Meriel acknowledged that this was a masterly performance and she could only admire her. If Ramon had ever announced to her that he was to marry another woman she knew that she would have collapsed, but the congratulations had come readily even though shock had held her fast for a few moments. She was a warm and lovely woman, with kindness of heart that shone from her eyes, even though at the back of those beautiful eyes there was a kind of haunted sadness.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AFTERWARDS Meriel was never sure how she managed to survive the next few hours. Until now it had seemed so unreal, like some bitter-sweet game that Ramon played with her, sensual, exciting, but impossible. A part of her mind had refused to accept the reality of it, knowing that she could never be a permanent part of his life. Now, the stage was being set with a thorough, almost ruthless vigour by Ramon that left no room for doubt. It was announced, the ring was on her finger, she seemed to be surrounded by astonished and disbelieving people and Ramon kept her under his hand like a captive slave.
She recalled wondering how Dona Barbara looked now after almost seven years. It could be summed up in one word—shocked! The imperious face seemed to have aged in minutes and she sat tightly upright in the breakfast-room, apparently having made for the first chair available, her lips in one tight line, white-edged with anger as Carmen stood beside her. They were as forbidding a pair now as they had ever been, starchily dressed in a style that looked more of the last century than this one, formidable enemies.
Only Ramon's power in their lives made them hold their tongues. They were wealthy, she knew that, but they were also completely under Ramon's domination. Their wealth was from shares in the Ortiga empire and Ramon wielded the power there. Chairman and major stockholder, he had never left them in any doubt that they owed their life-style and fortunes to him. The Ortiga inheritance was tied up securely, the shares only theirs for their lifetime. They were not able to sell or bargain and their rights were strictly limited. Only Dona Barbara's age and the deference due to her as his aunt made him consult her at all and she knew better than to cross him although she might be fainting with rage.
"I regret the shock we have given you," he said silkily as he came into the room with Meriel, Consuelo beside them. "Had you not arrived so suddenly you would have been informed in a less spectacular manner, but as you are here, I can hardly pretend that nothing is different. Meriel wears my ring and we do not intend to wait for long."
"I—I'm very happy for you." The words were choked out, forced from her throat by the necessity for courtesy. "It was, as you say, a shock. I really should have known. We have all seen the way you have looked after her. At least, she knows our ways and that is suitable."
There was a veiled condescension in the tight voice that made Meriel stiffen but she knew that she would have to expect this for ever. She was always to be as she had been, a tolerated outsider.
"It would be well, I think, for the family to become accustomed to Meriel's ways," he said quietly, steel behind the silk. "She is as firm in her ways as we are in ours and as she is to rule my life from now on, certain adjustments will have to be made. She will be in complete control of the house and no doubt will want to make alterations, and do not forget that her children will be heirs to the Ortiga wealth and fortunes. I think that from now on there will be a slight but noticeable shift of emphasis. Meriel is a little different from all of us, her life has been spent between two continents and she is a great success in her own right. Her new outlook will no doubt ginger us all up and put a little vigour into things."
There was a silence so deep that Meriel dared not breathe, but her eyes found Manuel's as he sat at the table listening, his eyes as round as the moon. She moved uneasily when he stood and walked across to them, his eyes on her face.
"I think that I do not understand what is happening, Merry," he said quietly. "I think though that you are wearing Ramon's ring and that you are not going away again?"
"She is going to marry me," Ramon told him with a sudden gentleness in his voice. "She will not leave us alone and unhappy again. I think that we both have what we want, Manuel."
"It is all right, to make Merry your wife?" Manuel asked with lingering anxiety.
"She is not my sister, I am happy to say," Ramon assured him softly. "I think that it will mean that you now have a greater claim on her, you will have a very complicated relationship and she will be hard pressed to get rid of you."
"I must say, congratulations." Manuel stood stiffly and shook hands gravely with Ramon who looked down at him with equal gravity and nodded. Then, with a whoop of delight, Manuel threw his arms around Meriel and hugged her breath away, all boy again and filled with glee.
"You said that you hated him! It was not true. I think it was a lovers' quarrel. But," he added his face suddenly falling, "I will not be a pageboy at your wedding! I absolutely refuse to."
"You are too small to give the bride away," Ramon said soothingly, "but I can promise that you will suffer no such indignity as to be a pageboy. You may consider yourself to be an honoured guest. As to the lovers' quarrel," he added in amusement, "remind me to check your reading material. You are perhaps though simply seeing too much television."
For a few moments they had been one small family unit and Meriel had forgotten the existence of the forbidding aunt and cousin. She was reminded though at once.
"Surely such haste is not a good idea," Dona Barbara began, her colour somewhat restored and with it her confidence. "It is usual in our family to wait."
"I have waited," Ramon informed her sharply, his gaze going to Meriel's face and softening at once. "I have waited for at least ten years and that is a measure of self-discipline that is an example to any man. One week if it can be arranged, and the wedding here at the hacienda!"
After that there was nothing to say, and it was apparent even to his aunt that her services were not really required, her advice not to his liking and therefore dismissed. Meriel ate her breakfast in a hazy dream, wondering when she was going to wake up and realise that it was all untrue, her ears picking up the faint sound of raised voices from the study as Ramon talked to his aunt and her eyes painfully aware of the annoyance on Carmen's face and the utter misery on Consuelo's.
To her credit, the beautiful Venezuelan girl tried to keep some sort of conversation going, but Carmen said nothing at all and Meriel was too dazed to help very much. They were all glad when Ramon announced that he was going to fly them to Caracas after lunch and that he would not return for at least two days.
Now that he had what he wanted, he seemed disposed to get on with his affairs and ignore Meriel, a situation she was well accustomed to in her life here. It took a great deal of courage to enter the study and confront him when she had thought through all the things that would have to be arranged. He seemed to be giving no thought to the wedding now that he had her promise and had made his announcements.
"I want to talk to you," she began when he called for her to come in. "There's a lot to discuss and…'
"I will try to get back in two days," he said, continuing to leaf through papers, his mind clearly elsewhere, and her temper soared at such indifference.
"Well, then, shall I discuss my problems with Manolito? As he seems to be the official mouthpiece when you're too preoccupied to answer me, perhaps I should ask him about the wedding-gown, my father, my job and all the other bits and pieces."
He looked up slowly, simply raising his eyes and surveying her beneath dark brows, his eyes narrowed.
"You do not have a job," he reminded her in a hard voice. "Your father is at the other end of a telephone, the wedding-dress will have to wait for two days. I have work to do, a small but demanding empire to keep on an even keel and I am not about to be put out of my stride by anything."
"Then perhaps you should listen to your aunt!" she advised him sharply. "Let's wait. We can wait until you can fit me into your busy schedule!"
She turned to the door but he was beside her in a few swi
ft strides, closing the door and forcing her back against it, his hands on either side of her head as he looked down at her with dark intent eyes.
"If you are wanting to go back to England and see your father, tie up the loose ends of your life there, then the answer is no!" he bit out. "The gown can be bought in Caracas, a few hours away, and I will take you there as soon as I come back. We can if you wish have the wedding in two weeks instead of one so that you may fuss to your heart's content, but you will not return to England!"
"So I'm a prisoner?" she asked, her temper rising at his indifference to her feelings for her father. "I'm to stay here like a patient child waiting for you?"
"I had hoped that you would stay here waiting for me with a great deal of impatience," he said softly, his lips beginning to brush her forehead gently. He was not touching her except for this persistent caress but it was enough to ease all her temper away and she was hard pressed to remain passively leaning against the old door. "I have been impatient for a long time while you lived a separate life in England. Two days of waiting is surely not asking too much."
"I—I only wanted to—to…' She made the mistake of raising her eyes to his and he was smiling down at her with amusement.
"So do I," he whispered softly. "I want to very much indeed."
"Ramon!" As colour flared into her face she raised her fingers to his lips in an instinctive gesture to stop the words that fell so sensuously from his curved lips and he raised his hand from the door, taking her fingers in his and drawing them into his mouth, sucking each one in turn. It was so deeply pleasurable, so tormenting that physical pain shot through her like torture and she gave an odd little gasp of sound, a whimper of distress, a signal that he acknowledged by drawing her into his arms and turning her until he was the one leaning against the hard warmth of the oaken door. His fingers tangled in her hair as he drew her unresisting into the hard demand of his hips, his mouth opening above hers and taking her lips with urgent demand.
Now that she had promised, now that she wore the ring there was no resistance in her. She was all melting warmth, her bones turned to water as they stood locked together in an embrace that was almost frantic in its enjoyment. His lips searched hers deeply, his hands tight on her hips as he held her against the swiftly growing desire of his body. All her fears fled as if they had never been and there was no house, no relatives, no past, only the moment and the need that raced through them both like a fire across the plains.
When he raised his head, his breathing a harsh gasp in his throat, Meriel clung to him, her open mouth against his neck, the taste of his skin, salty and heated on her tongue, years of longing in her movements as she twisted against him.
"Meriel!" His voice was a shaken plea, deep and violent. "Dear God! Stop or I will take you now with the house beset by disapproving faces and the floor hard and unyielding against your back!"
The hard reality of his words sank in slowly and she faced his dark glittering eyes with flushed face and dazed unseeing eyes, still leaning towards him as he lifted her away from the burning arousal that had fired her own sexuality.
"We're engaged—we…' she began in a trembling whisper.
"And you have decided to surrender to me now, and here?" he asked, his voice still shaken with desire. "I had thought that I would have to coax you into submission in spite of the messages of your eyes. I forgot that you are not still my timid little waif of so long ago. You are now a go-getting, fast-talking salesperson." He was trying to take the tension and the stinging excitement out of the air and she saw the white flash of his smile before she lowered her lashes to hide her growing shame and confusion.
"Now we have the quick slide into the past," he teased. "How will I ever discover the real you? Who is in here? Who is really in that lovely head?" He cupped her face and looked with smiling eyes into hers, and her blushes were painful on her face.
"You know," she quipped shakily, "a bad-tempered, businesslike…'
"Be quiet!" he suddenly ordered. "We can so readily tease each other into a situation that will be resolved in a few minutes of wild passion right here. When you come to me it will be for much longer than that and I will have you sobbing in my arms for the fulfilment you need. I have waited too long for it to be over in a burst of gratification." He released her with one stinging kiss on her lips, a groan torn from him when she instantly moved against him. "We are both hungry," he said harshly as he strode to his desk, his back taut beneath the shirt that was still damp against his tight muscles. "It is a hunger that will have to wait for the time and the place. About your worries…'
"It doesn't matter," she said in a soft voice. "I'll telephone my father and—and then I'll wait."
He looked across at her, saying nothing, but she was sure that words were not far away, but although she waited, her heart thumping with anxiety, he said nothing and turned his eyes back to the work piled up on his desk. For one brief second she felt that there was a resolution to confess something that was hidden deep in those eyes, but whatever it was, he decided to keep silent and there was nothing she could do about that. She knew him too well.
After the others had gone, the house was suddenly too silent, an air of waiting about the whole place. She knew that by now every servant would know that her new status here was to be as Ramon's wife. They did not need to be told officially, they seemed to have their own secret telegraph that spread like wildfire through the whole estate. Manuel she had expected to question her, to be excited and eager for news, but he was simply quietly happy and her guess was that Ramon had told him to keep out of things for the present. In any case he was to be too busy because later in the morning she heard the sound of a voice she had once known well.
Arturo Morales had once for a very short time in her life been a tutor here for her, and now, with the need for mourning over, he had returned to take up his normal duties with Manolito. She smiled into his surprised and austere face as she went down the corridor to meet him and for a moment his eyes narrowed in thought before his face relaxed into a smile of greeting.
"Senorita Meriel, is it not?" he asked quietly. "My one-time student and the best loved sister in the world from what I gather from my small and talkative charge."
"I'm flattered that you remember me, Senor Morales," she smiled, shaking the hand that had come out to meet hers. "My stay here was quite short as it turned out."
"I could not forget such brilliantly shining hair," he remarked, "and the colour is not really normal for Venezuela. More than that though I am constantly reminded of your existence by Manuel, who, has always been in a fever of excitement when he was to visit you in your country."
"This is Merry's country now," Manuel's voice announced with all the determination of his older brother. "Merry is going to marry Ramon and stay here for ever. When they have children I shall be their uncle, or so Ramon told me. I shall like that," he added with a smile at Meriel that had her trying to control the blush that stained her cheeks.
"Well," Arturo Morales looked long and hard at Meriel and then smiled his usual tight but genuine smile. "It should have come as no shock to everyone I think? From a child you seemed to be in Ramon's care, it is only natural that he would feel deeply enough to wish to make you his wife. I am very happy for you. Now we will get on with our studies," he added, turning purposefully to Manuel. "Sadly much time has been lost."
She stood there after they had gone and his words ran round her head, chasing each other. There was something so steadily rooted in the past in this place. It was not out of the ordinary to think that there would be a tutor here. There were good schools in Venezuela but it was more in keeping with the place that Manuel should be taught here. It had never been given any consideration when she had asked to go to school when she was a child, and Senor Morales was clever and good at his job. Did her marriage too fit into this comfortable acceptance of the past, that Ramon had treated her as a charge from the first time she had come here and that it was only natural that he should mak
e her his wife?
She remembered his words from this morning when he had spoken to his aunt. "I have waited for ten years." Ten years! How old had she been then? Thirteen? Fourteen? Had he looked at her and said to himself that she would do very nicely when she was older? Was she in any way a threat to the inheritance? No. She was not in any way related, a slight tie perhaps through her mother. It was all so unsettling, and the memory of his eyes looking with thoughtful consideration as she had waited earlier for him to speak the words that seemed to be hovering on his tongue came back to her clearly. She knew far less than she should know as his future wife. All she was sure of was her love for him and his undoubted desire for her. She would have to wait and see what the future brought. In the meantime, there was her father.
His silence when she told him that she was about to marry Ramon brought a tremor of unhappiness into her heart. He knew that once again she was going to stay in Venezuela and leave him, and it took considerable effort on his part to control the steadiness of his voice.
"Do you love this stepbrother of yours, Meriel, or have you been brow-beaten into agreeing to marriage?"
"You're very astute, Daddy," she said tremulously, "but there's nobody here to bully me and in any case, Ramon wouldn't permit it. We're marrying because we love each other." A white lie, but she had to believe in it or her world would crumble. He felt strongly enough to want to marry her anyway and she would have to be content with that, she would have to hope.
"Then I'm happy, my dear," he said quietly. "I haven't forgotten how Ramon, made your life there bearable and I haven't forgotten too that you so obviously pined for him when you were here at school. I should have expected it, I suppose, but with you being away from him for so long, I had almost forgotten the attachment you used to have towards him."
"Will you come to see me married?"
The Ortiga Marriage Page 12
