by Wilbur Smith
Until that moment, she had been content simply to be with Ramsey, but now, as she leant close to him and watched his eyes in the candlelight, the horizons of her ambitions widened. She wanted him as she had never wanted anything in her life before.
"And so you see, Bella, despite all of this, I am not a rich man." 'Oh, yes you are. I saw you pay over two hundred thousand dollars into your bank this afternoon,' she told him gaily. 'You can afford to buy me another bottle of wine, at the very least." 'If you didn't have to fly back to London tomorrow morning, I would have used some of that money to take you up to Granada. I could have accompanied you to the bullfight, and shown you my family castle in the Sierra Nevada..." 'But you have to go back to London as well,' she protested, 'don't you?" 'A few days - I could have managed a few days. Any sacrifice to be with you." 'You know, Ramsey, I don't even know what you do. How do you earn your crust?" "Merchant banking,' he shrugged dismissively. 'I work for a private bank and I am responsible for African affairs.
We arrange loans for developing companies in central and southern Africa." By now Isabella's mind was accelerating up to racing slieed. Ramsey's lack of fortune was fully compensated for by his august origins, and he was a banker. There would certainly be a place for a merchant banker in the top ranks of Courtney Enterprises. It was all beginning to look marvellously exciting.
"I would like more than anything in this world to see your castle, Ramsey darling,' she whispered huskily, and she thought: I wonder how much a castle would cost, and if I could talk Garry into it. Her brother Garry was the chairman and financial head of Courtney Enterprises. He was no more proof to Isabella's charms and wiles than any of the other male members of the family. Like most of the family, he was also a terrible snob. A marquesa needed a castle - he might just fall for it.
"What about your father?' Ramsey asked. 'I thought that you promised you'd be back on Monday." 'You leave my father to me,' she said firm-dy.
"Bella, this is the most ridiculous hour to wake an old man,' Shasa protested as he answered her telephone call. 'What time is it, in the name of all that's holy?" 'It's after six, and we have already been for a swim, and you are not old.
You are young and beautiful, the most beautiful man I know,'Isabella cooed over the international line.
"This sounds ominous,' Shasa murmured. 'The more extravagant the compliment, the more outrageous the request. What do you want, young lady?
What are you up to now?" 'You really are an awful old cynic, Pater," said Isabella, and traced patterns in Ramsey's chest hair with her forefinger., He sprawled naked beside her on the double bed; his body was still sticky, damp and salty from their dip in eo the Mediterranean. "I just rang you to tell you how much I love you." Shasa chuckled. 'What a dutiful little mouse. I certainly trained you well.' He lay back on the pillows and slipped his free arm around the shoulders of the woman who lay beside him. She sighed sleepily and wriggled closer to him, nuzzling against his chest.
"How is Harriet?' Shasa asked. Harriet Beauchamp had agreed to provide cover for Isabella's expedition to Spain.
"She's fine,' Isabella assured him. 'She's right here now. We have been having a wonderful time." 'Give her my love,' Shasa ordered.
"Oh, I will,' she agreed and, covering the mouthpiece, she leant over and kissed Ramsey full on the lips. 'She sends her love back to you, Papa, but she refuses to catch the London plane this morning." 'Ah!" said Shasa. 'Now we come to the true reason for all this filial consideration." 'It's not me, Daddy, it's Harriet. She wants to go up to Granada. There is a bullfight. She wants me to go with her.' Isabella let her voice trail into silence.
"You and I are flying to Paris on Wednesday. Had you forgotten that? I am addressing the Club Dimanche." 'Daddy, you speak so well; the French ladies adore you. I'm sure you don't really need me." Shasa did not reply. He knew that silence was the one sure way in which he could disconcert his wayward daughter. He covered the mouthpiece and asked the woman cuddled against him: 'Kitty, can you come to Paris on Wednesday?" She opened her eyes. 'You know I am leaving for the OAU conference in Ethiopia on Saturday." 'I'll have you back by then." She raised herself on one elbow and looked down at him thoughtfully. 'Get thou behind me, Satan." 'Daddy, are you still there?' Isabella's voice floated between them.
"So my own flesh and blood are determined to desert me, are they?" Shasa asked in his most injured tones. 'All by myself in the least romantic city in the world?" 'I can't let Harriet down,' Isabella explained. 'I'll make it up to you, I promise." 'You'd better, young lady,' Shasa warned her. 'I shall, remind you of your indebtedness at a future date." 'Granada will probably be deadly dull - and I'll miss you awfully, dear Papa,' said Isabella contritely, and traced her forefinger down Ramsey's body, past his navel and into the thick bush of hair below it; she twirled a dark curl around her fingertip.
"And I will be desolated without you, Bella,' Shasa agreed, and dropped the handset of the telephone on to its cradle and pushed Kitty back gently on to the pillows.
"I said get thou behind me, Satan,' she protested huskily. 'Not get thou on top of me."
Isabella drove as fast and as well as any man he had known. Ramsey lay back in the leather bucket seat of the hired Mercedes and studied her openly. She basked in his attention and every few minutes, when a straight section of road allowed it, she glanced sideways at him or reached across to touch his hand or his thigh.
Unlike many of the assignments that he had been given over the years, Ramsey did not find it difficult to act out his part with this woman. He sensed a strength in her, an untapped reservoir of courage and determination that intrigued him.
He recognized that she was as yet unfulfilled and restless, dissatisfied with and rebellious against her easy undemanding existence, ripe for excitement and challenge, searching for something, some cause to which to dedicate herself.
Physically she was immensely attractive, and he had no difficulty faking that tender concern towards her that was the hallmark of the accomplished lover. When he looked at her like this, it was a deliberate device. He knew the appeal of his gaze, that cold green contemplation like the stare of the serpent that mesmerizes a wild bird, and yet he enjoyed looking at her as at an exquisite work of art. Although he knew from her file that she had been with other men, he had learnt in these last few days that the core of her being was still untouched and there was a strange virginal quality about her that aroused him.
As with so many legendary male lovers, Ramsey experienced that condition known as satyriasis. The name derived from those woodland godlings of Roman mythology which were half-man and half-goat and whose sexual appetite was insatiable. Although Ramsey Machado was quite abnormally responsive to any woman, whether she was attractive to him or otherwise, yet it was unusual for him to be able to achieve orgasm. He was in most cases simply indefatigable, able to outlast a partner with even the most tardy libido and to drive a normal woman on and on until she at last screamed for mercy.
Then he was able to continue at the very first indication that she wished to do so, and he was so sensitively attuned to feminine sexuality that he would usually recognize that indication before she did herself.
However, this woman was one of those rare creatures who was able to bring him on without too much difficulty. With her he had already achieved true orgasm a number of times and he knew he would again. It was, of course, essential to his plans that he did so.
Driving up from the coast on that sultry summer's day, Isabella was as happy and exhilarated as she had ever been. She was in love. Now there was not the least shadow of doubt in her mind that this was the grand passion of her life. There had never been, and there could not conceivably be again, anyone to match him. She would never experience any emotion to exceed what she felt for him now. His presence beside her and those green eyes upon her made the sunlight brighter and the high dry air of the Sierra taste sweeter on her lips.
The wide plains and the mountains beyond were so like her own beloved land.
Ramsey knew these mountains and he directed her over dusty back-roads to vistas of grandeur and beauty hidden far from the usual tourist routes.
They stopped in one of the little villages, and he joked with the locals in their patois. He came away with a slab of the pink serrano ham cured in the snow, a loaf of rough peasant bread and a goatskin full of the sweet dark Malaga wine.
Beyond the village, they left the Mercedes parked beside an ancient stone bridge and followed the stream up through the olive groves into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.
While a bearded billy-goat watched them in astonishment from the cliff above, they plunged naked into a secret pool of the river. Then, st ' ill naked, they ate their picnic lunch seated on the smooth black rocks above the water.
Ramsey demonstrated how to hold the wine-skin at arm's length and direct a hissing jet into the back of his open mouth. When she tried, the wine spurted over her cheeks and dribbled from her chin, and at her request he licked the ruby droplets from her face and from her taut white bosom. This was such fun that they forgot about the rest of their lunch and made love, Isabella still perched on her rock and Ramsey standing knee-deep in the pool facing her.
"You are incredible,' she whispered. 'My legs are jelly. You'll probably have to carry me back to the car." They spent so much of the afternoon beside the pool that the sun was on the tops of the mountains, turning the snows to incandescent gold, when they came in sight of the castle.
It was not as large or as grand as Isabella had expected it to be. It was simply a gaunt dark building high on the slopes above the higgledy-piggledy pink-tiled roofs of the village. As they approached, Isabella saw that part of the parapet had collapsed and that the grounds were overgrown and neglected.
"Who does it belong to now?' she asked.
"The State.' Ramsey shrugged. 'There was talk some years ago of turning it into a tourist hotel, but nothing came of it." The caretaker was an old man who remembered Ramsey's family, and he led them through the ground-floor rooms. They were empty; all the furniture had been sold to pay the family debts, and the chandeliers were thick with dust and cobwebs. The walls of the hall were stained with rain-water from the leaks in the roof 'Ies so sad to see something once so lovely ruined by neglect,' Isabella whispered. 'Doesn't it make you sad, too?" 'Do you want to go?' he asked.
`Yes, I don't want to be sad today." As they went down the hairpin track into the village, the last of the sunset was so splendid on the mountain-tops that Isabella recaptured her bubbling mood.
At the inn in the village, the innkeeper recognized the family name. He ordered his two daughters up to change the bed-linen in the front room, and sent his wife back to her kitchen to prepare one of the Andalusian specialities for their dinner, cocido Madrilefio, a stew of chicken and the spicy little chorizo sausages on a bed of cabello dedngel, noodles so fine that they deserved their name of Angel's Hair.
"In Spain, sherry is the drink of the people,' Ramsey explained to her as he filled her glass. It was cold enough here in the mountains to warrant a fire in the stone fireplace, and the light of the flames played over his features making him even more improbably handsome.
"We always seem to be doing one of three things' - she contemplated the golden wine in her glass - 'eating or drinking or. She sipped the wine.
"Are you complaining?' he asked.
"Gloating, actually.' She slanted her eyes at him. 'Eat your cocido and drink your sherry, sehor, you are going to need your strength." She awoke with the sunlight streaming in through the open window and experienced a moment's dread that he had gone again. However, he was there beside her in the wide soft bed, watching her with that cool enigmatic expression; she felt another moment's chill of doubt, but as she reached for him, almost diffidently, she found that he was already hard and swollen for her.
"Oh Godp she whispered joyously. 'You are incredible!' No man had ever wanted her as much as he did. He made her feel like the most desirable woman in the universe.
The innkeeper had laid a breakfast of purple figs and goat's cheese for them in the walled courtyard. They sat under the trellised vines, and Isabella peeled the figs with her long painted nails and placed the globules of succulent flesh between his lips. Her father was the only other man she had ever done that for.
When one of the daughters brought a pot of steaming coffee out to them, Ramsey excused himself and went up to their bedroom. Through the tiny bathroom window, he could see Isabella sitting in the courtyard below and heard her voice and her laughter as she tried to make herself understood in her newly acquired Spanish.
Earlier he had watched her swallow a birth-control pill as she stood beside him at the washbasin. She had made a silly little ritual of it, toasting him with the glass of water. 'Many happy returns!'However, the pack of remaining pills was no longer in her toilet-bag on the ledge above the basin.
He went back into the bedroom. The bed occupied almost the entire floor-space, and their luggage was crammed into the curtained alcove beside the door. Isabella's big squashy leather shoulder-bag was thrown carelessly on top of her suitcase.
He paused to listen again, and heard her voice faintly through the open window. He took the bag to the bed and began to unpack it swiftly, laying out the contents in careful sequence so that he could repack it in exactly the same order. He had searched her sequinned handbag and checked the brand of birth-control pills she was using on that first morning in the Kensington flat while she was still asleep.
Later he had discussed them with the doctor at the embassy.
"If the woman discontinues treatment before the tenth day of her cycle, she will almost certainly experience a fertility backlash effect and become considerably more susceptible to impregnation when she ovulates," he had assured Ramsey.
The slim pack of pills was in one of the compartments of her black crocodile-skin purse near the bottom of the bag. Once again, Ramsey straightened up to listen. There was no sound of voices from the courtyard, and he darted back to the window. He saw that Isabella still sat at the table and that the innkeeper's black cat now had all her attention. The supercilious creature had settled in her lap and was allowing her to tickle behind his ears.
Ramsey stepped back into the bedroom. There were seven pills missing from the separate date-marked compartments in the packet. From his inside pocket Ramsey slipped the identical Ovanon packet with which the embassy doctor had provided him. He removed the first seven pills from their compartments and dropped them into the toilet-bowl. Then he placed the two packages side by side and compared them. Now they were identical in every respect, except that the second package contained only aspirin tablets cunningly coated to resemble birth-control pills.
He slipped the packet of placebo tablets into Isabella's purse and replaced her shoulder-bag in the alcove. He pocketed the original package and flushed the toilet, making sure that the seven pills were gone before he washed his hands and went down the narrow staircase to where Isabella waited in the courtyard.
In Granada, Ramsey took her to the corrida de toros and exulted in their great good fortune that they were to be Able to watch El Cordobes work.
Had not Ramsey's father been a patron of this most famous of all matadors when he was a mere novillero, they would never have procured tickets to the performance at such short notice. As it was, two tickets were delivered to their hotel on the morning after their arrival. Not only were they seated at the ringside directly to the right of the pre
sident's box, but also before the spectacle they were invited to watch El Cordobes dress for the corrida.
Of course, Isabella had read Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon, and she realized the honour of that invitation. Nevertheless, she was unprepared for the obvious depth of Ramsey's respect as he greeted Manuel Benitez, El Cordobes, or for the semi-religious solemnity of the ritual of dressing.