‘Old witch!’ Persepha muttered, but there was no real intensity in her words. She didn’t really dislike the old woman, for if she was possessive about the Don, and fiercely defensive about his honour, it was because she was Latin and had served this household from a very young girl. If he had to have the English girl to satisfy him, then the old woman understood, for he was muy hombre, as she was fond of saying. But she didn’t have to approve his choice, and Persepha knew that she waited, like a black widow spider, for some flaring disagreement to throw them apart so that he would cease to even want her. Then like other patrónes he would take a Latin mistress, and that - so Carmenteira thought - would put the nose of the English girl completely out of joint.
Carmenteira thought her proud, and in her estimation only men had the right to be proud and self-willed. She was old, of another time, and she believed that women should be humble and grateful for a man’s attentions. She wanted to see Persepha humbled, one way or another, and that was why Persepha stayed up here and waited to greet the Don in privacy.
She steeled herself for that meeting, and had even dressed for it in an apricot-toned dress of spotted chiffon, with a deep frill at the hem and a softly detailed neckline. It suited her colouring, and the chignon style of her hair leaving her slim neck bare and vulnerable, with tiny gold tendrils of hair against her creamy skin. She had coloured her lips lightly, but wore no other cosmetic apart from a dab of perfume.
He had been away from her for ten days, and she hoped that if he had missed her, he might not be overly curious about that night she had spent away from the hacienda.
Her hand stole to her temple, from which the mark of her fall had ebbed away. It might have been a far worse blow had she not been wearing a hat, but the pink cloche had cushioned the side of her forehead against the full force of her head hitting the ground as the heaving of the earth had thrown her right out of Gil’s arms. That upraised stone could have left her with a scar, and she didn’t think that the Don liked his possessions damaged in any way; he would dislike a scarred woman as much as he would a cracked wine goblet, for perfection pleased his eye and he had handled her much in the same way as she had seen him toy with a rare wine glass or a jade object from his collection in the sala, running his lean dark fingers over the silky surface and the slim contours, seeking to find only a sensuous pleasure.
Well, she wouldn’t just stand here, like a child waiting to be punished, and fingers gripping the chiffon handkerchief that matched her dress she walked to one of the deep cane chairs and sat down, crossing her legs with an assumption of ease and admiring abstractedly the design of her ivory-coloured, high-heeled sandals.
Down in her midriff she could feel a riot of nerves and it was impossible to face with a calm mind the thought of having him close to her again ... she recalled the moment of their parting and what she had said to him . . . and what he had said to her, about both of them getting their wish. Ten days, and his eyes would take in every inch of her, possessing her without even touching her.
She laid her head back against the lime-green cushion of the chair and closed her eyes against the sun ... she would pretend to be dozing when he came to her, as if it troubled her in no way at all that he was home again.
For this moment, and the next, she was alone in the hot silence of the tropical noon, which dazed even the cicadas, and there stole to her nostrils the subtle perfume of the frangipani flowers that clambered all over a nearby wall, spreading from a tree planted years and years ago and now grown strong and high, making a small temple of its boughs and filling the nearby air with that mystic flavour.
Flower of temples, and flower of love ... she gave a little shiver and wished that it had been possible to get away from Mexico before the Don’s return. But there had been no way to get hold of her passport; she had gone to the door of his office one evening, intending to try his desk in the hope that he might have left it unlocked, but to her amazement, and her anger, she had found the door of his office firmly locked. He had guessed that she might try to find her travel papers and her passport, and so as an added precaution against her recovery of them, he had during his absence locked her out of his study. She had wanted to pummel at the door, scream and kick at it in her impotent sense of fury at being treated not only like a prisoner but as a child not to be trusted.
But I’m not to be trusted, she thought idly. He knows I’ll go, if I ever get hold of my papers! He knows I’ll run away if I get the chance.
Her hand flung out towards the frangipani of its own accord and her fingers crushed the tiny, star-like flowers with a cruelty she was unaware of; all she knew in this moment was a need to find ease for all her tumult of heart and body, and she was still too unworldly to realize that only by inflicting pain could one’s own pain be eased.
It was her innermost nerves that felt his approach, for he had come through the open glass doors before she heard him. She tensed and forced her eyes to remain closed, until shadow fell across her eyelids and she knew him to be standing over her, tall against the sun. He didn’t speak and she knew that he was waiting with diabolic patience for her to lose control of her apparent composure.
The silence stretched until it tore at her nerves and she couldn’t stand any longer that silent, curious, mocking scrutiny. He knew she was wide awake and only pretending to doze in the sun. He knew it to be a battle of wills, and she could actually feel the magnetic power of his gaze penetrating into her mind ... her very bloodstream.
Without laying a finger upon her the Don made her open her eyes to him, and he filled the world like a dark shadow, his eyes unfathomable because the sun was behind him.
Still he waited, and she knew that she had to speak first, had to say something, and because she had shown him that she was not deliriously overjoyed to see him again, she found it comparatively easy to murmur a casual, ‘Hello, señor. You’re looking well.’
He was looking as tanned and lean as a hard-riding Indian, yet she wondered if it was her imagination that seemed to see a deeper incisiveness to the lines beside his dark eyes. ‘I trust that your business deal was brought to a satisfactory conclusion?’ she added. ‘Will you now make lots more money?’
She was inwardly pleased by her own flippancy, and then she flinched as he suddenly leaned down, gripped her wrists and pulled her to her feet, so swift an action that it seemed to check the beat of her heart as she was swung into the full play of the sun and studied so intently that she felt like some objet d’art which had a flaw he had to search for.
She flung up her chin and gave him a proudly defiant look. She had done nothing of which she need feel ashamed and she wasn’t going to be forced to defend herself when she was an innocent victim of what Gil had called an act of nature.
‘Well, Persepha, are you disappointed that the plane didn’t crash and land me in hell instead of Latin America?’ As he drawled the words he carried to his lips the hand whose fingers were drenched in the scent of the frangipani, and as he kissed her skin, running his lips along each separate finger, she saw his nostrils quiver and he suddenly brought her palm right against his face and he breathed that scent which her warm skin had intensified.
‘Dare I hope that you missed me for even an hour?’ His words moved his lips against her palm, and the sensation was curiously intimate, so that she wanted to snatch away her hand before a hot flood of sensuous memory flooded over her. Too late, for he gripped her around the waist and brought her so bone-close to him that only a shadow could have slithered between them.
When he walked, when he rode, whenever he entered a room he had that élan vital of a body in perfect control of its every muscle, but for a wild moment, a raking second or two, Persepha felt him quiver from his neck to his heels as he locked her against him, until he must have felt every particle of her slim body through the thin chiffon of her dress.
He moulded her to his hard frame as she knew he moulded her to his will, as if she were made of clay and could eventually be made to bend to
his every whim and fancy, until she lost her own identity and became part of him.
‘No!’ She jerked her head aside and wouldn’t succumb to that power he could assert over everyone; in her case a physical power with a wild thread of passion running in it, reaching out to those dark, secret places where love didn’t warmly glimmer to make of passion a splendid thing.
‘No - I can’t kiss you!’ She cried out the words as if they were a confession she was making on the rack. All he had to give her was passion, and she didn’t want that... not that.
‘And why can’t you kiss me, Persepha?’ He gripped her chin in his hard fingers and made her look at him almost hurting her as he forced her to a full frontal scrutiny. His black eyes looked down into hers, a little flame smouldering at the centre of each one. ‘Have you something on your conscience, my dear? Has something happened that you feel ashamed of? Come, why not tell me, make a clean breast of it? What have you done, smashed some of my fine glassware, or spilled ink on the panel Persian rug in the dining sala?’
He was mocking her, being the cruelly smooth inquisitor leading up to the real accusation. Persepha hated him for that and her fingers clawed at his jacket, but couldn’t reach to his face, for she was too tightly crushed to him, held as if in a vice that might break her bones.
‘Y-you’ve been grilling Juan Feliz, haven’t you?’ she panted. ‘You’ve found out about that - that night I had to spend in town, and you’re wild as hell about something I just had no control over—’
‘Ah, was it as impetuous and demanding as that, mi vida, that you could not control what occurred that night?’
His face seemed devilish to her as his voice sank down on that final word. He frightened her more than he ever had, and she felt a kind of terror taking hold of her that he knew about Gil - yet how could he know? They had been so utterly careful about the hiring of the cab; Gil had telephoned from the store where he worked and the cab-driver had picked her up in the town square, where she had waited by the equestrian statue. No one had seen her... and then her heart gave a little trip that made her catch her breath.
There had been someone hanging about ... in her relief at getting out of town she had quite forgotten until now that there had been a man in the square that morning. One of those intensely thin and sallow Mexicans, with a coal-dark moustache that drooped at the ends like a bandit’s, and eyes like shotgun pebbles that bored into a woman. She had been so relieved by the arrival of the cab that she had quickly pulled open the door, her edge of panic making her voice rise as she had given the driver her address.
As these images flashed again through her mind she stared up at the Don her husband, and her heart warned her that he knew something... perhaps everything.
She had not intended to go on the defensive, but now she had to... that look on the Don’s face warned her that she was pleading for her life.
‘Juan Feliz has told you that he drove me into town the day we had those earth tremors,’ she said, and she strove to keep her voice in control. ‘And he’s also told you that I didn’t return with him to the hacienda but arrived home the following morning? And you think - you believe that I did something I ought to be ashamed of? But I didn’t, señor, and that is the absolute truth. I went to the shops a-and then I started to stroll about among the houses with those charming old courtyards - all at once I felt the ground moving and scared out of my wits I ran into one of these courtyards and I tripped and struck my head - I was knocked out, señor, and these people in the house were kind enough to take care of me until the morning. It so rained that I couldn’t get away until the break of day -and that’s the truth—’
‘Oh, it’s true enough about the tremors, and the fact that you were hurt,’ he said, and his eyes narrowed as they brushed across her forehead. ‘You had facial bruises and they were seen by my servants - but what my servants haven’t seen, or heard, just yet, is that you were with a young American all that night - ah, I see from the look on your face, querida, that you recall him. He works there, eh? Has fair hair and a rugged kind of face that appeal to girls, and charm of the easy-going variety. We met him once on the beach and you lied that time, as well. You pretended you didn’t know him when all the time you did. Was it then that you arranged to meet again, as soon as my back was conveniently turned? Was it more pleasant in his arms, mi vida, than it was in mine?’
‘I knew,’ she cried out, straining to be free of these arms that felt like iron bands crushing breath and hope out of her, ‘that you’d think what you are thinking! How do you know about Gil? Have you spies posted all over town? I -I noticed there was a slinky individual hanging around the morning after—’
‘Really, the morning after being consoled by the so charming Señor Howard?’
‘Oh - go to hell!’ Persepha closed her eyes against the cruel dark look on his face and suddenly she didn’t care two hoots if he took her neck in his hands and snapped her backbone. She waited coldly for the pain of it, for she knew him capable of the most utter ruthlessness, and who was there beyond these walls to care whether or not she was ever seen again. Gil Howard liked her well enough to aspire to an affair with her, but beyond that he felt no deep concern for her. He liked what the Don had already, her body and her hair and the cool golden looks that condemned her to be so wanted. Not for herself! Oh, never for the person she was at the heart and soul of her.
She flung back her head as if exposing her neck for his hands, and as she had thought they circled the slim pale column, dark against her skin, warm and threatening, his eyes shimmering down at her, intensely dark and dangerous.
‘Yes, I should break your neck, amiga,’ he said, in a soft and menacing voice. ‘And if you wonder how I know about the American, then I will tell you, before you die first from sheer female curiosity. When I arrived home you did not come down to give me your warm and heartfelt welcome, so I went to my office to read any mail which had come to the hacienda during my absence. Sure enough there was a selection, and the most interesting of the lot was a grubby, ill-spelt, local letter, which out of sheer male curiosity I opened. It was from a certain person who used to be employed in my stables. In his bad, unstable hand he wrote to inform me that my wife was “sleeping” as he stated it, with an American named Gil-berto Howard who worked in a gem store on the avenida in town. He had himself seen the two of you talking together near the store, and he followed you to Señor Howard’s apartment not far from the avenida. You entered, he wrote, and he thought perhaps that you had gone there to look at some gems. But no, the following morning he saw you in the town square, riding off in a cab to the Hacienda Ruy, and he put “two together and made one”.
‘As he had this information,’ the Don continued grimly, ‘he thought I had better pay well for it unless I wished it to be known all over the region that I had a loose woman for a wife, who had put horns on my head, where they belonged to match my cloven pride. Well, mi vida, how do you think that hits a man just returned from a long and rather arduous trip? A pleasant welcome, eh? Better than a kiss any day, no?’
At the conclusion of his words Persepha could only gaze at him in sheer horror. ‘Blackmail?’ she gasped. ‘By that man - the one I saw? That sallow little man with the bandit’s moustache? Oh God, no wonder he looked at me with eyes like shotgun bores! He thought - and it isn’t true, señor. I didn’t sleep with Gil! I was on my way out of his apartment when the tremors came and threw me to the ground, where I struck my head. Gil looked after me - and what with the rain - I had no option but to stay at his place. He — he didn’t touch me! I wouldn’t have let him! I’m not that sort - you should know better than anyone that I - that I—’
‘Oh, I know,’ the Don said drily, and still holding his hands about her neck he bent his head and his lips closed on her lips, with those appealing words still upon them. Then he drew his mouth slowly away, and with narrowed eyes he studied her mouth, drawn slightly open like a sensuous flower against her creamy skin. ‘Why did you go to his apartment, Persep
ha? He’s a young and virile man, and he could be excused for thinking that a girl with honey in her eyes and a rather heartrending shape to her lips was a warm and generous creature. Don’t tell me that he didn’t flirt and that you weren’t slightly flattered by his attentions? Were you running from him when you tripped and fell?’
‘No,’ she shook her head, even as a flush came into her cheeks at the way he had said “a warm and generous creature” as if in reality she was as cold and ungiving as the statue she had claimed to be. ‘I’m not going to let Gil be blamed for any of this. He was kind and good to me. He bathed my head and behaved like a perfect gentleman.’ ‘I see.’ The Don’s expression was sardonic. ‘He caught the chill blowing off the ice maiden and retreated before he developed frostbite. It takes a brave man, querida, that you will admit!’
She smiled just a little as she saw the ironic humour seeping back into his eyes. ‘But what are you going to do about that nasty letter - I suppose it’s from that groom you threw out of your stables? He had to find some way to get back at you, and he’s trying to do it through me?’ ‘Exactly.’ The Don drew his hands away from her as a white-coated manservant came along the terrace carrying a tray of drinks, which the Don had presumably ordered to be brought to them. They were set down on the terrace table, set at an angle that overlooked the gorge, and as the Don began to pour the drinks Persepha sat down again, rather glad to on account of her rather shaky legs. It had come as a shock that the Don had received a blackmail letter, and one that couldn’t be completely proved as untrue. She had spent the night with Gil Howard, and though with entire innocence, it couldn’t look anything but the usual sort of affair, conducted while her husband was absent on business.
‘You will have sangria?’ The Don’s voice broke in on her distressed reflections, and when she glanced at the tray on the table she saw the tall pitcher of ruby-coloured sangria, a very Spanish drink concocted of wine, cognac, sections of fruit, sparkling ice, cinnamon and soda-water. It was a delicious drink on a hot day, and looked very inviting there in the cut-glass pitcher.
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