The Abducted Heart (Sweetly Contemporary Collection)

by Blake, Jennifer

  “Agreed,” she said, her voice husky as she gave him her hand.

  The first test of their pact came the moment they stepped into the ballroom of the hotel. Irene, scintillating in a long dress of black covered with gold sequins and a headdress topped by a feather plume to match, hurried forward to greet them.

  “Ramón,” she exclaimed, her voice pitched so high with excitement that heads turned in their direction from all around. “I’m so glad you could come, but you haven’t worn a costume, you devil, you or your charming fiancée. I suppose I must forgive you, however. When could I ever do otherwise?”

  She clutched Ramón’s arm, an arch look in her eyes. She drank in his calm greeting before turning her bright, malicious gaze on Anne.

  “My dear Miss ... Matthews ... was it not? You look darling in your little turquoise number, but then, you always do.”

  The sly reference to the fact that Irene had seen her wearing the turquoise gown before was not lost on Anne.

  “Why, thank you,” she said, smiling. Complacently, almost possessively, she placed her left hand over her right where it was tucked into the crook of Ramón’s other arm. “I love wearing it because Ramón bought it for me. I had nothing with me on this visit to use as a costume, but I thought this dress might pass muster since Ramón told me once that in it I reminded him of the Aztec rain goddess, Our Lady of the Turquoise Skirt.”

  The gasp Irene gave was plainly audible. In the sudden silence could be heard a titter of laughter at the woman’s expense, quickly stilled. Anne was aware of the tightening of the muscles of Ramón’s arm, a small signal of approval and congratulations.

  His manner perfectly easy, he filled the awkward moment with a few words of commendation to Irene for her charity work and the splendor of the decorations for the occasion. Detaching himself from her nerveless grasp, he declined to be so selfish as to keep her from her other guests. Before she could recover they made their escape.

  Shortly afterward, they were joined by Estela and Esteban, and the four of them found a table far enough from the musicians for comfortable conversation. Several couples stopped by to greet them and were introduced. Their attitude was cordial, faintly tinged with curiosity.

  Anne and Ramón danced a number of times. Once Anne felt his lips brush her hair and another time the skin of her neck below her ear, but when she drew back to look at him, he merely returned her gaze with the lift of an eyebrow as though it had been no more than a part of the act. They varied this performance by conducting conversations of absorbing interest concerning the different people in the room who were Ramón’s friends and acquaintances and by smiling with apparent delight in each other’s company.

  Once or twice they changed partners with Estela and Esteban. Anne found she liked Estela’s quiet, bearded husband more each time they met. Whether he had been primed by his wife on the way to the hotel, or from an innate politeness, he asked no awkward questions. He talked to her of her home state, Texas, of the worthiness of the charity the gala honored, and when the subject turned to the weather, he gave it as his grave and most considered opinion that a storm was due to break over the city before morning. The rainy season was not due for some months yet, but the weather had held too good for too long.

  The night wore on. The heaviness in the air seemed to increase, though it was impossible for them to hear the sound of thunder over the beat of the music or the laughter and chatter of the crowd.

  A champagne supper served from long tables decorated with ice sculptures presented another opportunity for Anne and Ramón to display their solidarity. They made a great show of serving each other’s plates and recommending the delicacies they had sampled to each other. Still, keeping up such a pretense at lightheartedness proved an effort for Anne. The glass of champagne she drank did nothing to ease the pressure gradually gathering behind her eyes, caused by strain and the sullen atmosphere. If anything, it made it worse.

  Supper had not been long over when Estela and Esteban deserted them, leaving the party. Soon afterward Irene approached their table with a rather embarrassed-looking young man in tow. It became obvious that he had been commandeered for the express purpose of asking Anne to dance, leaving Ramón free to partner Irene.

  Short of actual rudeness, there seemed no way to refuse.

  The young man, as if determined to make his sacrifice complete, kept up a barrage of questions: How did she like Mexico? Would she be staying long? What had she seen? Which did she like best? It might have been more flattering if he had not kept glancing around, trying to keep an eye on Irene as she danced with Ramón. Anne thought he was relieved when she pleaded a headache and asked him to get her something to drink.

  Anne found that she herself derived no pleasure from watching Ramón with the Mexican woman. As soon as her own dancing partner was out of sight, she slipped away, going in search of the quiet of the ladies’ powder room and lounge.

  The headache was not a fiction. By now it was only too real. She was able to get a pain tablet and a paper cup full of water from the maid on duty in the powder room. Swallowing it, she retreated to a small brocaded settee in the lounge. For the moment she had the room to herself and she leaned back, closing her eyes, trying to relax.

  In her mind’s eye she could see Irene moving into Ramón’s arms, her head thrown back and a rapt expression in her narrow brown eyes. Despite the woman’s personality, despite what she had tried to do, there could be no doubt that she cared for Ramón. With the same nationality as his, the same language and customs and circle of friends, there could be little doubt also that she would make him a suitable wife. If she was strong-willed, well, so was he. She would not disgrace him by wearing the wrong clothes or choosing the wrong set of friends. Mingling his blood with hers would help to obliterate the American strain in his bloodline, which he so despised. Their children...

  “So! This is where you have hidden yourself away.”

  Startled, Anne opened her eyes to find Irene standing in the lounge doorway. The Mexican girl let the heavy panel fall shut and sauntered toward her.

  “You will be happy to know, Señorita Matthews, that Ramón is looking for you. He sent me — me! — as a messenger to tell you he is ready to leave. But first there is something we must discuss, you and I.”

  Anne got to her feet. Looking around for a waste basket, she disposed of the paper cup she still held. “I know of nothing,” she said.

  Stepping around the other girl, she moved toward the door.

  Irene swung around, her voice rising. “Don’t you? Don’t you indeed! Well, that’s too bad. I have something to say to you concerning this marriage, and you will listen.”

  Anne pushed open the door. “I think not,” she said softly and went out, letting it fall to behind her.

  She had not gone more than a step before the other girl came catapulting out of the lounge.

  “And I say yes, you will listen!” she screamed. “You stupid little fool, what do you know of love, or of the deep passions of our race? What do you have to give a man like Ramón Castillo? There is no fire under your sweet paleness; you will bore him within a year. And then what? Your face will mock him with memories of his mother’s disgrace. You will find no happiness because he will have none. What good will all his money do you when you find your husband hates you? What can you do, except look elsewhere and bring scandal and tragedy down upon the Castillo house once more, as did that other pale American, his mother? We have long memories here in Mexico. Everywhere you look you will find someone who knows who you are, and what happened to one of your kind in the past. And so everywhere you will find your future, waiting.”

  Frowning, Anne said slowly, “The future is fresh and new — it does not depend on the past. But I wonder how much you and your kind, with your pessimism and disapproving faces and dire warnings had to do with what happened to Ramón’s mother. There is also this: A woman pressured and scorned on all sides may have an affair, but she does not have one alone. There is al
ways a man in it somewhere who must share the blame.”

  Her face contorted, Irene cried, “My father was not to blame! He was a victim of that she-devil!”

  “Oh yes! A victim who was, of course, lured aboard his own yacht at Acapulco?”

  “How dare you!” she shouted, her eyes blazing and her fingers curling into claws as she advanced on Anne. “How dare you suggest such a thing!”

  The need to strike out at her was plain in every line of Irene’s body. Anne stood her ground, determined not to flinch or move. What she had said was no more than the truth and she would retract not a word of it.

  Just as Irene reached her, a man moved from the outer hallway to stand quietly at Anne’s side.

  The Mexican woman halted as if she had stepped into an electric fence.

  “I can see you delivered my message, Irene,” Ramón said, irony lacing his even tone. “My thanks. Anne, darling, are you ready to leave?”

  “Yes, Yes, I am,” Anne answered dazedly, as she felt his fingers warm and firm at her elbow.

  “Then all that remains is to pay our respects to our hostess and go.” With a nod in Irene’s direction that was considerably less polite than his tone, he swung around, and with Anne beside him, walked away.

  A gust of wind lifted the tendrils of hair about Anne’s face as she stepped out of the car onto the front drive. The Castillo house loomed large and dark before them, shadows moving under the entrance arcade as the wrought-iron lantern left alight there swayed in the wind.

  Anne shivered a little as she passed before Ramón into the house. It was not the tension of the impending storm which gripped her, however, but something far different. Ramón had said almost nothing on the drive home. How much he had overheard of the conversation with Irene she could not tell; she suspected it was no small amount. She had waited for him to make some comment, but he had not. She would almost have preferred him to lash out at her, condemning her for discussing his private affairs, for giving her opinion on matters which she was ill prepared to judge. Anything would have been better than the endless, nerve-wracking quiet.

  The stained-glass lantern sprang to life in the entrance hall. Tonight there was no Maria waiting up for them; she had given up her nightly vigils in the last few days.

  Ramón locked the front door behind them, then paused with his hand on the light switch, looking up at Anne who was already halfway up the stairs.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” he asked. “I gave orders to have a percolator left ready in the library.”

  Anne retraced her steps with a certain wariness. The coffee sounded lovely — it was the purpose behind it which troubled her.

  In the study Ramón plugged in the coffee pot. There was only one cup and saucer on the tray, so while it heated he went to find another.

  Anne moved to the french window at the far end of the room and, pulling aside the heavy drapes, looked out. The library was one of the rooms which opened out onto the central patio. The center square was dark and still within the protecting walls — then, as she watched, lightning flared. For a blinding instant it filled the patio with a yellow-blue glow, outlining the leaves of plants and trees and the forms of containers and statues with cool fire. Thunder, deadened by the thick walls of the house, followed within seconds. As if touched off in some way by the lightning, a reckless excitement gripped her. She could not possibly sleep in this kind of weather. Her headache was gone. Why shouldn’t she grasp at the last few hours remaining to her with the man she loved? What did it matter what he said to her? He did not realize the power he had to hurt her, nor would she allow him to guess at it, whatever he chose to accuse her of. And why shouldn’t she say what she pleased also? She had no reason to fear physical retaliation. To be banished would be the worst punishment, and one she must endure anyway. When she was gone, nothing she had said would make any difference.

  When Ramón entered the room she dropped the drape and turned with a smile. He placed the cup and saucer on the tray, then stood with one hand resting on the desk.

  “I believe that I am indebted to you,” he said quietly.

  Anne’s smile faded. “Indebted?” she said without comprehension.

  “For defending my mother to Irene — and, just possibly, giving me a new slant on what I had been taught to think of as solely my mother’s indiscretions.”

  It was the one reaction she had not considered. “I’m sorry if I interfered in something that was none of my business.”

  “I imagine Estela told you?”

  Anne nodded. “She seemed to think I had a right to know. Under the circumstances I could hardly tell her differently.”

  “No, and I doubt if Irene gave you much more opportunity to deny any interest.”

  Again she agreed with a shake of her head.

  “You see? I’m not an unreasonable man. As I told you, I’m grateful for it. I have always been led to believe, you know, that my mother was in the wrong in what she did, and my father completely in the right. It never occurred to me to question it, I’m ashamed to say. There is always the possibility that the version I was given was the correct one — but at least I will no longer condemn the woman who bore me without an attempt to discover the facts. I owe her that much.”

  “I’m glad,” Anne said simply.

  “Because she was an American?” he asked with the lift of a sardonic eyebrow.

  Shielding her expression with her lashes she answered, “Not entirely, although I suppose that is part of it.”

  “And the rest.”

  “I think,” Anne said slowly, “that I feel a certain — kinship — with her. Our circumstances were not the same, of course,” she went on quickly, “but I think I can understand how she must have felt, alone here, without friends or relatives, tied to a man she did not love.”

  A stiffness settled over Ramón’s features. “Yes,” he said, “even I can see how that might make a difference.”

  The bubbling noise of the coffee pot provided a distraction. Seeing that the coffee was ready, Anne moved to pour out the steaming brew. Ramón took the cup she handed him with a preoccupied air, as if he had forgotten that it was the main purpose for their being there.

  As Anne took up her own cup, lightning flashed once more outside the window. As if drawn by the flickering light, Ramón pushed open the french window and stepped outside, his cup in his hand.

  The cool wind which swept into the room carried the damp earth smell of coming rain and brought the sound of thunder nearer. Anne could not resist following Ramón out into the darkness of the overhanging loggia. Another pulsing flash of lightning picked out his tall shape leaning against one of the stone columns. It seemed natural to settle against the next in line. In silence that was neither easy nor uneasy, they stood drinking their coffee, staring out into the tumultuous blackness of the night.

  At last Ramón spoke. “So you think my mother made a bad bargain?”

  “It would seem so,” she replied.

  “Not even a millionaire’s wealth could make living in this country bearable?”

  “Mexico is a beautiful country. It could be a wonderful place to live, if two people loved each other. If they didn’t, all the money in the world couldn’t make them happy together, here or anywhere else.”

  Her voice carried a strong note of defiance because she knew he thought of her as a gold-digger, but he did not take up the challenge. His face in a blue-white glitter of lightning looked pale and bleak.

  Lost in thought, her eyes dazzled by the bright glow and the mutter of thunder in her ears, Anne was not aware Ramón had moved until he loomed up beside her. He took the empty coffee cup from her hand and placed it with his own in a nearby stone trough filled with pansies. When his arms closed around her, a shiver of surprise and abrupt awareness of the chill in the air caught her and then his lips, bitter-sweet with the taste of coffee, were on hers. He teased her mouth with genre, experimental kisses, trailing fire across the curve of her cheek to her hairline.
His arms tightened, his hands moved over her back, drawing her closer against him. “Anne,” he murmured, his voice low and husky, his breath warm against her neck. “Por Dios, I want you so.”

  She tried to speak his name but his mouth captured her parted lips as he crushed her to him. His fingers cupped her chin, dropping to the tender hollow of her throat, then to the soft curves beneath the smooth silk of her bodice.

  “I thought I could keep away from you, but I cannot. Somehow you have crept into my brain and my blood. Stay with me, Anne, mi alma. I will give you anything you ask, only stay with me.”

  He had spoken no word of love. He had said he wanted her, no more than that. And in return he was prepared to give her anything she wanted — except himself. Despite everything she had said, he was offering to bribe her with his money! It should have been funny, that he would offer the one thing he had so despised the other women he had known for finding attractive. It was not. It was only painful that he could still think she would accept such an offer.

  “Ramón—” she said, her breath catching on the pain caused by speaking his name. Tears that seemed to rise upward from her heart crowded into her throat.

  “Yes, querida?”

  “Please,” she whispered, pressing her hands against his chest.

  The muscles of his arms were steely with resistance. Beneath her fingers she could feel the heavy beating of his heart and the abrupt cessation of his breathing. Suddenly she was free.

  An absurd feeling that she should apologize touched her. She wished she could see his face instead of the dark, shadowed silhouette he presented in the faint light from the library.

  Without warning the tension within her snapped. She whirled, pushing through the french window into the house. She thought she heard him call her name, but she did not stop. She could not. She had to reach her room before the blinding tears came and she could not find her way.

  Nine