Counterfeit Bride(8)

Her lips parted, then closed again helplessly. Nicola couldn't think of a  single word to say, but she knew she had to say something, for  Teresita's sake. Although there was no way Teresita would have ever got  into this situation, she realised despairingly. She couldn't really  believe that she herself had done such a thing.

She said haughtily, 'Please do not speak to me again, Don Ramon.'

It was weak, but it was the best she could manage. She turned her back  on him resolutely and stared out of the window, totally unseeing,  praying that the blush which seemed to be eating her alive would soon  subside.

She couldn't think what was wrong with her. She wasn't completely  unsophisticated. He'd made a verbal pass that was all. It wasn't the end  of the world. It had happened to her before, and she'd demolished the  perpetrator without a second thought. She was Nicola Tarrant, the Snow  Queen, who could cut a too ardent male down with a scornful look. She  had never fluttered or flustered in her life, and especially not over  the past year. And it wasn't enough to tell herself that her outrage was  assumed, part of the role she was playing. She was shaken to the core,  and she knew it.

When the car finally stopped, she almost stumbled out of it, barely  aware that they were at yet another motel, but smaller this time and far  less luxurious. She knew that Lopez was watching her curiously, and  tried desperately to pull herself together and act normally.                       
       
           



       

Ramon came to her side. 'Will you have dinner with me?' His voice sounded constrained.

She avoided his gaze. 'No-I have a headache. I'll ask for some food to be sent to my room.'

'As you please.' He made no attempt to detain her, and she fled. Safe in  her room, she made no attempt to order any food, knowing that she  wouldn't be able to swallow as much as a morsel. She undressed and  showered and lay down on top of the bed, staring into the gathering  darkness, her whirling thoughts refusing to cohere into any recognisable  pattern.

There was one rock to hang on to in her sea of confusion-that tomorrow  they would be in Monterrey, and this whole stupid, dangerous masquerade  would be over. She should never have embarked on it in the first place,  she knew, and she could only pray that she would emerge from it  relatively unscathed.

Just let me get through tomorrow, she thought, and then it will be all  right. I'll be able to take up the rest of my life, and forget this  madness. I'll be free.

She kept repeating the word 'free' as if it was a soothing mantra, and  eventually it had the effect she wanted and the darkness of night and  the shadows of sleep settled on her almost simultaneously.





CHAPTER THREE


It was a maid knocking on the door which woke her eventually. She sat  up, pushing her hair back from her face, to find to her horror that it  was broad daylight.

'Señorita, your car is waiting,' she was reminded, and heard the woman move away.

She glanced at her watch and groaned. She had overslept badly. She  dressed rapidly, and almost crammed the loathsome wig on to her hair.  She smothered a curse as she adjusted it. She had wanted to meet Ramon  in the clear light of day, looking well-groomed and in control of the  situation, and instead she was going to appear late, harassed and  looking like something the cat had dragged in.

She grabbed her bag and left precipitately, aware that a porter was waiting in the corridor to fetch her cases.

As she emerged from the reception area into the sunshine, she made  herself slow down and take'deep, steadying breaths, as she saw the  waiting car. Lopez was standing beside it, looking anxiously towards the  entrance, but when he saw her he smiled in relief and opened the back  door.

Nicola, steeling herself, climbed in. But the other seat was unoccupied.  She twisted round, looking out of the rear window, but she could only  see Lopez supervising the bestowal of her luggage in the boot. When he  took his place in the driving seat, she leaned forward.

'Where is Don Ramon?'

He turned. 'I am to give you this, señorita.' He handed her an envelope, then closed the glass partition between them.

Nicola opened the envelope and extracted the single sheet it contained.

'I regret that urgent business commitments take me from your side,' the  writing, marching arrogantly across the page, informed her. 'I wish you a  safe journey, arid a pleasant reunion      with your novio.' It was signed  with an unintelligible squiggle.

Nicola read it several times, relief warring with an odd"  disappointment. So she would never see him again. On the other hand, it  meant she only had Lopez to shake off when they reached Monterrey, and  that had to be welcome news.

She read the terse words once again, then folded the note and stowed it in her bag, biting her lip.

Later, making sure that Lopez' whole attention was concentrated on the  road ahead, she reached into her bag and drew out the itinerary for her  trip. There was an airport at Monterrey, and she would have to find out  whether there were direct flights from there to Merida. There had been  no time to finalise every detail before she left Mexico City. Teresita  had seen to it that she had enough money for any eventuality, firmly  cutting across her protests.

'You are doing this for my sake, Nicky. It must cost you nothing,' she had said.

In retrospect her words seemed ironic to Nicola now, but she dismissed  that trend of thought from her mind, and began reading the brochures for  her trip, trying to recapture her earlier excitement at the prospect.  But it wasn't easy. The names, the jungle temples no longer seemed to  work the same potent magic with her as they had done. Nicola sighed and  replaced them in her bag, arranging the crush-proof blue sundress she  was going to change into on top of the papers.

She yawned, feeling earlier tensions beginning to seep away. Her little  adventure was almost over, and she could begin to relax. Her sleep last  night had been fitful, which probably explained her failure to wake this  morning. She put her feet up on the seat, and relaxed. Next stop  Monterrey, she thought.

It was the car slowing which woke her at last. She struggled to sit  upright, putting an apprehensive hand up to touch the wig. She was  stiff, and her mouth was dry, as if she had slept for several hours, but  surely it couldn't be true.                       
       
           



       

She expected to see suburbs at least, and signs of an industrial  complex, but there wasn't the least indication they were approaching a  city. On the contrary, it seemed as if they were in the middle of  nowhere. There were vestiges of habitation-a few shacks, and a  tin-roofed cantina. And the road had altered too. They were no longer on  a broad public highway but on a single track dirt road.

There were petrol pumps beside the cantina and this was clearly why Lopez was stopping. But where were they?

Lopez came to her door and opened it. 'Do you wish for coffee, señorita?  I did not wake you for a meal because I thought you would be glad to  reach your destination at last.'

'I would be glad of coffee.' She got out of the car. 'When do we reach Monterrey, Lopez? Is this a shortcut?'

The stolid face expressed the nearest thing to amazement it was probably  capable of. 'Monterrey, señorita? But surely you know-we no longer go  to Monterrey. It is Don Luis' order that we should go directly to La  Mariposa instead.'

Nicola's lips parted in a soundless gasp. For a moment, she thought she  was going to faint, and caught at the edge of the car door to steady  herself. She saw Lopez look alarmed, and pretended she had turned her  ankle slightly on Teresita's high heels.

She managed to say, 'No-I didn't know.' This must have been the message  Ramon had tried to give her, she thought frantically. 'When- when shall  we arrive at the hacienda?'

'In less than two hours, señorita.' He spoke as if expecting to be  congratulated. 'You will be pleased, I think, to reach your journey's  end.'

Journey's end, Nicola thought as she negotiated with some difficulty the  patch of dry and barren ground which separated the cantina from the  road. Journeys end in lovers' meetings-wasn't that what they said? But  there was no lover waiting for her-just a formidable and justly enraged  man whose path she had dared to cross.

Inside the cantina, a girl was frantically wiping off a table and  chairs, and Nicola sank down on to one of them, trying to control her  whirling frantic thoughts.

What was she going to do? She knew from Teresita that the Montalba  hacienda was miles from anywhere, with no nearby stores where she could  unobtrusively perform her transformation, or crowded streets for her to  fade into. And there was nowhere to hide, or means of escape here. This  looked like the kind of place where there might be one bus a week to the  nearest town.