Читать книгу The South American's Wife - Kay Thorpe - Страница 6

SOFT but insistent, the sound of her name drew Karen out of a dreamless sleep. She opened her eyes to gaze for a blank moment or two at the unfamiliar, sun-filled room, her mind struggling to orientate itself.

Her eyes dropped to the lean, brown masculine hand covering hers where it lay on the white bed cover, travelling slowly up the length of a bronzed muscular arm to reach the face of the man seated at the bedside: a vital masculine face beneath thick black hair, short-cropped to control its curl.

‘So you’re back with us at last,’ he said in heavily accented English.

Mind still fogged, Karen eyed him in perplexity. ‘I don’t understand,’ she murmured, surprised to hear how weak her voice sounded. ‘What happened? Where am I?’

Some nameless expression flickered across the dark eyes. ‘You were involved in an accident and suffered a concussion,’ he said. ‘You’re in hospital here in Rio.’

The fog deepened. ‘Rio?’

‘Rio de Janeiro.’ He paused, brows drawing together. ‘Do you not remember?’

Karen stared at him in total confusion. Rio de Janeiro? That was in Brazil, wasn’t it? The farthest she’d ever been from home was Spain!

‘I don’t understand,’ she repeated helplessly. ‘Who are you?’

There was no immediate answer; the expression on the hard-boned face was disturbing. When he did speak it was in measured tones. ‘I’m Luiz Andrade. Your husband.’

She froze, eyes wide and dark, mind whirling. ‘I don’t have a husband,’ she got out. ‘What kind of game is this?’

The hand still covering hers tightened as she tried to draw it away. ‘The concussion has confused you. Relax, and everything will come back to you.’

‘No, it won’t, because it isn’t true!’ She pressed herself upright, wincing as pain shot through her head, but in no frame of mind to give way to it. ‘I’m Karen Downing! I live in London! I’ve never been to Rio de Janeiro in my life, and I’m certainly not married—to you or anyone!’

‘Hush! You must not agitate yourself this way.’ Looking concerned, he reached for the bell-push on the bedside table. ‘The doctor will give you something to calm you. When you waken, everything will be clear again.’

‘No!’ She tore her hand free, shrinking as far as she could get from this stranger, now on his feet and towering over her. ‘It’s all lies!’

‘Why would I lie?’ he asked. ‘For what possible reason would I claim to be your husband if it were not the truth?’

‘I don’t know!’ she flung back. ‘All I do know is that I never saw you before in my life!’

As if on cue, the door opened to admit a uniformed nurse. Looking from one to the other, she said something in a language totally foreign to Karen’s ears, answered by the man claiming to be her husband in what appeared to be the same language.

‘What did you tell her?’ she demanded as the woman exited again.

‘To fetch a doctor,’ he said. ‘You’re obviously suffering from a temporary amnesia.’

‘There’s nothing temporary about it!’ she claimed. ‘Whatever this is about, you can forget it!’ She glanced down at the white hospital smock she was wearing, then wildly about her. ‘Where are my clothes?’

‘The ones you were wearing at the time of the accident have been disposed of,’ he said. ‘Others will be brought when you’re deemed fit to be discharged.’

‘I want to go now!’ she shot back at him. ‘You can’t keep me here against my will.’

Powerful shoulders lifted. ‘To where would you go? You know no one in Rio.’ A muscle jerked in the firm jawline as if he’d clamped his teeth together on some addition to that statement. ‘Be patient,’ he went on after a moment, ‘and everything will be all right.’

He turned as the door opened again, this time to admit a white-coated doctor, addressing him in the same language he’d used with the nurse. Portuguese was the language spoken in Brazil; Karen knew that for a fact. She felt trapped in a never-ending nightmare.

The fight went out of her suddenly. She subsided on to the bed, unable to summon the strength of either mind or body to protest when the doctor produced a syringe. Sleep would be a welcome release from the turmoil in her head.

She opened her eyes again to soft lamplight, and for a moment imagined herself safe in her own bedroom, having fallen asleep reading as she often did.

Only it wasn’t her room, and it hadn’t been a dream, because the same man was seated at the bedside.

‘How are you feeling now?’ he asked.

Her voice came out low and ragged. ‘Afraid.’

Face expressionless, he said, ‘Do you know me?’

Karen shook her head, too demoralised by the realisation that the nightmare hadn’t ended to summon any semblance of spirit.

‘So what exactly do you remember?’ he asked.

‘I’m Karen Downing,’ she said. ‘I’m twenty-three years old, and I share a flat in London with a friend who works for the same firm. My parents were killed in a plane crash four years ago.’

That memory alone was enough to pierce her fragile control. She swallowed on the lump in her throat, recalling the agony of those days, weeks, months it had taken her to come to terms with her loss.

‘This much I already know,’ Luiz Andrade returned. ‘What appears to have happened is that your mind has somehow blanked out the past three months of your life. The three months you’ve spent here in Brazil as my wife.’ He paused again, as if gathering himself. ‘We met at the hotel where you were spending a holiday. We were married within the week.’

‘That’s impossible!’ Karen burst out. ‘I’d never…’

She broke off, biting her lip. If she couldn’t remember, how could she be sure of what she might have done? But three months! Three whole months missing from her life! It didn’t seem possible!

‘How did I get to Rio?’ she asked, forcing herself to calm down a little. ‘I couldn’t afford a holiday in Brazil on my earnings.’

‘You told me you had won a sum of money on your lottery, and decided to see something of the world outside of Europe while you had the opportunity.’

‘So you didn’t marry me on the assumption that I was rich,’ she murmured, trying to make sense of the story.

The strong, sensual mouth slanted briefly. ‘It was your beauty that attracted my eye, your personality that captured my heart.’ He registered the expression that crossed her face with another humourless smile. ‘You looked much the same way the first time I made my feelings clear to you—as if you doubted your power to stir a man to such a degree. Only when we made love did you begin to believe in me.’

Warmth rose beneath her skin as her eyes dropped involuntarily down the length of his body to the lean hips and long legs clad in close-fitting white jeans, the stirring deep down in the pit of her stomach no fluke of imagination.

‘You were a virgin,’ he went on softly. ‘That in itself would have been enough to seal my fate. It was fortunate that you felt for me too, because I would not easily have let you go.’

It had to be true, Karen thought desperately. As he’d said before, what possible reason could he have to lie? If only she could find even the slightest kink in the blanket cloaking her mind!

‘You said we were married within a week of meeting?’ she ventured.

‘Just five days, to be precise. For me, it would have been sooner, but there were necessary formalities to be observed. We travelled to my home in São Paulo the following day.’

Karen’s brows were drawn in the effort to recall, but there wasn’t even a glimmer. ‘You’re saying I never went back home at all?’

‘There seemed no need when you had so little to return for. Your friend was contacted, and your place of work.’

‘But my things!’

‘Most of which you had with you. The apartment apparently was rented. The few items you did express a desire to have were despatched by your friend.’

Karen absorbed the information in silence for a moment, trying to imagine Julie’s reaction to the news. ‘It must have been a tremendous shock for her,’ she said at length.

‘I imagine it was. You’re still in touch with her, if you feel the ring you wear isn’t verification enough.’

Karen raised her hand slowly to gaze at the wide gold band, shaking her head in numb acceptance. ‘I believe you. I have to believe you! It’s just so difficult to take in.’

‘It must be.’ Luiz leaned forward to ease his position, lips twisting as she flinched. ‘You have nothing to fear. Retribution is farthest from my mind.’

Karen felt her heart jerk. ‘Retribution?’ she got out. ‘For what?’

It was apparent from the expression in the dark eyes that he regretted having said what he had. ‘There are matters perhaps best left alone for the present,’ he declared. ‘The problems are many already without adding to them.’

‘I want to know what you meant,’ she insisted, every nerve in her body on edge. ‘I have a right to know!’

The hesitation was brief, the lift of his shoulders signifying resignation. ‘Very well. You came to Rio in the company of a man named Lucio Fernandas, with whom you had apparently been carrying on an affair. I followed you in order to bring you back, but the accident happened before I even reached the city. Perhaps fortunately,’ he added on a harder note, ‘or I may have been driven to measures that would have done none of us any good.’

Karen had difficulty finding any words at all. An affair? She’d been having an affair!

‘Are you sure?’ she asked faintly.

The firm mouth acquired a cynical slant. ‘Why else would you have run away with the man?’

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. And then with a flash of spirit, ‘But if it is true, why on earth would you have wanted me back?’

‘What is mine remains mine.’ The statement was all the more compelling for its lack of force. ‘There has never been, nor ever will be, a divorce in the Andrade family—no matter what the provocation.’

Karen felt a sudden shiver run down her spine. She made a valiant effort to regain control of herself.

‘So where is he, this Lucio Fernandas?’

‘Vanished, like the coward he is!’ The contempt was searing. ‘You were alone when the medics reached you.’

‘Reached me where?’

‘At the road outside the airport where you were hit by a car. It was fortunate that your bag wasn’t stolen while you lay unconscious. Once your identity was proven, news was relayed to our home, then passed to me on landing.’ His jaw contracted. ‘You were unconscious for almost two hours. It was feared that your skull was fractured.’

Karen considered the foregoing, feeling ever more confused. ‘You said the news was passed to you on landing?’

‘I set out after you the moment I became aware of your departure this morning,’ Luiz acknowledged. ‘You’d taken your passport, but I doubted that you would have gone straight to the international airport in case of pursuit. I was right. Unfortunately, I was fifteen minutes too late to catch you at Congonhas. I took the next flight to Rio. Having first checked that Fernandas was on the plane too,’ he added, anticipating the question hovering on her lips. ‘There was no mistake.’

‘I’m…sorry.’ It was totally inadequate, but all she could come up with for the moment.

The dark head inclined. ‘I’m the one who should be sorry. I shouldn’t have told you all this so soon.’ He got to his feet, body lithe as a panther’s. ‘You must rest. I’ll see you again in the morning.’

Stranger or not, she didn’t want him to go. At least while he was here she could keep on asking the questions crowding her mind—keep on hoping for that breakthrough.

‘I can’t stay here!’ she exclaimed on a note of desperation.

‘You have to stay.’ His tone brooked no argument. ‘At least until we can be sure you suffered no deeper damage. Perhaps a night’s sleep will restore you.’

He didn’t believe that any more than she did, Karen reckoned. Whatever the reason for her memory loss, it was going to take more than a night’s sleep to restore it. In the meantime, she had no other recourse but to do as he said.

Thankfully, he made no attempt to touch her in any way, but simply lifted a hand in farewell. She watched him go to the door, appraising the tapering line from broad shoulder to narrow waist and hip. A fine figure of a man in any language. She had lain in his arms, known the intimate intrusion of his body. How could any woman forget that? How could any woman forget him?

The nurse who came in after he’d gone was different from the one before, but kindness itself. She insisted on helping Karen across to the en suite bathroom. A welcome hand, Karen found when she stood up.

There was a full length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. The face looking back at her was pale, throwing into sharp contrast the purpling bruise at the temple. The wide-spaced green eyes looked bruised too, the soft, full mouth vulnerable. There was some grazing across cheek and jawline, though superficial enough to make any scarring unlikely.

If nothing else had convinced her of the passage of time, the couple of inches her hair had grown since she last recalled looking at it would have done so. Natural silver-blonde in colour, it fell curtain straight to her shoulders.

Luiz would be in his early thirties, she calculated. The kind of man most women would find devastatingly attractive, she had to acknowledge. She could well imagine the impact he would have had on her at first sight: an impact deep enough to make her willing to give up everything she’d ever known just to be with him.

Which made the idea of her having had an affair with another man within three months of marrying him even harder to believe.

The nurse waiting outside knocked on the door. ‘You are well?’ she called.

Karen gathered herself together. There was nothing to be gained from standing here grappling with matters she had no knowledge of. All she could hope for was eventual enlightenment.

A sleeping pill gave her a good night’s rest, but morning brought no change. Awake at five-thirty, with little of yesterday’s physical unsteadiness left, she got up to take a shower and wash her hair. She had no make-up to hand, and nothing but the gown left by last night’s nurse to put on, but at least she felt bodily refreshed.

Where she went from here she had no clear idea. She was married to a man she not only didn’t remember, but whose trust she had apparently betrayed. Even if he was prepared to take her back, could she bear to go with him?

Yet what other choice did she have when it came right down to it? She had neither home nor job to return to in England, even if she still had the means left to get there.

Back in the bedroom, she drew the window blind to look out on a picture postcard view of sparkling white skyscrapers and green parks stretching down to a sea the same deep blue as the great bowl of sky above it. Rising from a jutting peninsula, the conical shape of Sugar Loaf Mountain was recognisable from a multitude of travelogues.

Built up here in the foothills of the backing mountains, this was no common or garden hospital, Karen realised—something she should have known already from the standard of both furnishings and facilities. Luiz Andrade was obviously a man of some means.

She dismissed the idea that that might have had something to do with her readiness to marry him. If the very thought of it turned her stomach now, it would certainly have done the same then.

Breakfast was brought by yet another nurse, who spoke no English at all. Karen picked at the fruit and cereal, mind still going around in circles. Physically she was surely well enough to leave the hospital today, which made it imperative that she come to terms with her predicament.

Luiz Andrade was her husband. That much she had to accept. What concerned her the most at present was what he might expect from her. She had no idea of a wife’s rights here. For all she knew, he could be within his in demanding an immediate resumption of marital relations, regardless of her condition. There had been an element of ruthlessness about him last night when he’d spoken of what he might have done had he caught up with her missing lover. It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that she might have suffered some form of retribution herself before being dragged back to wherever it was that they lived.

She was in a state bordering on panic by the time Luiz put in an appearance. He was wearing the same white jeans and shirt—both items freshly washed and pressed from the look of it.

‘I brought no change of clothing,’ he said, correctly interpreting the unspoken question. ‘There was no time. The hotel where I spent the night provides laundry facilities.’ He studied her, dark eyes revealing nothing of his thoughts. ‘How do you feel now?’

‘Much the same,’ she acknowledged, fighting the urge to throw a wobbly. ‘Mentally, at any rate. Physically, I don’t think there’s a great deal wrong with me.’

‘We’ll allow the doctors to decide that.’ He moved to take a seat on the edge of the bed itself, registering her involuntary movement with a narrowing of his lips. ‘You certainly look more yourself this morning. Apart from the bruising, of course. Is your head very painful still?’

‘Only if I move it too sharply.’ Karen was doing her best to maintain a stiff upper lip, vitally aware of the warmth radiating from the well-honed body. ‘I’d feel a whole world better for a touch of lipstick!’

‘You have no need of cosmetics to enhance your looks,’ he declared. ‘Your hair alone is colour enough.’

‘I washed it,’ she said, desperate to keep the conversation on an inconsequential level. ‘It was filthy.’

‘Hardly surprising after being dragged in the dust.’ Luiz put up a hand to tuck a still damp strand back from her cheek, refusing this time to be put off by her jerky movement. ‘Is my touch so obnoxious to you?’

‘It’s an automatic reflex,’ she said. ‘Nothing personal. I just can’t get my head round this whole situation.’

‘I find it difficult myself,’ he admitted. ‘You gave no indication that you no longer found my attentions desirable. Our lovemaking the very night before you left was—’

‘Don’t!’ Karen was trembling, the muscle spasm high in her inner thighs a hint that her body might remember what her mind did not. ‘Can’t we talk about something else?’

‘What would you suggest?’ he asked drily.

She cast around. ‘Your home?’

‘Our home,’ Luiz corrected. ‘The home to which we shall be returning.’ He shifted from the bed to the chair he had occupied the night before, face expressionless again. ‘São Paulo is many kilometres from here, the city the largest in Brazil, the state one of the richest. Guavada is a cattle ranch lying to the northwest of the city.

Nothing of what he was telling her meant anything. A cattle ranch!

‘You’re a manager or something?’ she hazarded.

About to answer, Luiz broke off as the door opened to admit the same white-coated doctor from the night before, getting to his feet to greet the man.

The latter came to examine the bruise on Karen’s temple, shining a torch into each eye before finally pronouncing himself satisfied with her condition.

‘You are fortunate,’ he said, ‘that the damage was no worse.’

‘I don’t see amnesia as a light matter,’ she retorted. ‘Have you any idea how long it might last?’

The man hesitated, obviously reluctant to commit himself to a prognosis. ‘Your memory could return at any time,’ he said at length. ‘Shock can do many things to the mind. You must be patient and try not to worry about it.’

Easy enough to say, Karen reflected hollowly. How could she not worry about it?

Luiz walked with the man to the door, returning to announce that she was cleared to leave the hospital.

‘Your bag will be brought for you to select fresh clothing,’ he said. ‘Shall you need help in dressing?’

‘No!’ The denial came out sharper than she had intended, drawing another of the cynical smiles.

‘I was thinking of a nurse’s assistance, not my own.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She made a helpless little gesture. ‘It isn’t that I don’t trust you.’

‘Is it not?’ he asked softly. ‘Can you truly claim to believe that every word I’ve spoken is the truth?’

‘I have to believe it,’ she said. ‘I don’t have any other choice.’

‘No,’ he agreed, ‘you don’t. Just as I have no other choice.’

He had gone before Karen could summon the strength for any further exchange. Not that there was a great deal left to say. She was going with him because she had nowhere else to go. To what exactly she had still to discover.

The leather suitcase that arrived a few moments later was accompanied by a leather handbag, neither of which she recognised. She rifled swiftly through the contents of the latter, finding a passport in her married name, along with a wallet containing a wad of foreign currency.

She had no idea of the worth. Nor did it make a great deal of difference to the present state of affairs. What she did wonder was just what plan she and this Lucio Fernandas had supposedly made.

There was nothing in the handbag to provide an answer to that question. She opened the suitcase, disconcerted by the jumble of clothing inside. Packed hastily and with little regard to content from the look of it, which suggested a decision made bare minutes before departure rather than a planned exit. Stuck in the middle of it all was a framed photograph that brought a lump to her throat. It had been taken on a camping holiday bare months before her parents had been killed. They were laughing together, holding up the tiny fish her mother had just caught in the river flowing behind them. A handsome pair, with everything to live for.

Julie would have sent it through along with the other things she’d asked for, Karen concluded, blinking the tears from her eyes. It would have been the last thing she’d have left behind, for certain.

She sorted out a pair of lace panties and matching bra, topping them with a white skirt and sleeveless cotton top she’d never to her knowledge seen before. There were only two pairs of shoes. She chose the pale beige sandals that were the only ones with a highish heel. At five feet six she was far from short, but she needed the boost to face a man over six feet in height with any degree of confidence at all.

The handbag yielded a pouch containing a pale pink lipstick, smoky eye-shadow and a mascara wand. No surprises there: she’d never used a lot of make-up. She donned the touch of lipstick she’d spoken of, and ran a comb through her dried hair. The bruising looked worse than it had the night before, as did the grazes on her cheek and jaw, but she had more to think about than her appearance.

Her last clear memories were of attending a leaving party for a workmate, followed by dinner out with a group from the office. Julie had been out herself when she had got back to the flat. She’d made a hot drink and gone straight to bed.

That had been the twelfth of September. The day before yesterday, so far as her mind was concerned. Luiz had said they’d been married three months, but that didn’t tell her the date now.

He supplied an answer to that question on his return.

‘It’s the twenty-seventh of January,’ he said. ‘More than halfway through our summer. The temperatures on the plateau are milder than here on the coast. While the days are hot at this time of the year, the humidity is low, the nights refreshingly cool.’

‘It sounds good.’ Karen was doing her utmost to stay on top of her emotions.

Luiz came to close and lock the suitcase she’d left open on the bed, hoisting it effortlessly up. ‘I have a taxi waiting to take us to the hotel.’

‘Hotel?’ she queried.

‘I think it better that the two of us spend some time together before returning to Guavada,’ he said. ‘We have a great deal to discuss.’

Karen forced herself into movement, reluctant to abandon the only bit of security she knew right now. Luiz went ahead to open the door for her, falling into step at her side to traverse a short, beautifully tiled corridor to a bank of lifts.

The one that arrived silently and smoothly in answer to his summons was empty. They descended without speaking, to emerge in a luxuriously appointed lobby. The receptionist on duty at a central desk bade them a smiling farewell, expressing what Karen took to be good wishes for the future. A forlorn hope indeed while the past months remained a blank.

Although it was still only a little after nine-thirty, the temperature outside was already soaring. Karen was glad to dive into the air-conditioned taxi-cab. With the suitcase stowed, Luiz slid in beside her. His thigh lay next to hers, the firm muscularity clearly de-fined beneath the fine cotton of his jeans when he moved.

Stripped, he would be magnificent, came the unbidden thought, bringing a sudden contraction deep down in the pit of her stomach. She would have seen him like that for certain—as he had no doubt seen her. She wondered how she, so unpractised in full-blown lovemaking, had managed to satisfy a man who would certainly have been no virgin.

They drove down through a city humming with workaday energies to a luxury hotel overlooking a superb crescent of white beach that was already heavily populated. Sugar Loaf reared now to the left, outlined against a sky beginning to cloud over a little.

‘Is it going to rain, do you think?’ Karen asked, turning from the balconied window—more for something to say than through any real interest in the weather. ‘Summer is the rainy season out here, isn’t it?’

Watching her from across the superbly furnished and decorated room, Luiz inclined his head. ‘It is, yes.’ His regard was penetrating. ‘You recall that much then?’

‘Not the way you mean,’ she said. ‘I must have read it somewhere.’

‘Then the view out there means nothing to you?’

Karen’s brows drew together. ‘I’ve seen it in pictures.’

‘But no more than that?’

‘No.’ Heart thudding against her ribcage, she added, ‘What else might it mean?’

‘It’s the view you had from your room in this same hotel three months ago,’ he said. ‘Not the same room, I admit, but a replica of it. I hoped it might strike some spark of recollection.’

‘It hasn’t.’ Her tone was flat. ‘I must have won quite a lot to afford to stay in a place like this.’

‘Several thousand pounds, I believe. A one-time opportunity to see how the other half lived, was how you excused the extravagance. There would have been little left to take home with you, for certain.’

‘Except that I found myself a husband who could afford to stay in places like this.’ She made a gesture of self-disgust. ‘Forget I said that, will you?’

The dark head inclined again. ‘It’s forgotten.’

Considering his expression a moment ago, Karen doubted it. If she wanted to alienate him any more than he already must be alienated, considering the reason he’d followed her to Rio, she was going the right way about it.

He was leaning against a chest of drawers on the far side of the queen-size twin beds. Karen could only be thankful that there were two of them—although the thought of sharing even a room with him was daunting.

‘I have the room next door,’ he said, reading her mind with an ease she found daunting in itself. ‘I’ve no intention of pressuring you into anything you find distasteful.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Karen scarcely knew what else to say. ‘It isn’t that I find you…unattractive.’

‘A start, at least.’ His tone was dry. ‘Patience is no particular virtue of mine, but it seems I must learn to employ it. Perhaps sight of our home will help.’

‘Perhaps.’ Karen hesitated, reluctant to put the idea in his mind if it wasn’t there already, yet needing reassurance. ‘You don’t think I’m pretending to have lost my memory, do you?’

His expression underwent an indefinable alteration. ‘What might cause you to do such a thing?’

She lifted her shoulders. ‘Fear of retribution, perhaps.’

‘You see me as a wife-beater?’

‘I don’t know what you’re capable of.’ She was beginning to wish she’d kept her mouth shut. ‘It isn’t true, anyway. If I were capable of putting on that kind of act, I’d belong on the stage!’

‘I believe you would.’ His shoulders lifted. ‘There have been moments in our relationship when you’ve sorely tried me, I admit.’

Karen eyed him in silence for a moment. ‘We had rows?’

‘We had some differences of opinion. You’re a strong-willed young woman.’

‘Where I come from, all women have minds of their own,’ she claimed.

‘As do Brazilian women—except that they are rather more subtle in their employment of it.’ The pause was brief, the sudden change of tone emphatic. ‘We have to put this behind us, and begin again.’ He held up a staying hand as Karen started to speak. ‘I’ll arrange a hire car and show you the sights—the way I did when we first met. Perhaps then things will start to come back to you.’

He straightened away from the chest, turning towards the door. ‘Come to the lobby in half an hour.’

Karen stood where she was for several moments after he’d left the room, mulling over everything that had been said. There were still so many questions to be answered, and only Luiz to supply those answers.

But was what he told her the whole truth? Why had she felt the need to turn to another man at all?