Crime Of Passion(16)

From the outset Rafael had been sickly prejudiced against her. He had probably fought hard against the attraction between them and, even in succumbing to that attraction, he had still been on red alert for any flaws that she might display. Desire had driven Rafael, and the price of fulfilling that desire had been marriage.

But intellectually, of course, he hadn’t wanted to marry her. If it hadn’t been for her connection with Maria Cristina, Rafael would just have taken what was on offer and slept with her, slaking his desire in the most basic way possible. Subconsciously, he must have fiercely resented that reality. So it must have been relatively easy for Rafael to begin to suspect that her innocence was an act, and fate had been wonderfully kind to him in serving up the kind of evidence he required to convince himself that she was a whore instead.

Rafael had run true to type, she reflected numbly. Hotblooded, suspicious, jealous and melodramatic—the archetypal smouldering Latin lover. Yet it was so difficult to equate that image with the freezingly self-contained male who had rejected her at their final meeting. He had not mentioned Steve then. Why not? Had it been beneath his precious dignity to reveal the extent to which he believed himself to have been deceived? He had not called her a whore, either. Indeed, in retrospect, she realised that Rafael had been remarkably restrained that day. But it was almost laughable that he could have believed her steeped in sexual sin at so tender an age. But she couldn’t laugh, had never felt further from laughter.

She felt agonisingly hurt and bitter and it was that incredible pain which she now feared most of all. Her pride and her principles revolted against the image Rafael now had of her. Yes, perhaps she would have liked the romantic illusion back, just as he had shrewdly divined. Being treated like a scarlet woman might have briefly appealed to her sense of humour when she put on an act that first night in an effort to hold her own, but with Rafael, she could never ever forget that once she had loved him.

The memory was just there in the back of her mind all the time, warning her that she was vulnerable, warning her that she still found him staggeringly attractive on a purely physical level, and that something inside her which she was deeply ashamed of made her behave more outrageously around him than she would ever have dreamt of behaving around any other man. Why was that? Was there actually a part of her which rejoiced in his desire for her body? Could she be that stupid? Hurriedly, she rose from the worn wooden pew.

She was walking towards the blinding sunlight flooding through the doors when the portly little priest appeared before her. ‘I am Father Tom&bs Garcia,’ he told her in perfect English, extending a polite hand that couldn’t be ignored. ‘And you are Georgie, Maria Cristina’s friend.’

Taken aback by the assurance with which that statement was made, Georgie mumbled she knew not what.

‘Would you like some tea? Or possibly some lemonade? This is the hottest part of the day and I think you must be very thirsty. You are a teacher, aren’t you? A fine profession, but more challenging now than it was in my time,’ he remarked, accompanying her outside and turning towards the small house in the shadow of the church. ‘Primary or secondary level?’ he prompted with interest.

Ten minutes later, Georgie was ensconced in a comfortable armchair with a glass of lemonade, in a cluttered but sparsely furnished sitting-room, and she didn’t quite know how she had got there. ‘You know,’ she muttered uneasily, fearing that the little priest was acting on a false assumption, ‘I’m C of E.’

Father Garcia chuckled. ‘I’ll forgive you. You were telling me about your history course,’ he reminded her.

It was over an hour before she departed, and her throat ought to have been sore from talking so much. After all, when all her years at college had been exhausted, they had somehow moved on to her family and from there to London, which her companion had visited forty years earlier and never forgotten. She was astonished by how relaxed she felt as she turned uncertainly back.

‘Thanks,’ she said huskily.

’For what do you thank me?’ Father Garcia’s sparkling brown eyes, so lively in his round, peaceful face, rested on her intently. ‘It has been a very great pleasure for me to make the acquaintance of Rafael’s bride-to-be.’

‘Bride?’ Georgie couldn’t help it; the repetition erupted helplessly from her startled lips and even to her own ears she sounded like a cat whose tail had been trodden on.

‘Fiancee?’ the little priest suggested with apparently unshakeable good humour that took no note of her shock. ‘That is the modern term, I suppose.’

‘I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood,’ Georgie began, in an agony of discomfiture.

‘It is supposed to be a secret? But how could it be here?’ Father Garcia’s expressive eyes twinkled merrily. ‘Naturally we are all excited at the prospect of Rafael’s marriage.’

And off he went before Georgie could unglue her tongue from the roof of her dry mouth. Dear heaven, did Rafael have any idea of the expectations he had raised by bringing her here? Father Garcia had spoken of their marriage as though it was one centimetre short of accomplished fact, and she had only arrived yesterday! Was he aware that Rafael had once planned to marry her?

In a renewed state of turmoil, Georgie headed back to the house, but this time she was abnormally conscious of the number of smiles and inquisitive looks she received on the way. Without hesitation she went off in search of Rafael, determined to demand transport off the estancia again. This farce had gone far enough! He simply couldn’t keep her here against her wishes!

He was on the phone in the library, which he appeared to use as an office. As she burst through the door his gleaming dark head jerked round, an expression of astonishment briefly etched on his devastatingly handsome features. Presumably nobody ever entered the inner sanctum without a knock and official permission.

‘I will be with you in a moment.’ It was a cool aside.

Stalking over to the window, Georgie turned her back on him and jerkily folded her arms. She listened to him talk in fast, idiomatic French, his accent and inflexion flawless. It set her teeth on edge. He was rapping out orders like the feudal autocrat that he was. When the call was concluded, she spun round.

‘I hear that Father Tomás has been entertaining you—’

‘The grapevine is supersonic around here, isn’t it?’ Georgie cut in, throwing her vibrant head back and watching him with a bright little smile pinned to her sultry mouth. ‘Did your little bird also tell you that he thinks we’re about to get married?’

‘What an extraordinary idea,’ Rafael gibed without pause, betraying not an ounce of the discomfiture she had expected to rouse. Eyes dark as Hades raked over her and his sensual mouth twisted wtih cruel amusement. ‘I may have gone overboard in my lust to possess you four years ago, but you will recall that I didn’t ever get as far as a proposal. In short, querida, men like me don’t marry women like you, unless they are suffering from temporary insanity.’

The angry flush on her beautiful face slowly receded, leaving her painfully drawn.

‘You see,’ Rafael extended indolently, ‘I first met you at a time when I was bored with the easy availability of your sex. No woman was ever a challenge. Every woman I ever wanted came to me, shared my bed, did whatever it took to try and hold my attention. I wanted to be the hunter but I never needed to exert myself—’

‘I don’t want to hear this!’ Georgie interrupted with sudden violence.

‘I want you to hear it.’ Rafael lounged gracefully up against his solid antique desk and surveyed her with hooded dark eyes. ‘And then, one day, I met quite unexpectedly the most stunningly beautiful girl, who blushed with enchanting regularity and looked at me with what seemed to be her every thought written in her gorgeous eyes. But this stunningly beautiful girl was untouchable by virtue of her youth. And that for me was the very essence of the romance which every other woman had been so quick in her eagerness to deny me. Don’t look so staggered…remember, I was only twenty-four,’ he reminded her with sardonic bite. ‘And, with hindsight, not one half as clever as I liked to think I was!’

‘Don’t!’ Georgie was disturbed by his savage selfmockery, and her nails dug painfully into her palms.

‘Men always want what is out of reach. That was threequarters of your attraction,’ Rafael asserted drily. ‘And as I got to know you—or believed I was getting to know you—I also discovered that you were bright, amusing and apparently outspokenly honest, a trait which for me was on a par with your beauty. Having to wait for you undoubtedly increased your desirability tenfold. I had never had to wait for anything in my life before and, while I waited, I endowed you with every conceivable virtue.’

The contempt with which he cynically dismissed what he had felt then angered and hurt Georgie. He resurrected memories of those innocent days and those memories burnt her now like acid. ‘I don’t believe in looking back,’ she said tautly. ‘It’s a mistake.’

Rafael spread long brown fingers in a gesture of careless disagreement. ‘I’m not so sensitive,’ he drawled. ‘You were a learning experience for me. Different culture, different values. I was young enough to believe that things like that didn’t matter… but they do, very much.’