House of Storms Page 2

  Now the summons arrived and Debra braced herself for the confrontation. She knew from Nanny Rose that since the departure of Jack Salvador's regular secretary there had been two replacements, but neither of them had met with his mother's approval. Debra was warned that Lenora Salvador was a difficult and demanding woman and it might be to her advantage to appear meek and mild if Debra hoped to find acceptance.

  'I'm not going to be intimidated by her,' Debra rejoined. 'I'm here to work as an editor not to be a doormat.'

  Nanny Rose laughed and looked Debra up and down in her neat black skirt and pin- tucked shirt. 'I grant there's something a bit different about you from those others. A bit of class, I'd say. Madam's bound to notice, you mark my words.'

  The solar was used as a sitting-room during the summertime, a boldly curving room with a range of wide windows and a barrelled ceiling. A table beside the hostess was attractively laid for tea.

  'Do come and sit down, Miss Hartway.' Slanting dark-brown eyes appraised Debra as she crossed the room and sat down. 'You've met my daughter Zandra, have you not? Prob¬ably on the stairs as she's been coming and going? Zandra rarely walks if she can run, and rarely sits if she can pace about, preferably with a cigarette in her hand.'

  Zandra was doing both those things as her mother spoke. She was tall, fashionably lean in culottes and a loose silk shirt, with dark shin¬ing hair that fell in a scroll to her shoulders, framing the sculptured planes of her face. Her eyes were like her mother's, with the slant to them that gave to their faces an individual look.

  Those eyes flicked Debra up and down. 'So you're the latest in a line of adoring typists? Another female from a bedsitter who sits up half the night devouring my brother's chunky books—you'll be in for a real thrill when the video deal goes through, won't you? I guess you've heard that his best books are going to be filmed?'

  'There was mention of it at Columbine,' Debra replied, her hands sedately folded in her lap as she met Zandra's rather insolent gaze. 'Your brother has a large following, Miss Salvador.'

  'I'm not a Miss,' Zandra snapped. 'I'm di¬vorced.'

  'I'm sorry,' Debra politely murmured.

  'Don't be, he was a silly ass with a beard and I should have heeded Mama's warning that he was no good for me. It's a family failing, both Jack and I turned a deaf ear to Mama when it came to choosing our soul mates. Tell me, have you met the precious infant?'

  'Yes.' Debra smiled. 'He's very charming, and very forward for his age, so his nanny informs me.'

  'He takes after his mother,' Zandra drawled.

  'That will be enough,' Lenora reproved her daughter. 'Do you take cream or lemon in your tea, Miss Hartway?'

  'Cream would be nice, thank you.'

  'You don't need to watch your figure, eh?' Zandra was giving Debra a rather narrow look through the smoke of her cigarette which was clamped into a holder so the nicotine wouldn't stain her fingers. 'You look younger than the other typists who came here after Miss Tucker took to her heels following a scrap with Mama, which, incidentally, Jack is going to be furious about because he got on well with the old duck.'

  'I couldn't possibly allow her to stay.' Lenora handed Debra her cup of tea, which wafted its fragrant aroma from a bone-china cup in an equally fine saucer. 'She called me an old witch! She accused me of making that silly Pauline's life a misery, and I did nothing of the sort! It merely irritated me, having to endure her chatter and the cheap music the girl was addicted to. And her clothes—she simply had no style, no finesse! When Jack was thinking of in marrying her, I just do not know!'

  'Mama, you're not that old,' Zandra said in a teasing tone of voice. 'She was curvy and blonde and she got under Jack's skin.'

  'He didn't have to marry her,' Lenora held a plate of tiny triangular sandwiches so Debra could take one or two. 'When I think of some of the delightful girls he's known, especially Sharon Chandler. My heart was set on Sharon for a daughter-in-law, and Jack knew it! In¬stead he had to go and marry that uneducated little dancer from a musical show, and I could have told him straight away that it was doomed; a man of Jack's powers in harness to that Sindy doll with her whispery voice!'

  'Mama,' Zandra murmured, 'she is dead, and after all she was Jack's choice and even if you didn't care for her, I'm sure he did.'

  Debra listened to the enlightening conver¬sation and ate her sandwiches, which had a delicious salmon spread inside them. As Nanny Rose had hinted, the marriage which had produced young Dean had not been approved of by Jack Salvador's family, and even though Lenora doted on the boy she had despised his young mother.

  Poor Pauline . . . Debra now had an image of her, a curvacious, child-like blonde who had danced for a living until meeting the famous writer of fine novels who, because of his lone¬ly profession, would have found the young showgirl amusing and diverting and probably seductive.

  Debra could well imagine the reaction when Jack Salvador had walked into the house with her . . . maybe he had carried her over the doorstep in the traditional way, only to be met by the snobbish disapproval of his mother! A widow very unlike Debra's mother, whose years of toil and unselfishness had paid off when she had met the charming, middle-aged man to whom she was now married.

  Although Lenora Salvador was a beautiful, elegant and well-preserved woman, it seemed that a second chance at love had eluded her. She was like a diamond, Debra thought, a little too hard and cutting. As her daughter had reminded her, Pauline was dead, and in dying she had left her husband so grief-stricken that he had gone off, no one knew where, in order to try and recover from the loss of his pretty wife.

  'Can't I tempt you to a cake, Zandra?' Lenora extended a plate with a selection of cream cakes on it. 'You used to love eclairs when you were a schoolgirl.'

  'And look what all that cream and chocolate did to me.' Zandra waved the cakes away from her. 'I was such a podge that I got left out of all the most exciting activities at school and it hurt like hell. I swore I'd never be fat again— however I feel sure Miss Hartway won't say no to a sweet and creamy cake.'

  'I'm afraid I shall,' Debra contradicted her. 'I haven't a sweet tooth, as it happens.'

  'You do surprise me,' Zandra drawled. 'Miss Tucker lived on cakes and chocolate bars; she really believed in tucking into sweet things, a compensation, don't they say, for being an old maid?'

  'I really wouldn't know, Miss—Salvador.' Debra's hesitation went unnoticed. It would have been impolite not to address her by name, and the actress's married title was not known to her.

  'You've a boy-friend, then?'

  Debra shook her head. 'I don't think it would worry me to be single.'

  'You have to be kidding!' Zandra looked scornful. 'It's true that men are hard to live with, but at the same time it's hard living without them. Maybe you don't attract them, eh?'

  Debra's eyes dwelt on the sculptured face with the ironic and rather discontented mouth, an actress with a brittle kind of brilliance, as if her heart was never fully involved in anything she did. Never having been poor, she hadn't been tempered in the anxious fires of wonder¬ing where the next meal was coming from. Her success, Debra decided, was based on her appearance rather than her innate talent... it was her brother who had the more expressive and worthwhile gifts.

  Zandra was reading Debra's thoughts in her large eyes, the kind with such a mixture of colours there was no telling their dominant colour until she was aroused to temper, when they turned green. A scowl darkened the classic face of Jack Salvador's sister.

  'I suppose you think you're damned smart,' she snapped. 'And I suppose you keep your angel wings fastened down with sellotape?'

  'Zandra,' exclaimed her mother, 'you do say the most astonishing things at times. Miss Hartway looks a sensible young woman to me; neat and clean, with sensibly arranged hair. Not every girl wants to be chased all the time.'

  'Are you going to be chaste instead, Miss Hartway?' Zandra mocked. 'Quite frankly I wouldn't want your job on a gold plate; I'd go out of my mind having to ty
pe all those words, all those pages, with Jack suddenly deciding to make changes in the text. He isn't the easiest man in the world to work for, you know.'

  'I expect he's a perfectionist where his work's concerned,' Debra murmured. 'His books reveal it.'

  'Enthralled by his books, are you?'

  'I certainly admire them,' Debra admitted.

  'You'd better not get enthralled by Jack him¬self, isn't that so, Mama?'

  'I've no intention—' Debra felt herself flushing at the very idea.

  'All our intentions are good ones to start off with.' Zandra frowned moodily, as if recalling her marriage. 'Have you worked for our kind of family before?'

  'I've only ever worked at the office,' Debra replied, not really intimidated by Zandra who, despite her mocking tongue, had a certain fascination which seemed to be a family trait. 'This is my first venture as a private secretary.'

  'Then you're new to an Old Line family?'

  'Yes, Miss Salvador.'

  'We have our roots in the rollicking days of the corsairs who used to sail into Cornish waters and take whatever plunder they could lay hands on, including any likely-looking females. You may have heard how Bride's Cove came to get its name?'

  Debra broke into a smile. 'Yes, your brother once wrote a book about your famous ancestor.'

  'Infamous,' Zandra corrected. 'The daring Don Rodare became a sea rover because in Spain he climbed a certain royal balcony and visited a lady he shouldn't have visited. Following that escapade he had to make a bolt for it, so he took to the high seas and became as successful at pillaging as he had been at seducing ladies in high places.'

  'Zandra,' her mother spoke in a flustered way, 'I wish you and Jack weren't so fond of bringing up the subject of that man.'

  'I thoroughly admire the memory of the rogue,' Zandra laughed. 'I'd like to have known him, and 1 like to think that Rod and I have some of his genes in us.'

  'Rodare certainly has,' Lenora agreed. 'I'm in no doubt that your half-brother has inherited a number of his traits. I'm relieved that Jack is more like my family.'

  Upon mentioning her son, Lenora's eyes grew moist and she drew a lace-edged handkerchief from the white cuff of her well-tailored dress and touched it to her nose. 'Jack was always such a clever boy and I pray that Dean will take after him. Clever men, unfortunately, do have a tendency to make mistakes about women, it's a well known fact.'

  Debra found herself silently agreeing with this observation, for men of intellect did seem drawn to girls who were the opposite. But the name Rodare conjured an image of the Don. Though Nanny Rose had chatted about the family, she hadn't mentioned that Jack had a half-brother. As he didn't live at Abbeywitch, he was probably married and resident elsewhere.

  It was certainly a fascinating family . . . rather like the cast of a play, its members a little more handsome and assured than their audience.

  'Have you formed an opinion of Abbeywitch?' Zandra's voice suddenly broke in on her thoughts, edged by the condescension of someone who had grown up in grand surroundings and took them for granted.

  'It's fascinating,' Debra replied. 'I've been told that sections of an ancient abbey have been built into it.'

  'Perfectly true. The fireplace in the drawingroom is constructed from abbey stone, and some of the bedroom terraces are paved with it. And Jack's den, where you are working, is actually the cell where the priest of those days had his living quarters. We're rumoured to have a ghost, and a cousin of Mama's insists that she has seen it, but she's a rather dotty old dear who has never had a man in her life so she's inclined to get odd notions. She probably looks under the bed before getting into it in case there's a man hiding there.'

  'That's no way to speak of Cousin Cora; she's a sweet woman and we all dearly love her.' Lenora glanced at Debra. 'Is your family living, Miss Hartway?'

  'My mother is, madam. She lives with her husband in Canada on their farm and they're very happy. My father died when I was very young, that's why I feel for your little grandson. It's sad to lose a parent.'

  Lenora Salvador seemed not to think so where Pauline was concerned, the tightening of her lips conveyed this.

  'Poor Mama, you'd like to forget that Jack ever knew Pauline, wouldn't you?' Zandra brushed her fingers through her hair, her eyes glittering darkly. 'You'd like her memory to be swept away just as her ashes were that day Jack stood on the headland, at the very brink of the cliffs, and let the wind carry her ashes out to sea. It was pure theatre . . . he and I very definitely have drama in our veins, whereas Rod has the call of Spain . . . the deep southern heart of Spain.'

  'His mother was Spanish so it comes naturally to him.' Lenora spoke rather waspishly. 'She was a Spanish gipsy and she danced in a taberna—it should have been Rodare rather than Jack who got entangled with Pauline.'

  'Hmm, they would have suited each other,' Zandra said thoughtfully, 'except that Rod is more shrewd about women; they have one hell of a job catching him, he's too fly.'

  'Anyway, it's a painful subject.' There was an edge to Lenora's voice. 'I bear the girl no grudge, but she wasn't one of us!'

  Debra flinched from the cutting words . . . could none of these people at Abbeywitch have liked Pauline? Did they regard themselves as so Old Line that a girl from the chorus line was beyond acceptance? Or was it possible that Mrs Salvador was incapable of accepting any wife that her son brought home? She had spoken of a girl called Sharon whom she had deemed worthy of Jack, yet would she have turned against her had he made Sharon Chandler his wife?

  Zandra clicked her lighter and lit a cigarette, puffing smoke into the air. Her mother tut-tutted and waved the smoke away from her. 'Do you have to smoke in here?' she demanded.

  'I need to smoke, Mama. You may not have vices, but you must accept that your son and daughter aren't so saintly.'

  'I don't pretend to be saintly,' a faint flush came to Lenora's face, 'but smoking is such a disagreeable habit and you're an actress and you should take more care of your throat, not to mention your lungs—you know what the habit does to people!'

  'I know what not smoking does to me.'

  Zandra wandered to a window where she stood in profile against the sunlit panes of glass. 'I wonder when Jack will decide to come home—has he written to you, Mama?'

  Her mother shook her head. 'My son will come home when he's ready.'

  Zandra gazed out of the window, smoking rather moodily and framed tall and striking against the glow of the sun. Debra couldn't help thinking that she should have been wearing a flowing robe instead of fashionable culottes.

  'What if Jack was to bring home a new wife,' she suddenly said.

  There was a palpable silence and then Lenora answered her daughter frostily. 'One must hope not!'

  'All the same, Mama, it's a possibility we can't ignore. Jack does have an infant who needs a mother.'

  'I'd never forgive him!' Lenora gasped. 'Not a second mistake!'

  Debra sat there astounded by the statement. She had never heard such a selfish utterance and couldn't help but wonder if this woman had been on board the yacht the night her daughter-in-law had fallen into the sea.

  'If you've finished your tea, Miss Hartway, you can go.' Lenora Salvador spoke abruptly to Debra. 'I assume you find your working and sleeping quarters satisfactory?'

  'Yes, Mrs Salvador, I've everything I require.' Debra rose to her feet, murmured a polite good-afternoon and made her way out of the solar, leaving mother and daughter to speculate further on Jack Salvador's whereabouts and plans for the future.

  Debra went downstairs in a thoughtful mood. . . she would have to ask Nanny Rose if Jack's mother had been a guest at that fateful party. She didn't bother to hide the fact that she had disapproved of Pauline, and Debra suspected that she was the kind of woman who might bear malice towards someone whom she thought of as being beneath her.

  As Debra crossed the hall in the direction of the working den, as it was called, she found her gaze drawn to the towering portrait of the founder
of the house. The dark eyes beneath the emphatic brows seemed to hold Debra to attention . . . there was proud dominance and a hint of devilry in that Spanish face.

  Don Rodare de Salvador, whom Zandra had admitted to admiring, and whose ways her mother had said were inherited by the half-brother.

  CHAPTER TWO

  As the days passed and Debra established a working routine that no one interfered with, it dawned on her that she had been accepted by the eminence grise of the house and wasn't going to be discharged from Abbeywitch because she jarred on Lenora Salvador. A woman very much of her generation and class, who had also developed a prejudice against any young female who might affect her son Jack the way Pauline had.

  Debra was faintly amused, for she was aware that in her neat shirts and skirts, with her hair in its chignon, and wearing the hornrimmed spectacles that she needed for close work, she looked about as sexually threatening as a dove on a fence.

  Thank heaven for it! She found Abbeywitch fascinating, and it made such a break to be working away from the sweltering city now that summer was coming. She didn't dare to hope that the job might become permanent, but she could look forward to a few weeks of bliss beside the sea, waking in the mornings to fresh air and only the sound of the seabirds, lifting and settling on the water, moving up and down like toy birds as the long waves curled towards the cove.

  The den itself was a secluded room right at the far end of the hall, its high walls panelled with Spanish leather that was stamped with gothic crosses in saffron and black. Books and scripts and cassettes were stacked upon shelves in units that stood away from the walls, and the desk where Debra worked was in a big bay window that let in light that didn't quite penetrate to the far comers of the room, and sometimes she would glance up from the typewriter with the oddest notion that a pair of eyes were watching her while she worked.