Master of Hearts Read Free Page B

had to waste so much of your time It is a pity because my nephews are beyond the discipline of any ordinary young woman, as I now realise."
    "What nonsense!" she exclaimed, turning on him. Her blue eyes blazed her contempt at him. "They are perfectly normal children who must feel half smothered by the atmosphere in this house! Children require to run free, and above all to be understood. Particularly when they've just lost a parent! And I've no doubt your Portuguese nursemaid is as little capable of understanding how they feel, uprooted as they have been, as you yourself apparently are!"
    She bit her lip until the blood spurted, and she felt herself trembling with the indignation that had taken
     
    possession of her. The Conde's eyes grew colder and infinitely more remote, but the iciness of his displeasure had little effect on her.
    "My recommendation to you is that you send them to school.. . Anywhere out of this house! And if they've got any relatives in America why not send them back there, if their mother can't bestir herself and look after them herself? In England a young widow would feel grateful for the compensation of two little sons."
    Then horror rushed over her as she realised what she had said, and Jerry rushed after her and caught her by the arm.
    "Was it you who were going to look after us? Was it really you? Oh, but Uncle Miguel mustn't let you go!" His bottom lip started to tremble, and he looked appealingly at his uncle. "You won't let her go, will you?"
    "Silence!" his uncle thundered, and any ordinary boy would have been petrified by the cold ferocity of that order.
    But Jerry merely rubbed his eyes and explained: "We didn't know it was her!"
    "You didn't know it was me," Kathleen said gently, ruffling his hair. "Something ought to be done about your grammar, but I'm afraid there isn't time now."
    "You don't mean you really are going?" Joe asked, sidling up and capturing her other arm. He, too, looked perturbed. "It would be fun if you could make Uncle Miguel let you stay! I didn't mean to kick you when you were under the table just now, but I'd have kicked harder if it had been Rosa. She's fat and dull, and I don't like her!"
    "It isn't fair to kick people just because you don't like them," Kathleen murmured to him, and then once more freed herself from clinging hands and moved purposefully towards the door.
    She knew that two pairs of greenish-hazel eyes followed her regretfully, but in the Conde de Chaves eyes there was no relenting as he stepped forward to hold open the door for her. Unfailingly polite, he bowed his sleek dark head once more as he said:
     
    "It was good of you to come, senhorita." But she was certain he merely despised her for her stupidity in imagining for one single instant that she was good enough to take entire charge of the nephews of a Portuguese nobleman. Rosa might be fat and dull, but at least she was Portuguese, and she would never have had the effrontery to criticise his sister, and certainly not himself! The additionally bleak look in his eyes was undoubtedly there because she had been so unwise as to let her tongue run away with her. "I understand you are returning to England," staring at her neatly-shod feet, as if they pleased him more than anything else about her. "I wish you a good journey," with the utmost formality.
    "Thank-you, senhor. It is almost certain to be a perfectly smooth journey," she returned, with an arctic quality about her clear English voice that was certainly a match for his own.
    And then she turned to say goodbye to the boys, and a wave of concern for them rushed over her. They looked so small and unwanted standing there in the doorway to the magnificent library, and once she had left them alone with their uncle there would be no one to put in a good word for them.
    "Please, senhor," she begged suddenly, her voice all soft, womanly pleading, one slim, tanned hand with lightly polished nails actually extended a little towards him, "you won't be too