Counterfeit Bride(4)

Disgust rose bitterly in Nicola. Not just elderly and arrogant, but mercenary and a womaniser into the bargain.

She said hotly, 'You can't marry him, Teresita. Write to him. Tell him it's all off. He can't make you.'

Teresita almost cowered in her chair. 'I cannot disobey.' Her voice  shook. 'Tomorrow I must leave for Monterrey in Ramon's charge. You do  not know Don Luis-his anger-how he would be if I wrote him such a  letter.'

'But he must know that you don't love him-that you're even frightened of him,' Nicola argued stubbornly.

Teresita sighed. 'My mother would have said that it is a good thing to  respect the man that one must marry- and that love can follow marriage,'  she added doubtfully.

'When you already love Cliff?'

Teresita's mouth quivered. 'That was craziness, a dream. I must forget him now that Don Luis has spoken at last.'

'Oh, no, you mustn't,' Nicola said forcefully. 'Teresita, you can't let  yourself be pushed around like this. Your father may have intended you  to marry Don Luis at one time, but if he was here now, and knew Cliff,  and realised how you felt about him, I know he'd change his mind.' She  looked across at Elaine, who gave a silent shrug. She tried again. 'Why  don't you and Cliff elope?'

For a moment, a hopeful light shone in Teresita's eyes, then she crumpled again.

'He is in Chicago.'

'Well, I know that, but we could cable him, tell him it's an emergency and he has to get back right away,' said Nicola.

Teresita shook her head. 'I must leave tomorrow. There is no time for him to return.'

'Then he'll just have to follow you to Monterrey and make Don Luis see reason.'

'It would be no use. Don Luis would not receive him, or allow me to see  him.' Teresita spread her hands helplessly. 'Nicky, you do not  understand.'

'On the contrary, I understand only too well,' Nicola told her grimly.  'You're not prepared to stand up to this guardian of yours.'

Teresita seemed to shrink. 'Nicky, it is not possible to stand up, as  you say. He follows his own will at all times, and always he is obeyed.'

'Oh, is he, indeed?' Nicola said wrathfully. 'I just wish I could meet  this lordly gentleman. I'd do anything to stop him getting his own way  for once in his life!'

'Then why don't you?' said Elaine.

'Why don't I what?'

'Stop him.' Elaine gave a shrug. 'Correct me if I'm wrong, Teresita, but  you're not very well acquainted with this Ramon, are you?'

'No.' Teresita gave a puzzled frown. 'As I said, he is Don Luis' cousin, and many years ago I met him at La Mariposa and...'

'Right,' Elaine interrupted. 'And all he knows is that tomorrow he has  to collect you someplace-the convent, I guess-and escort you to  Monterrey. Well, Nicky can go in your place.'                       
       
           



       

There was a shaken silence, then Nicola said, 'That's the silliest idea I've ever heard.'

'It's not so silly,' Elaine said calmly. 'Stop and think. You speak  Spanish like a native, and if we fitted you out with a brunette wig,  some dark glasses and a heavier make-up, you could pass for  Teresita-especially with a guy who saw her once when she was a kid, for  God's sake.'

Nicola gasped, 'But I'd never get away with it! Just supposing I could  fool this unfortunate man-which is by no means certain-what would happen  when I got to Monterrey? I couldn't hope for the same luck with Don  Luis.'

'You wouldn't need it. You take your big leather shoulder bag in which  you have one of your own dresses, and your papers and vacation tickets.  When you get to Monterrey, you make some excuse to stop off somewhere-a  store or a restaurant, and you go to the powder room, where you take off  the wig and dump it, change your dress-and-voila. Goodbye, Teresita  Dominguez and hello, Nicola Tarrant, leaving Don Luis with egg on his  face because his novia has run away. Oh, he'll be looking for her, but  he won't be equating her with any blonde English chick, and he won't be  searching in Mexico City, where she'll be marrying Cliff, with me as  chief bridesmaid. When she's ready, she can write and tell him she's  already married, and let him figure out how she did it.'

Nicola was about to tell Elaine that this time she had finally flipped,  when she saw Teresita looking at her, with the dawning of a wild hope in  her eyes.

She said, 'Teresita, no-I couldn't! It's crazy. It's impossible. It wouldn't work.'

Teresita's hands were clasped tightly in front of her as if she were  praying. 'But we could make it work, Nicky, in a wig, as Elaine said,  and some of my clothes. It will take two days, maybe even three to drive  to Monterrey, because there are business calls which Ramon must make on  the way for my guardian. Then when you reach Monterrey, there could be  at least one more day while Don Luis searches there . . .' She turned  eagerly to Elaine, who nodded.

'We'll cable Cliff right away,' she said. 'Maybe Nicky could play for  time in other ways on the trip-pretend to be sick or something.'

'I wouldn't have to pretend,' Nicola said desperately. 'Stop it, the pair of you. You're mad!'

Elaine gave her a steady look. 'You said you'd do anything to stop this  happening. What Teresita chiefly needs is time-time for Cliff to get  back here and marry her himself-and this you could give her.'

'Yes,' Teresita said with a little sob. 'Oh, yes, Nicky. If I go to Monterrey, then I shall never see Cliff again. I know it.'

. 'But I really don't think I could get away with it,' Nicola said,  trying to hold on to her sanity. 'Oh, I know people congratulate me on  my fluency and my accent, but all it would need would be one small  mistake and I'd be finished. And I can hardly drive hundreds of miles in  stony silence.'

'But why not? Ramon would not expect me, the novia of his cousin, to  talk and chatter to him. It would be indecoroso. And if you pretended  that the motion of the car was making you ill, then he would not expect  you to speak at all. He is much younger than Don Luis, and when I was a  child, he was kind to me.' She was silent for a moment, then she said  pleadingly, 'Nicky, I beg you to do this thing for me. I could not love  Don Luis, and he does not love me. He marries me only because it is time  he was married, and because he wishes for a son to inherit this  new-empire that he has made. Would you, in your heart, wish to be  married for such a reason?'

Nicola was very still. As if it was yesterday, she saw Ewan smiling at  her, and heard his voice. 'Of course I'm not in love with her, darling.  It's you I care about. But Greta knows what the score is. She  understands these things. Once I've married her, there's no reason why  you and I shouldn't be together as much as we want, as long as we're  discreet.'

She suppressed a little shudder, remembering how, even through the agony  of the moment, there had been a flash of pity for Ewan's wife, who  would never possess the certainty of his love and loyalty. A marriage of  convenience, she had thought bitterly. Very convenient for the man-but  heartbreak for the woman.

Teresita didn't deserve such a fate.

She said, 'All right, I'll do it.'





CHAPTER TWO


Nicola stood nervously in the shadow of the portico and stared down the  quiet and empty street. Ramon was late, and at any moment the door  behind could open and one of the nuns emerge, and ask what she was doing  there.

For the umpteenth time she had to resist the impulse to adjust the wig.  It was a loathsome thing, totally realistic, but hot and itchy. Orchid  pink silky dress, strapped sandals with high heels in a matching kid,  and two of Teresita's expensive cases as window dressing. The only thing  out of place was the bulky leather bag on her shoulder, but it would  just have to look incongruous. It was her lifeline.                       
       
           



       

She glanced at her watch, biting her lip nervously, thinking how funny  it would be if it was all for nothing and Don Luis had changed his  mind-and then she saw the car and her stomach lurched in panic.

It was too late now to run for it. She could only cross her fingers that  the wig and cosmetics and the large pair of dark glasses would be  sufficiently convincing. Swallowing, she adopted an air of faint hauteur  as Teresita had suggested and stared in front of her as the car came to  a halt in front of the convent steps.

There was a uniformed chauffeur at the wheel, but Nicola barely  registered the fact. She was too busy looking at the man who had just  emerged from the front passenger seat and was standing by the car  watching her.

Young, Teresita had said, or at least younger than Don Luis. Well, he  was at least in his mid-thirties, so that figured, but what she hadn't  mentioned, either because she'd forgotten or had been too young to  notice, was that Ramon was a disturbingly, even devastatingly,  attractive man. Tall-unusually so-with black hair, and eyes darker than  sin. Golden bronze skin over a classic bone structure that went beyond  conventional good looks. A high-bridged aristocratic nose, a firm-lipped  mouth, the purity of its lines betrayed only by a distinctly unchaste  curve to his lower lip, and a proudly uncompromising strength of chin.