Master of Hearts by Averil Ives Page B

take over when it is absent, and Kathleen found that her employer was more often aloof than friendly. And the twins were by no means easy to handle, even though she prided herself that she understood children.
    By degrees, however, she discovered the knack of bringing them to heel when they threatened to become unmanageable, in the way that they had done whilst in the care of the unfortunate Rosa. She warned them that one really bad piece of behaviour on their part would recoil on her, and that would result in her dismissal. Whether she entirely believed this in her own heart she wasn't quite sure, but she did know that the threat of losing her was sufficient to bring an acute look of anxiety to the small faces of Jerry and Joe, and they promised to mend their ways without delay. Which, of course, they didn't do in any very noticeable fashion, but at least they refrained from deliberate naughtiness.
    On the whole, Kathleen managed them in a fashion that should have merited approval, if any close observer had felt like rewarding her with approval. But no one apparently did. The children's mother merely looked amused when no one complained of their abandoned habits for over a week, and the Conde really saw very little indeed of them.
    Kathleen wished he hadn't insisted on her having meals in the dining-room, for this was not merely a strain which she could have dispensed with but it imposed on her a burden of anxiety which robbed the meals of any sort of pleasure. They were usually long-drawn-out, and although Maria took over the twins at lunch time Kathleen could never be quite certain that her charges wouldn't take advantage of her temporary absence. They delighted in tormenting Maria, as she knew, and the
     
    harassed wonder concerning what they were getting up to while she sat in state at a long table went close to upsetting her digestion for the first time in her life.
    At lunch, however, she could sometimes count on being alone, for the Conde seemed to have many luncheon appointments in the course of a week that kept him away from the quinta for several hours at a time. When he did lunch at home he frequently contrived to be a little late, so that Kathleen was more than half-way through her meal when he put in an appearance. His sister kept so much to her apartments that she seldom, if ever, conferred the benefit of her society on Kathleen in the middle of the day; but at night it was different, and she liked to make a kind of grand entry into the dining-room wearing something so spectacular that Kathleen felt inclined to gasp when she looked at her.
    Her wardrobe must have cost a small fortune, and although it contained a lot of black it was not what a Portuguese widow might normally have been expected to choose. It was extremely smart and ultra-fashionable black, and usually it was relieved by touches of gold or silver, and frequently by a daringly bright colour.
    Kathleen felt she would never forget the first night that she dined at the same table as the Conde and his sister. To begin with the room was so magnificent, and the Conde was wearing a white dinner jacket and a black cummerbund that made him appear almost devastatingly handsome and far removed from the type of men with whom she was accustomed to sharing evening meals. Shane, for instance, who usually wore an open-necked shirt — admittedly he liked it to be freshly-laundered, and he had a weakness for silk shirts
    and was persuaded with difficulty into a dinner jacket he had had for years.
    Dona Inez looked quite as startling as her brother in very dark crimson silk, and there was a collar of rubies encircling her lovely white throat, and a heavy bracelet of rubies weighed down one of her slender wrists. Kathleen, in embroidered white linen that actually suited her very well indeed and was a bargain she had
     
    picked up at quite an exclusive little dress shop before she left London, felt as ordinary as a white china teacup by comparison with some lovely