‘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 mouth pursed slightly, as though he were remembering old arguments. ‘I tried to warn him, but he would not listen to me. Of course he had told his wife nothing of his financial affairs, so when he died and the truth was revealed, the Condessa had no idea where to turn. It was decided that she should sell her house in Lisbon and this quinta, and that she and the children should live in a small villa the family owned not far from here on the coast. The house in Lisbon was sold almost straightaway, but this quinta with its neglected vines…that was a different matter. The late Conde was not a man who was at all interested in the husbandry of his land.’
Was there a shade of disapproval in the lawyer’s voice? Shelley suspected so.
‘So it came about that the Condessa and her children went to live in the villa on the coast, and it was there that she met your father. You will know, of course, that he was a painter. It was just about this time that he had started to make a name for himself, and in fact it was I who introduced them. Your father was also a client of mine, and one who I must say showed a shrewd judge of a good investment. There are, of course, those who would say he was lucky, but there is more than luck involved in the making of a fortune from what is commonly called speculation.
‘At the time when I introduced him to the Condessa, your father was already a comparatively wealthy man, but it was still his painting that was his first love. He asked the Condessa’s permission to paint the villa, and I believe it was from that point that the romance developed.
‘It was your father who advised the Condessa against selling the quinta, and who nurtured Jaime’s interest in the land and the vines. You will have gathered by now that Jaime was very devoted to your father. It was your father’s money and his investment in the land that enabled the quinta to become profitable again. On their marriage he also bought from the Condessa the villa, which has remained in his name ever since.
‘It is this villa that he has left you in his will, plus a small share in the profits of the quinta. You must not feel in accepting this bequest that you are in any way depriving the Condessa or her family in any financial sense. Your father made ample provision for the Condessa and her children in his will…’
‘And yet still my stepbrother resents the fact that I was left something.’
Shelley said it under her breath, but the lawyer heard her, his expression faintly wary as he interrupted quietly, ‘I think you will find that the Conde’s resentment springs not from the fact that your father chose to leave you something, but from his own ignorance of the true facts. He sincerely believes that you chose to ignore your father’s existence, as indeed did we all. None of us had any idea that you were as ignorant of his existence as he was of yours. We have all misjudged you, Miss Howard, but through ignorance rather than malice. Once the Conde knows the true situation…’
‘No…’ Seeing the surprise on the lawyer’s face, Shelley softened her sharp denial with a brief smile.
‘I don’t want to discuss any of this with the…with my stepbrother yet. I would like some time to come to terms with what you have just told me, but I still feel that the villa is rightfully the property of the Condessa and…’
‘No. It is rightfully yours,’ intervened the lawyer firmly. ‘I admire the independence of spirit that leads you to reject such a gift, but think, if you will, of the future, Miss Howard. One day you will marry and have children. In refusing the gift that your father leaves you, you are refusing it on their behalf as well. You cannot know what life has in store for you. When the Condessa married the Conde, no one could have known what was in store for her. She was marrying an extremely wealthy young man, and yet…’
‘It is different nowadays,’ Shelley told him stubbornly. ‘Women are not dependent on their husbands any more. I do not want the villa, senhor,’ she told the lawyer, unable to explain to him that she still felt as though the villa rightfully belonged to the Condessa and her family. She was glad that her father had remembered her, that he had loved her, and she genuinely wanted nothing else.
Illogically, even now, understanding the reasons why, it still hurt that she had been rejected by her father’s family. It was pride that had kept her from telling them the truth; she acknowledged that just as she acknowledged that it was a measure of how deeply she had been hurt that she was unable to forgive Jaime now. Instead of rejoicing in the fact that he had loved her father, she felt deeply resentful of it; resentful of the fact that her father had been there for him, while she…
‘You will know that the Condessa is English,’ the lawyer continued. ‘On her father’s side at least, but her mother was Portuguese, and came home to her parents when her husband was killed in the early stages of our last world war. Jaime is, I think, much more his mother’s son than his father’s. He and Carlos never got on. Carlos resented him, I think, and his childhood was not a happy time for him. You have much in common, you and he, even if neither of you knows it yet.’
He was interrupted by a maid carrying a tray of coffee. There were three cups on it, but when Jaime came in on