Sweet Torment Page 14

  `I wanted to before, but you wouldn't let me. I ... locked the door because I wanted to think about something someone had told me about you.'

  'Something you didn't like?' he asked, warily she thought.

  'Yes. Juan, I know why you decided to marry me.'

  'But of course you do. I told you why and I've just demonstrated why.' He was laughing again, gathering her close against him so that the supple warmth of his body once more inflamed her senses. 'I married you to stop you from running away,' he went on in an ardent whisper, `to keep you with me so I can show you off to all my relatives and friends, boast about you to them ...'

  'And throw dust in Ramon Angel's eyes,' she accused in a low voice.

  'Como? What's this you're saying about dust and Ramon Angel's eyes?' he demanded, sitting up suddenly

  to look down at her, his eyebrows slanting in a puzzled frown.

  'You know what I mean,' she retorted, sitting up too, hunching the sheet about her protectively, 'so you can stop pretending you don't understand. You said yesterday there's another reason for marrying me besides wanting to get to know me better, and I've found out what it is. You're going to use our marriage as a blind to make Ramon Angel think that your affair with Monica is over, aren't you?'

  He continued to stare at her, his face hardening.

  'Who told you that?' he asked, and although his voice was quiet there was a menace in it which made her nerves crawl.

  'Isabella Cortez.'

  'You know her?' His surprise seemed genuine.

  'Yes, of course. I've met her many times at the Angels' house. She's a friend of the family. But you must know she is—she introduced Monica to you.'

  'Did she?' He shrugged, turned away from her and pushing aside the bedclothes swung off the bed. 'I had forgotten,' he added curtly, reaching out for the clothes he had left on a nearby chair and beginning to pull on underwear. 'And I suggest you forget it, too.'

  Watching him pull on fawn-coloured trousers and belt them round his waist, Sorrel nibbled uneasily at her thumbnail. He hadn't come right out and denied her accusation. He had countered by questions which had the effect of making her more suspicious.

  'I can't forget it,' she muttered. He slanted her a wary glance, shrugged his shoulders again and with a clean shirt over his arm he began to walk away from the bed across the room. 'Juan, where are you going?' she asked.

  He stopped and looked back at her.

  I thought it was obvious, to the bathroom, to wash and shave. Much as I would like to spend the rest of the morning with you I'm afraid I have to go to the arena, to see about the bulls.' He smiled slightly. 'But don't worry, querida, we shall have a honeymoon when the corrida is over.'

  'But you haven't answered my question,' she said.

  I thought I had. I asked you to forget it,' he replied curtly. 'Anything which happened to me before I met you isn't your concern.'

  'Including your relationship with Monica Angel?' Even to her own ears her voice sounded a little shrill. 'Yes, including that.'

  'But it isn't what you've done in the past which is concerning me,' she said, unable to control a quiver in her voice. 'It's what you're going to do in the future.'

  `So?' His eyebrows went up and he laughed. 'Now we're getting to the heart of the trouble! You're jealous already of the women I might meet and might look at twice.' He shook his head from side to side, still laughing a little as he opened the bathroom door. 'Oh, Sorrel, I'd no idea you'd be so fiercely possessive. But what you're implying won't happen as long as you continue to behave as a good wife should and make me welcome.' His voice softened and deepened, and in spite of herself her pulses leapt in response to the look he gave her. 'As you did this morning,' he added suggestively.

  'Stop it, stop it!' she cried. 'Stop trying to deceive me into believing I'm to be the only woman in your life from now on.'

  'But you are, querida, you are ...'

  'Only as long as I'm submissive and do as you wish and make no comment on your activities, I suppose,' she moaned. 'Oh, what have I done? I should have kept

  on running away from you, I shouldn't have let you make love to me. Oh, what shall I do now? What shall I do?'

  She was suddenly weeping stormily, tears pouring down her face as she realised Juan wasn't going to deny her accusations and what that meant. This morning he had taken all she had offered, yet in spite of the vows he had taken he was still intent on deceiving her.

  `You could try trusting me,' he said, and the rasp in his voice made her drop her hands from her face to look at him. It seemed to her that he had gone very pale.

  `How can I?' she blurted out. 'How can I possibly trust you when you've deceived me right from the beginning? At our first meeting you deceived me by not telling me your real name. When you offered to help me I believed you, yet when I asked you for help you turned me down. You've even stolen my wallet ...'

  'I didn't steal it. I found it: His voice cut like a knife. 'And it's there on the dressing table. As for the rest, I've tried to explain to you why I did what I did, but if you can't understand I've been mistaken in you, too. With regard to Monica ...' He broke off, thrust a hand through his hair and turned away towards the bathroom. 'Oh, hell, what's the use? You've made up your mind you prefer to believe Isabella Cortez and I can't deny your accusation. I did hope that my marriage to you would put a stop to talk about Monica and me.'

  'In that case any single woman who came along would have suited your purpose,' she lashed out wildly, driven by the pain of deep disappointment because what Isabella had suggested was true, too distressed to hear him catch his breath as if he had been physically wounded.

  'How right you are ' he flung at her. His voice was

  hoarse and his light eyes blazed like pale fire in his white face. 'But I had to be fool enough to pick a cold-blooded bitch like you.' His livid glance raked her. 'Now I know why no man had ever made love to you before I met you! '

  The bathroom door slammed behind him and with a wail of anguish Sorrel flung herself down on the pillow, crying as she had never cried in her life, beating the pillows with clenched fists, tormented because she wished she hadn't accused him of anything, wished he was still there in the bed beside her, holding her in his arms and whispering sweet Spanish endearments to her.

  How long she wept she didn't know, but gradually she grew calmer and began to face up to the reality of the situation. She was married to the sort of man she had always tried to avoid, an arrogant, conceited tough who performed in a violent sport which earned him thousands of dollars, who was adored by hundreds of fans and who inspired a respect and loyalty in his relatives and those who worked with him; a man who had aroused in her passions she hadn't known she possessed and who had just admitted he had married her only to stop gossip about himself and another woman.

  She couldn't stay and live with him knowing that. She couldn't bear to sit back, plump with child, as Isabella had suggested, knowing he was meeting another woman on the sly. She would have to leave him, and the sooner the better, before ... before ... Sorrel drew a long sobbing breath as she faced up to another reality. She had to leave him before she learned to love him too much.

  Slowly she shuffled to the edge of the bed and slid off it. She went to the dressing table. Her wallet was there, and she picked it up and examined the contents. Nothing had been touched. The money she had drawn

  out of the bank at Medellin was still there.

  The idea that she should go to Medellin and see Monica, tell her what had happened and see how she reacted, sprouted slowly in her mind, but grew fast so that soon she was dressing quickly in the skirt and blouse she had worn the day before. She could go while Juan was at the arena. She could go now before anyone else in the house was up and about.

  When she was ready she searched in her handbag for the diary she always carried with her, tore a piece of paper out of it and wrote a brief note to Juan on it : I have left you. Do not follow me. I cannot stay and live with someone wh
o has deceived me. She placed it on the top of the dressing table where her wallet had been and picking up her overnight bag walked out of the room. On her way down the stairs she met no one, and she stepped out into the street feeling a vague surprise because it had been so easy to leave after all.

  It wasn't far to the busy boulevard which crossed the side street at right angles and soon she was walking swiftly towards the main plaza, using the soaring glinting towers of the cathedral as a landmark. She found a taxi and after making sure the driver wasn't the man she had hired the day before she slid into the back seat and instructed him to take her to the airport.

  Soon they were on the road which wound beside the river. This morning the water was blue, stippled with silvery light where a slight breeze ruffled it. Under the shadow of the trees which fringed its banks the colour of the water changed, shading from blue through pale olive green to a deep dark green. A flight of ducks swooped down with rapid wing beats and landed on the water, dark shapes, floating on the bright surface.

  She might never see this river again, thought Sorrel, but she would always remember its placid beauty and

  would always associate it with Juan's urgent wooing of her in the back of the limousine yesterday afternoon as the sun was setting.

  The scene blurred before her eyes as more tears welled in them. How easily she had given in to him, believing that his intention to teach her more about the torment of love was a confession of his love for her and an invitation to love him. How eagerly she had grasped that invitation because from their very first meeting she had been half in love with him and could now see her attempts to run away from him had been prompted all the time by the fear that he didn't love her—at least not in the way she understood love.

  The taxi slowed down in front of the airport building and she knuckled away the tears impatiently, found money to pay the driver and then went into the building. At the airline desk she was told that there was a plane leaving for Medellin in ten minutes and there was a seat available on it. She bought her ticket, passed through the gate into bright sunshine again, went up the gangway and on to the plane.

  The flight to Medellin was uneventful and she spent the time gazing out at cloud formations rising about the peaks of the Andes and considering alternatives, each time coming to the conclusion that she couldn't stay and live with Juan as his wife. Yet each time the conclusion gave her no peace, only filled her with feelings of regret.

  At Medellin she checked that her luggage was still in the locker where she had left it. Should she take it out, take it with her to the Angels' house? No, better to leave it where it was. And after making that decision there was another one to be made. Should she book a reservation on the next flight to England? Be ready to go at a moment's notice? For a few seconds she stood

  hesitantly twisting the heavy wedding ring which Juan had placed on her finger the previous evening round and round. It was another heirloom, borrowed from Eugenia like the lace mantilla, and inside the circle of -gold there were the initials of two people, a date and the Latin words Semper Fidelis, Always Faithful. Sorrel smiled a little bitterly at the irony of the words. Juan had had no intention of being faithful to her, so she might as well make the reservation on the plane.

  It was almost noon when she eventually found a taxi and told the driver to take her to the Angels' address. Medellin's buildings sparkled in the perpetual spring sunshine and the orchids were exotic splashes of crimson and pink in the flowerbeds down the middle of the boulevards.

  As the taxi turned in through the elegant wrought iron gates which were open at the end of the driveway leading up to the Angels' house Sorrel felt her nerves tingling with apprehension. Telling Monica what had happened and trying to get at the truth wasn't going to be easy. She was surprised to see Ramon's cream Cadillac was parked at the front door and wondered if he were still at home and why. She paid off the taxi, went up the front steps and rang the doorbell. After a while the door was opened, not by Manuela as she expected but by Laura.

  'Laura! Why are you at home?' she exclaimed.

  'Sorrel ! Oh, you've come back, you've come back!' Laura flung herself forwards, half crying and half laughing, to hug Sorrel and kiss her. 'Oh, where have you been? Mummy was so unhappy this morning because you hadn't come back. She cried and cried and I had to stay with her. In the end I had to phone Daddy and ask him to come home from the office. But quick,

  come in and go straight to her room. They're both there.'

  Monica was still in bed, lying back against the pillows, her face pale and her eyes closed. Ramon was standing at the window looking out into the garden, one hand fiddling with the cord with which the heavy curtains could be pulled across the window. When he heard Sorrel enter, he swung round and exclaimed :

  'Ah, so you're back at last! '

  'Sorrel—oh, thank God you've come!' cried Monica, and promptly burst into tears.

  'Is Renalda with you?' demanded Ramon after one anxious glance at his wife. 'If so, go and bring him here at once.'

  'But how do you know ...' Sorrel broke off and looked at Monica.

  'I've told Ramon everything,' said Monica, wiping her eyes on a wisp of handkerchief. 'Did you find Juan? What did he say? Has he come?' she added eagerly.

  'No, he hasn't,' replied Sorrel. 'He refused to come. He said he didn't think it would do any good, so he married me instead.'

  They both gaped in amazement and they both spoke together again.

  'Sorrel, my dear, are you sure?' said Monica anxiously.

  'Renalda married? I don't believe it,' exclaimed Ramon. 'It must be a hoax of some sort.'

  'Yes, I'm sure he married me,' said Sorrel, her voice shaking a little as she held out her hand so they could see the wedding ring 'but I think you're right, senor, and that it is a sort of hoax, only I didn't find out until afterwards when Isabella Cortez suggested that he had married in a hurry to throw dust in your eyes, to make you believe his affair with your wife was over ...'

  'But Juan and I never had an affair,' cried Monica. 'I've told you that. Never, never. Oh, God, it's all Isabella's fault! Ever since her husband died she's tried to come between you and me, Ramon. She introduced me to Juan. She encouraged me to go skiing. She suggested I should go and visit him at his ranch, and all the time she was telling you what I was doing, making out it was much more than it was. Oh, Ramon you've got to believe me, you've got to '

  There was a short silence while Ramon gazed down at his sobbing wife with his face drawn into lines of pain and bewilderment. Slowly he turned to Sorrel.

  `Sit down,' he suggested quietly. 'This has to be talked out. It seems that all of us have been hoaxed at some time or other.'

  Sorrel sat on a chair and waited, her own emotions in a turmoil again.

  'Monica, listen to me and try to answer calmly,' said Ramon, sitting down on the edge of the bed. 'You've told me why you were attracted to Renalda in the first place and I think I understand and am willing to admit that my own behaviour may have been responsible. Now can you tell us exactly what happened when you went to his ranch.'

  Monica sniffed, wiped her eyes again and let out a shaky sigh.

  'He wasn't there,' she said flatly.

  'So you didn't see him?' exclaimed Ramon and she shook her head from side to side.

  `No. But a woman was there—youngish, about twenty-eight, I would say, very pretty and flamboyantly dressed, with rings on her fingers which must have cost thousands of dollars.'

  Sorrel recognised Inez immediately.

  `Did she tell you who she was?' she asked.

  `No, come to think of it she didn't,' said Monica. `But ... but ... I was too flummoxed by the sight of her to even think of asking her name. She was a very aggressive person. She asked me who I was and laughed when I told her, said Juan had told her about me and had made fun of me.' Monica's voice and face expressed the same distress which she must have felt on hearing that the man she had fallen in love with had ridiculed her behind her back to ano
ther woman. 'She told me to go back where I belonged because she was living at the ranch and there wouldn't be room for both of us, and I suddenly realised she must be Juan's mistress. I ... I ... was mortified. I just turned and ran to the car. Even now I can still hear her laughing at me. I hardly knew what I was doing, and that's why I crashed. But I was coming back to you, Ramon, please believe that. I was coming back to you, because I realised I love you and only you.'

  `Hush, hush, querida.' Ramon gathered his wife into his arms and stroked her hair as she sobbed into his shoulder. 'I believe you now, I believe you.'

  And I didn't try to contact Juan again through Sorrel,' Monica went on, babbling almost frantically in her efforts to convince him. 'Isabella was lying when she told you that on Sunday. She wants you to divorce me so that she can marry you, can't you see that? She's been trying to build up a case against me, one which I'd have difficulty in defending because she knows it would be difficult for us to get a divorce since we were married in the church here.' Monica drew a long sobbing breath and added with a groan, 'But perhaps you want her instead of me. Oh God, that would really be my punishment for daring to even look at Juan!'

  `No, I don't want Isabella,' said Ramon firmly. 'I want you and I'always have done, but I was beginning to think you didn't want me. After the child died you seemed a little withdrawn, and I didn't want to make too many demands on you since the doctor had warned us that if you had another child you might die too!' Ramon smiled ruefully. 'I can see now it was the wrong thing to do without telling you how I felt.'

  Monica smiled back at him, her blue eyes blazing through unshed tears as she took his hand and held it between both of hers.