Sweet Torment

by Flora Kidd

  Squelch. She found herself walking through a deep puddle and wished fervently that she could see where she was going. Around her frogs croaked perpetually in the wet darkness. There were smells of damp earth and rotting vegetation. The trees which edged the lane were dim ghostly shapes, and aware suddenly of the emptiness and vastness of the countryside through which she was walking, of its alien remoteness from anything she had ever known, she began to run again.

  Soon the trees were no longer there. She had come to the junction of the lane with the road. Which way should she turn for Ibara? Left or right? Panic flickered through her as she realised she had no idea from which direction Pancho had approached the ranch that afternoon.

  Perhaps she should go back to the ranch house. But wouldn't Juan Renalda regard her return to ask for shelter for the night as surrender to his demands that she should stay and live with him? There was no doubt in her mind that he would. She would have to go on, take a chance that Ibara was to the left and hope that some vehicle would come along and the driver give her a lift.

  She hadn't walked very far along the road when she

  heard the sound of an engine. It was coming from behind and soon she could hear the swish of tyres on the wet road. In the shafts of light from headlamps the slanting rain glittered. Sorrel turned expectantly and the beam of the nearside headlamp shone directly on her. The vehicle passed her slowly and she recognised it with a leap of hope. It was the truck in which she had travelled that afternoon with Pancho. It stopped a little ahead of her and with a sense of relief she hurried forward, sure that the friendly Pancho would give her a lift to Ibara.

  As she reached the nearside door it swung open, released from the inside. Peering in, she could just make out the outline of a shallow-crowned, wide-brimmed hat such as Pancho had been wearing.

  'Pancho?' she queried warily.

  `Uhuh.'

  'Are you going to Ibara?'

  'Mmm.'

  'Thank goodness,' she muttered, and pushing her bag on to the seat climbed into the warmth of the cab, sat down and shut the door. 'I'm very glad to see you,' she said.

  He didn't reply but put the truck in gear. It moved forward, then with a screech of tyres he turned it in a tight curve on the roadway and drove on in the opposite direction.

  'Wasn't I going the right way?' exclaimed Sorrel, shivering a little in spite of the warmth.

  'I don't think you were,' replied a familiar voice, and her shoulders sagged.

  'Oh, it's you,' she muttered. 'I suppose it's too much to hope that you'll have the decency to drive me to Ibara.'

  'It is,' he retorted coolly. 'The way I do things it

  wouldn't be decent of me to take you there and dump you in that dilapidated hotel. You will stay the night at my house and be welcome. The least I can do is offer you hospitality when you have nowhere else to go.'

  'If I stay the night will you take me to Ibara tomorrow?' she asked.

  `Tomorrow?' he repeated jeeringly. `Do you really expect a Colombian to think as far ahead as the next day? Who knows what will happen between now and then? I'm not making promises, but you can be sure of one thing. There is no "if" about you staying the night with me. You have no alternative.'

  They turned into the lane which led to the ranch house. When they reached the courtyard and the vehicle stopped Sorrel made no attempt to move until the door beside her was swung open.

  'Are you coming voluntarily or do I have to drag you out and carry you into the house over my shoulder?' he asked.

  She slid down into the courtyard. He banged the door shut and with one hand on her arm guided her towards the front door, which opened noiselessly as they approached, held by the little dark-faced woman who had brought coffee to Sorrel earlier.

  'Por dios, you are wet!' exclaimed Juan, removing his wide-brimmed hat and pulling off the crimson and black woollen ruana he was wearing. `Go with Jovita. She will show you where you can have a bath.'

  Since her whole body was crying out to be immersed in hot water Sorrel willingly followed the little woman along a passageway lit by wall lamps which hung from curving wrought iron brackets.

  Jovita led the way into a big room furnished with a double four-poster bed hung with curtains of gold and ivory damask. A huge dressing table with a wide mirror

  seemed to take up most of one wall. The carpet was deep-piled, crimson in colour, and the two narrow windows were covered by sheer ivory-coloured curtains edged with frills and framed with heavy brocade drapes.

  Jovita opened another door and disappeared. There was the sound of water gushing from a tap. After a few seconds Jovita reappeared, carrying over her arm a crimson and black brocade dressing gown.

  'Take off your wet clothing, senorita,' she said. 'I have brought you this gown to wear.'

  She laid the dressing gown on the bed and returned to the bathroom. Slowly Sorrel peeled off her wet skirt and underwear and stepped out of her sodden sandals. The luxury of the room was a little shocking and the uncompromising femininity of its decoration in the home of a bachelor made her more than suspicious. Had it been specially designed and furnished to accommodate Inez?

  She picked up the dressing gown. It was far too big for her and she had no doubts about who owned it. She pulled the velvet lapels close together across her breast and tied the gold-tasselled black velvet belt tightly at her waist, thinking how glamorously barbaric the gown was, like the man who usually wore it.

  'Senorita, the bath is ready now. Come, por favor,' said Jovita from the doorway of the bathroom.

  What was Jovita thinking? What went on in the mind behind that wizened poker face and unblinking opaque black eyes? Was she surprised that her employer had found a new occupant for this love-bower where soft lighting and an extensive use of luxurious fabrics created a romantic atmosphere? Or was the little woman so accustomed to the way he lived that she had no comment to make?

  The bathroom made Sorrel gasp, for there was an-

  other dream room, all ivory tiles and mirrors with exotic touches of crimson and black. The bath was round, made from black marble and sunk into the floor, and it was full of ivory-coloured foam from which sweet-smelling steam rose.

  'You get in the bath now, senorita,' instructed Jovita, and began to untie the belt at Sorrel's waist.

  'Oh no, not until you've gone,' objected Sorrel, stepping back unused to such personal attention at bath-time.

  'I'm not going, I stay to help you. I wash your back. I wash your hair. Then you feel better and look more beautiful. 'Jovita smiled suddenly, showing surprisingly good teeth. 'I do it always for Señora Inez.'

  The name Inez was to Sorrel like a red rag to a bull.

  'No, no, thank you. I'll manage by myself,' she said determinedly, not wanting to be treated as if she were the mistress of Juan Renalda.

  'But, senorita,' Jovita's tone was suddenly wheedling, `Senor Juan said I was to look after you and make you comfortable while you stay here, and if I don't do as he tells me he'll be angry with me.'

  'I shall bath myself and wash my hair,' insisted Sorrel. 'And if Senor Renalda asks you why you're not doing as he told you you can tell him I prefer to look after myself.'

  As she had hoped, speaking authoritatively to the little woman had the desired effect. Still looking worried, Jovita nodded her greying head submissively and left the room. Sorrel closed the door, slipped off the dressing gown and stepped into the twinkling bubble bath.

  The foam rustled as it crowded about her and beneath it the warm water caressed her cool damp skin. Glancing sideways at the mirrors all she could see of

  herself was the slope of her bare shoulders, her long neck and her face framed by clinging wet hair.

  There was a chromium spray and hose attached to the bath and she soon had it in action and was shampooing her hair. She was rinsing for the second time when she felt the spray taken from her hand. Since water continued to cascade over her head she couldn't see who was rinsing her hair, but she assumed it was Jovita
who had come back, ordered to do so by the domineering Juan.

  The spray was turned off. Strong hands gathered up her hair and squeezed the water out of it. A towel, warm and scented, was wrapped round her head. Taking an end of the towel, Sorrel dabbed at her eyes, looked sideways—and felt her heart leap with shock. Instead of seeing Jovita's neat brown dress she saw black suede trousers shaped by muscular thighs and lean hips, then a silver buckle on a handsomely tooled leather belt, a loose half-buttoned shirt of ivory silk and lastly the lean scarred face and narrowed grey eyes of the bullfighter.

  'How dare you come in here while I'm in the bath!' she flared. 'Get out! '

  Ignoring her protest completely, he sat down on the wide flat edge of the bath quite close to her.

  I came to see if you needed any help,' he replied coolly. 'Jovita was most hurt because you wouldn't let her wash you. Why wouldn't you let her?'

  'Because I'm not used to being waited on,' she replied, sitting still and straight, looking down to make sure the foam was covering her sufficiently, concealing her body from his observant arrogant gaze.

  Almost as if he sensed her worry and had to taunt her about it he scooped up some of the foam from the place where it covered her breasts. The tip of his finger

  just touched her skin and she gasped as if she had been seared by a red-hot needle. Her heart jumping crazily, she looked up to glare at him. His eyes were cool and insolent as he returned her glare steadily while he blew the foam off his finger so that it flew about in all directions.

  'You're a very complex person,' he murmured. 'One minute you're bold and independent, a typical liberated woman, the next you're shy. I find the mixture fascinating, like your colouring.' He reached out to smooth a fingertip along the slope of her shoulder and she had trouble trying not to show how his touch affected her. `You're skin is the colour of ivory, your hair has a crimson sheen to it and your eyes are almost black—my favourite colours,' he added, his breath feathering her brow.

  `So I'd noticed.' She tried to speak dryly and lightly, but her voice came out in a shaken whisper and once again a shiver tingled through her when she felt his fingers warm at her throat under her chin, tilting it up and round. And she was helpless, at his mercy, because if she moved she would disturb the foam. Keeping her eyelids lowered in case the panic which was pulsing through her showed in her eyes, she sat and waited for the kiss which she was sure would come, wondering how she was going to resist it.

  'Why are you so afraid?' he asked softly. 'I'm not going to hurt you.'

  His fingers slid slowly down her throat, their touch suggestive and sensual. Then they were gone and so was he. Disconcerted by the disappointment which washed over her because he hadn't kissed her after all, she turned her head to see him take a big crimson towel from a pile of towels on a rack. Holding it across his body like a muleta, he came back to stand beside her.

  `Are you ready to come out now? The water must be cold,' he said, and flicked the towel as he might flick his cape at a bull. 'I'll rub you dry.'

  `No!' In panic Sorrel slid down under the foam. `Please go. I'll dry myself.'

  He stared down at her, eyebrows slanting in a frown.

  `Why do you object?' he asked. 'I do it only to help you instead of Jovita. It is good to be rubbed dry. Come, if you sit there much longer you will become too cold.'

  'I can't let you. You shouldn't be in here at all,' she said.

  'I shouldn't?' His eyebrows went up in mock amazement. 'Why not? It is my bathroom.'

  `Yes, I know, but we're not married, and ...' she paused, trying frantically to think of a way to explain why he shouldn't be there and shouldn't dry her, to make him understand that her values were different from his.

  `Are you trying to tell me that you wouldn't be so shy of me if we were married?' he queried, with a glint of interest.

  `Yes, I suppose I am.'

  'Would you like to be married to me, Sorrel?' He had thrown the towel aside and had perched on the side of the bath again.

  `I ... I ... Oh, go away, and stop tormenting me!' she wailed, and covered her face with her hands. 'I don't want to have anything to do with you, and I wish we'd never met '

  Even to her own ears her outburst sounded childish, but it expressed exactly how she felt. This man was dangerous to her and the sooner she got away from him the better.

  `But we did meet and we're going to meet again,

  whether you want to or not,' he said, and she heard him stand up and move away. When he spoke next his voice came from the other side of the room. 'So ends the suerte de pica, little red bull.'

  A door clicked closed. Sorrel sat up and looked round cautiously. The crimson towel lay crumpled on the ivory floor, like-a splash of blood on ivory sand. She shuddered a little. Crimson, ivory and black, the colours of the bullfight.

  Standing up, she stepped out of the bath and huddled into the soft warm towel, ruefully admitting to herself that she had sat too long in the bath water and that it would have been good to have been rubbed dry until her body tingled and glowed.

  But not by Juan Renalda. To have let him dry her would have been to invite him to possess her. He had no scruples when it came to getting what he wanted, knew no inhibitions. He was completely lawless. Perhaps his brushes with death in the arena had made him like that—determined to grasp whatever pleasure was offered while he was able. Not that she was on offer ...

  Sorrel gasped suddenly and stopped towelling herself and stared at the several reflections of a slim pale-skinned young woman with a cloud of darkened hair who was half-draped in a crimson towel and whose wide dark eyes expressed dismay at a new thought. It was just possible that Juan Renalda believed that she had come here to offer herself to him.

  Quickly she finished drying, shook out her partly dried hair, slipped into the brocade dressing gown and went into the bedroom. Somehow she must make another attempt to get away tonight, preferably before she had another encounter with the bullfighter. So ends the suerte de pica, he had said, the first act to the bull-

  fight in which the picas were placed in the back of the bull to torment it. Well, he had certainly tormented her in the past hour or two and heaven only knew what he had in store for the second act, so she must be gone before it opened.

  In the bedroom Jovita was waiting patiently with her hands folded in front of her.

  `Where are my clothes?' Sorrel demanded.

  `I have taken them to be washed. You could not wear them again. They were very .wet.'

  `But I can't wear this all the time. It's too big. Look,' Sorrel demonstrated how the lapels gaped over her breast. 'I left my overnight bag in the truck. There is a change of clothes in it. Could you get it for me, please?'

  Jovita shook her head negatively from side to side.

  `I don't know of any bag,' she replied. 'Come and sit down, senorita, here before the mirrors. I'll rub your hair dry and then brush it for you.'

  Biting her lip to restrain her impatience, Sorrel sat down on the cushioned stool in front of the dressing table, thinking she might get more co-operation from the woman if she did as she suggested, and watched the reflection of Jovita's wrinkled hands as they rubbed her hair with a towel.

  This was where Inez had sat and had had her hair dried and brushed, and goodness know how many women before her. Feeling sick suddenly with unreasonable violent jealousy, Sorrel scowled at her reflection.

  `Am I hurting you, senorita?' Jovita's wrinkled monkey-sad face looked concerned.

  `No.' Sorrel tried to smile. 'I was just wondering whose room this is.'

  `It used to be the Señora's.'

  'Señora Inez's?'

  Señora Joan's—the wife of Señor Rodrigo and

  the mother of Señor Juan. Many times I have dried her hair as I'm drying yours now, senorita. She was tall with blonde hair and a golden skin, kind and always smiling. She could ride a horse like a man and fight the bulls too.' Jovita sighed sadly. 'We all cried like little children when she was killed.'<
br />
  'Killed? How?'

  'She was breaking in a horse. She was thrown, and her neck was broken.'

  'How terrible!'

  `Si, it was. Señor Rodrigo was very shocked. He never recovered. He was much older than she was, you understand, about twenty years and they had married only when he retired from bullfighting. Together they bought this ranch to rear here the special little ,bulls for the bullfights. Señora Joan's family own a big ranch in California. She knew much about ranching.' Jovita stopped towelling Sorrel's hair. 'Shall I brush your hair now so that it will look like silk?'

  The long smooth strokes of the brush were soothing and almost against her will Sorrel relaxed, enjoying the unaccustomed luxury, and found she wanted to know more about the fascinating Renalda family.

  `How long have you worked here, Jovita?' she asked.

  'Since Señor Juan was born. I came to be his nursemaid. I used to bath him, dress him, take him for walks and put him to bed. Then I did the same for his sister and his younger brother. After Senora Joan was killed I stayed on to help poor Señor Rodrigo who was very ill until he died seven years ago. After that I went away to live with my sister in Ibara, but when Señor Juan was hurt badly in that last fight of his I came back here to look after him.' Jovita shook her head from side to side. 'It took a long time for him to get better, and after the wounds were healed he was different.'

  'In what way?'

  'It was as if the Juan Renalda we had all known until then had died and his body had been taken over by another spirit. He had lost his enthusiasm, wouldn't see any of his old friends and stayed here on the ranch all the time.'

  `Do you think he had lost his nerve?'

  'For fighting the bulls? No, I don't think that because he still fought them here, showing Pancho and some other young men how to be matadors. But it wasn't good, the wanting to cut himself off from the rest of the world, and I was glad when Señor Cortez came and persuaded him to go to the opening of a new ski resort. Since then Señor Juan has skied much and now his interest in the corrida has come back.' Jovita took hold of the heavy folds of Sorrel's hair and coiled them round on the top of her head. 'Would you like me to arrange your hair like this?' she asked. 'I used to do it often for Señora Inez.'