"Are we almost there?" she asked, stretching.
"Almost."
Her mouth was dry. "I'd like something to drink."
"A coke?"
She shook her head. "Champagne," she said, sleepily. "We are celebrating, aren't we?"
He gave her an odd look, as if her mentioning that they had something to celebrate was in questionable taste.
"Champagne it is, then," he said, after a moment. "They should be serving something to eat soon."
She shook her head. "Not hungry."
"I don't recall your eating at the airport."
She felt a slight flush of pleasure rising to her face. He had noticed it then. It was a small success on the road to the Olympics. "Maybe later," she decided, perfectly willing to cooperate.
Simon signaled the flight attendant, who was at their side in a moment, smiling down at him.
"My wife will have a glass of champagne," Simon told her abruptly and coolly, turning back to his work. "Oh, and bring me a Scotch on the rocks."
Eye contact, Jill discovered. Her husband turned it on and off at will. He was in control every step of the way. She had a lot to look forward to. When the drinks arrived, Simon put his work aside. He lifted his glass and regarded her with an absorbed expression. He seemed about to say something, but then, after pausing a moment and waving his glass at her briefly, took a long drink.
Jill stared down at the bubbles in her glass. She wondered if he had not suddenly realized the irrevocability of what he had done. If only she knew something about him, she thought desperately, but it seemed to her that he was carefully drawing a line of demarcation between them. You keep to your side, and I'll keep to mine.
She lifted her glass. Well, two could play at that game. "Salud," she said, downing the drink at once. "More, please."
He gave her a quizzical look and then signaled the flight attendant. As Jill's glass was refilled, he stared at it as if trying to commit the bubbles to memory.
"Do you find it good?" he asked at last, in a stiff, formal manner.
"Why not?"
"Do you drink much?"
"Oh, I see," Jill said. "You're trying to find out whether you married an alcoholic."
"Are you?"
"You didn't," she answered in a frigid tone. She thought of the long, boring evenings with Derek, when a drink might have made things more interesting perhaps. She detested liquor but was not about to let Simon know. At least not yet.
"I like New York in June," she said sarcastically. "How about you?"
"Excuse me?" Simon watched her curiously.
"Oh nothing. Just the line of a popular song. I suppose," she added gaily, "you say potay-to, and I say potah-to."
Simon shrugged. "I'm not sure I like them either way."
"Ah," said Jill. "Now we're getting somewhere. I've learned that you don't like potatoes."
Simon reached over and put her empty champagne glass down. "You want to know something about me, who I am, how I live, but you're afraid to come right out and ask me."
"I suppose you're right," Jill said. "Are you—?" She stopped. She had almost asked it. Are you sorry you married me? It was the one question she wanted answered more than any other. She took a deep breath. Begin at the beginning. "I know you're a sort of adventurer. I know you come from Texas and you were my uncle's partner. That's all I know. You pop into my life like a jack-in-the-box and sort of bounce around without letting me get a hook into the real you."
"Oh, you've hooked me all right," he said tauntingly.
"Hooked you?" She was angry now. "Perhaps it's the other way around. I don't care what Jay Wilhelm said."
He turned to her sharply. "What did Jay tell you?"
She was taken aback at the menacing look in his eyes. What was he trying to withhold? "Nothing," she said, frightened. "What could he have told me? He just said you had never been serious about anyone before. Is that anything to get upset about?"
He relaxed for a moment, and then, reaching for his briefcase, removed some papers and spread them out on the tray.
"All I know about you," Jill said, "is that you carry that case with you wherever you go."
"I'm a very busy man."
"Even on your honeymoon?" she asked, trying to keep the sarcasm in her voice to a minimum.
He laughed briefly and reached over and kissed her lips lightly. "Even on my honeymoon." He turned back to his work. "Oh, but keep talking. I'm really interested in everything you have to say."
"Sure," Jill said. "Then order me some more champagne."
"You've had quite enough."
"I'm not a child," she told him impatiently. "I'm a married woman."
He turned to her. "A married woman." His glance was so penetrating she felt the back hairs on her neck stiffen. "I do remember vows a little while back," she informed him coldly.
He continued to watch her. "What else did Jay tell you?" His voice still carried that peculiar, menacing tone.
Jill managed a laugh. "Good heavens, he was only trying to tell me how terrific you are. And how terrific he thought I was because I managed to snare you. It seems," she added, her voice carrying as much sarcasm as she could muster, "that the man I married has been pursued by every woman in the world from the Suez Canal to Tierra del Fuego. Only, of course, he managed to resist them until he met me."
Simon returned to his work. "Jay talks too much."
"It's true then," Jill persisted. "It's true that I, and my fortune, have captured the man every woman in the world has wanted. Sounds like the title of a book, doesn't it? The Man Every Woman Wanted. I must write it some time." She giggled, and wondered how two small glasses of champagne could have made her suddenly feel so giddy.
"That's enough," Simon said in a peremptory tone. Jill glanced curiously at the work spread out before him, long reports as far as she could tell, typed on legal length stationery.
"I suppose all that concerns me," she said for no reason at all.
"Nothing should concern your pretty head."
The compliment was chilling, meant in fact, for a teenager. "You know nothing about me," she said doggedly, aware that Simon was only half-listening. "How do you know whether I'm smart or stupid?"
"I know nothing about you," he said. "Tell me everything. I want to know everything." He did not look up from his work.
"I was born. I grew up. I got married. That's about it."
"Interesting," he murmured. "Go on." He took a pencil from his jacket and began making notations on the page before him.
"I also think the stewardess is in love with you, and if she smiles at you one more time, I'm going to throw the champagne in her face." There was only one problem. She had no more champagne.
"Interesting," Simon said, deep into his notes.
"And furthermore," she went on, "I don't think our marriage is going to work one little bit."
"Go on," her husband said. "I'm really interested in everything you're telling me."
The jet touched down in the rain at the airport in Miami. They would have a stopover of a couple of hours before boarding the Bolivian jet that would take them to Caracas.
Simon was met at the airport by a heavyset man wearing a raincoat that was soaked all the way through. They repaired to the bar to discuss some business, and Jill excused herself to go wandering about the airport lounge, peering in at the shops, stopping for coffee, putting on fresh makeup in the ladies' lounge, wasting time sleepily. She had been up since six that morning. She spent a long time at a book stand selecting some paperbacks for the flight. She had, in all her innocence, actually believed that the trip itself might have constituted some sort of honeymoon, or at least a time when she could have learned something about Simon Todd.
She looked at him curiously from afar when she returned to the bar. He was still wearing the double-breasted business suit in which he married her, the shirt still closed by the slim tie. When did he relax, she wondered, loosen his collar, come down to earth?
Yet when she approache
d the table, he stood up at once and smiled, as if genuinely pleased to see her.
"Everything okay?" he asked, planting a kiss on her cheek.
"Fine." She sat down next to him.
"Hungry?"
"No."
"Sure?"
She smiled. "I'm sure."
When at last they were seated aboard the Bolivian jet, Jill felt ready for sleep. Simon, on the other hand, had slipped his briefcase under the seat, and regarded her with smiling eyes. The plane leveled in its flight. "Now," he said, "I know everything about you. What can I tell you that would be interesting?"
Jill began to laugh, but when she looked at her husband's face, his deep-set eyes watching her earnestly, she stopped and drew her breath in quickly. She realized, astonishing herself, that there was nothing so interesting at that moment as the idea of his lips against hers. It startled her, and for a few seconds she continued to stare at him, amazed.
"Yes?" he asked.
"I didn't say a word," she murmured, feeling oddly free of the droning of the engine, the movement swirling about them, feeling as if somehow she floated in a vacuum.
As if he quite understood her message, Simon leaned forward and kissed her, barely touching her lips.
"More," she whispered, pressing her mouth full against his, her hands on his sleeves.
He pulled away abruptly, and Jill was aware of the flight attendant standing in the aisle, looking down at them, regarding them with a faint smile.
Simon gave a strange, half-strangled laugh, as if relieved at the interruption. He ordered some coffee for them both. Jill leaned back in her seat. More. What in the world could she have been thinking of?
"Oh, won't this trip ever end?" she groaned.
"It's hardly begun."
"Well, why don't you pull out that briefcase of yours and do some work," she snapped. "You don't want to waste a precious minute, do you?"
"Temperamental," Simon remarked, as if adding it to a list of her attributes.
"Not temperamental. Bored, tired, hungry."
"Hungry," Simon said. "The child doesn't eat and then complains that she's hungry. We'll have to watch that when we get home."
"Home," Jill exclaimed. "I don't even know where that is or what it is. Home. How can you talk about home when you won't tell me about it?" She paused, aware that she was both tired and feeling silly.
"Home is a big, rambling villa with a red tiled roof and more rooms than you can count," Simon told her patiently. "It's watched over by Senhora Cordero who will take you in hand at once and make certain you eat."
"And plump me out, no doubt. Where did my uncle live?"
"In a hotel. He planned to buy a villa when you came down. Our life styles were quite different. He wanted nothing but the clothes on his back, until he began getting paternal feelings as far as his niece was concerned. On the other hand, I purchased Las Flores in order to preserve an old bit of Manaus before the bulldozers got to it."
"Is it very old?"
"Turn of the century. It has all the lovely plumbing conveniences newly installed. You'll like it."
Jill regarded him curiously. "How did you and my uncle meet?"
"In the jungle to be precise. I worked for a construction company at the time. We were putting a road through a rough part of Amazonia. The Indians didn't want to give up a piece of it, and I don't blame them. Your uncle was a geologist searching for manganese deposits. He traveled light with a couple of Indian guides, but it was their territory. He was set upon one night; the guides disappeared, and when I came upon him he was running for his life. Just one of those lucky meetings. There I was in my jeep, and there he was. After that it was just a matter of time before we formed Carteret-Todd and went out to do a little mining of our own."
"Is the jungle still so dangerous?" Jill asked.
"The Indians are more peaceable now perhaps, but the frontier towns are rough, anyway. Camp Esmeralda, where we're digging for manganese is one of them. That's where your uncle was felled by the log."
"Why was he there, though? I mean, if Carteret-Todd is so successful, why wasn't he in a safer place, like an office or something?"
"Your uncle was a tough character. Dan liked a fight," Simon told her. "He liked to be where the action was. It wasn't enough for him to sit in an ivory tower. He felt he had to be in everything."
"And you?" Jill asked quietly, her heart in her mouth. "You don't just chase danger for the fun of it, do you?"
Simon turned to her and regarded her with an affectionate smile that surprised and pleased her, until he spoke. "I'm afraid, my young bride, that I do."
Chapter Five
A light tapping on her arm woke Jill, blinking, unable for a moment to place herself in time or even space.
"We're here." Simon stirred in his seat, unfastening his seat belt buckle.
"Manaus?" Jill looked out the window and saw that the plane had stopped a short distance from a low, modern, brightly lit building. The ground was wet, and a light rain was falling. "So soon?" she asked, stretching luxuriously. She had fallen asleep at once, as soon as the plane had taken off from Caracas.
Simon draped his raincoat about her shoulders for the short run from the plane to the customs shed. The air, even with the rain, felt pleasant and cool and she welcomed it after the long plane ride with its stale, clinging odor of upholstery and food and cigarette smoke.
There had been few passengers on the early morning flight from Caracas, and their passage through customs went easily and with a minimum of fuss. Outside, a limousine with a sleepy looking driver waited for them.
"Is it a long ride?" Jill asked, stifling a yawn, and settling into the back seat.
"Forty-five minutes or so."
Staring into the black night, she discovered flat, open fields on either side of the limousine, rather than the jungle she anticipated.
"Where's the jungle?" she asked.
"I'm afraid that as Manaus spreads, the jungle recedes, but don't worry, there's plenty of it to go around. You just have to go farther to see it."
"Is the house right in the city?" Jill asked, unable to mask a growing excitement.
"Right in the city."
"Ah."
"I promise you won't be disappointed." His voice, disembodied, remote, had an edge of amusement to it.
She was silent. Disappointed about what? She had absolutely no notion about the way Simon lived, the way they would live. How could she? She had had scarcely enough time to catch her breath and she was married; literally swept off her feet by a handsome stranger, just like in the fairy stories she had read avidly as a child. Swept off, carried away to a distant kingdom by a knight in a double-breasted business suit. Two people suddenly brought together who had nothing in common but the memory of Daniel Carteret—and Daniel Carteret's fortune.
Hardly five days had passed since Simon Todd had walked into her life. Five days and a lifetime. Now they were racing through the dark toward a city she had thought was in a jungle—a jungle that had miraculously disappeared. What other tricks were in store for her?
A sudden light flashed in the car and she looked across at the man who had become her husband. He was lighting a cigarette, and for a second, his face, as still and immobile, and quite as cold as granite, was lit by the flame. Then, with only the red glow of the cigarette ash to place him, he was gone. She had skirted thinking about it seriously until now. This was their wedding night. It was still their wedding night. Was it possible that this cool stranger would take her in his arms and make love to her?
Did she want him to? She thought of his kisses, given freely as illustrations merely, illustrations for the sake of Jay Wilhelm and Mrs. Hughes. Illustrations to show the difference between romantic love and sex for the mere pleasure of it. Always illustrations. And the trouble was, she had thoroughly enjoyed every one of his lessons.
She wanted to talk to him about it, to lay it all on the line, but there was something forbidding in his silence that made her qui
te afraid. He was a man who would take what he wanted, how he wanted it, when he wanted it. You couldn't set out to conquer the jungle and have it any other way.
But I don't love you, Mr. Todd. She remembered the way the words had burst out. He had laughed and teased her about romantic love, as if she were a simpleminded teenager. And she recalled his kiss, and how she had been unaccountably stirred as she had never been in a year of Derek's kisses. What was it? Merely the touch of lips to lips. That was all. Jill shifted uneasily in her seat. What in the world could she be thinking of? Simon Todd had made it quite clear that theirs was a marriage of convenience, and she had acquiesced. It was all a matter of money, and she mustn't forget it, mustn't forget it for a moment, because when she forgot it, she might have to think about her future, and that was forbidden territory. To think about a loveless future, a future without a real husband and children, all for the sake of a fortune, was unbearable.
She had married this stranger for money, her uncle's money. She had married him to get away from snow and Chicago, and a silly job in a city where no one wanted to hire a college graduate who could speak excellent Portuguese—and that was all.
Outside the window, the monotony of flat plains flashing by was broken by an occasional light in the distance. The rain continued and they seemed to be suspended in a dark space, the tunnel of love without love, lit only by headlights, making her feel as if she were traveling endlessly, coming from nowhere, going nowhere. Perhaps Manaus did not really exist except on the maps, and this mysterious man had kidnapped her.
"Simon?" She wanted to hear his voice, to know that everything was all right.
"Mmm."
"Where in the city?" She asked the question haphazardly, not expecting an answer, yet knowing somehow that he understood her.
"You'll see it soon enough."
She lapsed back into silence. They would live separate lives, perhaps in separate quarters. Simon might even have a woman somewhere, a woman whom he would turn to, a woman who would understand the kind of man he was, and how he had to marry to retain control of Carteret-Todd.
"You'll have to excuse me," she said. "I suppose I'm being impatient or tired or excited or something." Her voice faded off.
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