Sally Wentworth - Chris

‘Then I’d love to stay. But only——’ she gave him a

sparkling, playful look ‘—if you’ll promise to call me Tiffany and not Miss Dean.’ She imitated his deep voice, making Calum laugh.

‘It’s a bargain. I’ll go and tell the caterer to change the table setting.’

‘And I’ll ring the boutique.’ Calum went out and Francesca went over to the phone, but glanced at Tiffany and Chris and then said, ‘The number is in my address book upstairs. Will you excuse me while I go and make the call?’ And she hurried away.

Not wanting to be left alone with Chris, Tiffany said, ‘I’ll wait upstairs.’ She went to follow Francesca out of the room, but got caught up in the skirts of the robe and had to hitch it up.

As she made for the door, Chris said, ‘You’re wasting your time, Tiffany.’

Pretending not to understand, she said over her shoulder, ‘See you later.’

But Chris said sharply, ‘You won’t catch Calum.’ She stopped, closed the door, which she had half opened, and turned to face him, leaning against it.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

Chris laughed unpleasantly. ‘You know exactly what I mean. Calum fell for your trick, but he’s much too clever not to see through you eventually—even if no one tells him.’

He had jumped to the wrong conclusion, but it was impossible to tell him the truth; he would only have her thrown out that much more quickly if he knew she was trying to get a story on his cousin. ‘Are you—are you threatening me?’ she said unsteadily, the future looking a long, empty prospect again.

‘No.’ Chris straightened up from the arm of the settee on which he’d been sitting and came over to her. ‘Just warning you that you’ll be wasting your time.’

Tiffany thought of bluffing it out, but one look into Chris’s eyes told her it would be no use. She didn’t admit anything, but instead raised large, pleading eyes to his. ‘Things have been tough for me lately. You wouldn’t begin to understand…’ Her fists clenched. ‘I—I deserve a break.’ She broke off, her voice unsteady.

Chris’s mouth twisted sardonically, and she didn’t think that she’d got through to him at all. But he amazed her by giving a shrug and saying, ‘If you want to make a play for my cousin, then go ahead. Try your luck. But you’ll be disappointed.’

‘You mean you’ll tell him anyway,’ she said bitterly.

Slowly Chris shook his head. ‘No, I won’t tell him.’

Her eyes widened. ‘But you said…Why won’t you tell him?’

‘I won’t need to.’ He put a hand under her chin. ‘And maybe it will amuse me to watch you try.’

She stared at him, realising that he was playing with her. Her chin came up. ‘All right—so watch.’ Then she turned and walked out of the room with as much dignity as bare feet and a bathrobe could give her—which wasn’t much.

FRANCESCA had told the boutique to send not only evening gowns but a choice of day clothes too. The assistant who had brought them was deferential to say the least. ‘The Princess told us your size, senhorita, and that you were fair. I am sure you will find something here that you like.’

Tiffany was sure of it too; all of them looked good on her, and any one of the dresses, she was equally certain, would have put her in hock for the rest of her life. Not that any of the clothes had anything so vulgar as a price-tag attached. Wondering fleetingly if she was supposed to pay for the dresses, and deciding not to worry about it, Tiffany chose a chic blue shorts suit to wear for the rest of the day and a stunning black velvet cocktail dress to wear that evening. Luckily the boutique had also sent shoes and evening bags, so she was able to put a whole outfit together.

Francesca came in just as the assistant was packing up all the clothes, and applauded Tiffany’s choice. ‘Mmm. Nice. I wish I could wear those shorts suits, but my legs are so long I look ridiculous in them.’ Patently untrue, of course, but it was a kind thing to say. ‘Put the things on my account,’ Francesca said offhandedly as the woman left.

‘Oh, but really…’ Tiffany made a half-hearted protest, comfortably sure that it would be overborne.

It was. Francesca lifted a hand to silence her. ‘No, please. My pleasure. Let’s go down, shall we?’

She was still wearing the flame outfit, and strode ahead down the corridor towards the stairs. After they’d gone about twenty yards, Tiffany called out, ‘Hey! Do you always walk this fast?’

Pausing at the head of the staircase, Francesca laughed. ‘Sorry. All my family are so tall that I suppose I’m not used to slowing down.’

‘From what you said earlier, 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.’