Persepha thought of the crevice into which that foal had fallen and she gave a shiver, one of inward coldness for her skin felt as warm as if she stood near a fire. ‘Gil, I’d better be going,’ she said. ‘I have to be back at the car by four o’clock, otherwise the driver will become anxious. And if there’s going to be a downpour, Juan Feliz and I should start the drive home before it comes flooding down. It won’t be any fun for him driving in a deluge, and he’ll be worried all the time about having me for a passenger.’
‘You mean the Don would give him hell if anything happened to you?’ Gil took hold of her and swung her to face him, and there seemed to be a flicker of storm in his grey eyes as they studied her tense face. ‘Are you sure the hidalgo isn’t crazily in love with you? You’re lovely enough to get under the toughest skin—’
‘No - he doesn’t love me, in the way you mean.’ Persepha spoke with a conviction which even torture couldn’t have shaken. She knew, as no one else did, that the Don had never spoken of love and had only ever shown that he possessed her. She knew, as Gil didn’t, that her husband had given his heart to someone else - a woman into whose grave he had wanted to leap on the day they had buried her. ‘Don Diablo merely owns me, and he has a possessive nature, and it would make him furious if his property was damaged in any way. I’m going now - I must. Thank you for tea, and for letting me talk about my problems. I don’t imagine that you’re often used as a psycho-analyst, but I’m very grateful to you -Gil, please let me go! I have to go!’
‘I’ll let you go, honey, if you promise you’ll come again.’ He drew her forward until her angora dress was brushing his shirt and slacks. ‘In some ways you’re as soft as a kitten and you need to be petted. I guess the Don takes you by the scruff of your neck and makes you claw and yowl. You need to be made to purr, Persepha, and I’m not too bad at getting girls into a sensuous mood.’ And as he spoke Gil drew his hand down the side of her dress to her hip, caressingly. ‘Wouldn’t it be a nice way of getting back at him, to have someone to make you feel good? Someone like me?’
‘Do you know,’ she said quietly, ‘what he’d do if he found out that I was making a cuckold of him, with any man?’
‘But there’s no reason on earth why he should find out.’ Gil grinned down at her. ‘You are a little innocent, you know. Look at us right now! Does anyone know that we’re here together? You came to town during the siesta, and believe me when Mexican people take their siesta it takes the devil or an earthquake to wake them up. That’s how we could arrange it—’
‘No.’ She spoke sharply. ‘I don’t care about the Don and his almighty honour, but I care about my own. You said yourself, Gil, that I’m not the sort for extra-marital antics, and you were right. I’d feel cheap and brazen, like some woman the Don and I saw the other day, so accustomed to giving herself that she almost does it in front of other people. Ugh, I’d sooner be dead!’
‘Well, thanks,’ he drawled. ‘I had no idea that I struck you as being less attractive than a hole in the ground.’
‘Oh, it isn’t that! You are attractive, Gil, and I like you, but I don’t want an affair - all I want is to be free.’ She sighed, and then gave a frightened gasp as the very ground seemed to tilt beneath her feet, throwing her forward against Gil’s chest. They clung, but not amorously, and then it came again, that curious and terrifying tremor, much harder this time, throwing the pair of them right off their feet to the hard courtyard stones.
‘It’s a quake!’ yelled Gil, and Persepha just caught the words a second before her forehead struck a partly raised stone and sent her flying into a painful, stunning darkness.
When she came to herself, she wasn’t lying on the ground but on the softness of a bed, and there was an icy coolness against her forehead, easing the ache that throbbed there. She gave a groan and saw tiny flashes in front of her eyes as she forced them open. Everything spun round and she couldn’t focus her gaze for several moments, and then gradually she became aware that a lamp was on, throwing shadows against a pale wall and a white ceiling ...one shadow was that of a man bending over her, and when she stirred and mumbled a name, he bent a little closer, and moved the ice-bag to her temple.
‘Persepha, honey, are you all right? My, but you gave me an almighty scare, you were out so long!’
She stared at the face in the lamplight and let her hazy eyes wander over the rugged features, tanned but not dark; the eyes grey and not like deep wells of smouldering jet.
‘Gil?’ His name was a question, not a statement, as if she wasn’t yet sure of him. ‘W-where am I? W-what happened?’
‘A hell of an earth tremor,’ he told her. ‘You hit your head and I brought you indoors - how do you feel, honey? It was quite a crack and it put you out for a couple of hours or more. I was thinking of dashing out for a doctor when you started to groan and move about. Does it hurt a lot?’
‘Enough,’ she managed weakly. She tried to sit up and again the room spun round and she collapsed against the pillow. ‘M-my head aches and everything is going round, Gil. And it’s dark!’
‘Honey, the lamp is on.’ A note of alarm came into his voice. ‘You can see me, can’t you? You can see?’
‘Yes—’ Her gaze stole round the room, taking in the pale walls, the chest of drawers, the fluttering shadows as the flame of the lamp moved back and forth. ‘It’s night time, Gil! It’s night and I shouldn’t be here!’
As she began to struggle to sit up, Gil firmly pressed her back against the pillow. ‘You mustn’t move just yet, honey. You could have a touch of concussion after that crack on the head, and I’d be doing you more harm than good if I allowed you to get out of bed. Now just relax and don’t get into a panic. The quake has died away and now if you listen you’ll hear the rain - hear it?’
She lay back reluctantly and glanced over towards the window, where the thin curtains couldn’t muffle the sound of heavy, battering rain, like fingers of iron knocking on the glass and threatening to break it.
‘The rain came and the heat lifted,’ said Gil. ‘Thank heaven it did, otherwise we might have had some really colossal tremors that would have caused real damage. It will rain heavily for hours, and then the courtyards will be overflowing with flowers - they’ll be smothered in them. Great!’
‘Oh yes,’ she echoed, ‘it’s really great that I’m stranded here with you, with no hope of getting away for hours -ooh, my head! It feels as if I’ve been kicked by a mule.’ ‘That’s better than being numb,’ he told her, and circling an arm around her, so she was cradled, he applied the ice-bag to the nape of her neck. ‘There, I bet that feels good, huh?’
‘Mmmm,’ she had to admit that it felt awfully good, and she only wished that her nerves could be so easily treated. ‘I know it isn’t any of your fault, Gil, but I’m worried about Juan Feliz, and what will the others at the hacienda be thinking?’
‘I guess like sensible people they’ll assume that you’ve been trapped somewhere by the heavy rain - that you’re taking shelter. My sweet girl, there’s no need to get so hot and bothered about it, for you’ll only make yourself feel dizzier. Come on, you must relax. That husband of yours can’t blame you for an act of nature; he can’t say that the elements conspired to make it possible for you to spend the night with me, now can he?’
‘The - night?’ She gazed at Gil with such horrified eyes that he gave a rueful laugh.
‘There you go again, Persepha, looking at me as if I’m some kind of a rake. Those two men in your life have taught you to be positively hostile towards younger men, and that isn’t fair. I bet I’m a nicer fellow than either of them, or do you consider that a debatable point?’ He quizzed her with a grin in which relief that she was all right was mingled with a sort of boyish triumph that she was marooned alone with him. Outside in the courtyard they could both hear the rain splashing down, a drowning deluge that looked like going on for hours, flooding over the old stones and gurgling in the roof gutters, and bringing into the room a jungly smell.
‘You can only tell the truth,’ he said. ‘You took shelter from the quake and the rain and had to stay the night with the - er - people who gave you shelter.’
‘You see,’ she took him up, ‘the absolute truth is out of the question. I’m here with you alone, and how would that sound? I’m going to be asked the name, address and status of the people with whom I supposedly stayed overnight. I just know I am!’
‘But your husband’s in South America,’ said Gil. ‘He can’t act the inquisitor directly you get home, and by the time he does arrive, your sense of guilt would have worn off and any white lie you tell him will have the casual ring of truth. You can just say the people were kind, and you were in too much of a spin from a blow on your head to think to ask their name, and all you really remember is that they lived in a house with a courtyard. There are dozens of such houses hereabouts, and if you play on his sympathy with regard to getting bumped on the head, there’s no need for him to ever know the real truth.
‘You’re a woman, honey,’ Gil’s eyes slipped over her, ‘and there’s a bit of an actress in every female. Now, do you reckon you could drink a tot of brandy? It will help steady you.’
‘I - I think I’d prefer a cup of coffee,’ she said, and though she was looking about her for her bag and her shoes, it did rather look as if she were avoiding his eyes, and he said gruffly:
‘I don’t plan to make you tipsy so I can seduce you. There’s no fun in it for me if the gal’s reluctant, and you’re scared stiff of that husband of yours even finding out about me.’
She looked at him then, at his ruffled hair above his brow, and that slight boyish scowl that came and went was like a breeze through the trees compared to the Don’s dark frown, and his fearless unconcern that a woman should want him or not.
Yes, looking at Gil Howard she could see that he liked to be thought well of by a woman and it would bother him to have to force a response from someone. Maybe it was that attitude which had broken up his marriage; he had not forced Lois to live his kind of life but with a free and easy shrug he had let her go her own way, and that way had led her straight into the arms of another man.
Persepha could feel a slight smile trembling on her lips ... good-looking Gil was a trifle vain; he expected girls to fall for him and wasn’t prepared to fight for their affection. Thank heaven, she thought, that he hadn’t the disposition of a Don Diablo, otherwise this night would be fraught with peril.
‘What are you smiling about?’ Gil demanded.
‘I’m smiling because you’re so nice,’ she said. ‘If a girl has to spend a night with a man not her husband, then I’d vote for you any time. I really don’t think of you as a satyr, and I just happen to fancy coffee more than brandy.’
‘I see.’ He looked quizzical as he sat on the side of the bed looking at her, her pale hair tousled and damp from the ice-bag, with a livid bruise against the left side of her forehead. The turquoise dress which had been so immaculate was dirtied from her fall and rumpled above her knees. There was a ladder in her sheer tights, and a slight graze on the side of her chin.
‘You look marvellous even when you’ve been through the wars,’ he told her, ‘so I’m not sure I should take it as a compliment that I’m not your idea of a dangerous guy. Are you saying that compared to Don Devil I’m a tame sort of fellow?’
‘I believe,’ she half-smiled, ‘that half the men in the world would outshine my husband for gentleness. He has that quality which makes a Spaniard saunter into a bullring - the courage to be cruel. I don’t think that Americans or Englishmen possess that type of almost fatalistic nerve, for I don’t think they really believe in hell as the Latin does. He believes he’s going to burn no matter what he does; he has a dark faith in original sin, far more so than the Anglo-Saxon.’
‘Hence the Inquisitorial,’ drawled Gil. ‘Live hard here on earth, for there’s no hope in heaven, ye sinners!’
‘Something like that.’ Her smile quivered and she put a hand to her aching brow. ‘Poor Desdemona was choked to death because of a handkerchief, so heaven help me if the Don ever finds out that I spent a night in the apartment of a handsome American!’
‘Glad, anyway, that I’m not altogether unattractive to you.’ Gil leaned forward and gently touched her face with his hand. ‘Poor kid, you must try and get away from the Don before he returns from his business trip. I’ll help all I can - come with you, maybe.’
‘It’s getting hold of my passport and paper—’ She bit her lip. ‘I wonder if it can be managed—?’
‘Sure, find a hammer and break the lock of his desk.’
‘I mean - getting away from him. He has a long arm and owns so much of this territory, and probably a sizeable share of the railway. I sometimes think that if I got as far as England, he’d find me and drag me back to Mexico. He doesn’t love me, but he chose to marry me, and that makes me part of the Ezreldo Ruy hierarchy. I — I no longer have a fate of my own. I am bound to him and his plans for the future.’
Persepha pressed her fingers to her forehead and had a vision of the Don’s concern had she fallen to the courtyard stones in front of him - a concern entirely rooted in his desire for a son. By now she would have a physician looking her over to make sure her childbearing prospects weren’t damaged - of that she was ironically sure. High wind or water wouldn’t have stopped the Don from getting a doctor to her side.
She closed her eyes as a wave of dizziness swept over her, and she seemed to spin away from the lamplit bedroom of Gil’s apartment into the silken realms of her suite at the hacienda ... she seemed to feel around her a hard bronzed arm, binding her close but never letting her into the heart that beat so firmly under the warm chest with its pelt of hair so dark against his skin. Like a tiger with its prey he held on to her even in his sleep, and she always lay so still unless he stirred, feeling the lift and fall of his muscular chest, the very beat of his heart in her bosom.
‘Persepha?’ A hand gently shook her shoulder. ‘Honey, are you all right?’
At the touch, which was somehow unfamiliar, she gave a little moan of protest and her eyes fluttered open. ‘I’m all right.’ She stared up at Gil. ‘Just tired—’
‘I’ll make that coffee, huh?’
‘Yes — that would be nice.’
But she slept again before he returned, and the next time she awoke the morning light was in the room and the rain had died away. The night was over and the day had dawned, and Persepha had to return to the Hacienda Ruy in a crumpled dress, in a hired car, to face the silent accusations of the Don’s household, which would become voluble as soon as he came home from South America.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHE was standing upon the high terrace when she caught her first glimpse of the silver car bringing the Don home to the hacienda. Her fingers clenched the balustrade for she didn’t doubt that he would have asked a number of seemingly casual questions, and Juan Feliz would have answered them. The earth tremors of last week would have been mentioned; the Don would have been concerned that no damage had been done to the hacienda. It would have been one step from the brink for the chauffeur to then inform his master that on the day of the tremors he and the señora had gone to the shops and after that she had vanished, only to reappear hours afterwards at the hacienda, dishevelled and bruised.
The sun flickered like lightning on the framework of the car as it sped in beneath the great archway, where the big iron gates were thrown open, the escutcheon of the Ezreldo Ruy family wrought into the iron itself. The car came to a halt in the courtyard and the door opened at once, thrusting outwards to allow the long swing of his legs in dark fawn suiting. Persepha stared downwards at the familiar dark head, the lean and powerful body, the way his l
ong shadow fell across the sunlit tiles as he stood there, looking around him, absorbing all that meant so much to him. Jade leaves against tawny-cream walls, ivory petals, the drift of a butterfly with flamy wings.
His house, set like a jewel in stone above the world, its foundations intermingled with those of an. Aztec temple, just as his blood was intermingled with the old barbarities and the pagan beliefs.
And then, as if his quick blood sensed her presence, he glanced up and his dark eyes caught and held her gaze. Not a muscle moved in his face; not a hint of a smile stirred in his eyes. He might have been looking at a stranger instead of his wife, and because she was afraid of him since that night with Gil Howard and couldn’t act with the ease of other women, she just stood there like a pale statue and looked about as welcoming as a thing carved out of marble.
Then with a slight glint of irony coming into his eyes, the Don inclined his head to her, the sunlight playing across his scalp and bringing out the blue-black lights in his hair. It was like a plume, she thought, on the helmet of a conquistador, and the tips of her fingers seemed to tingle as she remembered the feel of his hair, thick and crisp and never oiled.
He was home and once again he would come and go in her bedroom-suite, the bed-lamp throwing his shadow high up the wall as he came through the adjoining door, walking silent and supple across the vicuna rug, pulling the robe from his brown shoulders as he came, flinging it from him as he reached for her and pulled her free of the concealing covers.
Persepha waited on the terrace for him to come to her, knowing that like a dutiful wife she should go downstairs to greet him, but Carmenteira would be there, mockery incarnate in her eyes as she waited for Persepha to lie to him about that night of the earth tremors and the torrential rains.
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