Duarte's Child

At least it was spring, she thought ruefully. She had spent the winter of their separation in the country house and it had been dismal. These days the Monteiros only ever used the property for a rustic summer break or during the vindima, the grape harvest when the Portuguese enjoyed getting back to their roots. In winter, the villa had been shrouded in the thick grey mists that rose above the dramatic high banks of the Douro river and day after day it had rained heavily and got colder. Emily shivered at those depressing recollections.

‘Perhaps I could spend the winters in England,’ Emily proposed in a small taut voice.

Duarte moved a lean, silencing hand for he was talking on the car phone. He frowned at her, winged black brows drawing together above clear golden eyes. Biting at her lip, Emily turned away again. The limo had already left the motorway. They were on the outskirts of the pretty hilltown of Sintra and within a startling stone’s throw of her former marital home, the Quinta de Monteiro. She assumed that Duarte was being dropped off home first.

Dense forest covered the hills above the ancient winding streets of the tiny village below the quinta. The verges of the road were carpeted with a colourful riot of naturalised crocus and scilla blooms. It was beautiful. But gooseflesh rose on Emily’s arms as she found herself studying the narrow corner building where Toby had once had his artist’s studio. The window shutters now bore a faded ‘for rent’ notice.

‘I assure you that you won’t be spending the winters or indeed, any other season in England,’ Duarte imparted that news with a gritty edge to his dark deep drawl. ‘I could not trust you that far from my sight.’

Emily twisted her head back with a bemused look. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘From now on, everywhere you go you will be accompanied,’ Duarte murmured.

‘Wh-what on earth are you talking about?’ Emily stammered as the opulent car glided below the imposing turreted entrance of the Quinta de Monteiro.

‘You heard me.’ Spectacular golden eyes tough as granite settled on her with unnerving force. ‘If you go riding, you will take a groom, and for all other outings, you will have a driver and a bodyguard. At any hour of the day, I will expect to know where you are and what you are doing—’

‘But I never went riding in the Douro…’ Emily was having huge difficulty in comprehending the necessity for such excessive arrangements and her bewilderment was visible.

‘I spend precious little time at our country house,’ Duarte said drily. ‘I was merely pointing out that there is a price to pay for my generosity in taking you back.’

‘Taking me back…’ Emily mumbled in repetition. ‘Taking me back…where?’

‘If I did not know you better, I would believe you were drunk,’ Duarte delivered a split second before his chauffeur opened the door beside her. ‘We will continue this discussion indoors.’

With an enervated flick of her eyes in the direction of the Quinta de Monteiro, a vast sixteenth-century building as monumental and impressive as a castle, Emily repeated uncertainly, ‘Indoors? You want me to come inside?’

‘No matter how much one might feel like it, one does not leave one’s wife to sleep in the car,’ Duarte framed with considerable sarcasm.

Emily sat bolt upright, finally pausing to consider that phrase ‘taking you back’ in a different light. Not just back to Portugal, it seemed, but back to sharing the former marital roof. True, it was an exceptionally large roof, beneath which the most bitter enemies could probably live separate lives, but even so Emily was shattered by the concept. With an effort, she parted her lips, keen to clarify the matter. ‘Duarte…I—’

Springing out on to the gravel, he swung back and grasped her hand in an impatient movement to urge her on. ‘Come on… Victorine is waiting to welcome us.’

Emily ducked down her head and peered round him in dismay. There stood Victorine like a door sentinel, a middle-aged woman clad from head to toe in unrelieved black, her face set like an ancient Egyptian grave mask. Welcome? Victorine welcome the head of the family’s unfaithful wife back to the hallowed ground of the Monteiro ancestral home? Was he joking? Even in the early days of their marriage, Duarte’s former mother-in-law had been unable to conceal her antipathy towards Emily.

‘I’m not going in,’ Emily argued in a feverish undertone. ‘I had no idea you were bringing us here. I thought I was going back to the house in the Douro—’

‘Then a geography lesson would appear to be in order,’ Duarte gritted without hesitation. ‘Get out of the car, Emily. For once in your life behave as I might reasonably expect my wife to behave.’