under the same roof with my wife. I know padre was generous to you in his will so you can well afford your own apartment. I daresay you could share it with Zandra.'

Lenora stared at him as if she couldn't believe her ears, then she carried her silk handkerchief to her nostrils in her habitual gesture of the grieving widow. 'I never thought I'd live to hear you speak to me in such a way, Rodare. That girl is changing you just as Pauline changed Jack. Why are the pair of you drawn to girls beneath your station?'

'Perhaps it runs in the blood,' Rodare retorted.

'You—you're insulting,' Lenora gasped.

'And so are you.' His face was dark and hard. 'Do you think it's kind for Debra to sit and listen to the things you've been saying? Do you think it's ladylike?'

'Do you think it gentlemanly to creep into her bedroom while we have guests in the house?' Lenora retaliated. 'That's why I came to warn you—we don't want a scandal, do we?'

'How could there be a scandal when I intend to marry Debra?'

'For God's sake, Rodare!' Debra had had enough of sitting there listening to the pair of them. 'As if you have to marry me—the whole thing is ridiculous!'

'There you are.' Lenora looked triumphant. 'These working girls don't expect proposals of marriage when they're caught with a man. Your trouble, Rodare, is that you've lived in Spain too long. You don't have to feel obliged and Miss Hartway knows it. Give her a cheque.'

'I wouldn't touch his money with a bargepole,' Debra flared up. 'I'm going to pack my suitcase and I'm getting away from Lovelis Island before I finish up like Pauline.' She scrambled off the bed and hurried across to the cupboard where she kept her suitcase, but halfway there Rodare caught up with her and swung her to face him.

'Do you really want to leave?' he demanded.

'I can't wait to get away,' she retorted. 'I came here to work on a book and didn't expect to find myself being spoken to as if I'm a—a slut. I've never played around with men in my life a-and I won't be accused of it! You know very well that we weren't playing around!'

'Really, Miss Hartway,' Lenora's eyes flicked her up and down, 'if being in the arms of a man on a bed isn't playing around, then please tell me your definition—it must be quite hair-raising.'

'I—I was crying.' Debra sought for the words that would take the look of contempt off Lenora's face. 'I was upset about something and Mr Salvador was trying to make me feel better—'

'I'm sure he was,' Lenora drawled. 'I am certain that Rodare is very good at making young women feel better—that was certainly the way it looked when I walked in.'

Debra blushed vividly and couldn't stop herself, seeing the scene as it must have looked to Lenora who had already decided earlier in the evening that Debra, as an employee at Abbeywitch, had overstepped the mark by performing a rumba with the master of the house. If the situation hadn't been so threatening then it might have been amusing, but never had Debra felt less like laughing.

The threat simmered in Rodare's eyes and in the way he was gripping hold of her. He hated the way they had been caught together, she realised, especially as he had been so quick to warn Stuart Coltan that if he did anything he shouldn't beneath the roof of Abbeywitch, he would find himself in trouble.

Debra suspected that Stuart was at the bottom of this predicament she found herself in. She had the feeling he had been lurking about when Rodare had visited the nursery; he had waited and watched and seen Rodare follow her into her room, and he had then gone to Zandra and hatched mischief.

'Oh, does it really matter?' Debra sighed. 'It's really only a storm in a teacup. I'll leave and the whole thing can be forgotten.'

'Not by me.' Rodare spoke in a voice of iron. 'You may recall what I said, Debra, and I meant it. While you reside beneath my roof I guard your name . . . there is no way I can let you leave with mud on your name. It's a matter of pride.'

'This isn't Spain,
señor
—' Debra had grown frightened by his manner, and all too well she remembered the scene down in the hall, when he had told Stuart that he made the rules that applied to this house and he expected himself as well as other men to abide by them.

'Spain is where a Spaniard happens to be,' he rejoined. 'I repeat, I can't allow you to leave. I must put things right and that means you must marry me—whether you want to or not!'

'What utter nonsense, Rodare. As if
her
good name matters?'

He swung round to face his stepmother and he looked as if he were barely holding himself in check. 'You have said all I wish to listen to,
señor
a. It's time to say good night, so please leave!'

She stared at him a fraction longer, then with a shrug she turned to leave, saying as she went: 'Play the gallant fool if you feel you must, but you'll regret it—regret it with all your heart, just as Jack did. Fools the pair of you! Making wives of girls who don't fit into our way of life. Girls of a lower class!'

She significantly left the door open behind her and Debra stared at the opening as if she wanted to dash out. . . out of this house which she had entered so innocently, unaware that she would find herself in a situation such as Rodare Salvador proposed.

'It is nonsense,' she said to him. 'People these days don't get married to avoid a scandal, and no matter what your stepmother surmised or said, you and I know that we've done nothing wrong.'

'Of course we know.' His look was sombre and very Spanish. 'But everybody else will think otherwise, and in all conscience I can't allow other people to put a wrong interpretation upon our behaviour. You see, the curse of a Spanish heritage is that honour and duty are deep in the bone, there in the marrow, and I am quite unable to watch you leave this island labelled as my partner in a grubby little episode.'

'There was no episode—least of all a grubby one,' Debra protested. 'Why should I expect you to—to marry me? Only people in love get married.'

'In Spain,' he said deliberately, 'love is not always the reason, as in this case. We have been caught so we pay the price!'

'You can't make me marry you—' Debra backed away from him. 'You're behaving just like the other Don Rodare, and you know it!'

'Not quite like him.' Rodare took a step forward in time with her every backward one until she had nowhere to go but out on the terrace in the chilly night air. He came after her and without any hesitation swept her up into his arms and returned her to the bedroom, where he held her and scanned her face.

He gave a brief laugh. 'Come, don't look so petrified by the idea. Don't you find anything about me worth being married to? I have sufficient funds for the two of us and, after all, what is love? We say in Spain that love doesn't happen, it has to be made.'

He dropped her to her feet. 'Your eyes are almost out of your head, so go to your bed and sleep will repair your shattered emotions.' He strode to the door and flung a few last words over his shoulder. 'Tomorrow I shall start to arrange matters and you had better write to your mother to inform her that you are going to become a wife.
Buenas noches
, Debra
mia!
'

'I'm not yours,' she protested.

He turned in the doorway to regard her as she knelt on the bed in an attitude of appeal. 'I think I know you better than most,' he said, 'so in that context you are mine. Does the thought frighten you?'

'It frightens me that you're always so sure about everything,' she rejoined. 'You—you take things for granted.'

'I am taking you for granted, eh?'

'Yes—you think I shall tamely do as you say a-and marry you.'

'You will marry me because you have no choice.'

'I do have a choice.' Her eyes were pure green as she looked at him across the room, seeing in him everything she could intensely love if she allowed herself such madness, but seeing also a man whose pride enforced his proposal of marriage. It was the proud boast of his house
Let honour reside within
and Rodare felt duty-bound to stand by that statement.

'And what choice is that pray?' He was drawn up to his full height, looking every inch the
hidalgo
to whom his name as well as hers was of the utmost importance . . . exceeding that of two people being madly in love with each other, swept by all the passions and not just a passionate sense of honour.

'I respect your wish to respect me,' Debra's voice softened, 'but you must be realistic,
señor
. When you marry you must marry a girl who will fit into your way of life. I have a career—'

'You have a responsibility,' he broke in.

'Oh, in what way?' She looked perplexed.

'You were responsible in the first place for my presence in your bedroom.'

'But I—I didn't ask you in. I didn't ask for your sympathy,
señor
.'

'You didn't repudiate it when I gave it.' He withdrew her pearl pendant from his pocket and swung it in his fingers. 'I shall have this repaired for you, but tell me who gave it to you in the first place?'

'My father,' she said simply.

'And would your father be happy if he knew that his daughter left her place of employment with a black mark against her name?'

'No—but you exaggerate,
señor
. The rules in England aren't quite so definite as those in Spain and you must be aware that your stepmother had already decided that I should be dismissed.'

'Dismissed because you danced with me,' he said ironically. 'The more we talk,
señorita
, the deeper we find ourselves embroiled—fate has decided for us, wouldn't you agree?' And he gave the smile that was never more than half realised, his gaze brilliant and unavoidable, his dominance accentuated by his haughty Latin nose.

'Fate,' she murmured, and her head was slightly bowed so the lamplight played upon the subtle highlights in her hair, a glossy cape around the shoulders of her pale mauve wrap.

She gave an emotional shiver, for it was as if fate had taken a hand and placed her within dangerous reach of a man she would never meet again if she left him as she secretly planned to do.

'Run away from me,' he menaced, 'and I shall follow you.'

'But why?' she asked.

'Because I stand by my word!' He inclined his head like an eighteenth-century courtier, then the door closed behind him and Debra was left alone to remember every detail of his face as he had spoken those words.

'Rodare,' she whispered. 'Oh, Rodare, you devil—you beloved devil!'

Chapter Seven

'WHAT do you think I should do, Nanny Rose?'

Debra hugged young Dean in her arms and gazed across at the older woman with a hint of hope in her eyes that Nanny Rose would be able to solve the problem she had brought to the nursery quite early. Beyond the open windows the birds could be heard, but the sunlight was fitful as the occasional large cloud rolled above the sea.

'Perhaps you should listen to your heart,' came the reply to Debra's anxious question. 'You may not get the answer you hope is the right one, but you'll get an answer if I'm any judge.'

'But I daren't—' Debra broke off. 'You think I've fallen for him, don't you?'

'Aye, you've fallen a good deal of the way,' Nanny Rose agreed, but the look in her eyes was gentler than her tone of voice. 'I could see it happening—you so untried, and Mr Rodare so big and dominating, with those Spanish ways of his. And now he wants to marry you!'

BOOK: House of Storms

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