you don’t seem to see much of them,’ Tiffany remarked, coming up to her.
‘Not as much as I’d like to. Especially Chris; he always seems to be somewhere I’m not, if you see what I mean.’
‘Don’t you live in Portugal?’
‘No. I have an apartment in Rome, but at the moment I’m renting a house near Paris. And you?’ she asked as they reached the bottom of the stairs and moved towards the sitting-room again. ‘Do you live in Oporto?’
‘Yes, I’m sharing a place with friends,’ Tiffany returned, wondering what Francesca would think if she knew that ‘sharing a place’ really meant that someone she used to work with smuggled her in and out of an attic room shared with three other girls, and that Tiffany had only a sleeping-bag on the floor to call her own.
The room was empty, but the windows opened on to the garden and they could see Calum outside on the terrace, talking to the caterer again. The two girls went out to sit at an ornamental table and Calum brought the woman over to them.
‘Francesca, do you have any further instructions for Mrs Beresford on the party at the quinta?’
‘Yes. Would you excuse me a moment, Tiffany?’
The other girl moved away and Calum sat down beside Tiffany. He smiled. ‘I see you found something to suit you.’
‘Yes—much better than the bathrobe.’
‘But you looked very pretty in it.’
She smiled at him under her lashes, having got the answer she wanted from him. ‘Thank you.’ Resting her chin on her hand, she looked at him attentively and said, ‘Tell me; what is a quinta?’
She already knew, of course, but it was a good enough opening gambit.
‘A quinta is the Portuguese word for farm or estate. It’s where we grow the grape-vines for the port wine. I’m surprised you haven’t come across it before.’
‘But you see, my phrase-book only gives English to Portuguese; when it’s the other way round I’m stuck.’
Calum laughed. ‘I’ll have to find you a two-way dictionary. That’s if you’re going to be here for very long?’ He made it a question, which was a good sign.
‘I don’t have any immediate plans to leave. But you were telling me about your quinta; does it have a name?’
‘The company owns several in the Alto Douro—that’s the Upper Douro valley. Er—you do know that the river that runs through Oporto is the Rio Douro?’
‘Oh, yes, I do know that,’ she assured him with amusement in her eyes.
He nodded and gave a small smile. ‘Our principal vinegrowing estate is called the Quinta dos Colinas—the farm of the hills. That’s where we’re holding another bicentennial party, for all our workers and their families.’
‘Do you actually make the wine at the quinta?’
‘Yes, but by very modern methods. We no longer have workers treading the grapes to extract the juice.’
Tiffany’s nose wrinkled a little. ‘Why not?’
Reaching out, Calum tapped the end of her nose. ‘For the very reason that you just did that! No one would buy the wine if they thought it had been trodden by the great feet of peasant workers. People are too particular today; everything must be done by hygienic methods.’
There was a slightly disparaging note in his voice which Tiffany picked up and used as a cue to say, ‘I suppose so, but treading the grapes sounds much more romantic. Have you done it yourself?’
‘Yes, but many years ago now.’
‘Do you stand in a big tub to squash them? How high do they come up?’
‘Not a tub, a big stone trough or tank. And on most people the grapes would come up to their knees, but on you I think it would be a little higher,’ he remarked, looking at her legs.
‘How unkind of you to remind me.’
‘Do you dislike being short?’
‘It’s often a great disadvantage,’ she admitted.
‘I really can’t see why you should think so.’
It was a nice reply, a compliment without going overboard. Tiffany began to realise that Calum must be more experienced with women than she’d thought. His reputation in Oporto wasn’t that of a playboy—that title was reserved for Chris. From what she’d heard of him, Calum was the serious type, hard-working and rather reserved. He was also one of the most eligible bachelors in the town. Rich, very good-looking, well-bred—what girl could ask for more? And he was in his thirties—high time he went looking for a wife. But that wife would have to be fair, to carry on the Brodey tradition. Everyone knew that, so all the dark-haired girls, the brunettes and the redheads, sighed and left him alone, certain they would be wasting their time if they made a play for him. And there weren’t too many blondes in Portugal, which was why Tiffany had thought him inexperienced. But that, of course, was stupid: even if the girl he eventually married had to be a blonde, that didn’t stop him gaining experience with all the others.
He started to describe the first grape-treading he had been taken to, as a baby, still in his mother’s arms. ‘It’s a tradition, you see. It’s supposed to get wine-making into our blood.’
Behind them, Chris came out on to the terrace and overheard. Pulling out a chair, he turned it round to sit astride it, his arms along the back. ‘But all it did was to give us a taste for wine from an early age. At least, it did in my case.’
Annoyed that he’d interrupted her tête-à-tête with Calum, Tiffany hid it behind a smile. ‘I’m not surprised. But obviously it didn’t work with your father.’
Chris raised an eyebrow. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Someone at your party said he was an artist, that he wasn’t part of the family firm,’ she said quickly, inwardly cursing herself for making such a stupid slip.
Calum nodded. ‘That’s so, but he still appreciates a good wine.’
Chris gave her an amused look. ‘Who was it told you he was an artist?’ he asked, guessing her thoughts, wanting to needle her.
But Tiffany was a match for him. ‘Wasn’t it you?’ she said sweetly. A glint came into his eyes, but she turned quickly back to Calum. ‘Are you interested in art, Calum? I’m afraid I know very little about Portuguese painters but I went to an exhibition recently at the museum. Did you go to it?’
‘Yes. As a matter of fact our company was one of the organisers. A group has been formed to try to sponsor and encourage contemporary painters. Not that I agree with everything they do.’
‘You don’t like modern art?’
They got into a discussion on the subject, and she was on safe ground here because she really had been to the exhibition—when she’d read that Calum was one of the sponsors—and had also done
