forethought to bring a tailored linen suit with her, and she put this on now, frowning a little over the soft mint green colour, unaware of how poignantly the easy fit of the skirt showed up her recent weight loss.
Make-up was a wonderful disguise, she decided grimly, glancing at her watch and carefully removing the last of her personal belongings from the room.
Calculating how much petrol she had left in her car and how far it was to the last garage she had passed on her drive occupied the last few minutes before she heard a polite knock on her door.
‘The advogado is here,’ Luisa told her shyly when she opened it.
She could see the maid glancing past her, her eyes widening as she saw the suitcases on the bed.
‘I shall be leaving shortly, Luisa,’ said Shelley coolly. ‘Thank you for looking after me so well.’
She suspected it would be considered bad form for her to offer the girl a tip, but she had bought herself a new bottle of perfume before leaving home and luckily it was unopened. She would leave it as a present for the girl, whose open-mouthed surprise betrayed that she had expected Shelley’s visit to be of a much longer duration.
‘If you will just direct me…’
Collecting herself, the girl said hurriedly, ‘The advogado is in the Conde’s study. I will show you the way.’
As she followed the maid Shelley realised that there must be more than one flight of stairs to the ground floor of the house, and then wondered if it had been built along the Moorish lines of separate wings for various members of the household.
The stairs led down to an elegant hallway with three doors off it. Luisa knocked briefly on one of them and stood back, indicating that Shelley was to go in.
At first glance the room was faintly intimidating, full of heavy, dark furniture and lacking in light, but as her eyes accustomed themselves to the dimness Shelley recognised a richness to the furnishings that muted its heavy authority. A French window gave on to a small and obviously private courtyard—the sacred preserve of the males of the family, she thought sardonically as she turned to face the other occupants of the room.
There were only two of them: Jaime, and another man who she guessed must be the advogado.
She was not really surprised at the absence of her stepmother and sister, but she wondered a little cynically how her father would feel if he knew how completely her new family had thrown her to the wolves, or rather to the panther, for it was that beast of prey who most reminded her of her arrogant and dangerous stepbrother.
‘Ah, Shelley, let me introduce you to Senhor Armandes. I shall leave it to him to explain to you the intricacies of your father’s will, where it touches upon your inheritance.’ He turned and said something in Portuguese to the lawyer, who looked grave and bowed over Shelley’s hand.
Resentment shook her. It was all right for her arrogant stepbrother to misjudge her if he wished, for she did not intend to allow the lawyer to labour under the same misapprehension.
The moment the door closed behind her stepbrother, she launched into impetuous speech.
‘Please, let us both sit down, so that we will be more comfortable,’ suggested Senhor Armandes, gently interrupting her before she had said more than half a dozen words.
Unwillingly subsiding into a chair, she waited for him to sit down, and then, leaning across the desk, declared in impassioned tones, ‘Before you say anything to me about my father’s will, I want to make it plain to you that no matter what he has left me, I intend to renounce all claim to it. As far as I am concerned it is enough that he held a place for me in his memories and in his heart. I don’t want or need any tangible evidence that he cared for me.’ All the anguish she had suffered since her arrival at the quinta rose up and overwhelmed her, obliterating her normal control. Emotion suspended her voice, and she had to pause to blink away tears and get herself under control.
She continued grimly, ‘I realise that…that certain people believe, quite erroneously, that I deliberately withheld myself from my father. That isn’t true.’
Quietly and logically she went through the tragic circumstances surrounding her separation from her father, and her own upbringing in the belief that he was dead. Once or twice she sensed that the lawyer was going to interrupt her, and saw quite unmistakably the shock and compassion in his face.
‘Please, don’t feel sorry for me,’ she said huskily. ‘As far as I’m concerned it’s enough to know that my father cared. That’s the only thing any child has the right to expect from its parents. Nothing else matters.’ She bit her lip and added softly, ‘I can’t tell you how much I wish I’d learned the truth before he died, but the couple he met here on holiday who told him about me had actually moved away from the town where I lived with my grandmother. They didn’t realise that she had died and that I was in foster-care, and of course my father couldn’t know that my grandmother registered my surname as her own. It was quite by chance that I spotted the advertisement.’
‘It is a tragedy,’ the lawyer said heavily, shaking his head. ‘Your father…’ He shook his head again, and smiled at her. ‘I can only say that had he known you, I am sure your father would only have loved you more—were that possible. I think it is true to say that he was, in his last years, haunted by his need to find you, but obviously God willed it otherwise.’
Bleakly Shelley wished she could share the lawyer’s simple faith. It would make her own anguish somewhat easier to bear.
Glancing at her watch, she said quietly, ‘I’m afraid I have taken up an awful lot of your time. I must…’
She made to rise, but the lawyer reached out and urged her back into her chair.
‘Please sit down and listen to me. I understand and sympathise with everything that you have told me, but you know, you mustn’t throw away something of considerable value through emotionalism.’ The look he gave her was both direct and compelling. ‘You understand that this family have been clients of mine for many years. I, like them, have witnessed your father’s struggles to find you. They say that to know all is to understand all, so please be patient with me and allow me to explain to you a little of the family’s history.’
Since there was nothing else she could do, other than to walk rudely out of the room, Shelley settled back in her chair with a faint sigh.
She wanted to tell the lawyer that she didn’t entirely blame Jaime for the conclusions he had leapt to. What she was running away from wasn’t his contempt and dislike, but her own reaction to it. She had never ever experienced such a strong reaction to any man, never mind one as hostile as Jaime, and that disturbed her. Every ounce of feminine instinct she possessed urged her to leave, now, while she still could.
Instead, she had to sit and listen while the lawyer embarked on what threatened to be a very long story.
‘You must understand that when the Condessa first met your father she was a lady suffering under a tremendous burden. Her late husband, the father of Jaime and Carlota, had been killed while playing polo. Their marriage had been the traditional one arranged by their families. When she married Carlos he was a comparatively wealthy young man, but on the death of his grandfather shortly after their marriage, he started to speculate unwisely, and by the time Carlota was born he was on the verge of bankruptcy. Carlos was a man born out of his time, much addicted to the expensive sporting hobbies of the wealthy,’ The lawyer’s
