Lord of the Land

by Margaret Rome

  When a concerted yell of encouragement drew her attention back to the bullring she saw men on horseback manoeuvring the tormented bull inside a white circle painted inside the ring, apparently inciting the beast to attack. As she watched, the bull charged as if intent upon digging his horns into the quilted padding protecting one of the horses. Swiftly, the rider raised his arm. She saw a flash of steel as the picador plunged his lance towards the bull's hump, then a sickening spurt of blood when the wounded beast shied off, suffering pain, surprise, and fear.

  At that precise moment, the bullring, the performers, and the entire crowd began swimming before her eyes. She must have gasped aloud, for beneath the cover of frantic applause Maria's voice called, 'What's wrong? Are you feeling faint?'

  Dumbly, Frances nodded, exerting every ounce of willpower to fight wave after wave of nausea.

  'Don't dare to faint here!' Maria's command was totally devoid of compassion. 'Rom would never forgive such a loss of dignity. Pull yourself together and try to appear composed while I make some excuse to the others for our temporary absence.'

  Frances had no idea what pretty lie Maria told, but Rom's response, directed as if from a long way away, sounded amused, even slightly indulgent.

  'Do whatever you wish, chica madre, you deserve a little pampering.'

  Maria's reaction to the fond address, 'little mother', earned because of her success with the egrets, was a long indrawn hiss.

  The events of the following few minutes passed in a blur. Somehow, with Maria's assistance, Frances managed to walk without staggering, without betraying any of the panic she felt when the ground appeared to begin rising and falling away beneath her feet. Normality returned only when she was seated in Maria's car, feeling a breeze teasing her hair and cooling her cheeks while she was being driven at maniacal speed along roads which she assumed led back to the hacienda.

  Even when Maria stamped hard upon the brake, jolting the car to a screeching standstill miles from nowhere, Frances felt no inkling of danger, merely curiosity as to why the car should have been stopped on a deserted stretch of road flanked by endless miles of grazing land, its flatness unbroken except where tall wooden rails had been erected to form a huge, corral-type enclosure.

  'Get out!' Goaded by the bewilderment evident in mist-blue eyes, Maria started towards her looking as berserk as the maddened bull whose eyes had been rolling with the lust to kill. 'Rom loves me!'

  Frances felt the dig of sharp fingernails as she was pulled out of the car, then a thump between her shoulderblades that sent her staggering against the barred gate. 'And I love him far too much to allow any other woman to bear his child!'

  Terrified out of her wits by Maria's insane glare, Frances pressed her back against the gate and felt it give way behind her. With a laugh of pure evil, Maria darted forward to push her hard inside the enclosure before slamming the gate shut and turning a key in an iron padlock.

  'Trespassers really should take more care!' Frances heard her shout gleefully as she ran back towards the car. 'If you look to your right, Condesa,' she yelled above the noise of the revving engine, 'you will see a notice that warns: "Beware of the bull"!'

  It could not possibly be true, Frances assured herself, pressing her shaking body hard against the gate towering a foot above her head where it met the level of a fence built high enough to protect the unwary from beasts averaging a thousand pounds in weight, that could outrun a horse over short distances, that were strong enough to lift a horse and rider on their horns and toss them far enough back to fall clear of their tails. She was experiencing a nightmare from which she was sure to waken soon, a nightmare—she jerked stiff and cold with fear—that included a black speck in the far distance that was moving menacingly towards her!

  Maria must have gone mad! The thought registered at the same instant that the noise of a car engine impinged upon her subconscious. Maria had relented, she was coming back!

  Held fast in the paralysing grip of terror, Frances stood as if frozen, staring at the speck looming nearer and nearer until a body began taking shape before her frightened eyes.

  The increasing proximity of a huge black body, slobbering foam-flecked mouth, and eyes glaring madly beneath a wicked crown of horns gave her the impetus to scream, a piercing cry of terror that was answered by the squeal of brakes and Rom's frantic voice shouting an order.

  'Frances, don't move! Stay very, very still!' Gratefully, she obeyed his command by sliding slowly, helplessly, into a dead faint.

  The white and gold comfort of her surroundings struck her as familiar when eventually she struggled to raise heavy eyelids over eyes still dazed with half-remembered fear. Then when realisation dawned she sighed her pleasure at having been returned home, of being surrounded by things that were safe, familiar, and well loved.

  The noise, soft though it was, must have reached as far as the shuttered window where a man was standing with his back turned, head bowed as if deep in thought. When he swung on his heel she saw that it was Rom, looking somehow different— strained, haggard, deathly pale beneath his tan.

  'How are you feeling now, querida?' His voice, too, sounded different and his movements, though swift, lacked their usual spring of vitality when he strode across to the bed.

  'Fine…' she quavered, moved almost to tears by his expression of deep concern. 'What happened?' She frowned, attempting to recall some horror that her memory seemed reluctant to resurrect. 'Oh, now I remember!' She caught an agonised breath. 'I began feeling unwell… Maria offered to drive me to her home…' Then terror flooded back, swirling horrified disbelief into wide grey eyes. 'Rom,' she levered herself upright, 'Maria tried to kill me!'

  Gently he pressed her back against the pillows. 'Try not to judge her too harshly, chica,' he pleaded, deeply serious.

  Her heart sank like a stone. Was he so much in love with Maria that he was about to try to excuse her dreadful behaviour? She closed her eyes to hide tears of despair and lay motionless while he quietly explained.

  'Maria's emotional instability made itself known during her early teens. Naturally, as our families had always been close, I helped in every way I could to ensure that her condition was kept secret from an inquisitive world. Doctors repeatedly assured her father that there was no danger of her ever becoming violent. All that was necessary, they maintained, was that at the onset of the black moods that were symptomatic of her illness she should be confined to her room where someone could be with her every single moment. Then, when she was about eighteen,' he hesitated, then continued firmly, 'she began imagining that she was in love with me…'

  Something deep inside Frances seemed to stir, then settled back to normal with a sigh of relief.

  'Her father asked my permission—which was readily given—to act out the part of an aristocratic hidalgo who considered no man good enough for his only child, so that whenever she boasted to anyone that I had proposed marriage he could immediately voice a fierce objection which, as well as providing listeners with an impression that the marriage would never take place, also appeared to appease the guilt she must have suffered whenever she voiced the lie.'

  Frances raised her lashes just in time to see agony reflected in eyes sober, as the day of judgment, ridden dark with self-condemnation.

  'Maria will never be allowed such freedom again! I cannot imagine what caused her sanity to snap when it did, but I promise you, Frances,' he stressed with a steel thread of determination running through his words, 'that never in future will she be in a position to pose any kind of threat to your safety.'

  Chica madre! She felt an impulse to tell him that it had been the implication Maria had read in those two small words that had pushed her over the brink of sanity. Little mother! She chanced a sideways glance, wondering if this was the right moment to tell him that she was carrying his child, then forgot everything at the sight of his tortured expression.

  'I can't remember anything about my rescue,' she admitted huskily, 'but I'm certain that you must ha
ve saved my life at the risk of your own. Thank you, Rom,' she smiled shyly, 'I'm very grateful.'

  She was startled by his look of anger, by a grip that tightened as if he were resisting a temptation to shake her.

  'Does a man deserve gratitude for saving his own sanity?' he grated savagely. 'My motive was purely selfish, all I wanted was to ensure that I would continued to be soothed by the calmness of your presence, delighted by an occasional glimpse of deliciously feminine hips wiggling inside masculine denim, won over by the arguments of an uncynical mind, shamed by the generosity of a heart that interprets loving as giving! I don't know exactly when your gentle grey-eyed spirit took possession of my heart, cami mescri,' he groaned suddenly, 'all I know is that, if a presentiment of disaster had not urged me to follow closely behind Maria's car, if I had not arrived just in time to distract the attention of the beast that was bracing itself to charge, I would have wanted to throw my own useless body on its lethal horns! I love you, my life, my adorable chica madre!'

  He scooped her from the pillows to enclose her within the urgent cradle of his arms. 'Luz de mi vida, promise me that you will stay, give me just one more chance to prove myself deserving of the devotion that you wore on our wedding day like a halo for all to see!'

  Very much later, when she had been allowed to descend slowly from a floating cloud of ecstasy to nestle closely into the comfort and security of his arms, Frances dared to stroke tender fingers across a silver wing of hair and scold lovingly.

  'I was worried in case you should be taken ill. Do you realise that the limonada Sabelita persuaded you to drink probably contained some of the weird substances she gathers to make up her so-called love philtres?'

  She felt him stir, heard a growl of laughter deep inside his throat.

  'So what if the drink was a love potion?' he teased, gazing down at her sweetly flushed face with the hunger of a passion starved gypsy. 'Sabelita will hear no complaint from me, querida, because so far as I am concerned, it worked perfectly!'