The Ortiga Marriage Read online

  For the first time she had seen the black brows raised in aloof astonishment, the wryly twisted lips.

  "Including me, English girl?"

  "Yes! And I hate you too because you're hurting my head!"

  He had released her at once and stepped easily into the saddle, looking down at her as she had taken her courage into both hands and raised her eyes to him.

  "So! I am gloomy and you hate me? You will not mind therefore being left here alone to await the coming of el tigre. Better to be a pussycat's dinner than to ride with a gloomy savage that you hate, eh?"

  "Oh!" Her long-drawn-out gasp and her clenched hands had emphasised the terror in her huge grey eyes and she had seen, also for the first time, the handsome face dissolve into laughter.

  With one lithe movement he had bent, his strong arm circling her tiny waist, and she was lifted in front of him to sit high on the great horse as his arm held her securely.

  "Perhaps after all I will not leave you to the jaguar," he mocked, laughter in his voice. "I will take you home where it is gloomy and filled with gloomy people. You hate them too, pequena?

  "No, I don't hate them. I'm just miserable and they dislike me." She nestled against him, suddenly warm and secure, and she felt for the first time his hand smooth the wildness of her hair as it blew across his face.

  "Do you dislike me, Ramon?" she asked in a very small voice.

  "But of course I do! You are after all, English, as you so rightly pointed out." There was laughter in his voice and she just knew that he didn't mean it.

  For a while she was content to feel the rhythm of the horse, to look across the peaceful grasslands towards the distant river.

  "Is there really a jaguar?" she asked after a while, hopeful that there was not, but all the teasing left his voice and he reined in the horse.

  "Can your grey eyes see a long way?" he asked seriously. "Because if they can you will see the trees that edge the river. Now, in the dry season it is merely a trickle but the roots are deep and they cling to life all the year. In such places el tigre hunts for his food and he is a ferocious killer who will attack animals great or small, even if the animal is a man, even if the prey is a bright-haired little girl. El tigre is the cat of the llanos, seven feet long to the tip of his tail. He can kill with one blow of his paw and he does not always crouch in the trees. Sometimes he ventures further. He will take cattle if he is hungry and he is the enemy of the men who ride the plains. Today you have been foolish. It is better to be unhappy in a gloomy hacienda than dead on the open stretches of the llanos."

  She shivered and he turned the horse once more for home.

  "I—I'll not do it again," she whispered and he heard her because he asked, "Is this a promise?"

  "Yes."

  "Good. Now I can safely leave you alone at the hacienda."

  "Would you care if el tigre caught me, Ramon?" she asked tentatively, wanting Somebody to care, and he tilted her pale face up, looking down at her with dark arrogant eyes.

  "It would have been better if you had not been brought here," he said evenly, "but as you are here, then yes, I would care, even though you are English and hate me."

  She smiled up at him with pleasure, her eyes glowing, and for a second he looked straight into the silvery depths, unsmiling, before looking away towards the house. He had said nothing more and when at dinner she had greeted him with a little smile of friendship he had coldly ignored her.

  "Dreaming?" His voice dragged her back into the present and she looked at him with the cool eyes he had so often turned on her.

  "Remembering would perhaps be a better word," she said with no inflection in her voice. "Re-living memories."

  "And all of them bad?" he asked quietly.

  "Yes! Except for Manolito, yes!" She closed her mouth firmly and he did not speak again.

  There was a car parked in front of the hacienda in a place usually reserved for the cars of visitors and some inner instinct made Meriel stiffen.

  "You have another new car?" she asked tautly. "I thought that you always stuck to Mercedes for a pleasure vehicle."

  "I do." His voice was as taut as hers and it did nothing to ease her mind. "The car belongs to Carmen, she has been looking after Manuel."

  "So why am I here as you have all the help that you need?" She swung round in the seat and glared at him, two silvery eyes meeting two dark eyes, an equal amount of anger in both pairs.

  "I have told you," he said sharply, "Manuel needs you. He has asked for you constantly. At night he wakes up with screams from bad dreams and then he weeps for his sister. Merry! Merry! It is all that we hear and there is no comforting him."

  "As I recall, there is little comfort in Carmen!" she snorted angrily. "No doubt she is sleeping the sleep of the just while Manolito works himself up into an agony of memories!"

  "There is no woman in the house except the servants, what would you have had me do?" he demanded angrily. "Tia Barbara offered the help of Carmen and I was very grateful!"

  Meriel had heard enough and stormed from the car, slamming the door. Yes, Tia Barbara would have offered the help of Carmen. It was the grief of her life that she was aunt to Ramon and her daughter Carmen his first cousin. A marriage between them would have opened the doors for her to the Ortiga wealth but unfortunately the relationship was too close for any marriage to be possible. Nevertheless she insinuated both herself and Carmen into the house on every conceivable occasion and this occasion was an opportunity too good to be missed. Manuel was the last of their worries.

  Her burst of rage was stifled as the great doors opened and her half-brother came out into the sunlight. For a moment she stood still, shocked beyond words at the sight of him. There was a deathly pallor beneath the golden tones of his skin and he had lost weight, but some of this she had expected. She had not, however, expected to see a small boy clothed from head to foot in black. His black suit and shoes, his black tie against his stark white shirt looked bizarre and uncomfortable in the heat of the afternoon, and he stood quite still, clearly afraid to come to her, afraid to show any emotion.

  "Manolito?" She called to him softly and Ramon, just leaving the car, paused with the same breathless waiting that was on her face.

  For a second, the tight face of her half-brother held its blank dignity, and then he flew across the space between them, hurling himself at her, twisting his arms around her waist and burying his face into her.

  "Merry! Merry! You have come!"

  She could feel his body racked with dry sobs, his hands clutching her tightly in his misery, and the eyes that she turned on the woman who followed Manuel out into the sunlight were harder than her eyes had ever looked in her life. For a moment it seemed that Carmen would speak, would remonstrate with the boy for this unseemly display of emotion, but after one glance into the silvery grey eyes that looked at her with cold anger she thought better of it, summoning up a smile—of sorts.

  "You are here at last, Meriel," she said tightly. "Welcome to the hacienda."

  "Thank you, Carmen, but I need no other welcome than the one I have just received. I am home!" she stressed the word, a word she would never have used in any other circumstance at this place. "I am here to look after my brother and I intend to begin right away!"

  "I—I will go to my room, Meriel," Manuel stammered, ashamed now that he had shown such feelings, understanding the silent disapproval on Carmen's face.

  "Right! I'll be with you in two shakes!" She was deliberately easy in her speech, modern and casual, and it did not please Carmen. Perhaps it did not please Ramon either because he took her luggage and moved to the house.

  "I will speak to you later, Meriel," he said with an angry quiet, and she nodded distantly. He certainly would but not before she had spoken to him.

  "Excuse me." She brushed past Carmen and entered the cool and silent hall, seeing her suitcases there on the shining, polished boards of the floor, seeing also that Ramon had walked into his study. He glanced at her but continued
, leaving the door open in silent invitation although she needed none.

  "Why is Manolito dressed from head to foot in black?" she demanded to know, shutting the door firmly behind her as she entered. "Isn't his misery enough without this ridiculous discomfort ?"

  "He is obviously in mourning!" he said tightly, turning away.

  "And you?" she asked scathingly. "Are you not in mourning then?" She leaned against the door, folding her arms and watching him coldly.

  He looked down at his jeans and checked shirt and then across at the silken green of her dress.

  "Apparently not. Neither are you." She opened her mouth to reply but he cut in sharply before she had the chance. "For your information, Manuel was not dressed like that when I left to collect you from the airstrip. It is probably Carmen's idea to impress upon you the solemnity of the occasion. You have rarely risen to any occasion, as I recall."

  "There has never been an occasion in this house worth the effort!" she tossed back at him. "In any case, the past is unimportant. Now that I am here, Carmen can go."

  "You expect me simply to pack her off?" Ramon looked at her with no interest, almost bored. "Tia Barbara would be offended beyond words."

  "Then offend her!" she advised sharply. "You ordered me here and now that I have seen Manolito at the mercy of your cousin, wild horses wouldn't drag me away. I intend to look after Manolito and I'll suffer no interference!"

  "Restore Manuel to normality and I promise that you will suffer no interference, but remember that I rule the hacienda, the land and—the family! I will not countenance any trouble!" He stood facing her, hands in the pockets of his jeans, the black eyes glittering with impatience.

  "Normality is an unusual commodity in this house," she scoffed, returning his stare with an arrogance of her own. "And what makes you imagine that there will be trouble?" she added with a smile. She was mocking his power, defying him and his gaze became more intent.

  "I only have to look at you," he assured her in a low voice. "You do not need to do anything at all. You were born to be trouble with your golden hair and silvery eyes. I recognised trouble from the moment that you stepped into the hacienda at an age almost equal to Manuel's now."

  "And you were very thankful when I left," she said woodenly.

  He inclined his head in agreement, his smile without humour.

  "Well, don't worry," she said with a forced lightness. "A few days and I'll be going back to my own life, to my own— kind!" The last phrase came out almost against her will, seeming to fall from her tongue unbidden, and she would have given anything to withdraw it because she saw his eyes flare with a kind of unholy joy.

  "You have not forgotten then, Meriel?"

  She turned to the door, refusing to answer the silky question.

  "Where am I to sleep?"

  "Your old room is ready—as it was."

  Startled she turned back, staring into his shuttered face.

  "As it was? After almost seven years? My mother told me when she was in London last that the room had been refurnished as an extra guest-room."

  He nodded absently and turned away, beginning to leaf through the papers on his desk.

  "She had it changed. I was away at the time. I had it restored to its original state when I returned."

  "Why?" She found her heart fluttering in her throat, a flicker of feeling stirring, and she silenced it at once.

  "Why? I do not like changes, as I told you. I will have your suitcases brought up," he added, coolly dismissing her.

  She was glad to go, the dark study intimidated her, reminding her of the number of times she had stood there as a trembling girl while Ramon sat behind the desk berating her. Let him try it now!

  She walked along the wide, polished passage to her old room remembering each door, each picture, every small glittering chandelier that lit the dark passages at night. The house was single-storied in the manner of the old haciendas, rambling haphazardly as new parts had been added over the years, and she saw it now with adult eyes, noticing its beauty and charm.

  Almost opposite her room, the long door of a small, dark closet caught her eye and her heart thumped as she recognised it. Windowless, dark and confining, it had terrified her as a child.

  She walked towards it and pulled open the door, facing her ghosts with tight lips and then stopping in astonishment. It was painted white inside now and filled with shelves that held beautiful bed linen. A light came on automatically as the door opened and her ghost vanished as if it had never been. If Ramon did not like change, he had certainly made an exception here, had wiped out a part of her past that still haunted her mind, a day when Ramon had made it clear that he would one day rule the Ortigas, a day when he had firmly taken her under his protection and destroyed her mother's domination forever.

  She walked in a kind of daze to her room, her mind only vaguely noting that it was truly as it had been. Even her small treasures had been brought back from the store room and replaced exactly in the original positions. Rosita! Meriel smiled, fingering the small objects that belonged to the past, Rosita, the small and round housekeeper, had always been fond of her. She wandered to the window and looked across the green of the lawns but her mind was still outside the room, seeing the past and her trial by terror.

  It had been a few weeks after her encounter with Ramon on the dry hot plains that she had had the temerity to answer back when her mother had sharply rebuked her for some small fall from grace. Her tiny defiance had brought a punishment that her father had never allowed. She had been locked in the cupboard.

  At first as her mother turned the key, leaving her in darkness, she had clung to her defiance, standing against the wall, waiting for her eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness, trying not to hear the steady tapping of her mother's high heels as she walked away. But the blackness was total, confining and suffocating and she had begun to cry, at first softly but then with deep shuddering sobs that threatened to choke her. She had felt for the door and hammered on it in growing panic, knowing that no one would come until her hour of imprisonment was over—her mother had assured her of that.

  She began to scream, falling to her knees by the door, surrounded by darkness, and a slowly creeping silence that only her own cries of terror kept at bay, but no one would come.

  Ramon had come. She had never heard the sound of his riding-boots striding along the passage, had heard nothing of his savage voice. Only the feel of his arms as he lifted her, tear-drenched and dirty-faced, to hold her against his chest, awoke her to the fact that she was free.

  He had stormed back to the sala, his pitiful burden cradled against his shirt, murderous rage in his dark eyes, and he had burst in upon his father and stepmother as they had sat calmly taking tea.

  What he had said she never knew, she was not then fluent in Spanish and could not follow the savage speed, but her mother had paled at his obvious threats and his father too had fallen silent before such rage. She was never punished again by her mother; her only ordeal thereafter had been the sharp edge of Ramon's tongue.

  It had dawned on her that he had only just come in because his horse was still standing saddled against the stables and he had mounted, grim-faced, pulling her against his chest and riding out on to the llanos.

  It was a wild ride, the horse at full gallop, the tall grasses parting before the pounding hooves. Her hair had streamed out over his shoulder and gradually her shuddering had stopped as the wind blew in her face and the sun warmed her fear-chilled skin.

  When he reined the horse to a stop they were all breathless, Meriel, the horse and Ramon.

  "You are free, little one," he had told her quietly, "free on the llanos, under the sky, the wind in your hair."

  "Why did you leave me so long?"

  She had turned her head and timidly touched him as he looked down at her tear-stained face.

  "I was not there. Rosita told me as I came in. It will not happen again."

  Gently he had removed her hand, looking for a moment
at her thin, pale fingers, and then he had turned for home, silent and stern, but a haven of comfort and protection. Not that it had made her very much more happy, only perhaps a little more secure, for he had continued in the same manner as before, cold and aloof, ignoring her, speaking to her only when she spoke to him, and she had no doubt whatever that she was an outsider.

  What it had done however was give her mother the excuse that she needed to send her away. Her father had applied once more for custody, complaining that with Meriel in Venezuela his visiting rights were an impossibility, and for once, Inez had been prepared to compromise. Her tutor had been dismissed and Meriel had been packed off to boarding school in England only to come out to the hacienda in the long holidays and at Christmas. Her father could visit her as often as he wished and she could spend the short holidays with him. Inez had rid herself of the ignominy of Ramon dictating to her about her conduct with her own child, and Meriel was not a constant reminder of her English marriage.

  Ramon had put her on the plane and she had seen a kind of satisfaction in his dark eyes too.

  Jose brought up her suitcases and greeted her with his old face wreathed in smiles. She was not surprised to find that Ramon had handed them over to a servant, he would not wish to see more of her than was necessary, and she quickly hung up her clothes and put a fresh skirt and top on the bed, ready to change and then seek out Manuel.

  She was surprised therefore to hear a sharp knock on the door and find Ramon outside as she opened it.

  "You have everything that you need?" He stood looking down at her with eyes that were oddly intent and for a second she simply looked back, not answering. "It is strange to find you once again in the house," he added quietly. "It is something that we will both have to get used to."

  "I shall be here for only a little while," she said tightly, turning away and walking into her room. "I'm quite sure that with Carmen out of the way and Manolito free to talk or weep as he wishes my job here will soon be over. In any case," she added, "I can't take indefinite leave. My leave is open-ended only because I…' She suddenly pulled up short. Her relationship with Stewart was nothing to do with Ramon Ortiga.