Duarte's Child

Emily’s rigid shoulders slumped. Evidently it would take someone a great deal cleverer than she was to catch Bliss out.

‘Please go home, Bliss,’ Duarte urged in an electrifyingly quiet request. ‘I’m sorry you had to witness this.’

Bliss strolled past Emily like a queen and walked back indoors.

Duarte swore in driven Portuguese, and strode over to Emily, who was staring emptily into space. He gripped her by the arms to force her round to face him. ‘What the hell has got into you? A friendship with Bliss? Since when? Are you paralytically drunk and delusional? How could you make such an ass of yourself?’ he demanded with savage incredulity.

Emily was in a daze. ‘Bliss does have a grandfather clock,’ she protested shakily. ‘And we were friends and I’m not drunk but I’m beginning to feel delusional!’

His smouldering dark golden eyes narrowed and he converted his hold on her limp arms to a supportive soothing hold. Looking distinctly at a loss, Duarte expelled his breath in a slow hiss. ‘Look, I think you need to get some rest…OK?’

‘You think I’m crazy. Or do you? Maybe you’re as big a deceiver as she is! If that’s how it is, fine. I don’t care any more.’ Emily raised her arms in an abrupt movement to shake free of his lean hands. Turning away from him, she set off down the corridor.

‘I’ll be upstairs in five minutes…’ Duarte called after her. ‘Do you want me to come up with you?’

‘No, thanks.’ If he thought she was going upstairs to share a bedroom with a male who thought she was only one mental step removed from a nervous breakdown, he had better think again.

Emily trudged back across the echoing main hall and out the front doors just in time to see the tail lights of Bliss’s sleek silver sports car disappearing down the winding drive. Naturally one grandfather clock would now be speedily disposed of or possibly Bliss had got rid of that parental legacy months ago, Emily reflected numbly, for the clock had not suited the ultra-modern decor of Bliss’s city apartment.

Unable to bear the claustrophobic silence of the house or the prospect of another confrontation with Duarte, Emily wandered out into the moonlit gardens. The dew-wet grass crunched beneath her feet. The palms cast spiky, mysterious shadows that faded the further she moved away from the house. She saw the domed bulk of the building the Monteiros called a summerhouse glimmering in the darkness beneath the trees. A grand eighteenth-century folly built of white marble, it was large enough to house a full orchestra. Mounting the steps, Emily dropped down on to a hard marble bench. Just then, the folly had a great deal more appeal than any bed containing Duarte.

Her husband thought she was nuts. He had gone from outraged disbelief to sudden grave concern. Right now, he was probably ringing one of his many medical friends to ask for some serious advice and book her an appointment with a psychiatrist.

In the quiet of the folly, Emily skimmed her shoes off to flex her crushed toes and willed herself to be calm. She saw that once again she had been set up by Bliss. Having seen Emily watching her with Duarte, Bliss had staged a pretend fall. No other explanation made sense. If Duarte wanted to snatch Bliss into a passionate embrace, he was highly unlikely to do so in a well-lit courtyard in full view of more than forty windows.

So, in that sense, she had made an ass of herself, Emily acknowledged grimly. But it was difficult to care when she was truly at the end of her tether. Bitterness was rising inside her like a dam surging to break its banks. Assert yourself, Duarte had told her when he was telling her how to deal with her own family.

But when had she ever asserted herself with Duarte? She was Mrs Doormat Monteiro and it was little wonder that Bliss was able to best her at every turn. Eleven months ago, Duarte had demanded a separation and he had dispatched her to the house in the Douro and she had gone without a murmur. She had behaved as if she was an unfaithful wife!

Why? She had been consumed with guilt over a kiss that she had neither invited nor enjoyed. Why had she beaten herself up for so long over that stupid episode? She had not been unfaithful and she had not betrayed her husband. But, totally intimidated by Duarte’s chilling rage and his even more appalling conviction that she had actually been sleeping with Toby Jarrett, she had become so distraught that she had been incapable of offering a convincing self-defence.

As Emily sat there ruminating on her cold marble bench, she began to see that she had spent most of the twenty-two years of her life blaming herself for every bad and unlucky thing that had ever happened to her. When her parents didn’t hug her as a child and her older sisters bullied her, she had assumed that the fault was in her and not in them. She had felt guilty and ashamed that she wasn’t sufficiently loveable and had just tried harder and harder to please in the hope that somehow matters would improve. Only they never had improved, she conceded sadly.