She was in an agony of impatience when he returned from his visit to the condesa. And the news he brought threw her into a frenzy of despair.
“He’s gone? He escaped? But where is he then? Oh God, where has he gone? How will I ever find him now?”
“But, querida, I thought you would be glad of the news.” Miguel smiled down at her with his twisted, sarcastic smile. “After all, he’s a free man now, he’s no longer in chains—although, of course,” he added thoughtfully, “he won’t dare show his face around here again—he’s a murderer, along with those other wretches. They all have a price on their heads now.”
She looked at him wildly, and he put his arms around her, drawing her rigid, unresisting body against his.
“You mustn’t worry, chica. If he had enough presence of mind to kill a guard and seize his chance to escape, I’m sure he’ll know where to go. My guess is that he’s gone to find Díaz. Yes, I’m almost sure of it, now I recall that my Tia the condesa is a distant family connection of Don Porfirio. Perhaps that’s where she sent him.”
She felt so numb. The effects of the shock she had received, and the even worse shock of knowing that having been so close to her, Steve had disappeared again, made Ginny move through the days that followed like a somnambulist. She felt so empty inside—so drained of everything, even the pride and stubbornness that had enabled her to survive all that she had gone through up to this point. She had finally learned to accept the fact that Steve was dead, that she would never see him again, and then suddenly she was informed that he hadn’t died, that he was alive; only to have him snatched away once more.
There was also the frightening realization that he might not want to see her again. He must hate her of course, after the rotten trick that Colonel Devereaux had played on them both. He probably blamed her for everything—perhaps he had even forgotten about her, if he hadn’t seen her that day…and if he had, then he must think the worst.
It was agony to know all this, and to have to go on existing, pretending to everyone but Miguel that nothing had changed, that she was still the same lighthearted, flirtatious young woman they all thought her to be.
Strangely enough, she was more than ever in Miguel Lopez’s company these days. She felt that in his own peculiar way he was the only person who knew her real self, and understood her pain. He was the only person she could talk to honestly—there were no more pretences between them, and so therefore, an almost grudging friendship, if one could call it that, grew up between them. She had almost forgotten about Michel, except when Agnes, or some other catty woman would ask about him.
Ginny knew very well that they all whispered that she was Miguel’s mistress—he her latest lover. Not a few of the other women hoped secretly to be the one to comfort the poor young Captain Remy when he found out how his fiancée had been behaving. But by now Ginny didn’t even care.
Colonel Lopez seemed to take a peculiar pleasure in parading the lovely Madame du Plessis as his latest mistress. She was one of the most beautiful and sought-after women in Orizaba, as she had been in Mexico City, and he had conquered her citadel. He had made her his, even though it was widely known that the Comte d’Arlingen had actually asked her to marry him! Women whispered to each other that Miguel Lopez must be an exceptionally charming and virile man to make a lovely woman jeopardize the prospect of an extremely good marriage and in fact her very reputation, just to be seen with him everywhere.
They did in fact go everywhere together, with Miguel playing the assiduous gallant. They went riding alone and did not return for hours—it was a well-known scandal that Colonel Lopez was more often in the bedroom of Madame du Plessis than he was in his own—and in the emperor’s own hacienda, under his very nose in fact, the gossips whispered. Miguel took all kinds of public liberties with her—he kissed her boldly on the lips when they danced, or let his fingers brush across her breasts when he leaned close to whisper something in her ear. And Ginny still did not care, even when Agnes warned her that she was being foolish to allow her reputation to be ruined.
“But Agnes, what is my reputation after all?” Ginny said wearily when Agnes taxed her with it. “You know what they all said when Michel first produced me as his mistress—why should I care now?”
“Michel, at least, was a gentleman about it! You know how unexceptionally he behaved towards you in public, never showing anything but the greatest respect. But Miguel—he’s a show-off! He wants to make sure everyone knows when a woman has given herself to him. He may be—what is the word they use?—yes, ‘macho,’ but basically he’s not a gentleman, at least where women are concerned.”
“But you were all for my taking him as a lover! You encouraged it, don’t you remember?”
“Of course I did!” Agnes said impatiently, “but I didn’t expect you to lose your head! Every woman needs a lover, especially when she has a fiancé who’s not around. But for God’s sake, you should be more discreet about it! What will happen when Michel finds out?”
Ginny had been wondering, in a passive kind of way, why she had heard nothing from Michel. She had imagined that perhaps he had heard all the stories that were circulating about her, and had decided he did not want to see her again. And she began to think that perhaps that was best—she could not possibly marry Michel now, knowing that Steve still lived; but still, she could not bear the thought of hurting Michel, who had been so good to her. Yes, it was best this way—and there was always Miguel, and their strange, almost unnatural alliance.
Then she received word, by a special messenger sent by Marshal Bazaine himself, that Michel had been wounded during the siege of Durango, when the French had been forced to retreat, leaving the fortress to the victorious Juaristas. His wound was not serious, but it was bad enough to put him in the hospital in Mexico City.
When Ginny left Orizaba, early in November, Miguel Lopez went with her. The emperor had decided to stay in Mexico and fight for his crumbling empire. He was talking of coming back to the city himself, and Colonel Lopez was to see that the old palace was prepared for his arrival.
“He says he can’t bear to live at Chapultepec again. It has too many memories of Carlotta.” Miguel, riding beside her open carriage, bent his handsome blond head to Ginny’s pale, upturned face. “But you, querida—what will you do now? So you’ve decided to run back to your handsome, wounded hero to nurse him back to health. No doubt he’ll carry his arm in a sling and have an interesting pallor in his cheeks for a while. But what are you going to do about him?
Will you throw yourself at him and confess everything? Will you sacrifice your one great love to his need?”
Miguel’s drawling, sarcastic words grated on her nerves, and she started chewing her lip angrily.
“Must you always sound so callous? Of course I’m going to see Michel. And the very least I owe him is honesty! I feel so guilty as it is.”
Miguel groaned dramatically.
“Dear God—the sentimentality of women! First you’re half-dead with frustrated passion for your long-lost husband, and then you feel guilty because you can’t have your comte as well! Make up your mind, chica—or better still, play your cards right and you might have both in the end!”
“Oh you! You’re really insufferable, do you know that? You’re the one man I’ve met who is absolutely devoid of principle!”
“How very cruel and unfair you are, querida!” Miguel picked up her hand and held it to his lips. “Here I travel all the way to the city with you, and all I hear is reproaches. What would you have me do to prove my devotion to principle? Shall I make a clean breast of everything to Captain Remy and fight a duel with him? But of course—I’d forgotten his wound. That’s too bad. Think what a buzz of gossip we could create!”
Because she had learned that the best way to combat Miguel’s constant barbs was to ignore them, Ginny forced herself to shrug lightly.
“Please Miguel! At least let me see poor Michel before we decide what to do with him!”
He gave a d
elighted laugh. “You’re learning, chica, you’re learning! We’ll make a good pair, you and I.”
She was to think of that later, when she moved into Miguel’s little apartment—the one where he always kept his current mistresses.
Yes, she thought bitterly, we really do make a fine pair! Both opportunists—using whatever weapons we have to gain our ends. Miguel is right, I’m almost as heartless and as calculating as he is!
The thought of her last, painful meeting with Michel still twisted like a knife-blade in her heart. He had been so hurt! So angry! Try as she would, she could not forget the bitter, hurtful words he had flung at her.
“To think that I loved you and respected you enough to offer you marriage! And then the minute my back is turned you embark on a flagrant affair with Miguel Lopez—that rake! That roué! You knew his reputation, and yet you had to make a public show of your affair with him, and drag my honor in the dust along with your own! Don’t come running back to me when he throws you over—I’ve done with you forever!”
I deserve it—I deserve everything he says about me, she kept thinking while he continued to flay her with his caustic words.
“I really loved you, Ginette! And God knows how much I tried to make you love me back. I thought of you as the beautiful and unworldly girl that I had known—even though you had been dragged through the dust, I continued to think of you as a heroine, a degraded angel who was capable of rising above anything! But now I’m beginning to believe that you are past redemption, that you actually enjoy degradation and the kind of life that can only lead you from once vice to another.”
“Oh stop, Michel!” she had entreated him at last, “please stop—please don’t upset yourself so! I know I deserve your scorn and your anger as well, but you have to admit that I never pretended, with you, to be what I was not! Didn’t you enjoy the art of lovemaking that I had been forced to learn? Wasn’t that what obsessed you in the first place? You never would have dared to make the old Ginette your mistress, but you enjoyed the new me, didn’t you? You asked me to marry you because that was the only way you could be sure of me—because deep inside you felt you could not trust me, isn’t that true?”
“What a glib tongue you’ve developed!” he sneered at her. “How easily you’ve learned to twist everything, so that you can avoid believing the truth about yourself! You never loved me—all you could offer me was gratitude! Good God—gratitude, when I worshipped you, I adored you, and wanted only your true affection in return! What does Lopez give you? What kind of satisfaction do you get from being his public plaything, his little poule of the moment?”
“He can help me to find my husband!” At last, goaded beyond endurance, she had almost shrieked the words at him. “Would you have preferred me to enter into a bigamous marriage with you, Michel? Heavens, what a juicy scandal that would have created! But I couldn’t do that to you, nor to myself either, and as for Miguel Lopez, he is about the only man who understands—who is willing to accept me as I am. You see, he knows that I still love my husband—in a way, he saved him for me!”
She saw Michel’s pale, suddenly tortured look, but even that could not stop her now. “Michel, Michel—you knew that I still loved Steve! How many times have you accused me of yearning for a ghost? Well, he’s not a ghost, he’s alive, somewhere, and I’m going to find him. No matter what it takes, no matter what I have to do, to what depths I might have to sink, I’ll do it!”
“So when Lopez has had enough of your rather publicly advertised charms he will find your husband and push you off into his arms—is that how it’s supposed to be? In a way, I almost pity this husband of yours—I wonder how he will feel to get his rather used wife back!”
She paled as if he had struck her. “Yes, I’ve thought of that too,” she said in a whisper. “But that is a chance I must take.” She had turned and fled from him then, unable to face any more. And had gone to Miguel, just as he had expected.
45
Being Miguel Lopez’s official paramour was not really too bad after all, Ginny discovered as society began to return to Mexico City in throngs, in the wake of the emperor. The city returned to its old frantic gaiety, and she attended just as many balls and tertulias as she always had, with the difference that Miguel, and not the Comte d’Arlingen, was now her “protector”, and Miguel was not in the least jealous.
He took her to all the more important functions, and seemed as devoted and attentive as ever in public. In private, he made few serious demands on her, except to oblige him when he decided he wanted her—and as a lover he could be quite exciting, if a trifle perverted in his tastes. Ginny refused to let this upset her. After all, why should it? She had done almost everything, she had learned all the tricks of a whore—what difference did it make? At least, Miguel did not use force on her, and he was always impeccably clean. He made her feel, at such times, as if they were playing some kind of game; competing with each other as if they had been children. And they could be perfectly honest with each other, with no need for playacting.
Miguel Lopez enjoyed showing her off in public as his latest acquisition. It gave his rather jaded reputation a kind of cachet to have it known that he had stolen her from right under the nose of a French nobleman, and almost on the eve of their wedding, at that. If she had decided to take another lover, or more than one, he would merely have laughed and asked her for details. He had grown quite fond of her, he admitted, but he was hardly in love with her. After all he was married—and kept his wife safely tucked away in his small hacienda in the country, protected from the corruption of the city. And he had other women—he made no bones about it.
He made Ginny his confidante and related endless stories of his various conquests, his amours. Sometimes he even went so far as to ask her advice or help in some affair of the heart.
“Fancy, chica,” he laughed, “you’re the first woman I’ve really been able to talk to quite frankly. You’ve made our little arrangement a pleasure.”
“But what about your side of the bargain?” she said quickly. “Haven’t you been able to find out anything yet?”
“Patience, querida, patience!” he cautioned her. “You know I’ve been working on it, but these are such uncertain times, and he appears to be an extremely difficult man to pin down.” He smiled lazily at her, playing with a lock of her hair. “Did you know that some Porfirista guerrilleros blew up that painfully constructed railroad they were building to Puebla? Yes—in spite of all the precautions we had taken, they sneaked through our armed soldiers like puffs of smoke—destroyed all those months of hard labor! And then disappeared quite safely, to make matters worse. On top of everything else, it’s really a bad business!”
She sat bolt upright. “What are you trying to say? Do you think that he was one of them?”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt he engineered the whole thing! Such multifaceted talent—such a resourceful man, isn’t he? I suppose I’ll have to send down to ask my dear aunt the condesa all about it—I’m sure he must have paid her a visit at the same time. Did I tell you how struck she was by him? I was quite bored, listening to her rattle on about his good looks, his magnificent physique, his—er—other qualifications.”
“Oh, damn you, Miguel, damn you! I do hate you when you’re in a cruel mood like this!” She beat at him furiously until he caught her wrists, still laughing, and held them over her head while he brought his face down.
“I think I have a way of making you forget how much you hate me,” he whispered, and after a while her furious struggling stopped. It was the kind of defeat he enjoyed inflicting on her, and she thought with a pang, how much Steve had enjoyed doing the same thing. Steve—Steve—she closed her eyes. That would be her revenge on Miguel!
In spite of the almost endless round of amusements that Mexico City provided, Ginny found the time dragging. Christmas came and went—the rain showered down and then the sun came back and baked them. She kept reminding Miguel about his promise until he pointed out that she was becoming a
nag, and he was doing his best. All she had to sustain her was the thought that Steve was still alive—Miguel was able to tell her that much at least. And she had learned this much about Miguel, that he had his own peculiar sense of honor in spite of his deviousness and cynicism. If he took the trouble to give his word, he would keep it.
But Miguel too was preoccupied these days. The war was going very badly—that was all everyone could talk about, and Ginny sometimes thought she would go mad, listening to the endless discussions, the battles refought. What was the point? It was now one victory after another for the Juaristas, and Maximilian still vacillated dreamily while his generals talked of nothing but “man˜ana,” when they would push the hated revolutionaries back to the sea, with or without the damned turncoat French.
It was now an established fact that the French were packing up to leave. The Emperor Louis Napoleon, preoccupied by the war with Prussia, had finally given in to the adamant demands by Secretary Seward of the United States. He promised to withdraw his troops, and made repeated requests, echoed by the Emperor of Austria, that Maximilian should give up this mad venture and return to Europe himself.
Maximilian, his pride pricked, listened instead to the urgings of his generals. He had adopted Mexico as his own country, he announced. He would never leave it. He could never desert his loyal Imperialist troops, nor abandon all those who had supported him to the not-too-tender mercies of the Juaristas. Stories of brutalities, of torture and mutilation of prisoners, of mass executions of defeated Imperialist troops by the Juaristas began to float around the city.
“They say it’s only in revenge for the Black Decrees, and for what the French did to them, but do two wrongs make a right?” Agnes du Salm sounded vehement. “That Juarez is a monster—did you know he is pure-blooded Indian? If he had been Spanish he might have been more honorable.”
“Were the French all honorable?” Ginny retorted, stung. “You forget, Agnes, I’ve been at the receiving end of some of their brutality.”
Sweet Savage Love Page 57