Читать книгу The South American's Wife - Kay Thorpe - Страница 7

THE limousine Luiz had hired was already waiting for them outside when she went down. He put her into the front passenger seat before going round to slide behind the wheel.

He had shown her the sights this way when they’d first met, he’d said upstairs. If the hotel itself, plus the view from the window, had failed to stir her memory, it was unlikely that this was going to work either, but it was worth a try, Karen supposed. Anything was worth trying!

They headed for the mountains backing the city, leaving the congested streets to enter a world of tropical rainforest where thick lianas hung like pythons from tree branches furry with moss. The tangled canopy far above filtered out the sunlight, casting an eerie green glow over writhing creepers and huge tree ferns. There were flowers in abundance, their colours jewel-like among the foliage.

Karen was mesmerised, hardly able to believe that they were still within the city limits.

‘It’s like another planet!’ she exclaimed, viewing a begonia bush bursting with bright yellow blossom and smothered in bees. ‘What’s making all the noise?’

‘Monkeys,’ Luiz advised. ‘We invade their territory. This is the Terra da Tijuca, Rio’s national park. It spreads over a hundred or more square miles.’

‘It’s wonderful!’

He cast a swift sideways glance at her rapt face. ‘But in no way familiar?’

‘No.’ The enthusiasm faded as reality reared its head again. ‘To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never seen any of this before.’

She sank back into her seat, head against the rest, eyes closed. ‘I feel I’m living someone else’s life!’

‘I can assure you you’re not,’ Luiz responded. ‘Your memory will return when you’re ready to remember.’

Karen stole a glance at the hard-edged profile, feeling the fast-becoming-familiar tension in her lower body. ‘Supposing that’s never?’

His jaw compressed momentarily. ‘Then we accept matters the way they are and live our lives accordingly.’

‘I’m not sure I can accept it,’ she said, and saw the compression come again.

‘There’s no other way.’

It was obvious that any further protest on her part would be a waste of time and breath, Karen acknowledged silently. Whatever she’d done, she was his wife and she was staying his wife.

Topped by the towering white statue of Christ, the granite peak of Corcovado afforded a panoramic view over both city and coastline. The skyscrapers below were reduced in size to toytown dimensions, the beaches of Copacabana and Impanema to curving crescents of white dotted with ants. Karen was overwhelmed by the sheer spectacle.

‘You were equally impressed the first time you saw it,’ said Luiz, watching her face as she gazed at the scene. ‘As you were with everything.’

‘Including yourself,’ she murmured.

‘Including myself,’ he agreed. ‘As I intended you to be.’

‘How long did I hold out?’

Dark brows lifted. ‘Hold out?’

‘Before you got me into bed with you?’

It was a moment before he answered, his tone quizzical. ‘Does it matter to you?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I need to know.’

His shrug was brief. ‘We made love on the first night of our acquaintance.’

Karen swallowed. ‘You must have thought me the easiest conquest you’d ever made!’

‘No such thought entered my mind,’ he denied. ‘We were two people drawn by the same overwhelming force.’

She couldn’t bring herself to meet the dark eyes full on. ‘Would you still have wanted to marry me if I’d had previous experience?’

‘I would have accepted it, yes.’

Karen looked at him then, oblivious to the other people on the platform. An arm resting against the guard rail, head outlined against the sky, he looked at ease in a way she envied. She had a sudden urge to disrupt that equanimity.

‘Tell me about Lucio Fernandas,’ she said with deliberation. ‘Who exactly is he?’

She gained her wish as his face hardened. ‘I prefer not to speak of him.’

‘We have to talk about him,’ she insisted.

Straightened now away from the rail, Luiz studied her for a moment in silence. When he spoke it was in tautly controlled tones. ‘There’s little enough I can tell you of his background. He was employed by one of my foremen. Had I had any notion…’ He broke off, gritting his teeth together. ‘Suffice to say he would have been in no fit state to arouse any woman’s interest!’

Karen’s chest felt tight as a drum. Luiz Andrade was a proud man; it didn’t take intimate knowledge to be aware of that. The discovery that his wife had been having an affair at all would have hit him hard enough, but for her to have become involved with a mere employee!

‘I’m still not convinced it’s the truth,’ she said defensively. ‘What actual proof do you have that there was any affair to start with?’

Amber lights glinted in the depths of his eyes. ‘What proof do I need other than that you provided yourself in running off with him?’

‘There had to be some prior signs, surely?’

‘There apparently were, had I been willing to see them. Beatriz suspected, but failed to warn me.’

Karen put up an involuntary hand to her temple as pain lanced briefly through it. There was an odd buzzing in her ears, a sense of being drawn somewhere she didn’t want to go.

Luiz moved swiftly to catch her as she swayed, arms sliding about her to hold her close. She could feel the strong beat of his heart at her breast, the sun-stoked heat of his body.

‘I’m all right now,’ she managed. ‘Just a bit of a dizzy spell, that’s all.’

He made no attempt to stop her as she pulled away from him. ‘I should have refused to discuss the matter,’ he said. ‘This isn’t the place.’

What attention they’d drawn from those in the vicinity had now been returned to the scenery. Karen tilted her head to let the breeze cool her cheeks, both hands on the guardrail to steady herself.

‘Who is Beatriz?’

Luiz made a curt gesture. ‘As I said, this isn’t the place. We’ll return to the hotel.’

She made no protest. The name had meant something to her, that was obvious, but there was no further break in the curtain.

It was well into the afternoon when they reached the hotel again. Luiz accepted Karen’s plea that she was tired and needed rest rather than food without demur, simply saying that he would see her later.

A shower was a first priority on reaching her room. She luxuriated for several minutes in the glass-walled cabinet, blanking out everything but the feel of the water streaming over her skin.

Towelled dry, she donned the robe provided and returned to the bedroom to extract fresh underwear from the suitcase. There seemed little point in unpacking fully when she had no idea how long they would be here.

Her throat closed up at the thought of what she would be facing when they did return to the ranch. However much she might want to disbelieve it, all the evidence pointed to the fact that she really had been having an affair with another man.

Where would she have been now, she wondered, if there had been no accident? What kind of life would she have had with a man capable of leaving her lying unconscious in the road? How could she have been drawn to another man at all when she was married to one as charismatic as Luiz Andrade?

Unless Luiz wasn’t the man he appeared to be either. How could she be sure what their marital relationship had really been like? There had been rows, that much he’d admitted. She only had his word that there had been no serious rift between them.

He left her alone until eight, by which time she had begun to wonder if he had deserted her after all. When he did put in an appearance he was wearing a light linen suit that sat on his frame as if made to measure.

‘I felt the need of fresh clothing,’ he said. ‘You at least have that facility.’ He ran an appraising glance over her slender curves in the lilac silk tunic that had been one of the few items in the suitcase she considered suitable for dining out. ‘Did you rest well?’

Karen turned away, unable to hold his gaze for long. ‘As well as can be expected, considering. What happens now?’

‘We have dinner here in the hotel. If we repeat, as far as is possible, the details of our time here together, perhaps it will stir something in your memory.’

‘Every detail?’ she asked after a moment.

‘I said as far as is possible,’ he responded. ‘I make no demands on you.’

‘For now,’ she murmured, and heard him draw a roughened breath.

‘Do you think me so easily able to banish the thought of you with Fernandas from my head? Whenever I close my eyes I see you in his arms!’

Karen made herself look at him, seeing the anger glittering his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said wretchedly. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’ She paused, searching for words. ‘Do you think you ever will be able to put it aside?’

‘If not I must learn to live with it.’ He was in control again, though his voice remained taut. ‘The marriage will not be dissolved.’

There was nothing she could say to that. Nothing likely to help the situation. But there were still so many things she needed to know.

‘This morning you mentioned someone called Beatriz,’ she ventured. ‘Who is she?’

Something flickered deep in the dark eyes. ‘She’s the wife of my brother, Raymundo.’

The latter name struck no chord either. ‘Does he work on the ranch too?’

‘He and Beatriz have their home there,’ came the somewhat ambiguous reply. ‘As does my young sister too. Regina was devastated by your leaving.’

Karen sank to a seat, her legs no longer supportive. Just how many people would she be facing on her return to the home she had fled?

‘How old is Regina?’ she asked.

‘Eighteen now.’

Green eyes lifted to view the incisive features. ‘And Raymundo?’

‘Twenty-eight. Four years younger than myself. There was another brother between us in age, but he died some two years ago.’

Empathy came swiftly, born of her own loss. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You never knew him.’ Luiz moved abruptly, crossing to open a cabinet Karen hadn’t attempted to explore. ‘I think we’re both in need of a stimulant.’

He poured a colourless liquid for them both, bringing both glasses back to where she sat to thrust one into her hand. Not gin, she realised, putting it to her lips, but white rum. The spirit burned her throat, but she finished it, glad of the immediate effect. Alcohol was no solution to her problems, for certain, but it helped take the edge off them.

‘What about parents?’ she said.

‘I lost my father some years ago. My mother married again, and now lives in Brasilia.’

Karen viewed the empty glass in her hand with lacklustre eyes. ‘Have we met?’

‘Just the once, when I took you to visit her.’

‘Did she approve? Of the marriage, I mean?’

‘No.’ His tone was unemotional. ‘She would have preferred that I marry a woman of my own race.’

‘That’s understandable.’

‘It’s of no consequence.’ His own glass also drained, he took hers from her unresisting hand, depositing both on the nearest surface. ‘Enough questions for now. You need to eat.’

Food was the farthest thing from her mind, but she rose obediently to her feet. It would be embarrassing going into a restaurant looking like this, she acknowledged, catching sight of her face in a nearby wall mirror, but there was little to be done about it.

There were others in the lift descending to the ground floor. Karen could feel the glances. If Luiz was aware of them too, he gave no sign. The subdued lighting in the restaurant afforded some comfort. All the same, it was a relief to gain the relative privacy of the alcove table.

There was nothing in the least bit familiar about the plush surroundings. She hadn’t really expected there to be. She left it to Luiz to choose her meal, eating what was put in front of her without tasting a thing. The wine he’d ordered went straight to her head. She drank only half a glass, afraid of losing her grip altogether.

‘This isn’t going to work,’ she said bleakly over coffee. She cast a glance at the man seated opposite, senses stirred by his dark masculinity. ‘I don’t think anything is.’

‘There’s nothing to be lost by trying,’ he said. ‘From here we went to a club.’ His gaze was on her face. ‘And then back to the hotel.’

Karen felt a pulse throb suddenly at her temple, setting her heart pounding in empathy. She tried desperately to grasp the image that fleeted through her mind.

‘What is it?’ Luiz’s voice was low but urgent. ‘Do you remember?’

She slowly shook her head. ‘Just a feeling for a moment. Nothing concrete.’

‘But it meant something to you, that was apparent.’

‘It seems so.’ She studied the vital features, wishing she could tell what he was thinking right now. ‘Does everyone know about Lucio Fernandas?’

The glitter sprang in his eyes for a moment, then subsided again. ‘Beatriz is the only one with that information.’

‘You trust her to keep it to herself?’

‘She had better do so. Regina believes you left merely because of dissidence between us. Your amnesia will be difficult enough for her to accept.’

Not nearly as difficult as it was for her, Karen thought. Recollection might not be palatable, but it had to be better than this blankness.

‘We could always try keeping it a secret,’ she said, and saw his lips thin.

‘You find the situation one to treat with flippancy?’

She made a small apologetic gesture. ‘No, of course not. It’s just…’ She paused, swallowing thickly. ‘Have you any idea what it’s like to sit here and listen to you telling me about people and places and matters I’ve absolutely no concept of? The person I seem to have become bears no relationship to the person I believe myself to be. It’s like looking in a mirror and seeing someone else’s reflection!’

Luiz inclined his head, face set. ‘Difficult for both of us. To be deceived is bad, but to be forgotten…’

He left it there, lifting a hand to signal to the waiter. Up to now, Karen had been too involved with her own feelings to give any real thought to what he must be going through. She tried to put herself in his shoes, to imagine how it must feel to be wiped completely from her mind after months of living together as husband and wife. What man could handle that with equanimity?

She watched him sign the bill that was brought to the table. Those lean, long-fingered hands would know every inch of her, came the thought, sending a frisson the length of her spine. In three months she would no doubt have got over any inhibitions she might have had herself: the way her body was reacting at this moment gave every indication of it. She might not remember loving this man, but she was vitally attracted by him. Whatever had driven her to seek another man’s arms, it couldn’t have been because Luiz no longer stirred her.

She made an effort to compose herself as the waiter departed, to meet the eyes raised to her. ‘What now?’ she asked.

‘As I said before, we follow the same pattern.’

‘You really think it’s going to help?’

‘Whatever chance there is of stirring something in your memory, we must take,’ he stated. He got to his feet, rounding the table to draw out her chair. ‘The night is still young.’

It was gone ten o’clock, Karen saw from the thin gold watch on his wrist as she rose. Handsome, charismatic, obviously not without money, it could be said that Luiz Andrade was everything any woman could possibly want. Yet she had left him for a man whose backbone, it seemed, was so weak he had left her lying in the road. It didn’t make sense.

They took a taxi to what appeared at first sight to be a large private residence. Luiz handed over a card in the well-appointed entrance hall, and they were duly signed in to wander at will through rooms devoted to various pastimes.

Luiz ignored the crowded casino, leading the way to a smaller, dimly lit room where couples swayed to the beat of an excellent four-piece combo. There were tables set around the periphery of the room, but he ignored those too, drawing her on to the floor and into his arms.

Held against the hard male body, Karen concentrated on matching her steps to his. She felt his hand warm at her centre back, his breath stirring the hair at her temple. Her mouth was in line with the hollow of his throat, revealed by the open neckline of his shirt; the male scent of him tantalised her nostrils.

All sensations of the present not the past, she told herself. Luiz was a man to whom any woman with an ounce of red blood in her veins would respond. Perhaps if they actually made love…

She rejected the thought immediately. Even if she could bring herself to try such an experiment, Luiz almost certainly wouldn’t with the images he’d spoken of earlier crowding his mind. He had followed her to Rio with the intention of fetching her back because his pride wouldn’t allow him any other course, but that wasn’t to say he’d have been prepared to make love to her again.

‘Could it have worked even if I hadn’t lost my memory?’ she heard herself ask. ‘Forcing me back, I mean.’

It was a moment or two before Luiz answered. When he did speak his tone was unemotional. ‘I would have found it difficult to put your transgressions aside, I admit. Trust isn’t easily restored.’

‘But you still wouldn’t have been prepared to finish it?’

‘No. Marriage, in my eyes, is for life. The reason why I waited so long to find the woman I could live that life with.’

‘Only she let you down,’ Karen said huskily. ‘I can’t tell you how awful it makes me feel to think I’m capable of that kind of behaviour! I still find it hard to believe I could be capable of it.’

‘There was no mistake,’ he said. ‘Only the one you made in choosing a man who cared so little for you that he left you sprawled in the dust.’

Karen rode the hurt as best as she was able. ‘What’s even harder to explain is why a man like that would have abandoned a good job.’

Luiz gave a short laugh. ‘Fear of what would happen to him when I discovered the affair would have been incentive enough.’

‘In which case,’ she pursued, ‘why would he have taken the risk in the first place?’

The laugh came again. ‘You do yourself an injustice. Few men could remain indifferent to you. You were a virgin when we met only because you’d never known one capable of bringing the fires smouldering within you to life. I could have taken you within minutes of our meeting.’

‘So why didn’t you?’ she challenged.

‘Because I wanted more than just your body.’ His voice had softened in reminiscence. ‘I wanted every part of you.’

All thought suspended, Karen felt heat rising through her from a central core, a spreading weakness in her limbs. Her body moved instinctively against him, pressing closer to his hardness.

‘Stop that!’ he said harshly.

She came back to earth with a jolt as reality raised its ugly head again, her face flaming as she looked up into the sparking dark eyes.

‘It wasn’t intentional,’ she stammered. ‘It just…happened.’

His lip curled. ‘The way it just happened with Fernandas?’

‘How can I know?’ she asked wretchedly. ‘How can I know anything for certain? All I have to go on is what you tell me.’

Luiz stopped moving, the spark grown to a blaze. ‘Are you accusing me of lying to you?’

‘No, of course not. But unless this Lucio Fernandas had money of his own, none of it adds up. The money I had on me almost certainly wouldn’t have been enough to take the two of us very far.’

‘So why else would the two of you have been on the same flight? Why else, for that matter, would you have been on the flight at all?’

Karen shook her head, feeling ever more desperate. ‘I can’t answer that. All I do know is…’

‘Is?’ he prompted as she broke off.

What she’d been about to say was that she simply couldn’t visualise walking out on someone who could make her feel the way he’d made her feel just now, but she wasn’t ready to go down that particular road.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Can we call it a day? I have a dreadful headache.’

Anger gave way to concern. ‘The fault is mine for insisting on continuing the attempt. I’ll arrange for a taxi to be called.’

He was solicitousness itself while they waited for the taxi to arrive. Karen hadn’t lied about the headache; it felt as if a hammer was beating at the space between her eyes. And this was just the beginning. There was worse to come. Facing the rest of the family would tax her resources to the limit.

It was coming up to midnight when they reached the hotel. Luiz had the receptionist on duty procure some painkillers and a glass of water for her before taking the lift to their floor.

‘I trust the headache will soon subside,’ he said at her door. For a moment he seemed to hesitate, his eyes on her pale face, then he said a brief goodnight and moved on to the room next door.

Thankful to be alone at last, Karen shed her clothing and took a shower. The bathroom was lined in mirror glass. She studied herself clinically as she towelled dry. Breasts high, waist slim, hips smoothly rounded, her body was, she knew from past experience, a magnet for male eyes, her face, in normal times, an equal draw. She’d had several short-term romances, but had lost hope of ever meeting any man who could make her want him the way he wanted her.

Until coming here to Rio and meeting Luiz Andrade. The very thought of him sent a ripple down her spine. The mistake she’d probably made then was in confusing lust with love. A mistake she must have realised eventually.

Regardless, she just couldn’t imagine herself turning to another man for solace. Especially one like this Lucio Fernandas. Could she possibly have been so desperate that she’d cultivate a relationship with him simply to secure his help in getting away from Guavada?

She was going round in circles again, she acknowledged wearily, and still getting nowhere. The only chance she had of learning the truth was by returning to Guavada. Not that she had any choice in the matter anyway.

Worn out, she slept like a log, awakening to sunlight and a low-pitched ringing that turned out to be the telephone on the bedside cabinet.

‘How are you feeling?’ Luiz asked.

‘Better,’ she said, referring to the headache not the inner turbulence. ‘What time is it?’

‘Gone ten o’clock. You missed breakfast, but I can have something brought to the room.’

She wasn’t hungry, Karen started to say, breaking off as her stomach growled a protest. ‘Give me ten minutes,’ she said instead.

‘What would you like?’

‘Fruit and coffee will be fine.’

She put the receiver down, wondering how she could speak so calmly and collectedly when her insides were dancing a fandango at the mere sound of his voice. They’d made love the night before her departure, he’d said yesterday. If it was the truth, whatever had gone wrong between them hadn’t affected her physical responses even at that point.

Showered, she donned the white robe and went to open up the balcony doors with the intention of eating outside. She closed them again hastily on feeling the sticky heat, glad of the cool blast from the air-conditioning vents. São Paulo was far less humid than this, Luiz had said; she could be glad of that at least.

A knock at the door heralded the arrival of a waiter with a table trolley containing far more than the items she had requested. Luiz followed the man in, despatching him with what appeared to be a whole handful of banknotes. It was unlikely to be payment on the spot in a place like this, Karen concluded, so it had to be a tip. Generous or not, she had no way of knowing.

He was wearing the suit from last night, this time with a black shirt. Opened a little lower at the neckline than the night before, it revealed a fine gold chain bearing a small medal, the latter nestling amidst a curly mat of hair.

‘I only asked for fruit and coffee,’ she said, pulse rate increasing by the minute. She indicated the cereal, the covered tureen containing who knew what, the rolls and preserves. ‘I can’t eat all that!’

From the look in the dark eyes, her instinctive move to tighten the tie belt of the robe had not gone unnoted, though he made no comment. ‘It’s of no consequence,’ he declared. ‘The choice is there should you change your mind. I’ll take coffee with you.’

Feeling distinctly vulnerable, she poured for them both, leaving his black as he’d requested the previous night. Luiz accepted the cup from her to set it down on the small table at the side of a nearby chair.

‘I reserved seats on the one-thirty shuttle to São Paulo,’ he announced without preamble. ‘You were right last night. Attempting to recreate our beginnings is a waste of time and effort. All we can do is return to Guavada and hope for an eventual cure.’

Karen took a couple of deep swallows from her own cup before answering, needing the stimulant. ‘What do we tell your sister?’

‘She already knows about the amnesia. I spoke to her earlier. She sends her love, and hopes to help in your recovery.’

‘And the others?’

‘Regina is to pass on the news. If you’re concerned for what Beatriz might say, you can rest assured of her silence,’ he added hardily.

‘You think she won’t even have told your brother the real reason I went?’

He hesitated. ‘Perhaps that would be asking a little too much. There should be no secrets between husband and wife.’

Karen busied herself slicing a banana into a dish, adding grapes and ready-cut pieces of melon. ‘As manager of the ranch, I suppose you hold a lot of authority,’ she murmured.

‘I don’t manage the ranch,’ he said. ‘I own it.’

Her head came up. ‘You own it?’

‘Why such surprise?’ he asked on an ironical note. ‘Do I appear a man of small means?’

‘No,’ she acknowledged. ‘Not at all. I just thought…’ She broke off, lifting her shoulders. ‘I’m not sure what I thought. Is your brother a partner?’

‘No.’ The statement was unequivocal. ‘Are you going to eat the fruit, or simply continue poking at it?’

Karen forked up a piece of banana and put it in her mouth, chewing on it resolutely. Fruit here had a far better taste than back home, she had to admit. Except that England was home no longer, of course. Not for her. She might never even see it again!

‘Is it far to the airport?’ she asked, shutting out the hovering despondency.

‘The São Paulo shuttle flies from Aeroporto Santos Dumont in the city centre,’ Luiz returned. The flight itself takes less than an hour, the drive to Guavada considerably longer, but we should be there before dark.’

To meet more people she couldn’t remember. People who had known her a whole three months. How, Karen wondered numbly, was she to deal with it all?