The Winding Stair (25 page)

When she learned the size of the allowance she was to get, Juana thought this must be the case, ‘But that's too much, grandmother.' She wished at once that she had not spoken. Too much, perhaps, for her, but not for all her family.

‘Nonsense. You're my heir, remember? And that reminds me, I think I'd better announce that. Arrange a Christmas party to welcome your family. It's time your cousins came to see us, Pedro and Roberto. I'll have an unpleasant surprise for them.'

Juana sighed and took her leave. Was it all an illusion that old age brought wisdom, benevolence and so forth? Had her grandmother always been the tartar she seemed now, or was she getting worse with the years?

She was glad to find Elvira alone in the Ladies' Parlour, working at her set of embroidered chair-covers. It was always a good sign when she got these out; it meant that she was at her most rational. Now she looked up and smiled her sweet, vague smile at Juana: ‘Did you manage to calm poor mother down?'

‘A little.' She loved her aunt for not asking what was the matter, and hurried to tell her. ‘My family are coming out from England. Poor father's in debt. Grandmother's not at all pleased.'

‘I don't suppose she is.' Elvira set a few stitches in her pattern. ‘But I don't know what else she expected, when she refused to give him an allowance.'

‘Nothing?'

‘Didn't you know?'

‘I wasn't sure.' Her step-mother had hinted at this often enough, but one never knew how much to believe of what Cynthia Brett said.

‘Nothing,' Elvira said. ‘She said if he wouldn't stay here, he could do without her help. But she gives Miguel and Prospero allowances. Your father was always my favourite. I suppose he's lived on what your mother left him. And that wasn't much, I can tell you. Poor Reginald, I shall be glad to see him.'

‘Aunt Elvira, grandmother says I'm to make the arrangements for them. Do you mind?'

‘Mind? Why should I mind, child? I am the wind that blows where it pleases; I am the moon that waxes and changes … Prospero! I didn't hear you coming.'

‘Why should you?' Prospero closed the door quietly behind him. ‘How's poor mother, Juana? What's upset her so?'

Gair Varlow learned of the Brett family's impending arrival in a letter from his sister. ‘Those dull Bretts have done a midnight flit,' Vanessa wrote. ‘Just ahead of their creditors, by all reports. Will you be pleased to see them in Portugal, I wonder?'

He was very far from pleased. Their presence at the Castle on the Rock would further complicate a situation that was bad enough already. But at least Vanessa's letter had come in the diplomatic bag and by fast cutter. The first packet the Bretts could have caught would not arrive for another day or so. There was time to confer with Juana. He asked leave of Lord Strangford and rode out to the Castle on the Rock that same afternoon. It was a clear December day, with a brisk wind from the sea turning the wings of the windmills along the shore and blowing lateen sails about like butterflies on the Tagus. But Gair hardly noticed them, or the spring flowers that were beginning to come up already, now the autumn rains were over.

He had too much to think about. Juana had done admirably so far, but he had been well aware of the strain it had been on her. Sometimes he thought he had been mad to involve her; often his conscience told him he had been wicked. The murder of his messenger, the attack on Juana herself and, worst of all, the death of Tomas had been a series of threats he could neither ignore nor entirely understand. Impossible to tell how close to Juana the danger was, but no use to try and pretend it did not exist. Sometimes, in the dark hours of early morning, he thought he should persuade her to go back to England. But how could he? Too much depended on her.

And now her family's arrival must inevitably mean a new burden for her. Only her father spoke Portuguese. She would have to interpret for the others, would have to speak English with them, would stammer … What would this do to her? He did not like to think.

His pretext for calling was, of course, Vanessa's letter, and the chance that Mrs. Brett might not yet have heard of her son's imminent arrival. But Juana's first words, when Jaime ushered him into the Ladies' Parlour, settled that. ‘You find us all at
sixes and sevens,' she sounded surprisingly cheerful. ‘My family are arriving any day now and we are having such a spring-cleaning of apartments for them! I didn't know there was so much dust in the whole of Portugal! And as for spiders! Do you know, Mr. Varlow, we found toads as big as dinner plates in one of the cellars? If you'd only got here a little sooner, I could have showed you. Would you like to see the rooms I'm getting ready for them? Not the toads: my family.'

‘Yes, indeed.' No hope of talking to her here, with Elvira stitching away at her embroidery, and her uncles liable to appear, soft-footed, when least wanted.

‘Such a battle, too, to settle where to put them.' Juana led the way down from the parlour to the central courtyard. ‘You'd think in a vast place like this, it would be no problem. But Uncle Miguel didn't want them in rooms off the cloisters, because he and Father Ignatius like to say their prayers there, and when I suggested putting them in the old wing, Uncle Prospero nearly had a fit. My grandmother won't have them anywhere near her, and I don't much want them looking out on to the terrace. So in the end' (she opened a door leading off a corner of the cloisters) ‘they're in the haunted wing, poor things. But you're not to say so. I've sworn the whole household to secrecy. If you tell Daisy and Teresa and start them having hysterics on me, I'll never speak to you again. What are you going to do about them, by the way?'

It was what he had been wondering himself, but that did not make her question any less disconcerting. ‘Do?'

She laughed. ‘No need to pretend with me. You know perfectly well you were courting Daisy with your left hand and Teresa with your right, back at Forland House. And now look at you! All's well.' She had seen his anxious glance up and down the range of empty rooms. ‘The servants are at their dinner. I've got the only key.' She held it up. ‘I want to be friends with Daisy and Teresa,' she went on. ‘It's important to me. Besides, it will make things so much easier. So what are you going to do? They'll be furious if they think you've really changed!

He almost said, ‘But I have.' This was no time for that. ‘What do you advise?' How odd to be asking her.

‘I've been thinking about it ever since we heard they were coming, and I believe I've got the answer. There's something I've been meaning to tell you.' She paused, and he found himself
glad to see her at a loss for a word. It was curiously disconcerting to have her take the lead as she had been doing.

‘Yes?' He moved over to the window to look out at the Pleasant Valley.

‘It's about my grandmother. She's not a bit well, you know. And she's worried about what will happen if she dies. About the stair; because it goes down from her room. And everything.' It was very difficult to say it. ‘She sent for her lawyer a while ago and changed her will. She's going to announce it at Christmas dinner.' She hesitated, watching him.

‘Announce what?'

‘That she's made me her heir. Only' – in a rush – ‘she doesn't know this, but I must tell you. I shan't keep it; not a moment longer than I have to. It wouldn't be right. I shall share it with the others. It won't come to much that way, because of course Pedro must have the castle, as the eldest. But, for the time being (do you see?)it provides an admirable pretext for you to court me.' This came out in a rush as she moved away into the next room, muttering something incomprehensible about toads and cobwebs.

He let her go, too angry to speak. She had been afraid that if he thought she was her grandmother's heir he would start courting her in earnest. Well? He stood there a minute, looking at himself with dislike. She might have been right. The unwelcome bit of self-knowledge did nothing to improve his temper. But the silence was drawing out too long. He followed her into the next room: ‘You think I'll make a convincing fortune-hunter?' He could not help it, nor his tone.

‘I expect you'll manage. I'm sorry if you don't like it, but you've told me often enough that no sacrifice is too great. This will be their sitting room.' She changed the subject ruthlessly. ‘I think it will do admirably when we've found some furniture for it. I'm trying to make them as independent as possible.'

‘Is it as bad as that?' He followed her lead into this safer topic.

‘Just about. I'm afraid I'm the only one who's pleased to see them. But I am.' She made it almost an ultimatum.

‘I'm glad,' he said peaceably. ‘I hadn't thought how dull it must be for you here.'

‘No. Why should you have?'

He rode back to Lisbon in a thoroughly bad temper.

The packet arrived a few days later and Gair debated with
himself whether to go aboard, pay his respects to the Bretts, and, incidentally, try to establish the new relationship with Daisy and Teresa. But the sight of the carriage from the Castle on the Rock standing in Black Horse Square made up his mind for him. Almost certainly, Juana would have come in person to meet her family. He would leave her a free field for the first encounter. After all, she seemed almost disconcertingly competent, these days, to handle her own affairs.

Lord Strangford had just had official news of Napoleon's Berlin Decrees and his staff were unusually busy as a result. Gair felt he could not possibly ask leave to go and find out how things were settling down at the Castle on the Rock. It made him oddly restless and he wished more than ever that it had been possible to find a safe messenger to go between him and Juana. But they had agreed that the risk was too great.

He was accordingly delighted, two days before Christmas, to receive a note from Mrs. Brett inviting him to a small Christmas party, ‘to celebrate my son's arrival from England'. No word of Juana, or of anything else that mattered. The note was entirely formal and gave no hint even as to whether Juana might have suggested the invitation. He found he badly wanted to know.

Christmas Day was fine, with larks singing above the ridge road, and the scent of gorse heavy in the air. Gair had been late in starting and rode hard. Dinner was to be at three o'clock, Mrs. Brett had said. It was not an occasion for which one was late. Coming up the last long slope toward the Castle on the Rock, he recognised two horsemen ahead of him as Pedro and Roberto Brett-Alvidrar. He had not met either of them since that curious occasion in the autumn when Roberto had seemed actually to be encouraging his suit to Juana. Now, grateful for this chance to see how they would receive him, he spurred on his horse to catch them.

‘You are coming to our Christmas dinner?' Pedro's question, after the formal greetings were over, came out curiously neutral.

‘Yes. Mrs. Brett was so kind …'

‘To meet the new arrivals.' The sneer in Roberto's voice was not directed at Gair. ‘So much the better. An outsider should make a difficult family occasion go more easily.'

‘Hardly an outsider,' said Pedro, but his brother did not seem to hear, and changed the subject to politics. He wanted to know, disconcertingly, how likely Gair thought a change of government
in England. It was a question that had exercised Gair a good deal since Fox's death. If the Tory party should return to power before he had had a chance to make his mark, he might be condemned to a life of obscurity. It did not bear thinking about. And nor did the idea, that came, unbidden, along with it, that he was risking Juana's life to advance his own career.

Juana received them in the seldom-used grand saloon. ‘Pedro! Roberto!' As tall as they, she let them kiss her brown cheek in turn, and Gair, watching, felt a queer little pang of envy.

‘And me?' Was it getting too easy to play the lover's part?

She laughed. ‘No, no, Mr. Varlow. Not you! I have two old acquaintances for you. Daisy! Teresa! See who's here!'

The two girls had been busy arranging a great bowl of sweet-smelling rosemary, bay, and whole branches with oranges, nearly golden, hanging among dark green leaves. Now they came forward, smiling, hand-in-hand, their pink and gold prettiness like light in the dark room. And yet, Gair found his eyes moving instinctively back to Juana. She's worth ten of them, he thought. And, lord, how she's changed since I last saw them all together.

But there was no time for thinking. Daisy and Teresa were laughing up at him, greeting him with the special warmth due to an old flame. This was indescribably difficult. His eyes went to Juana in automatic appeal, and she came to his rescue. ‘And here are my cousins,' she said. ‘Pedro, Roberto; my sisters, Daisy and Teresa.'

But, somehow, Pedro had already got hold of Daisy's hand, and Roberto of Teresa's. ‘Welcome to Portugal,' said Pedro, and ‘Welcome,' echoed Roberto, his tone in extraordinary contrast to the sneer he had used earlier in speaking of the new arrivals. The two pairs of eyes met and held. Teresa was blushing; Pedro had forgotten to let go of Daisy's hand. Gair had always laughed at the notion of love at first sight. Now he could only laugh at himself. Once again his eyes were drawn to Juana, who was watching the two couples with a look of surprised delight that delighted him.

The tableau held for a long moment, then broke up as Prospero and Miguel appeared, closely followed by Elvira with Reginald and Cynthia Brett. ‘Grandmother will meet us in the dining room,' Juana explained, carrying off the flurry of necessary introductions with an ease that amazed Gair. It was all done in English, without a stammer, but with a curious precision of
speech, as if she was saying a part in a play. It seemed an age since Forland House. Whatever happens, it's done her good to be here, he thought, and then – am I making excuses to myself?