He forged ahead along a narrow track, Chrissy following eagerly behind. Within minutes she could hear a faint thundering and as they went on it got louder until it seemed to enwrap them in its embrace. Then the leaves parted and the sticky heat of the forest gave way to a cool mist. Soon there was a welcome breeze and then Chrissy gave a gasp. Just in front of them was a magnificent waterfall, plunging, a glittering band of silver, into the depths of a wide pool.
Rodrigo looked down at her. 'Is this paradise or not?' he murmured. For a moment his eyes seemed full of subtle meaning but she turned at once, opening her arms as if to enclose the whole scene in one rapturous embrace. Tears stung her eyes. The beauty of the scene was more moving because it was a once-only moment. Rodrigo would return here time and time again through the years ahead—while she would leave it after today, never to return. It made her want to cry with an impending sense of loss.
'I love it!' she shouted above the crashing of the water, knowing that what she really meant was, I love you. She felt privileged that he should want to show her one of his favourite places and moved that it was done with no ulterior purpose.
She turned to him with shining eyes. 'This is heaven on earth.'
His mouth twisted. 'I'm glad you like it.' There was a momentary bitterness in his voice but it made no sense to her.
She stood in the shallows. Already her blouse was soaked, moulding itself to her breasts in a way she couldn't help. She saw Rodrigo's eyes flicker over her body and away again. He went at once to a sheltered corner by a rocky ledge and dumped the basket there, pretending to fiddle around with it, his head averted. Chrissy, with a sudden awareness of the danger in the situation, shook off her shoes, throwing them down on the edge of the pool. She waded further into the water.
Her heart was thumping wildly and she knew why. But he had given his word the day before and what was more he had kept it. It was only her imagination that was conjuring dangers out of a look, a smile.
She pretended to be absorbed in admiring the falls, but magnificent though they were it was still Rodrigo who filled her soul.
When he came to stand on the bank she forced herself to chatter about this and that, anything to bring some normality to the wild racing of her emotions. 'It's crazy,' she rattled on, 'the trees are like giant versions of my indoor plants at home! That rubber plant --' she pointed across the clearing '—it could easily be the one I have on my kitchen window-sill. Except that it's about a hundred times as big!'
She could feel his eyes on her. The spray from the fall had already drenched her. It made her hair hang damply around her shoulders. She should have tied it back today. She put up a hand. He was still watching her. 'It's like looking through a magnifying glass,' she hurried on, with a catch in her breath as he continued to stare at her. 'It makes me feel so small, like a figure in Lilliput.' She gave a shaky laugh.
It was true. She did feel small, completely unreal...as if she'd suddenly stepped out of the safe ordinary world of every day into a story-book world... where anything might happen.
He waded through the shallows towards her. 'You look like a water nymph...' he said through the roar of the falls. Then he gave a sudden laugh. 'At least, without these ridiculous shorts you would—I mean...' He turned abruptly.
She watched him climb up the bank and stride across the sandy inlet to the basket. When he returned he was carrying a silver flask. 'It's our tradition to picnic here. So, even though we can't stay long, I thought we ought to keep up the tradition. Here.' He waded to where she stood with the icy water foaming around her thighs, handing her a beaker into which he proceeded to pour a stream of rose-pink liquid. It rattled invitingly with ice cubes.
He raised the flask to his lips and their eyes met tellingly over the rim. Then he tilted it and Chrissy watched like someone mesmerised as the muscles of his strong throat worked. Tearing her glance away, she followed his example. A delicious sweetness filled her mouth. When she'd drained the beaker she forced herself to turn away. She wanted to behave naturally, but didn't know what natural meant any more.
'Don't go too far,' he warned, speaking from right behind her as she waded blindly towards the middle of the pool. 'You're getting into deep water.'
She gave a shaky laugh and stopped. 'I know that only too well!'
There was silence behind her and, when she dared a glance over her shoulder, his eyes were again full of something and she was forced to drop her glance. But her eyes returned of their own accord as if unable to deprive themselves of the sight of him.
'Don't look at me,' she whispered, her words almost lost in the battling roar of the falls.
He came closer and bent so she could hear the words he spoke. 'We're both already in deep water,' he paused. 'I didn't intend this...'
She could feel his breath against her temple. Trickles of moisture were running between her breasts. She could even feel spray on her eyelashes.
'Still "no"?' he asked hoarsely.
She nodded. How could he ask? The effort to reject what she most wanted lodged like a stone in her heart.
He must have read something of the effort it caused, for with a groan he reached for her and, as if it were happening to someone else, she felt her body propel her into his feverish embrace even as the warnings screamed in her ears.
'Darling, you are so very beautiful,' he murmured, sketching a fiery pattern of kisses over her face and neck.
'No, Rod, we mustn't touch each other like this...' she countered in fevered tones. 'Please don't --'
'I want you,' he replied as if that sealed the matter. His mouth burned hers as he raked it over and over with a sudden conflagration of kisses that left her breathless. Her nerves were screaming with the desire for more, but with a distant, half-dreaming release of control, she felt his hands slide slowly down to her waist and then gently leave her. 'You're right,' he muttered hoarsely in her ear. 'I gave you my word. Just make it easy for me. Be angry with me. Hate me. Fight me. Tell me you love another man. Tell me you hate me, darling. Make it easy.'
He stepped back a pace, and then a second pace, and then he was standing on the bank again, chained to her only by the ethereal atoms that danced between them. She brushed a hand over her damp cheeks, mind so dazzled by the yearning need shaking through her that she could have sunk down in the gushing waters and allowed herself to be consumed—as if their desire were something commanded by nature. But he was moving away now.
'Let me show you some flowers you won't have in your collection,' he called. His manner had changed. It was determinedly practical. She knew he didn't feel brusque, that it was a defence against the emotion that threatened with the unconscious force of a natural phenomenon. But she welcomed the chance to draw her tattered defences together.
He was right. They were in deep water and neither of them wanted to be swept away by it.
She followed him up the bank to the side of the cliff, then, watching where he placed his hands and feet, she began to scramble after him. At the top was an endless vista of forest trees, stopped only in the far distance by a ridge of snow-capped mountains.
'This is spectacular,' she breathed. 'Oh, Rod, how wonderful to live amid such splendour.'
'You say that --' he began harshly, then checked what he had been about to say and turned abruptly, though not before she had seen his face harden. 'Look, this is what I wanted to show you,' he announced before she could make sense of that look. Following his outstretched hand, she saw a cascade of multi-coloured blooms in a hollow between the rocks.
'This is the only place I've ever seen them,' he told her. 'Do you know what they are?'
She reached out and touched the slender bell-shaped flowers. 'They're beautiful, quite unknown... each one different.' Some were double bell-shaped, others crimped and frilled, yet others so fine they were almost transparent.
He allowed her to choose one or two specimens to take back. She asked, 'Do they have a name?'
He smiled, a sadness in his eyes as he watched
her hold the blooms to her face. 'We call them Angel's Wings... It makes sense,' he said as he turned. 'They only grow here... at Paradise Falls.'
He held her hand as they made the awkward journey back to the bottom of the cliff, releasing her as soon as he saw she was safely down. 'Now we must go back,' he told her at once, 'before I miss my appointment.' His eyes lasered briefly over her upturned face, but before it could become the first step on another forbidden path, he hocked the basket on to one shoulder and set off briskly through the wood.
Chrissy gave one last lingering look over her shoulder at Paradise Falls. She would never forget it. Only the knowledge that their love was forbidden had prevented its becoming a paradise indeed.
With the precious memory stored in her heart forever, she climbed into the canoe and allowed him to propel her back to the busy world beyond.
He left her on the steps of the hacienda. There was an air of something like coldness between them now and she knew she had failed him. He couldn't see anything wrong in her responding to the love he offered. It was an obstacle between them that nothing would remove.
It seared her mind to know that he could not understand how much she cared. But it was best like this. He still wore the eagle-crested ring.
She heard the Jeep come roaring back through the archway halfway through an afternoon that had turned uncomfortably humid. From her vantage-point in the shady little boudoir on the first floor at the front, she saw him climb athletically from the driver's seat and make for the house.
He found her in the boudoir a few minutes later.
There was a doubtful expression on his face as if he had something to tell her. Obviously he had come to a decision of some sort.
While he was standing in the doorway it started to rain in large hand-sized drops, and within a few minutes the drive below the balcony had changed from pale yellow to deep ochre.
Since she had seen him climb out of the Jeep he had changed out of his khaki work clothes and had donned a simple white vest with baggy designer trousers. She wondered how anyone could make such simple attire look so stylish. His hair was wet as if he had taken a quick shower before coming to her, and it hung glossily past his ears, even longer now than when Juanita had teasingly run her fingers through it.
'You've found this little place, have you?' he began. 'It used to be my mother's favourite corner.' The rain was still drumming on the ground outside and she could hear it beating on the roof with an increasing tropical tempo.
Her head lifted. He had never mentioned his family before. 'I can see why she would like it,' she replied.
'So can I,' he replied at once. 'It gives a perfect view of the road leading away from this place.' His mouth twisted with long-held bitterness.
'Did she want to—I mean-—V She was confused by the unexpected savagery of his tone.
'She wanted to. Like me she counted. But for her it was years not nights, and it was years to the time she would escape, not, like me, to a departure that fills me with despair.' With a sudden muffled curse he jerked away. 'It's no good!'
'Wait! Rod --! I mean...' Her eyes searched his face for clues when he swivelled to face her.
He came back, his face a mask. 'Do you know why marriage is out of the question for me?' he almost snarled. 'Because of her. It's been drumming in my head all day... ever since we went to the Falls... I wanted to take you there, to draw you into my past. Make you want to be part of it. But why? What's the purpose when I know—we both know—it would never work out?' He strode to the balcony and looked savagely out at the ceaseless rain. 'OK, so I should rethink perhaps?' He spoke half to himself, but then he gave a fierce shake of his head. 'One day, maybe. Who knows?'
He strode back to where she was sitting and stood over her, a variety of emotions playing openly over his strong features. 'But it wouldn't be with you. Impossible with you. You are wrong for me on every count. You can never be of Garcia Montada.' He was on the point of muscling his way out again when she gave a strangled cry.
Before he had entered the room she had been at peace, or as near as could be with the days dwindling so rapidly to nothing, but now, with a few short sentences, he had shattered the fragile edifice she had built up and the pieces lay in fragments, defying her ability to put them back together.
'What do you mean?' she cried out, half rising from the quilted chair in which she was ensconced. 'I know I can never be "of Garcia Montada" but I've known that from the beginning.' Her voice shook, and when he seemed to be on the point of shouldering his way out without properly explaining his strange remarks, she quavered, 'What have I to do with your mother, Rodrigo, and why have you never mentioned her before?'
He came back, towering over her, face tight with an extremity of emotion she had never seen before despite the intensity of previous encounters. 'Her name is never spoken here,' he said simply. 'My father forbade it.'
'Your father died some years ago, didn't he?' she asked, struggling to understand.
'Have you heard how he died?' he demanded harshly. 'The story the people tell about Miguel Garcia? His lingering death from a broken heart?' A bitter laugh was forced from between his lips. By now the rain was drumming in one consistent roar, almost drowning out his voice but failing to conceal the undeniable anguish in it.
Chrissy shook her head. 'I've heard nothing.'
'No, they are waiting for history to repeat itself,' he told her with bitterness in his tone. 'Afraid perhaps that if they speak out they will bring down the same curse on my head.' His lips whitened. 'Or perhaps they wonder why I don't use you to wreak my revenge on someone who can only arouse bitter memories for this house.'
By 'house' she at once understood him to mean the dynasty of Garcia Montada. 'But what happened to make such a thing a possibility?' she gasped. 'How am I involved?'
'You are not. At least not directly. But sometimes the people take fanciful ideas into their heads and at times even I—in the empty night hours—feel that maybe they are right. She brought him luck, my mother, so they say, and great happiness., .and then she took it all away when she left.' He turned as if unable to look at her.
From over by the balcony, with the sheets of rain as a backdrop, he went on, 'All he had after she ran away was me—a child of seven. I lived with his heartbreak from that day on. Seven years. Twice seven years he waited, pacing the drive down there,' he gestured with one shoulder to the front of the hacienda, 'waiting, waiting—always waiting—for a woman who forgot him the minute she tasted the freedom of the outside world. At least...' his voice became far away '... she thought it was freedom. But who knows, perhaps later she longed to return to the forest, but pride would not let her come crawling back to beg his forgiveness?' He raised his dark head. 'Or is that romantic rubbish, Chrissy? Tell me. You should know. You look like her. You come from her world. You of all women must know how she thought about us.'
'I?'
'She was the outsider here. The foreign bride. But it was we who were the foreigners finally when she cast us off.'
He sat down suddenly in the chair opposite and put his head in his hands. 'Her actions have always been inexplicable to me. Why should she punish me? Our family has been one cursed by ill-fated marriages. But it was a double-edged curse. With every bride who fled the primitive solitude of the forest, or died from loneliness, the Garcia Montadas flourished from the union. I'm the heir to a bitter harvest. I made a vow long ago not to tempt fate by an ill-considered love liaison. For me it would be a marriage of convenience or nothing. The vagaries of the heart would not be heeded.'
'But Rod—Rodrigo --' she put out a hand '—I thought you were married? I thought --' She felt dizzy with the effort to take in what he was telling her.
'Married?' His head shot up. 'To whom?'
'To Juanita of course!'
'Ha!' His expression lightened for a moment. 'Are you mad? She is my niece—family. We wear the rings of Garcia Montada.' He held up his finger. 'She is a mere child. A flirtatious little girl. Wh
at do you take me for?' He leaned back and mirth briefly overcame his earlier bitterness, but then his eyes clouded and he leaned forward to peer into her face. 'Is this what you were trying to tell me—you could not become the mistress of a married man?' He paused and when she nodded he went on, 'You seriously think I would offer you that sort of liaison? Chrissy—Christine...' He rose. 'Seriously...?'
When she nodded again he furrowed his brow. 'So, that explains your peculiar reluctance to enjoy what little we might have shared... How ironic.'
He was standing upright now, storm and shadow bringing into sharp relief the contours of his body. For a moment they looked at each other, she with her head tilted to his, he erect, his face inclined slightly to gaze down long and gently into her widening eyes.
Slowly he began to shake his head. 'What mischance and mismatching here. Would our fate have been changed but for a mistake like that?' He gave a dismissive shrug of his shoulders, 'Well, there it is, my angel. My decision. Now you know why I cannot offer you marriage --' He gave a bitter smile. 'I can offer only the doubtful pleasures of unwedded bliss.' He shrugged as if the conclusion was foregone. But his eyes softened as they turned full on hers. 'We are beginning to learn each other a little... It is bitter knowledge, yes?'
There was a crack of thunder as he turned to go. Chrissy watched him with staring eyes, even now unable to put the pieces together so that they could be handled without hurt.
Fate, she murmured to herself after he had left. Did they have to submit to its blind force? She glanced out into the deluge and could just make out the road leading away from the hacienda.
It must have been a view that had brought tears to the eyes of Rodrigo's mother many a time, but her own tears now were not from the longing to escape, but from the hopeless desire to remain.
CHAPTER NINE
Jungle Lover Page 13