'What the hell else do you expect me to feel? You led me to think there was the beginning of something real between us. I really started to believe in you—the least I believed was that you wanted me... that you felt something of some sort...' She didn't know how to go on because she couldn't see his expression. That was what made the whole thing worse. He was sitting very still. Watching her so coldly. As if in judgement. His face a blur. Eyes just two dark hollows.
Then he spoke and his voice was gruff and the words ran on swiftly as if in a hurry to get it over. He said, 'I care, God how I care—you must know that! But you will not, cannot settle for less than marriage. I understand that. I respect you for it. But you already know that is the one thing I cannot give you. Chrissy, Chrissy, can't you understand? I cannot marry you.'
'You're so good at the persuading game. I suppose that's what comes with experience.' She gave a cocky laugh. 'Of course you respect my reasons for saying no— but it doesn't stop you from making the attempt—I mean in trying to buy me!'
'Buy you?' He sounded incredulous.
'What else would you call it? However you dress it up it would come down to the same thing. Your job offer comes with a hefty grant. I'd be neatly tied by a contract. An apartment comes along with the appointment, so I gather from your outline. How long would it be before you managed to persuade me to m-make love with you?' Her voice was beginning to tremble under the strain of anger and betrayal. 'How could I fight with all that stacked against me? It would be so easy for you. The perfect plan! I would be set up in a little flat in a strange city, in a country I didn't know --'
'But the apartment is part and parcel of the job!'
'Naturally. And how long would it be before you were a frequent visitor? Whenever you got bored with your wife you'd just happen to come to town "on business" no doubt—very neat, very convenient.'
'And could you see yourself doing that for me?' He was white-lipped.
'Degrading myself? Parading around like a scarlet woman? Are you mad!' Her vehemence was all the stronger for a reason she knew very well—temptation had flaunted itself, and, though she had rejected it, a voice still insisted that she could have her heart's desire if only she would compromise.
She retreated to the balcony and turned her back but she could tell he had risen from his chair inside and followed her out. When she turned he was standing in the doorway.
'You have no opinion of me at all, do you?' His expression was strained. 'Maybe I'm a fool to expect you to know what is going on in my heart. I am trying to see it from your point of view. How it must look to you. But I cannot.'
'That's maybe the reason for the so-called curse on your family's marriages,' she said sharply.
He lifted his head.
'Think about it,' she advised with a bitter smile.
He was closer now, not touching, but near enough for her to feel the old chemistry at work. 'I'm not going to touch you,' he told her roughly, reading her mind. 'But you must tell me what you mean.'
'It's so obvious it doesn't need explanations,' she replied with a weary shake of her head.
'I am obviously very stupid. Go on. Explain.'
'You don't understand? Look --' She flung one arm out towards the jungle. 'How does it seem to you?'
He looked out into the night. 'It is rain forest,' he said at last. 'Income. Also very beautiful. Very mysterious. It has its secret life...'
'Go on. How would it seem to an English woman, alone in this country with your autocratic father as sole companion?'
'What?'
'Yes, I read your father's notes, the family book, it was there, in the library.'
'It is not secret, you had a right to read it. I asked you to, but what do you mean?'
'Imagine how she felt?'
'Autocratic, you said?'
'Wasn't he?'
There was a pause. Reluctantly Rodrigo admitted it was true. 'A bit of a tartar, yes,' he half smiled. 'A bear, would you say? But underneath a romantic, and madly in love with my mother.'
'But did she know that? She was very young when she married him. They lived alone here. Nothing happened from day to day. I've seen her diaries. "Again nothing. Miguel has his land. Days pass. I am buried alive. Has the whole world forgotten we exist?" That's a cry from the heart. So of course she sat at that window looking out at the road, desperate I should think to see another human being walking along it who wasn't an employee of her husband.'
Rodrigo's face was white as he considered what she was saying.
She went on. 'If some of the brides who married into the Montadas felt like that of course things turned to tragedy.'
'Surely that is what I am telling you? Here you would always hate it.'
'Fear it,' she said softly. 'Fear the rain forest. Its hidden dangers. Its secrets. Its boundlessness. Its massive loneliness...'
'So,' he replied after a short pause, 'hate, fear, it comes to the same thing. There would be no future for us.'
'I hadn't realised we were still discussing that topic,' she said icily, drawing back. 'I was simply trying to point out that if you want understanding you have to try to understand others too. If you want someone to be happy, you don't pretend their feelings don't exist, you listen to them, you share with them and you solve problems by sharing them. If only your father had listened to your mother, she would have stayed with him until the end. She loved him. It tore her heart out to leave him. She wanted to take you with her but knew that would destroy him more than her own leave-taking. She would have come back to him too. But he wouldn't hear of it. His pride was hurt. He refused to ask her to return. She died thinking he didn't want her back.'
'He was a proud man with an unforgiving streak.' His face was sombre.
Stubborn like you? she wanted to ask, but what was the point? It was over with them even before it had begun. He had made up his mind about that.
'Thank you, Chrissy. You've helped me see things in a different light. I must ensure that it doesn't happen --'
'Between you and your fiancée?' she cut in. 'Well, I'm sure she's quite a different person. I should think she might not even notice the enormous emptiness out there. I would imagine her interests are entirely domestic.'
'You are a bitch, aren't you?' His eyes kindled.
'No. I didn't mean it like that. She strikes me as someone who will be very content to run your household and bear your children and,' her voice thickened, 'and all that sort of thing,' she finished lamely.
'You are right, of course. That's why I chose her. She is excellent wife material.'
'I expect I missed the announcement,' she said dully.
'Not at all. Nothing has yet been announced. We are at the stage of discussion. But I felt I must tell you as soon as possible as I didn't want you to feel I was deceiving you. Maybe giving false hopes.' He shrugged. 'I knew too it was one way of severing this finally between us because, contrary to what you imagine, I knew you would never contemplate a relationship with me that would turn you into some sort of scarlet woman. And as that is also what I wanted to avoid, this seemed a way of extricating both of us.'
'A way of warning me off?' Her heart broke. 'How neat.'
'Quite so. It puts me out of bounds, does it not?'
'Maria would be very flattered to know all this,' she managed to get out.
'She has the story in its entirety,' came the surprising response. 'I have concealed nothing from her. Not even my—my desire for you. Although,' he gave a humourless laugh, 'it would have been impossible to conceal the effect you had on me this afternoon when you rose from the waters like a sea goddess—she would have had to be almost blind not to understand my reaction.'
'I thought you were angry with me --'
'My sweet... I wanted you...' A momentary gentleness came into his voice but he forced it away. 'If you must know I longed to be angry with you. As I do now,' he went on. 'Alas, it isn't possible. This would all be so much easier if we could part with rage in our hearts...'
> He seemed to pull himself together with an effort and his voice levelled. 'Luckily Maria willingly accepted the fact that this will be a marriage—how do you say?—a dynastic marriage? She understands that. Welcomes it. She will become even more wealthy. It is quite usual for families like ours. She is also grateful for the opportunity it offers to return some fellow's ring which she has been wearing to little purpose for quite some time.'
He went on, 'A love-match, so I am to understand, at least on her side. Feeling she has waited long enough, she suggested this face-saving solution after I told her...' He paused then added irritably, 'It is not good to be a spinster at the age of twenty-eight, she feels. Her family will welcome our decision.'
'How cold you both are.'
'When passions are liable to consume those involved it is wise to become like ice.' Despite his words his voice shook, revealing how thin the ice was.
But Chrissy was too consumed with emotion to hear it. 'You mean that underneath that calculating facade of yours there's a heart pulsing with human blood? Ha!' The strain of continuing was becoming too much. She could feel her limbs trembling. She groped forward in the darkness to find a chair. His hand came out, gripping her by the arm.
'Chrissy...'
She could feel the blood throbbing through the tips of his fingers, calling up a response in her that made her gasp, and although he didn't say anything else that one word uttered with such intensity seemed to express all the violence of his desire.
'Don't, please don't --!' she cried against the side of his head as their bodies searched for each other in the darkness. It was like a home-coming to feel his arms pull her into their warm circle at last.
She clung to him, touching his hair, his face, his lips. 'Oh, Rodrigo...' she moaned. Her mouth searched and met his as he searched at the same instant for hers, then they were spiralling down into the consuming depths where desire was the only law, his mouth hotly plundering, hers yielding without restraint.
He pulled her into the velvety darkness inside the room, his mouth still burning in a fever against hers, forcing her to respond to every quivering movement as he coaxed her to yield him everything. But even when his fingers sought the honeyed skin within the confines of her dress he found no resistance, only yearning and loving, as in an instant, shyly and helplessly, she surrendered at once her heart, her soul, every small response alive with love and trust.
With a stifled exclamation he stilled her beneath his more experienced touch, caressing her in a way that calmed and steadied her erupting wildness.
'No, we can't do this. Not like this. Don't, angel, be still.' He held her face steady between his palms. 'We mustn't. You would hate me. Nothing has changed... It cannot be. Stop now.'
Slowly calming her, his words penetrating the haze of desire that obscured her usual control, she was aware of his great strength supporting her, but, inexperienced as she was, she knew that a part of him was still resisting the need for control, every muscle throbbing with the desire to take her. Above it all his will of steel, tightening its hold, bringing him to a pulsing state of tension, a point of Balance that still needed only one push to send it out of control.
Words rose to her lips, feverish words prompting her to plead with him, to demand his loving, to exact it when she knew it was almost hers, but she forced them back. 'I can't go on without you,' she told him instead. 'If you love me, say you love me. That will have to do. But if you don't then let me go.'
'I want to hold you and touch you --' he murmured hoarsely against her mouth.
'Say you love me if you do,' she pleaded. 'Tell me if it's true...'
She tried to trace the contours of his face in the darkness with her lips. If only she could see the expression in those sky-blue eyes, but they were like two pits as endless as night in the mask of his face, giving nothing away.
He didn't say the words she wanted to hear. They were the only words that would make the loving and the leaving bearable. Someone once said, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. And she clung to him, desperate to hear him tell her that one thing that would make the sacrifice worthwhile, because she would know that the anguish it left would be shared.
'I want to hold you all night,' he repeated instead in that hoarse whisper. 'I want to love you till dawn. I want to take you to heaven and back. But we know we cannot. Don't fight it, angel. We cannot. Not here. Not like this. Not in this house at this time. Tomorrow I would hate myself. You would feel betrayed when it was time to part. To make love would make it impossible ever to be together again --'
'How should we ever be together again?' she whispered hopelessly.
'When you take over at the lab --'
'You can't imagine I could become your employee after this?' she breathed, scandalised, tearing her lips from their melting contact with the smooth muscles of his shoulder.
'Now yes, surely it will be possible?' he groaned. 'Now. If we do nothing to regret. But after knowing each other, it would be impossible.'
'You believe that?'
'I know it would.'
'No, I mean, do you believe I could work for you...?'
'You must. I cannot let you go altogether! At least we would have that --'
'What for? To carry the torment a stage further?' She was trembling as she tore herself away from his embrace. 'How do you think I could live, knowing you were loving someone else? Do you imagine I have such control over my emotions?'
'You will forget this madness in time. We will feel differently. We will be calm. This craziness will be simply a memory --'
' Will it? You mean, as it will be for you perhaps?' She forced his hands away again, making herself do it in order to gain some strength. 'So that's why you won't say you love me? Because you know for you it's only lust. It's an animal hunger that you'll satisfy some other way until it fades.' Her fingers came to her mouth. 'You've always known what you felt for me would come to nothing. I've been too blind to see it. I thought—oh, how stupid I am. How naive! It must make you smile to discover how inexperienced I am—mistaking plain lust for love!'
Unable to bear the knowledge that even now, magic though his touch had been, powerful because of his unsatisfied desire, it had been merely an animal reaction, with nothing finer in it, she groped blindly for the door.
'I kept seeing clearly, over and over again, how you just wanted me in order to add to your collection,' she bit out, 'but I shut my eyes to the truth because—because of what I felt. I thought—I hoped you felt it too...'
The world was a nightmare with such traps in it. How could the touch of one man spell heaven when all it came down to was the hunger of one animal for another?
She ran out into the corridor, his shout ringing in her ears. Blinded by despair, she blundered down the stairs, scarcely caring whether she bumped into anyone on the way, until, with a recklessness she had never felt before, she went plunging off into the terraced gardens, running, blindly running, until she felt the night close round her and the hacienda with its painful memories recede.
Far enough away from the garden lights to go unobserved, she slowed at last, wandering in blind torment along the pathways threading the margin of the forest. As the trees closed round it was strangely silent as if her presence had made the wild creatures wary of betraying themselves. It lulled her into a feeling of security. She half imagined that by rejecting the human world the natural one welcomed her as an accomplice.
Without conscious aim she pushed her way deeper between the close-packed trees, creepers and liana twining round her wrists, brushing her face, swinging silently shut behind her. She was scarcely aware of what she was doing.
Then she realised she was lost. At first she didn't care. Nothing mattered now. Shut out of Rodrigo's life, she belonged nowhere. Dense vegetation blocked her at every turn. She had to force her way through the thick columns. Eyes glimmered out of the darkness following her steps. Little by little she heard the night sounds start up again—a whirr, a click
, a sudden scream close by, then more distant cries, eerie, half human. The mating calls of countless insects gathered in violent chorus. Soon the noise rose on all sides, a cacophony to match the discord in her heart. It was as if the rain forest, satisfied she was one of them, was drawing her in to its endless, inhuman loneliness.
Pushing at a barrier of vegetation, she felt a sting on her shoulder. She turned with an exclamation. Then it was as if unseen fingers fastened round her throat. She stumbled, falling into deeper darkness. She was suffocating now in the damp, foetid atmosphere beneath the giant trees. Fear enveloped her, sending her scrambling back and forth in vain. There was no way out.
'Rodrigo!' she called, knowing he would never hear her.
Flesh crawled as something slithered over her foot. She failed to stifle a small shriek as the sound of some large unidentified creature crashed through the undergrowth towards her. It sent her running madly in the opposite direction. She tripped, falling full length. The thing was almost upon her. She could hear the harsh rasping of its breath. Horror sent her scrambling to her feet, running with the screams bottled inside until she hit another blind alley.
Then it was right behind her, its breath hot on her bare flesh.
'Chrissy! Stop!' Strong arms gathered her against a human form. The scent of vanilla enveloped her. The familiar, beloved voice was whispering over and over the words she had yearned to hear for so long. She knew she must be dreaming.
'Rodrigo!' she cried, pressing her face more desperately against the comforting bulk of his shoulder. She knew he would vanish in a moment, leaving her more alone than ever.
Then his lips inched over her skin. She heard the longed-for words again. 'I love you, Chrissy. I love you.' His lips pressed her temples, teaching her the shapes of the words he spoke, pressing their form against the pulse of her throat.
'I love you, Chrissy!' he repeated as if it was something he had newly discovered. 'Never, never, run from me again. Don't let me drive you away. Stay—stay where I can keep you safe forever.'
He held her protectively within the circle of his arms, lips pulsing feverishly over her face and as she heard the words she had despaired of hearing she felt the terrors of the night begin to fade.
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