Exotic Affairs(128)

A half-mile further on Luiz stopped the car where the road was a little wider and turned them back the way they had come. As they passed by the BMW again, she noticed that another car had pulled up behind it and that Felipe was on his own two feet, leaning weakly against it with his head in his hands, while the rest of the men were wrestling the BMW out of harm’s way.

‘They won’t hurt him, will they?’ she asked Luiz anxiously.

‘No,’ was all he said.

It was reassuring, short though it was. On a small sigh she began to shiver. Luiz instantly flicked the car heater on, but the shivering continued. She knew it was shock, not cold—Luiz probably knew it too.

‘Tell me what happened after that fool of a waiter let Felipe convince him he was me so he could lure you out to my car.’

‘When you start shouting and swearing, I might tell you,’ Caroline countered dully. ‘But not before.’

‘All right.’ His fingers tensed around the steering wheel. ‘Let’s just deal with your problem with my self-control first,’ he clipped. ‘You want to see the man dead?’ he gritted. ‘You want to see his head hanging from the castle wall? You want to see me drive you up this mountain the same way he brought you down it?’

‘No.’ She answered all of his questions at the same time.

‘Then tell me what happened after he got you into my car,’ he repeated flatly.

So, quietly and as flatly as him, she told him everything, even the way it had been her fault that the car had ended up where it had. The only bit she missed out was the hellish row she and Felipe had had about Luiz’s father.

By then they were driving through the village and everyone was out. It was like a replay of the first time they had come through here. Only then it had been daylight and the expressions had been curious. Now they looked pale and worried and anxious. So she waved and smiled and hoped to goodness they couldn’t tell that she was just about ready to cry her eyes out.

It was the same when they got back to the castle. Everyone was huddled around Neptune, waiting with anxious eyes as Luiz brought the car to a stop then grimly told her to stay exactly where she was.

He got out, ignored everyone, and came around the car to lift her out of her seat. Some gasped when they saw the state of her lovely dress and her pale face.

Her father stepped up and took hold of her hand. He looked dreadful. ‘I’m fine,’ she told him, and another one of those reassuring smiles appeared.

‘You don’t look it,’ he rasped.

‘Well, I am—I am,’ she repeated firmly.

‘Nevertheless, I will come with you…’

It was Luiz’s uncle Fidel. He fell into step beside Luiz as they walked into the great hall with her father still clinging to one of her hands. The first person she saw inside was Consuela. She was just standing there by the huge banqueting table, her face so white it could have been marble.

‘Put me down, Luiz,’ Caroline insisted.

He paused in his step but didn’t immediately comply.

‘Please,’ she pleaded.

Without a word, and with his dark face still that tightly closed book, he set her feet onto the cool stone floor and made sure she was steady before letting go of her. Caroline walked up to Consuela and simply—sadly—just put her arms around the older woman.

Instantly Consuela stiffened so violently that Caroline thought it was with rejection. Then she realised, as that stiff body began to tremble, that Consuela just wasn’t used to being held in any way. For all she had deserved punishment for what she had done to her own sister, she had paid for it—with thirty-five years of a barren marriage living in a barren atmosphere where love and affection had been non-existent.

‘It’s all right,’ she whispered, for the other woman’s ears only. ‘He’s fine. Luiz’s men are looking after him.’

‘He should not have done it,’ Consuela said, but some of the tension eased out of her.

‘He’s bitter,’ Caroline explained. ‘And he has a right to be bitter, Tía Consuela,’ she added gently.

The older woman looked into Caroline’s face and sighed knowingly. ‘The padre gave you the diaries,’ she said.

At Caroline’s nod, she nodded also. That was all. They understood each other. If Caroline had read the diaries then she knew that if Luiz thought his life had been hard, growing up in the slums of New York, then Felipe’s life had been no easier, living here with a father who had despised him and a mother who had locked herself away in an emotional prison of her own making.

Then Consuela said. ‘We will leave here tonight.’ It was a decision that made Caroline glance at her anxiously.