House of Storms (18 page)

'Are you afraid of storms?'

'Not as a rule—no.'

'But right now you're breaking a rule of your own, eh? You usually mind your own business?'

She flushed slightly. 'Will it make you any less happy, Mr Salvador, to be in the same house with Dean? He's only a baby. He hasn't done anything wrong and you're punishing him and yourself. You said you loved him madly when he was born, and he's still the same little boy. He still has such a capacity for affection—perhaps that was his mother's only fault, that she needed affection and you—you are a born writer and maybe you gave so much to your work that she felt left out. Perhaps you had forgotten to show her that you needed her—it would be cruel of you to do the same thing to Dean.'

'Affection and cruelty are provocative words, Miss Hartway, especially when you use them in reference to my marriage.'

'I know they are.' Debra felt unsure of the ground she was treading on, but she had to proceed. 'I don't pretend to have lived a very full life so that I'm able to judge men, but I wouldn't like your books so much if they didn't have compassion in them, and yet you deny it to Dean. Surely the love you felt for him when he was born is still there in your heart? Surely love doesn't die so easily?'

'You speak of love, but what do you really know about it?' His eyes searched her face. 'Do you imagine that it's a gentle emotion?'

Debra shook her head. 'I imagine that it's made up of many things and I hope that pride and passion aren't its prime ingredients. I hope it doesn't mean total submissiveness on the part of the woman or total possessiveness on the part of the man. Why should love turn a woman into a slave?'

'Miss Hartway,' he leant back in his chair, releasing her hand from his, 'you've been reading far too many books. Love between real people is one hell of a battle and the injuries inflicted can be as deep as the pleasures.'

'I realise how much you've been hurt,' Debra spoke feelingly, 'but the physical pain of the injury is over and I think you're giving in to pride.'

'We Salvadors are proud, or hadn't you noticed?'

'Oh yes, I've noticed!'

He arched a brow at the intensity with which she answered him, and then for a while he sat in sombre thought leaving Debra to listen to the thunder as it growled above the rooftops of Penarth.

She felt astounded by her own temerity in discussing love with a man who had enjoyed the sweet and the bitter of it. All she knew of love was a confused sense of attraction and doubt centred around his brother, who had the shape of someone she had sometimes glimpsed in a dream.

Debra wasn't going to allow a dream to deceive her. Jack's wife had died among the rocks of Lovelis Island and when the seabirds cried it was as if her ghost wailed among them, calling to someone within the stone walls of Abbeywitch.

The island and the house beckoned Debra back to them, but this time she told herself she was less innocent and she would be able to look at Rodare with eyes no longer bemused by him. Now she would see him as a man subject to dark passions . . . making her wonder what his thoughts had been when he had stood over her that day on the beach, seeing her defenceless at his feet.

Suddenly Jack Salvador spoke and Debra came out of her thoughts with a visible effort, the disturbing image of Rodare fading uneasily in the presence of his brother.

'I think, Miss Hartway, that you have a deal.'

But Debra felt trapped in her own silence. . . she had flung down the gauntlet and Jack had picked it up, but now she felt afraid of the challenge.

'I'm holding you to it.' Jack eyed her with a frown. 'You've pleaded your case in Dean's defence and made me feel guilty, and that's what you wanted when you came looking for me. I'm going home and you are going with me—that was the bargain.'

'Yes,' she admitted, and saw in the adamant set of his jaw his likeness to Rodare. It was vagrant that likeness; it came and went and it added to her awareness that she had talked herself into a situation fraught with problems.

'There's no need to worry any more about my mother.' Jack picked up the bill and studied it. 'I shall see to it that she doesn't bother you—did you enjoy your lunch?'

'It was very nice, thank you.'

A glimmer of amusement came into his eyes, which dwelt on her as if he didn't quite know what to make of a secretary who made bargains with him.

He beckoned the waiter and as he took his wallet from his pocket he said casually: 'This storm isn't going to let up for a while and we'd have a wet journey home if we went today. I suggest that you stay overnight in Penarth and we'll arrange to have Mickey Lee pick us up when he comes across for the family mail and the morning newspapers. You could probably book in here at
The Cap And Bells
for the night.'

'All right/ she said, feeling relieved by his suggestion. She was committed to going back with him to Abbeywitch and a few more hours in Penarth would be welcome. She would have time in which to adjust to this turnabout in her plans; time in which to build up the nerve to face Rodare on her return. Dare she ask Jack to ensure that his brother didn't bother her?

Oh lord! Her legs felt trembly as she walked with Jack out of the dining-room. What would be his reaction when he found out the real reason for her flight from the island? Would he understand and believe that Rodare's presence in her bedroom had been entirely innocent?

Could he possibly understand when a suspicion of Rodare ate like a worm at the core of him?

Debra went with him to the reception desk and stood there in a mood of misgivings as he arranged for her to stay overnight at The Cap And Bells at his expense. She tried to protest about payment for the room being added to his bill, but he overruled her. She was staying as his guest and he further informed the recep-nonist that her suitcase was upstairs in his room for the present. They would transfer it to her room later on.

'Let's sit in the lounge.' He led her into a room whose mullioned windows looked out over the drenched beer-garden. They sat in winged chairs at either side of the fire, down whose wide chimney large drops of rain fell spitting among the log flames. Jack lit himself a thin cigar and after taking a few thoughtful draws on it he asked Debra to tell him all about Dean.

She saw that now he had made his decision he looked more relaxed. Hers had been quite a victory, she realised. Dean mattered more than any of them for he couldn't fight his own battles, and a glow of pleasure encircled her heart as she sat answering questions about Pauline's baby.

Yes, he was growing by leaps and bounds and he was a bright and friendly child. Yes, he was still fond of splashing about in his bath and seemed to have an inborn love of water. Yes, he had a number of his milk teeth and already he was starting to pull himself to his feet in his efforts to toddle.

Jack reflectively smiled to himself. 'He's everything I'd want in a son, do you know that, Debra?'

'Don't you think,' Debra said quietly, 'that Pauline may have lied to you? She wanted to leave the island, didn't she, and she knew you'd fight tooth and nail to keep Dean at Abbeywitch? Oh, I know you said she never told lies, but people will go to extremes when they want something badly enough and she had lived among the Salvadors long enough to find out all about their pride. She knew how you would react if she told you that Dean belonged to her lover.'

Jack stared across at Debra; the room was dim from the pelting rain and from the shadowed panelling of the walls upon which old faded prints were hung. In the large winged chair Debra looked the mere girl that she was, untried in the ways of love but reaching into her heart for an answer to the question that haunted him.

'You believe Dean to be a Salvador, don't you?'

'Yes,' she replied.

'You must also realise how that could have come about?'

Debra looked away from him into the fire, and it was then that she decided to tell Jack the real reason why she had left her job on Lovelis Island, and so she plunged into it, telling him all about the party and the after events which had led to his mother coming to her room and finding Rodare with her.

'He thought we should get married. He was terribly concerned about my reputation and what people would say about me, and of course he didn't like the tag that people might hang on him. He said that Spanish rules of behaviour applied to Abbeywitch and he felt he owed it to me to tell your mother that he intended to marry me.'

Debra paused, remembering some of the scornful things Lenora Salvador had flung at her, implying that she be paid off for any services she might have rendered Rodare.

'Your brother was being gallant, Mr Salvador, but I couldn't let him go through with it—there being no need because we hadn't done anything wrong. I packed my suitcase as soon as it was daylight and I asked Mickey Lee to bring me to the mainland. He thought I needed to collect a pay certificate from you and that's why he brought me to The Cap And Bells.'

'Rodare was prepared to marry you?' Jack leant forward in order to search her eyes. 'On the other hand, you weren't prepared to marry him, eh?'

'I—I wouldn't marry anyone for those reasons. I knew he was just being polite and honourable—'

'Honourable?' Jack demanded.

'Yes. He could easily have walked out of my room and left me looking demoralised. Instead he stayed and defended me in the only way he could think of, and obviously he thinks in Spanish rather than English.'

Jack sat there mulling over her words and in a while he shook his head rather like a man emerging from deep water. 'You say it all in those last few words, don't you, Debra? When it comes to contact between men and women Rodare sees that iron grille and doesn't trespass, and I should have seen it where he's concerned!'

He surged to his feet and paced back and forth across the creaking floorboards covered by footworn carpet in which the woven roses had long since faded. The lightning had lost its strength and the thunder had faded into the distance, and within Debra there was a transient kind of peace and she leant back in the wings of her armchair and watched Jack Salvador throw off the burden he had carried ever since Pauline had drowned in the waters surrounding Lovelis Island.

She had made it possible for him to go home and already Debra had an image of him walking into the nursery and taking back into his arms the little boy he had never stopped loving.

'I want to go now!' He made for the door. 'Wait here—I'm going to look for Mickey Lee.'

The lounge door closed behind him and in the silence Debra felt the beating of her heart . . . she needed time, even if only a night, in which to find some courage for when she walked back into Rodare's house. The things she had said to Jack Salvador about his brother were the idealistic things she would like to believe ... if only she could believe them!

There was more to why he had leapt in with his proposal of marriage, and Debra drew her lip between her teeth as a person does when pain strikes a sensitive place in the body. She didn't doubt that Rodare Salvador did think like a Spaniard in many ways, especially in relation to passion and pain.

For decades the Inquisition had flourished in Spain and it was probably bred in the bones of a Spaniard to seek absolution for the commitment of a sin.

Debra rested her cheek against the wing of her chair and gazed into the hot heart of the fire where the flames had burnt their way through the logs, and she remembered her sense of shock when Lenora Salvador had reminded Rodare that he was committed to make his home at Abbeywitch as a married man.

Quite a punishment, Debra thought, for a man who related to Spain as if it were his own skin. What a way to absolution to tie himself down to a wife and a home he didn't love.

Abruptly the lounge door opened and her nerves quivered. 'I told Mickey to wait about,' Jack said as he entered the room, 'but it seems he won a couple of pounds playing darts and happy as a sandboy he went off home without a care in the world. Anyway, he'll be back in the morning and we'll leave then.'

Debra looked at him dumbly, wondering why she didn't tell him that she didn't want to go.

'It will be all right,' he assured her, catching her look of appeal. 'I'll explain how you feel to Rodare, and I'll make sure that my mother understands the situation.'

'You must make her understand that my only reason for being at Abbeywitch is to complete work on your book.' Debra spoke with such intensity that her voice shook. 'The very fact that I'm returning in your company will make her dislike me all the more—'

'Dislike is a strong word,' Jack broke in.

'Your mother is a strong woman,' Debra rejoined. 'She isn't afraid to say what she thinks even if she upsets people.'

'And she upset you?'

'Quite a lot.'

'Because you don't care to be thought of as the kind of girl who plays around?'

'I'm not that kind of a girl, Mr Salvador.' Debra gave him an unwavering look. 'I'm not a prig either and I accept that lots of women are as desirous of expressing their freedom as men have always been, but I just haven't the kind of nature that needs the attentions of men all the time. I enjoy my work. It fulfils me, and I don't want involvements that go from white heat to sullen coldness. I am my own person!'

'Indeed you are.' Jack came across to her, took her by the hands and drew her upwards. 'And in your own way, Debra, you are as strong as my mother. I know you think her a snobbish and suspicious woman, but she was the second wife of a man she idolised and I think she knew that she never really replaced the tempestuous Spanish dancer who gave birth to Rodare. Added to which, I could never be the eldest son and heir to the property. These things rankle, so when she found an opportunity to belittle Rodare she took it.'

'Do you mind that you're not the eldest son?' Debra asked him.

'It would be nice to own Abbeywitch,' Jack admitted, 'but I grew up knowing that my brother in Spain would inherit. The property is entailed in his favour, though my mother has always insisted that the form of marriage my father went through with Rodare's mother could be disproved in court. I doubt it!'