Counterfeit Bride(16)

She drew a deep and shaky breath as she assimilated precisely who was  waiting to receive her. She could hear Luis performing introductions,  his tone cool and composed as if this was a perfectly conventional  meeting.

'May I present my aunt, Dona Isabella de Costanza, my cousin Pilar, and her brother Ramon.'

She was aware of hostility in two pairs of dark feminine eyes, knew that  the murmured welcome was words alone. But Ramon was altogether  different. He stepped forward beaming.

'Señorita, may I welcome you to this house which is your home.'

His English was hesitant and deeply accented. Luis shot him a caustic look.

'Don't struggle, amigo. She speaks our language fluently.'

Dona Isabella stepped forward. Her bearing was regal, and her face stony as she looked at Nicola.

'No doubt you will wish to go to your room, señorita. I have assigned  Maria to wait on you. When you are ready she will bring you to the  comedor for breakfast.'

As she walked towards the stairs, following the pretty girl who had  shyly come forward at Dona Isabella's imperious nod, Nicola tried to  take in something of her surroundings.

The hacienda itself, she had thought as they approached, was more like a  fortress, a rambling low building protected by a high wall. The family  living quarters, it seemed were built in a large square round an  interior courtyard, with separate wings for guests, and for the staff.  Inside, the hacienda was incredibly spacious and cool, the fierceness of  the sun being kept at bay by shutters on the windows. The floors were  tiled, and such furniture as Nicola had glimpsed was clearly very old,  opulently carved in dark wood.

She followed Maria along a wide corridor to a pair of double doors at  the end. The girl pushed them open and stood back to allow Nicola to  precede her into the room.

Nicola paused to look around her, her lips parting in sheer delight. It  was a large room, and its charm lay in its utter simplicity, she  thought. The walls were washed in a pale cream shade, and the highly  polished furniture had probably made the journey to the New World from  Spain in the sixteenth century. The bed was enormous, with four carved  posts, and a cream silk counterpane embroidered lavishly with  butterflies in green, pink, gold and silver. Hanging at the back of the  bed was a huge embroidered panel in the shape of a butterfly, using the  same colours as the bedcover.

Nicola thought, 'La Mariposa-of course!'

Maria smoothed the counterpane with an almost proprietorial air.

'This was the room of Dona Micaela, the mother of Don Luis, señorita?  she volunteered in a hushed tone. 'And before her, may God grant her  peace, it was the room of his grandmother. Always the mistress of the  hacienda has slept in this room.'

And the master? Nicola wanted to ask. Where does he sleep? She looked  across at the wide bed, imagining generations of Spanish-born brides  lying there, waiting and wondering if the door would open to admit their  husbands.

And soon she too would lie waiting in the shadow of the butterfly.

'The bathroom, señorita,' Maria announced proudly, and Nicola turned  away, thankful to have another focus for her attention, It was a  charming bathroom, probably converted originally from a dressing room,  tiled in jade and ivory, and including a shower cabinet among its  luxurious appointments. Nicola noticed toiletries ranged on the shelves,  all brand new, the seals on the flasks and jars unbroken, most of them  made by names which a girl earning her own living had only heard of. It  was a room dedicated to beauty, and to the art of making oneself  beautiful for the appreciation of a man, and it made Nicola feel  slightly sick. A little cage, she thought, where the bird can sit and  preen herself all day.

But the thought of the shower was an irresistible temptation. Her hair  was like tow, and she needed a change of clothes. She groaned inwardly  as she remembered that the only luggage available to her was Teresita's.  The Mexican girl had hastily filled a couple of cases from her vast  wardrobe, in spite of Nicola's protests.

'You must have luggage with you, Nicky, or it will seem suspicious,' she  had said. 'And all these are things I no longer need, so that you may  leave them behind you when you run away.'

All the clothes now hanging in the cupboards and filling the drawers  were elegant and expensive, but few of the styles or the colours were  what she would have chosen for herself, and the thought of having to  present herself downstairs in another girl's dress to the scornful looks  of Dona Isabella and Pilar was unpleasant.                       
       
           



       

The next shock was that Maria clearly considered it her duty to assist  Nicola with her shower. Nicola spent several minutes firmly disabusing  the girl of this notion, and dismissed her, promising that she would  ring if she needed anything.

The shower was delicious and she revelled in it, letting the warm water  stream through her hair and down her body. She wrapped herself in a  fluffy bath sheet, tucking it round her body like a sarong as she came  back into the room. No doubt somewhere there would be some means of  drying her hair, but she was reluctant to ring for Maria again. She  needed to be on her own for a while.

She sat down on the stool in front of the dressing chest and stared at  herself. Could this really be happening? It seemed impossible. Tomorrow  or the next day she should have been in Merida, preparing to start her  holiday, and instead she was here in this beautiful room, a virtual  prisoner.

And somewhere in this house was the man who had made her his prisoner.  The man she had promised to marry. She swallowed, fighting back the  bubble of hysteria rising in her throat. It was all a monstrous joke-it  had to be. She was no demure Spanish dove accepting the gilded cage  provided for her, and offering in return her duty and obedience to a  comparative stranger.

Not love, she thought, but compliance, surrendering herself to her  master's will, but making no demands of her own. Asking no questions.

Men like Luis de Montalba-men like Ewan- expected the wives they had  married for convenience to look discreetly the other way while they  amused themselves. She wondered whether Greta had learned her lesson  yet, and whether it had been a painful one for her. Yet perhaps she  simply regarded it as part of the price she had paid for Ewan. Because  she wanted him, and always had.

Nicola had seen the hungry way in which the rather blank blue eyes had  fastened on him from the first. She had even laughed about it with Ewan,  secure in the knowledge that it was herself he wanted to be alone with,  to hold in his arms. The possibility that that was all he might want  had never entered her head, although it should have done, because she  had recognised from the first that he was ambitious, and had even  applauded it.

Well, at least Teresita was going to spared that kind of misery, Nicola  thought. She had Cliff, and they loved each other, and although nothing  was certain in this uncertain world, they had the chance to be happy  together. Teresita wouldn't have to spend her life dutifully bearing  children and being moved from one expensive prison to another.

She shivered convulsively, pressing her clenched fist against her mouth.

Was this the fate she had brought upon herself when she had unthinkingly embarked on her masquerade?

She reached for her hairbrush and pushing back the stool went towards  the window. She unfastened the shutter and stepped out on to a balcony  running, she saw, the whole length of the first floor. The heat of the  sun was like a blow, and she closed her eyes against its fierceness,  moving her shoulders in sensuous pleasure as she pulled the brush  through her hair, lifting the soft strands to dry them.

She heard a sound below her and looking down saw that Ramon was standing  in the courtyard beneath, his expression a mixture of admiration and  embarrassment.

'I did not mean to disturb you,' he said. 'I was on my way to the  stables.' He gestured towards a gated archway in the corner of the  courtyard.

'You're not disturbing me at all,' she said lightly. 'I've been washing my hair.'

'As I can see. It's very beautiful.' He smiled at her, and Nicola found  herself warming to him. He had an attraction all his own, she thought.  He was shorter than Luis, and swarthier, and his features were less  aquiline, but he possessed an open friendly charm, and Nicola knew that a  journey of several days in a car with him would have been pleasant  without posing any problems at all.

As if reading her thoughts, he said ruefully 'Luis has the luck of the devil himself.'

She felt herself flushing. 'Then you know-everything?'

He spread his hands, shrugging. 'Luis telephoned me from the first stop  he made. He wished me to check on Teresita on his behalf. He could  hardly do so without telling me what had happened, although ...' He  stopped suddenly.

'Although you never expected that he would bring me here,' Nicola supplied drily.

It was his turn to flush. 'Well-perhaps not. But I am delighted, I  assure you. It is time he was married. He has been lonely, I think.'