Flame Of Diablo
Sara Craven
Mills & Boon proudly presents THE SARA CRAVEN COLLECTION. Sara’s powerful and passionate romances have captivated and thrilled readers all over the world for five decades making her an international bestseller.Rachel had vowed to reach DiabloIn London, it had seemed simple. Go out to Columbia, bring back her brother, Mark. It was her one chance to do something for her beloved grandfather with whom Mark had quarreled.In Columbia, nothing went right. Mark was off in the wilds of Diablo looking for a legendary emerald–and the one man who could guide her to the territory was the handsome, arrogant Vitas de Mendoza.Rachel didn't trust him an inch, but he agreed to take her–at a price. Only when it was too late did Rachel discover that the price was far, far too high….
Flame of Diablo
Sara Craven
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Former journalist SARA CRAVEN published her first novel ‘Garden of Dreams’ for Mills & Boon in 1975. Apart from her writing (naturally!) her passions include reading, bridge, Italian cities, Greek islands, the French language and countryside, and her rescue Jack Russell/cross Button. She has appeared on several TV quiz shows and in 1997 became UK TV Mastermind champion. She lives near her family in Warwickshire – Shakespeare country.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
COVER (#u47a12cfa-e384-5a97-bbf3-8a9ef6b53a5c)
TITLE PAGE (#ub7018e9f-c1a6-5b06-ac17-3dabbfc429f8)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#u11eca87b-77ba-57c0-93ba-a05f0e930a72)
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
ENDPAGE (#litres_trial_promo)
COPYRIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u424e6a47-4cff-5582-bf95-eb3584db4d17)
A FEW flakes of snow were drifting down from a leaden sky as Rachel Crichton paid off the taxi, and ran up the shallow flight of steps to the front door. Her urgent ring at the bell was answered almost immediately by a tall thin woman in a neat dark dress, a smile of thankfulness relieving the anxiety in her face.
‘Oh, Miss Rachel, you’ve come at last! He’s been asking and asking for you. Dr Kingston wants to move him to the Mordaunt Clinic, and he won’t go. Said he had to see you first. He’s been getting himself in a real state—and Miss Rachel, he mustn’t!’
‘I know.’ Rachel gave the housekeeper’s hand a comforting squeeze. Even after twenty years, Mrs Thurston still had not been able to come to terms with Sir Giles Crichton’s arrogant refusal to allow any denial of his wishes. ‘I came as soon as I got your message. How—how is he?’ She made a little helpless gesture. ‘This is the last thing I was expecting. He seemed to have got over the last attack …’
She paused, and saw Mrs Thurston give a little shake of her head.
‘It’s bad this time, Miss Rachel, the worst yet. That’s why Doctor Kingston wants to move him. He told him to his face that he couldn’t be trusted to rest properly here.’ She swallowed. ‘I was with him when it happened, and I thought we were going to lose him, that I did.’
‘Oh, Thursty!’ Rachel stared at her in dismay. ‘It must have been awful for you. I should have been here—the play closed over a week ago.’
‘It wouldn’t have made much difference.’ Mrs Thurston seemed to rouse herself from her anxiety, and moved to help Rachel off with her coat. ‘Sir Giles has hardly been here himself for the past fortnight. He’s been backwards and forwards to London nearly every day. He even spent the night there one day last week. And when I tried to remind him of what the doctor had said, he nearly bit my head off. I said no more, naturally, but I’m wondering now whether, if I hadn’t given up so easily, this might have been avoided.’
‘I don’t think so, Thursty darling. And you’re not to blame yourself.’ Rachel gave a soft sigh. ‘We both know what Grandfather’s like when he’s got the bit between his teeth. But what can he have been doing in London? Did he give no hint?’
‘None at all, Miss Rachel.’ The older woman hesitated. ‘But he seemed—different. More like his old self. I wondered if it might have something to do with Mr Mark.’
‘I don’t think so, Thursty,’ Rachel said gently. ‘But we can always hope. Now, I’d better go up.’
She ran up the broad, shallow flight of stairs which led to the first floor bedrooms, and turned along the landing to the big double doors of the room situated at the far end. As she approached they opened, and a slight grey-haired man emerged. He looked tired and anxious, but his eyes lit up when he saw her, and he laid a finger conspiratorially over his lips, glancing back towards the room he had left.
‘Uncle Andrew?’ she whispered. ‘How is he?’
‘No worse, but certainly no better either,’ he said quietly. ‘Your arrival should help. He’s under sedation, and I rely on you, Rachel, not to allow him to get excited in any way. Now that you’re here I’ll go and arrange about that ambulance.’ He patted her cheek and went on past her towards the stairs.
It was very warm in the bedroom. A fire had been kindled in the old-fashioned grate, and its leaping flames together with a shaded bedside lamp provided all the light in the room.
Her grandfather lay back against the pillows, his eyes closed. He was very pale, and there was a bluish tinge around his mouth which frightened her, but she was careful not to let the fright show as she trod across the carpet, her slender feet noiseless in their low-heeled shoes. There was a chair close beside the bed, and she sat down on it, waiting for him to open his eyes and notice her there, unwilling to disturb him purposely.
At last his eyes did open, still fiercely blue, but with some of their former fire dimmed. For a moment Sir Giles gazed at her almost without recognition, then his glance sharpened and focussed, and he said, ‘So you’re here at last.’
Rachel tried to ignore the implied reproach in his words of greeting, to forget that if he’d been backwards and forwards to London as Mrs Thurston had said, there had been plenty of opportunities for him to contact her if he’d wanted—opportunities that had remained neglected. She tried to forget too that the reproach had always been there, ever since, in fact, the longed-for first grandchild had been born a girl instead of the boy he had set his heart on, and had not been alleviated even with Mark’s birth some two and a half years later.
She bent over the bed and put her lips to his cheek. ‘I’m here, Grandfather. Can I get you a drink or anything?’
‘No, child.’ The effort of speaking seemed to be using up his breath at an alarming rate, she thought. ‘Just—listen.’
He closed his eyes again and lay still, absorbed with some interior struggle for strength. She was just beginning to grow uneasy, when he said, ‘Have you heard from Mark?’
‘No, darling,’ she said gently. ‘Not a word.’
He gave a slight nod. ‘Not important. I—know where he is.’
‘You know?’ Rachel felt a stab of anger. ‘And you never told me? You never …’
‘I’m telling you now, child,’ he interrupted testily, and she subsided, remembering what the doctor had said about not letting him become excited. ‘It was by chance I found out. I had to go up to Town to see old Grainger. I was having lunch at the club afterwards when Larry Forsyth walked in. Do you remember him?’
‘I think so,’ Rachel returned almost mechanically, her brain still whirling from the news she had just received. ‘Wasn’t he in the diplomatic service?’
Her grandfather gave a grunt. ‘Still is. He’s been out in Colombia for a couple of years. And that’s where he saw Mark, less than three weeks ago.’
‘In Colombia?’ Rachel shook her head. ‘It sounds most unlikely. Was he sure it was Mark?’
‘Of course he was sure!’ Sir Giles sounded irritable. ‘Knew him at once, and Mark recognised him too. He was dining with some people—name of Arviles. Señor Arviles is one of the top lawyers in Bogota, according to Larry.’
‘Mark was at university with someone called Arviles—Miguel Arviles,’ Rachel said slowly. ‘But I didn’t know he was a Colombian. And I didn’t realise that Mark was on particularly close terms with him either.’
But then, she thought, why should she had known? Mark had never been forthcoming about his friendships, and Rachel had had to learn to curb her curiosity, knowing that any suspicion of over-protectiveness would be resented.
She frowned a little. ‘Did Mr Forsyth know what Mark was actually doing there?’
‘Of course not. He assumed I would know all about it and I allowed him to think so, or did you imagine I was prepared to make him cognisant of our private affairs?’ Sir Giles’ eyes glared a little under the bushy white brows and Rachel said hurriedly,
‘No, no. It was silly of me. Did—did Mark send any kind of message?’
‘Apparently he had very little to say for himself,’ her grandfather said shortly. ‘That’s why I asked whether you’d heard from him. It occurred to me that as he must realise his whereabouts are now known, he might have been in touch.’ He was silent for a moment, his breathing ragged.
Rachel was silent too, remembering. There had been family rows before, some of them quite spectacular, as when she had announced her intention of going to drama school, but somehow she had known they had not really been important. Grandfather had been irritated by the idea of her wishing to become an actress and had expressed his views forcibly, but she had always suspected he was merely going through the motions. It didn’t really matter to him what Rachel did with her working life, because she would merely be filling in time before she made a suitable marriage.
But Mark was different. Grandfather had plans for Mark, and had never made any secret of the fact, and none of these plans took into account Mark’s openly acknowledged passion for geology, and his desire to study it at university. Harsh words had been uttered on both sides, but Mark had got his way in the end—as he usually did, Rachel thought resignedly. Perhaps Grandfather had thought it was just a boyish quirk from which Mark would recover in his own good time if left unopposed. Only it hadn’t been like that. When he had left university, it was to seek work as a geologist, not to succumb to the none too subtle pressure being exerted to make him join the family firm.
And that was when the real row had started. Rachel had been staying at Abbots Field during that weekend, and she had been powerless to intercede while her grandfather and her brother prepared to tear each other to pieces.
The trouble was they were too alike in many ways, she thought. Neither of them could easily see any point of view other than his own, or even believe that such a thing existed. The weekend had been full of tensions—rather like duellists, she had thought afterwards, selecting their weapons and taking the prescribed paces, but the first shots had not been exchanged until Sunday evening at dinner, just when she’d begun to hope that an open confrontation might be avoided. They’d quickly passed from veiled remarks to open recriminations, both of them becoming angrier and less accessible to reason with every moment that passed, with Rachel sitting in between them, a helpless spectator, trying to resist the urge to press her hands over her ears and shut out the cruel hurtful things they were hurling at each other.
‘You’ll be a pauper, boy, d’you hear me? A pauper!’ Sir Giles had crashed his fist down on the table making the silver and glasses jump. ‘What can you expect but some minor post in a beggarly university department—spending your vacations taking elderly maiden ladies on fossil-hunting expeditions. What kind of life is that for a Crichton?’
‘My God, you make me sick!’ Mark had jumped to his feet, his face crimson with temper. ‘You and your preconceived ideas of everyone outside your narrow bigoted experience! Why, you don’t even know the kind of salary a top class geologist can command from an oil industry these days.’
‘Top class—you?’ Sir Giles had laughed sneeringly. ‘It takes years, boy, to get to the top in any profession, and you didn’t even get an Honours degree. You’ll be back here in a year, moaning that you can’t manage on your salary, begging me for a hand-out. Well, wait and see what answer you get!’
Mark was white where he had been red before. He leaned across the table, staring his grandfather in the face. His voice was very even and distinct as he said, ‘If and when I ever do come back, I’ll be rich. I’ll have so much bloody money that I’ll make you eat every word you’ve said. And I shan’t come back until I’ve got it.’
He’d walked out of the room, and Rachel had gone after him, but it had been no use. He’d looked at her almost as if he didn’t see her, and her pleadings had been to no avail.
In the end she’d said, ‘Mark, he’s an old man. You can’t do this to him. You can’t—just walk out like this.’
His remote look deepened. ‘Does age give you the right to ride roughshod over everyone? We’ve had it all our lives, Rachie, ever since Mother and Father died, and I’ve had enough of it. He’s had pre-ordained slots for both of us, and I’m not going to humour him any longer. He seems to think the only wealth in the world is to be found in the City of London. Well, I’m going to teach him that he’s wrong.’ His hand came up and touched her cheek. ‘I’ll be back one day, Rachie. Don’t worry about me.’
It had been a week later that Grandfather had suffered his first minor attack, and Rachel, panicking and sending for Mark, had discovered that he was nowhere to be found. He had given up his flat and apparently vanished into thin air. She did the rounds of his closest friends, but none of them knew, or professed not to know, where he had gone. And she’d waited, endlessly, for the phone call, the letter, the message of reassurance which did not come.
And now, six months later, Sir Giles had suffered yet another attack, and this time he was really ill. Every bone in the proud old face seemed suddenly prominent beneath the transparency of his skin, and Rachel felt a sudden dryness invade her mouth as she looked at him. Was he—could he be dying? Uncle Andrew had never suggested a nursing home before, especially a high-powered one like the Mordaunt Clinic. She sank her teeth into the softness of her lower lip and waited for the sick man to speak again.
He moved restlessly at last and opened his eyes again, blinking a little as if even the muted light in the room hurt them.
He said hoarsely, ‘I was going to fetch him, Rachel. It’s all in the desk downstairs—my air ticket, hotel reservation in Bogota—everything. I’d planned to leave next week as soon as the inoculations took effect. You’ll have to go instead.’
For a dazed moment she thought her ears had deceived her—or that she was going mad.
Then she saw his eyes fixed on her with almost painful intensity, and heard him repeat, ‘You’ll have to go, Rachel. It’s the only way. Bring the boy home to me—before it’s too late.’
Andrew Kingston said angrily, ‘It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of. You can’t seriously mean that you’re going?’
Rachel said wearily, ‘What choice do I have? You’ve told me yourself how ill he is—that another attack could occur at any time and be fatal. He wants to see Mark before he dies. It’s understandable. He’s his heir, after all.’
Dr Kingston moved his shoulders sceptically. They were in his private office at the Mordaunt Clinic, a tray of freshly made coffee on the desk between them. Sir Giles had been brought there by ambulance only half an hour before and was now in an intensive care unit. Rachel had been in to wish him goodnight, but he had been under heavy sedation and had not recognised her.
He said, ‘My dear child—–’ and paused, apparently lost for words.
She smiled rather wearily. ‘He has it all arranged. He even has an appointment tomorrow for all the various jabs—yellow fever, cholera—you name it. I’m supposed to keep the appointment in his place. The bookings are made, and my passport is in order. I don’t need a visa as I don’t expect to stay more than ninety days. It—couldn’t be better.’
Dr Kingston’s frown intensified. ‘My dear, it couldn’t be worse. What can Giles be thinking of? A beautiful young woman like you—alone in South America of all places!’
She said quietly, ‘He’s thinking of Mark.’
There was a brief unhappy silence while Andrew Kingston looked at her across the desk. There had been a feature article about her recently in one of the Sunday papers. It had described her jibingly as the ‘Ice Maiden’ of the English stage, and perhaps that was the impression she gave, with her cool blonde beauty and air of rather aloof composure. But a more discerning writer, he thought, might have detected the vulnerability beneath the poise which betrayed itself in the soft curves of her mouth, and the faint shadow which so often lurked in her green eyes.
He said abruptly, ‘But what about your career? The play you’re in—and that panel game on television?’
She smiled. ‘The play closed—and I’ve finished my stint on that particular game. My agent has other offers which I’ve been considering, but there’s nothing as yet that I feel I would die rather than miss. For all practical purposes I could go to Colombia. I’ve been promising myself a holiday, and it would get me away from the English winter.’
‘Oh, it would do that all right,’ said Doctor Kingston grimly.
Rachel leaned forward, setting down her empty cup. ‘I told him I’d go,’ she said quietly.
‘What?’
‘You told me not to let him get excited. He saw that I was hesitating and he started to get—very excited, so I had to agree. He wants Mark home. It means everything to him—the sorting out of this stupid quarrel. Mark won’t refuse to come back with me when he knows what the situation is.’
‘But do you have to be the one to tell him?’ he demanded. ‘This fellow—Forsyth—who saw Mark in Bogota. Couldn’t he arrange something—have the boy traced?’
Rachel sighed. ‘But don’t you see that would mean including other people—strangers—in a family upset? Grandfather wouldn’t be able to bear that. You’re really the only person outside the family who knows what happened, and you’re my godfather, so that makes it—legal, I suppose. And it isn’t really so onerous, you know. The arrangements have all been made for me. All I have to do is fly out to Bogota next week, trace this Arviles family and persuade Mark to come home—that is if he wants to see Grandfather alive.’ She swallowed painfully. ‘I doubt if I’ll be in the country more than forty-eight hours.’
Doctor Kingston nodded almost absently, his fingers playing with the cap of his fountain pen. Then he said gently, ‘My dear child, what are you trying to prove?’
He saw the colour rise in her face. ‘That isn’t fair!’
‘It’s the truth, Rachel, so what about it?’
She got up from her chair and went over to the window, pulling back the curtain and looking out into the darkness. She said, ‘Do you know, it’s snowing quite hard now.’ And then with barely a change of tone, ‘Don’t you see, Uncle Andrew, he’s asked me to do this for him. It’s the first time in my life that he’s ever asked me for something. He’s always been the one to give—you know that, ever since Mother and Father died. And he always made it clear that no return was ever expected or wanted, because I was a girl.’
‘But he’s always been proud of you. And you’re making a name for yourself in the theatre now. That must please him.’
She smiled wryly and let the curtain fall back into place.
‘Grandfather has always secretly believed that women belong in two places—and the theatre is neither of them. He has always looked on my career as a curious aberration which will be cured when I do the right thing and marry, and produce a family—boys, naturally.’
‘Rachel!’
‘Oh, it’s true, Uncle Andrew, and we both know it. He forgave me for my sex a long time ago, but he’s never let me forget it either—until now—and I’m not going to let slide an opportunity for Grandfather to see me as a person. I want him—I need him to be grateful to me, and if that sounds an unworthy motive for going to find Mark, then I’m sorry, but it’s the only one I’ve got.’
She swung back towards him, her lips smiling and her eyes luminous with unshed tears.
She said lightly, ‘I’m relying on you to give me the necessary shots, Uncle Andrew. I’d rather it was you than this strange doctor that Grandfather has found. You know what a coward I am.’
Andrew Kingston said soberly, ‘That isn’t quite the word I’d have used, my dear. But if your mind is made up, then I’ll say no more.’
Rachel leaned her aching head against the cool glass of the cab window and stared out at the rain-washed streets that they were so rapidly traversing. It had been a long and tiring journey and she was beginning to wish that she had obeyed her first impulse and stretched out on the comfortable bed in her hotel room. As it was, she had stayed only long enough to register and leave her luggage before enquiring at the desk if they could provide her with Señor Arviles’ address.
The Señor seemed to be quite as well known as Larry Forsyth had said, for within a matter of minutes a taxi had been summoned by the helpful clerk, and Rachel was on her way to the expensive suburbs which lay to the north of Bogota beneath the towering and slightly oppressive peaks of the Andes.
It was much cooler than she had anticipated, and Rachel found she was glad of the cream-coloured suit in fine wool she was wearing. What little she knew about the prevailing climate in Latin America did not seem to apply to Bogota, and she supposed vaguely that this was due at least in part to the fact that the city lay at over eight thousand feet above sea level.
She’d intended to do some background reading before setting out, but the days had slipped past with increasing acceleration, and the day of her departure was upon her almost before she knew it. Apart from packing, and spending an uncomfortable day reacting from her injections, she’d visited her grandfather daily.
On her last visit, she’d received the cheering news that he seemed to be out of immediate danger, and wasn’t altogether surprised as she entered his room to hear that he’d undergone a change of heart about her trip.
Sir Giles was all set to make plans to visit Colombia himself as soon as he was back on his feet again, and it required a stern visit from Andrew Kingston, spelling out to him precisely how long that might take, to reconcile him to the fact that Rachel was going in his place.
Instead he contented himself with uttering dire warnings about the kinds of attitude that Rachel might encounter on her trip.
‘They’re an old-fashioned society out there still.’ He fixed Rachel with a glare. ‘None of your Women’s Lib nonsense. Women have their place and they keep to it.’
‘Haven’t I always?’ Rachel asked with a trace of bitter humour in her voice.
Sir Giles’ glance was still fierce, but there was a tinge of discomfort in it. ‘You’re a good child,’ he admitted almost unwillingly. ‘But you’re a good-looking one too, and you’ll be mixing with men with the blood of the conquistadores in their veins. Have you thought about that?’
Rachel lifted an arched eyebrow. ‘I always thought they were more interested in gold than in personal conquests,’ she said. ‘And I’m perfectly able to take care of myself, you know. I’ve been working in the theatre—remember?—and they call me the Ice Maiden.’
‘Lot of damned nonsense,’ Sir Giles rumbled. ‘And written by that fellow who was supposed to be keen on you. What happened? Did you quarrel?’
Rachel was silent for a moment. One could not tell one’s devoted and old-fashioned grandfather the truth—that Leigh’s article had been prompted by nothing more than sexual pique, because he’d suddenly discovered he was not as irresistible as he’d always thought.
She’d liked Leigh, and frankly enjoyed the kudos of being seen with one of Fleet Street’s youngest and most attractive show business columnists. And eventually, inevitably there had started to be more to it than that. He’d become more than attractive. He’d begun to be necessary to her. Afterwards when she could think about it clearly and rationally, she could see what he had done—how clever he had been. He’d always known she wouldn’t be a pushover like most of his girl-friends, so he’d played the game her way, making his approach a gentle, almost insidious one, even making her believe, God help her, that he was falling in love with her.
She had even invited him down to Abbots Field for the weekend, although it had not been a great success, as she was the first to admit. Leigh’s elegant boutique-bought clothes and slightly raffish charm had seemed out of place against the quiet gracious lines of the old house, and although Sir Giles had behaved with perfect correctness, Rachel knew all the same that he was not impressed with Leigh. It had been a disappointment, but not, she had told herself optimistically, an insurmountable one. Grandfather and Leigh had to be given a chance to come to terms, occupying as they did, two very different worlds.
But there had been no opportunity for that. The following weekend Leigh had invited her to go away with him, to meet his family, he’d said. She’d accepted gladly, but then the doubts had begun. His manner had changed subtly, for one thing, and then for someone travelling home for the weekend he didn’t seem altogether sure of the route. And when they arrived at the secluded cottage, and found it deserted, she knew, and dismissed all Leigh’s too-fluent excuses about mistaken dates. The cottage wasn’t his home. He’d simply hired it for the weekend. He’d admitted as much eventually, amused at her dismay, but clearly confident of his ability to win her over and persuade her to stay there with him as his mistress.
‘But I don’t want it to be like this,’ she’d cried at last. ‘It’s dirty—it’s sordid—and if you loved me, you wouldn’t want it like this either.’
The memory of his laughter still had the power to make her cringe as if something slimy had left a trail across her skin. That, and the things he had said to her which had killed any feelings she’d had for him—the first sweet stirrings of desire that he’d roused in her—stone dead.
The Ice Maiden article had appeared two weeks later under his byline. It was skilful, even humorous, but Rachel recognised as she’d been meant to do the sting in the tail, and knew that, at a time when female sexuality was being exploited in the theatre, she was being written of as shallow, naïve and frigid. Everyone knew of her relationship with Leigh, and would assume that he knew what he was talking about.
Only his spite had misfired. A role in a television play that she’d not expected to get was suddenly offered to her, and for the first time in her career she was almost overwhelmed with work. Her agent, who had groaned over the Ice Maiden article, was surprised and delighted, and her success had helped in some way to relieve the ache Leigh’s treachery had caused her.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly at last, aroused from her painful reverie by the knowledge that her grandfather was becoming restive, ‘you could say that we—quarrelled.’
Sir Giles grunted. ‘Well, he’s no great loss to you, my dear. I can’t say I took to him. Strange sense of values he seems to have.’
She nodded silently, a feeling of desolation striking at her.
In the weeks which followed she had lived up to the image that Leigh had bestowed upon her, holding aloof from all emotional attachments, pretending that she preferred her own company, learning to conceal the harsh facts of her own loneliness. At least, she had tried to console herself, she had Grandfather and Mark to rely on. But then had come that terrible night at Abbots Frields, and it seemed as if Mark too had deserted her.
Rachel gave herself an impatient little shake and sat up, studying her surroundings. The streets the taxi was passing through seemed to combine a multitude of styles with glass skyscrapers springing up next to buildings of the old Spanish colonial tradition, and the elaborate façades of public buildings and churches. It could be an intriguing place, she decided, perched high on its Andean plateau and it was a pity that she had not more time at her disposal to explore. Perhaps after she’d made contact with Mark and persuaded him to return to England with her, there might be a brief opportunity then, she thought hopefully.
The scenery was changing as they left the more commercial districts behind and entered the purely residential area. There was no sign here of any poverty or decay in these gracious mansions with their velvet lawns and fountain-bedecked gardens. It all spoke of peace and tranquillity and the solid comfort that money can bring. And the Arviles family were part of all this, she realised, as the taxi turned into one of the smooth curving drives.
It was a charming house, low and rambling, a fragrant creeper burgeoning with pale pink blossoms cascading down to the ground beside the front door as Rachel knocked. She had told the taxi to wait for her. If Mark was there, she told herself hopefully, he might pack and come with her straight away. They could drive to the airport and pick up the next flight out.
When the door opened she was confronted by a stout woman in a dark dress covered by a white apron, who regarded Rachel with a doubtful frown. Relying on the Spanish phrase book she had bought at the airport, Rachel asked if she might speak to Señor Arviles. For a moment she was afraid that she had not made herself understood, for the woman frowned a little as if puzzled, but she held the door open for Rachel to enter.
The entrance hall was large with a coolly tiled floor. Rachel followed the maid to a large salón at the back of the house, where it was intimated she should wait. It was beautifully furnished and the chairs looked comfortable as well as luxurious, but Rachel felt too restless to sit down and compose herself. Her headache was worse too, and she felt an odd dizziness.
I’m a fool, she thought. I should have rested and had something to eat before I came here. But the thought of food, hungry though she was, was suddenly and grossly unappealing, and she was thankful when the door behind her opened, diverting her mind from her own physical discomfort.
A small, rather plump woman came in, followed by a young girl. The physical resemblance between them was too pronounced for them to be anything but mother and daughter, but where the girl was dressed with a demure and expensive simplicity, the older woman had a stunning and moneyed elegance. She wore black, and there was a discreet glitter of diamonds on her hands and at her throat, and she smiled rather uncertainly at Rachel.
The girl stepped forward. ‘You asked for my father,’ she said in heavily accented English. ‘I regret that he is not here. My mother wishes to be of assistance, but she speaks no English. How can we help you, señorita?’
‘My name is Rachel Crichton.’ Rachel paused. ‘I was hoping that my brother might be here—or that you might know where he was?’
She had to wait while the girl translated what she had said for the Señora, and then Señora Arviles came forward with both hands outstretched. Rachel only understood about one word in ten of what she was saying, but she knew she was being made welcome, and she smiled in response.
The girl came forward too, her lips curving piquantly. ‘So you are the sister of Marcos. I am Isabel. He has mentioned me, perhaps.’
‘He hasn’t mentioned anyone,’ Rachel returned rather awkwardly. ‘I—we’ve rather lost touch over the past month or two, I’m afraid. That’s why I’m here. Our grandfather is very ill, and he wants to see Mark.’
Isabel looked bewildered. She spread her hands prettily.
‘But he is not here, señorita. He has not been here since three weeks. We understood he was returning to Gran Bretaña. Is this not so?’
Rachel’s heart sank within her. She had come all this way for nothing. For all she knew Mark might be back in England at this moment. He might even have gone to Abbots Field.
‘You are pale, señorita.’ Isabel urged her to sit down, and she was glad to because her legs felt like jelly.
‘But he was staying with you,’ she persisted.
’si. He was with Miguel. He likes to bring friends here to stay.’
‘Perhaps Miguel would know exactly where he was,’ Rachel said half to herself. ‘Could—could I have a word with him?’
Isabel’s eyes widened. ‘He is not here, señorita. He has gone to Cartagena to stay with the family of his novia.’
The Señora broke in, clearly intrigued by the exchange between the two girls and wanting to know its subject. While Isabel explained to her mother, Rachel sat her head whirling. She didn’t know what to do next. She supposed she ought to try and make contact with the Mordaunt Clinic to see if Mark had turned up there. She pressed a hand against her throbbing head, willing herself to think straight. Perhaps there was some way she could enquire if Mark had left the country. She would have to arrange to see Señor Arviles. He was a lawyer, after all. He would be able to advise her.
She looked up, and that was a mistake because the room swam around her, and she could see Señora Arviles rising, her face full of concern.
‘Ay de mi!’ Isabel was at her side. ‘What is the matter, señorita?’
Rachel said through dry lips, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to be sick.’
The next few hours in retrospect were like a nightmare. She knew that somehow they had got her out of the salón and upstairs to a bedroom. Then someone was there called Dolores, helping to remove the cream suit with warm capable hands, holding a basin while Rachel vomited until her stomach was sore and bathing her forehead with a cool damp cloth in between spasms.
Rachel wanted to tell her that she was grateful, but she was too dizzy and too weak, and every attempt to raise her head from the pillow seemed to bring on another attack of nausea. She wasn’t even aware that at last she had drifted into an exhausted sleep.
When she opened her eyes, the room was dark except for one heavily shaded lamp in the corner. She stirred and stretched cautiously, but her body seemed to respond normally to the action, and she risked sitting up. As she did so, the door opened cautiously and Isabel’s head came round it.
‘Ah, you are awake,’ she exclaimed. ‘That is good. Do you feel better now? Well enough to speak to my father?’
Rachel nodded, thankful that there was no return of that appalling dizziness as she did so. ‘I’m sorry to have put you to so much trouble,’ she said contritely.
‘What trouble?’ Isabel shrugged. ‘It is the altitude which makes one suffer in this way. Many turistas are afflicted when they first arrive here, but one soon becomes acclimatised.’
She produced a large silk shawl which she proceeded to drape carefully round Rachel’s bare shoulders, then sending her a flashing smile she went back to the door and admitted her father.
Señor Arviles was a dapper man of medium height with an intelligent, humorous face. He bowed slightly over Rachel’s hand, then drew up a chair and sat down beside her bed. Rachel was amused to see that Isabel remained in the room, presumably to act as a youthful chaperone.
After an exchange of civilities, he came swiftly to the point.
‘I am grieved that we can give you no news of your brother, señorita. But we all understood that he was to return home to England. Has he not done so?’
Rachel shook her head. ‘Apparently not. And I need to contact him urgently, Señor.’
‘So Isabel has told me. A family illness, is it not?’ Señor Arviles gave her a sympathetic look. ‘Believe me, I would help if it were possible, but your brother merely stayed with us for a short while, then went on his way. His visit was shorter than we would have liked,’ he added courteously, ‘because he knew Miguel was to go to Cartagena.’
‘I see.’ Rachel paused. ‘He didn’t give the impression that he intended to stay in Colombia, maybe?’
‘No, señorita.’ Señor Arviles shook his head. ‘While he stayed with us, Miguel and he made tours, and paid visits to places of interest. There would be little left for him to see, I think.’
‘No,’ Rachel said desolately. ‘I suppose he must have—moved on somewhere.’
She would have to go home and confess failure, she thought unhappily, and what would that do to Grandfather’s already precarious health? She could only be glad that it was she who had had the wasted journey to the other side of the world, and not Sir Giles.
Señor Arviles’ eyes studied her downbent head attentively.
He said, ‘In the meantime, señorita, you will spend a few days with us? We are happy to welcome the sister of Marcos to our house.’
‘Oh, but I couldn’t.’ Rachel shook her head. ‘I’ve caused quite enough disruption already. Besides …’ She broke off, stricken, suddenly remembering. ‘My God, I had a taxi waiting and …’
Señor Arviles laughed. ‘It was paid off a long time ago, señorita, and the driver told us the name of your hotel so that we could contact them also. They might have become anxious if one so young and lovely had gone out into Bogota and not returned.’
Rachel returned his smile rather wanly. ‘That’s hardly likely.’
‘You think not?’ Señor Arviles shrugged. ‘Yet you must remember, señorita, that this is Colombia, not Gran Bretaña. Our history has blood in it, and some of it is recent. You would do well to remain here with us, I think, and allow my wife and daughter to entertain you while I make what enquiries I can about Marcos.’
His tone was firm. It was the one he would use, Rachel decided, when he was giving a client some unpopular advice.
‘So it is decided, then.’ He rose briskly from the chair before she could utter a further protest. ‘Rest, señorita, and we will make all necessary arrangements. Presently Dolores will bring you some soup.’
He bowed again and walked to the door. Isabel following him, her pretty face wearing a curiously thoughtful expression.
The soup when it came was delicious, almost a meal in itself, thick with beans and spiced meat, and served with delicately flavoured corn muffins.
Recalling how ill she had been only a short time before, Rachel was amazed that she could eat anything, but she finished every mouthful. When she heard the knock on the door, she imagined it was Dolores coming to remove her tray, and was surprised when Isabel came in.
She exclaimed with pleased politeness about Rachel’s return to health, and sat down in the chair that her father had vacated, folding her hands in her lap. Watching her, Rachel thought suddenly that she looked troubled, and saw that her fingers gripped each other, tight with tension.
‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there?’ she said, cutting across Isabel’s somewhat dutiful recital of the museums they would visit and the sights they would see while she remained in Bogota.
Isabel’s eyes filled with sudden tears. ‘Perhaps, señorita. I—I do not know.’
‘Well, tell me what it is,’ Rachel urged.
‘But first you must promise that you must not tell my father.’ Isabel’s tone was equally urgent. ‘He would be so angry—because I tell you and not him.’
‘I promise I won’t mention anything to him about this conversation.’ Rachel’s eyes never left the younger girl’s face. ‘Do you know where my brother has gone?’
Isabel lifted her shoulders in a deep shrug. ‘Maybe—that is all I can say. señorita, I must tell you something now of which I am much ashamed.’ She paused. ‘I love my brother, but sometimes he is not kind. Sometimes, when he has his friends, he tells me to go away, to leave them in peace, and this hurts me. So they go to his room and they talk, and sometimes I go to my room where there is an amario on the wall next to Miguel’s where there is also an amario.’ She paused again. ‘You know what I am trying to say?’
‘I think so,’ said Rachel. ‘There are adjoining—wardrobes, perhaps, and you can—hear what they are talking about.’
Isabel blushed unhappily ’si, it is so. I am much ashamed now, but before I used to laugh to myself because Miguel thought he had his friends to himself, and I could not share in the things they talked about.’
Her eyes gleamed for a moment and Rachel thought that the sheltered daughter of the house had probably found her eavesdropping on purely masculine conversations more than enlightening at times.
She said, ‘So you listened and you heard Mark and Miguel talking. Is that it?’
Isabel nodded. ‘It was then I knew my father would be angry because Miguel had spoken to Marcos of forbidden things.’
‘What forbidden things?’
Isabel looked down at her lap again. ‘Emeralds,’ she said in a low voice. There was a long taut silence, then she went on. ‘Our emerald mines here in Colombia, Señorita Raquel, are the most famous in the world. They make much money for our country. But not all the emeralds that leave Columbia do so with the will of our government, you understand.’
There was another pause and Rachel made herself say dry-mouthed, ‘Smuggling? You mean Miguel and Mark were talking about smuggling emeralds?’
’si, and from what Miguel is saying I know that he has done this thing, and that if my father ever finds out he will be angry, because it is so much against the law, and the law means everything to my father. He would think that Miguel had dishonoured him.’
Rachel said in a hollow voice, ‘Do you mean that Miguel was suggesting that Mark should become an emerald smuggler?’
‘No, not that. He seemed to be warning him. Many people die all the time because of emeralds. There is much danger. He says that he thinks your brother is a little mad. And then Señor Marcos says “You would not think I was so mad if I came back with the Flame of Diablo.” ‘
‘What is the Flame of Diablo?’
‘It is a legend, Señorita Raquel, a story that I heard when I was a child, as did Miguel. It is said that somewhere in the hills to the north there is a mine where one can find emeralds worth many millions of pesos. But it is also said that no one has set eyes upon this mine since the days of El Dorado, the Golden One who used emeralds from the Diablo mine to ornament himself before he made the offering in the Sacred Lake.’
‘Then Diablo is a place?’ Rachel queried.
Isabel shuddered. ‘It is truly named,’ she said in a low voice, ‘for it is a place of the devil. Many people seek the Diablo mine and the green flame which burns there, but they do not return. My father says the reason is simple. It is a dangerous place. Often there are landslides, and the rivers are deep with fierce currents and little fish that can eat a horse and rider before a man can utter a last prayer, and leave only the bones. And there is el tigre who kills, and many snakes. Also bandidos and other evil men,’ she added, crossing herself. ‘Perhaps it is all so, but there are those who say the reason why the Flame of Diablo stays hidden is that it is guarded by the old gods who were worshipped before the conquistadores came to this place, and that all who seek the Flame are accursed.’
In spite of herself, Rachel felt a long cold shiver run the length of her spine. It was all very well to tell herself robustly that only the very credulous would believe such a tale, but here in this alien land, in the very shadow of the pagan mountains, it was difficult to dismiss Isabel’s recital as nonsense.
‘And you think Mark has gone to this dreadful place?’ she asked, steadying her voice.
Isabel’s eyes met hers frankly. ‘I did not, because Miguel talks much to your brother, telling him of the dangers. But now you come and tell us that he has not returned to Gran Bretaña, and I worry, because he told Miguel that was what he planned to do. I think perhaps he only told Miguel this to put his mind at ease, so that he would not blame himself for having told him the legend. There are many such stories, you understand. I think Miguel did not believe Marcos would take him seriously.’
‘Mark’s a geologist,’ Rachel said, passing her tongue over her dry lips. ‘I suppose he might think that if this mine existed he had as good a chance as any of finding it.’ Or of dying, her mind ran crazily on. Of being drowned in a river, or eaten by piranha fish, or shot by bandits, or even swept off a mountain ledge by a giant condor. Hadn’t she read somewhere that they sometimes attacked unwary travellers?
Isabel’s cold little hand crept into hers. Her great dark eyes looked enormous suddenly, too large for her pinched face.
‘What will you do, señorita?’
‘I don’t know,’ Rachel said rather helplessly. ‘After all, we have no real proof that that’s where Mark has gone, although it does seem more than likely.’
‘If and when I ever do come back, I’ll be rich. I’ll have so much bloody money, I’ll make you eat every word you’ve said. And I shan’t come back until I’ve got it.’
The words seemed to sting and burn in her brain. Through Miguel Arviles, Mark now knew of the possible existence of an emerald mine which could fulfil his wild promise. Also through Miguel he could know of a way to get any gems that he found out of the country. Generations ago there had been a wild streak in the Crichtons. Perhaps this streak had been reborn in Mark, blinding him to all aspects of the perilous game he was playing but its high stakes.
Rachel smiled reassuringly into Isabel’s anxious eyes.
‘I expect I shall go back to England myself,’ she said untruthfully. ‘After all, we may be making mountains out of molehills.’
‘Que quiere decir eso?’ Isabel’s brow wrinkled; ‘What is this molehill?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Rachel assured her. ‘I—I’ll inform the authorities here that Mark—seems to be missing, so that they can keep an eye open for him, but there isn’t much more I can do.’
‘No,’ Isabel agreed, but so despondently that Rachel was tempted to throw caution to the winds and tell her that she intended to set out for Diablo herself the following day. But she restrained herself. Isabel might fear her father’s wrath, but Rachel felt sure that would not prevent her telling Señor Arviles about her plans if she got wind of them, and he, Rachel did not doubt, would take steps to prevent her from doing anything so foolhardy.
She soothed her conscience by telling herself she did not want to cause the Arviles family any more anxiety on her behalf. But she knew in her heart that this was not altogether true. Perhaps it was not only in Mark that the forgotten wild streak had surfaced.
I’m going to Diablo, she told herself, even if it means coming face to face with the devil himself.
CHAPTER TWO (#u424e6a47-4cff-5582-bf95-eb3584db4d17)
THE bus rounded the bend with a lurch that almost had Rachel flying out of her seat. She controlled the startled cry which had risen to her lips, and settled herself more firmly. The other passengers seemed used to coping with the bus’s vagaries, she noticed. Across the aisle, an Indian woman continued to feed her baby in the shelter of her ruana, her coppery face impassive. Rachel had seen as she boarded the bus that a small gaudy statue of the Virgin was secured just above the driver’s seat, and there was a general tendency as the rickety vehicle rocked round a particularly hairpin bend, or swayed dangerously near the lip of some ravine, for the passengers and the driver to cross themselves devoutly.
Rachel could sympathise with this evidence of devotion, but she couldn’t help wishing at the same time that the driver would keep both hands on the wheel.
She could understand now why the hotel clerk had stared at her in horror when she had enquired about buses, and strongly advised her to hire a car instead. Apart from her concern about the cost, she had not been keen to accept his advice. From what little she had seen of the drivers in Bogota, most of them seemed to regard a car as a symbol of their machismo and behave accordingly, Rachel possessed a driving licence, but she doubted her ability to compete, and now that she had seen the standard of the road up to Asuncion, she was glad she had not tried. She tried to imagine meeting one of these buses on one of those bends, and shuddered inwardly.
The window she was sitting beside was covered in dust, but she couldn’t really be sorry. At least she was being saved those stomach-turning glimpses of some of the valleys they had passed—a sheer rocky drop down to a wrinkled snake of a river. And snakes were another feature of the journey that she did not want to contemplate.
This whole trip was madness. She knew that now. What the hell did she think she was doing charging up a mountainside in company with a religious maniac masquerading as a bus driver, several crates of chickens and a goat?
She had seen the look of horrified disbelief come into the hotel clerk’s eyes when she had asked him which was the nearest town to Diablo, and the most direct means of getting there. He had done his level best to dissuade her, protesting that such places were not for the señorita. Then he had tried to persuade her to hire a car, but had made the basic mistake of pointing out that at least then she would be under the protection of the driver. Something in the way he had said this had needled Rachel unbearably.
She had said clearly and coldly, ‘I can look after myself, thank you, Señor.’
It had been a briefly satisfying moment, but he still thought she was mad. She had seen it in his face as he turned away to deal with another guest. And now she tended to agree with him. She had never sat on a more uncomfortable seat, and she doubted whether the bus itself had any springs. If she survived the journey, it would probably be as a hopeless cripple, she decided, as the base of her spine took another hammering.
It had been easier than she expected to persuade the Arviles family that she intended to return to England immediately, in pursuit of the errant Mark. Isabel had been disappointed that she would not even spend a couple of days with them, and Rachel regretted the necessity of deceiving the girl. But she wondered secretly if the Señor and the Señora might not have been quietly relieved at her departure, or could they genuinely have wanted yet another English visitor upsetting the smooth tenor of their life? Certainly she could not have faulted their hospitality.
She had tied a coloured handkerchief over her shoulder-length honey-coloured hair, and donned an enormous pair of sunglasses, but even so she knew that her fair hair and skin were attracting more attention than she desired from the mainly mestizo and Indian passengers, and she guessed that few tourists must travel by this route—particularly blonde, female English tourists.
She wondered if Mark had taken the same frankly death-defying route before her, and had tried to put a few halting questions to the driver before they had set off, but he had stared at her uncomprehendingly, so she had given it up as a bad job.
The bus seemed to be descending again, and slowly as well. Peering down the bus, Rachel could detect a huddle of buildings ahead of them, and guessed they had reached Asuncion.
At first it seemed to bear a depressing resemblance to other small settlements they had passed along the way, with groups of tumbledown shacks lining a small rutted highway, but with a triumphant blast of its horn the bus wound along the road, avoiding groups of children and animals apparently attracted from the shack doorways to watch its passing, and turned into a large square. Here some attempt at least had been made to paint and generally refurbish the buildings and there was a small market in progress. Presumably this was the final destination of the chickens and the goat, Rachel decided, watching their descent from the bus without a sense of overwhelming regret. They had not been the quietest or the sweetest-smelling of travelling companions.
As she alighted in her turn, she found the bus had stopped outside a building which seemed to be Asuncion’s sole hotel. She glanced up at its peeling façade rather doubtfully. It wouldn’t have been her first choice as an overnight stop, but beggars could not be choosers, and besides, there was an outside chance that Mark might have stayed there.
The reception desk was deserted when she got there. Rachel set down her small suitcase and looked around, then rapped impatiently on the desk with her knuckles. Almost as if her action had been a secret signal, a roar of masculine laughter broke out quite close at hand. Rachel jumped, then relaxed, moving her aching shoulders experimentally.
‘I wish I could share the joke,’ she muttered crossly.
Just then a door down the passage from the desk opened, and a man emerged. He paused before closing the door behind him and tossed a clearly jovial remark in Spanish over his shoulder, which was greeted with yet another burst of laughter. Then he spotted Rachel standing at the desk and his face changed in a moment, becoming both surprised and solemn.
’Señorita?’ His tone as he approached was civil, but Rachel felt she was being very thoroughly assessed, and that there was a strong element of disapproval in his assessment.
She produced her phrase book, and began to laboriously recite a request for a room, but he waved the book aside.
‘I speak a little English. You are an inglesa, Señorita?’
‘Yes, I am.’ Relieved that she did not have to converse with him in her non-existent Spanish, Rachel smiled. ‘I’m trying to trace another inglese, Señor—a man. My brother,’ she added hastily for some reason she probably could not have defined.
‘He has been to Asuncion, this brother?’ The man watched her impassively.
Rachel sighed. ‘I’m not sure. I think so.’
He hesitated, then he reached for the hotel register and swung it round so that she could see it.
‘Look for yourself, señorita. No inglese has been here apart from yourself.’
Rachel scanned swiftly down the list of names. It had occurred to her that Mark might have travelled under an assumed name, but she knew he would not have bothered to disguise his handwriting and none of the scrawls in the register bore the least resemblance to his signature. She felt almost sick with disappointment.
’turistas do not come here, señorita,’ the man said almost placidly. He was turning away, when she halted him.
‘Then can I book a room for the night?’ she asked, braving his look of astonishment. ‘And a guide. I would like to hire a guide if that is possible.’
’Señorita,’ the man said very slowly, ‘I must tell you that I do not have unescorted women staying at my hotel.’
She felt a slow tide of colour run up to the roots of her hair. She had never felt so helpless in her life.
She said, trying to keep her voice calm and pleasant, ‘Then as this is the only hotel in this benighted town, I’m afraid you will have to make an exception for once. Unless you can provide me with a guide immediately, of course.’
His look of astonishment deepened. ‘And where do you wish this guide to take you, señorita? Always supposing that such a person could be found.’
She said baldly, ‘I want to go to Diablo.’
If she’d suddenly produced a hand grenade and drawn the pin, she couldn’t have hoped to make a greater sensation. His jaw dropped, and he almost took a step backwards, she would have sworn to it.
He said flatly, ‘Es imposible. Where is your family, señorita? Who are your friends that they let you contemplate such madness?’
Rachel frowned. All sense of reality seemed to be slipping away from her, but that again could be attributed to the strangeness of the altitude. On the other hand it meant that she had to act the part she had set herself, and it was somehow easier to act than to believe in what she was doing. Deep down inside her she was afraid, but on the surface she was ice cool and in command of the situation.
She said, ‘It’s good of you to be so concerned, Señor, but quite unnecessary. I can look after myself. I’m neither a child nor a fool, and I don’t need you to judge my actions.’
Not a long speech, she thought detachedly, but an effective one, she hoped. In a situation like this, she needed to make every word count.
She glanced at the hotel-keeper, noting with satisfaction that he did not seem quite so sure of himself as he had been. There was an air of uncertainty about him, and he eyed her as if she was something new in his experience. She wanted to giggle, but that would be fatal, so she deepened her expression of calm assurance.
‘There must be someone around here,’ she said crisply.
‘Someone who knows this region well. And you don’t have to feel responsible for anything. Just introduce me to him, and I’ll do the rest.’
The man gave her a long look, then shrugged deeply and fatalistically.
He said slowly, ‘There is such a one—Vitas de Mendoza—but whether he will agree to take you to Diablo is another matter.’
‘That’s my problem,’ she said confidently, almost gaily. She had talked round this definitely hostile little man. She could talk round the world. ‘When can I meet him?’
He hesitated. ‘Later, señorita. I will speak to him of your request. At the moment he is engaged.’
She saw him give a half-glance over his shoulder at that door down the passage, and remembered the sound of men’s voices and laughter.
‘I’d prefer to see him right away. The matter is urgent. I’m not just a casual sightseer, I’m looking for my brother.’
‘And you think the brother has gone to Diablo.’ He shook his head. ‘That is not good, señorita, but it gives me an idea. Tomorrow or the next day there will be an army patrol arriving here. If you speak to Captain Lopez he will look for your brother.’
Rachel was silent for a moment. It was a tempting prospect to resign the responsibility for finding Mark to the army, but at the back of her mind she was remembering what Isabel had told her about the illegal trafficking in emeralds. Supposing when this Captain Lopez found Mark, he actually had emeralds in his possession? She swallowed. It didn’t really bear thinking about. She had no idea of the sort of sentences attempts to smuggle emeralds might carry, but she imagined they would be heavy, and that Colombian prisons would be a bad scene too. Besides, if Mark were arrested, it would be the death of her grandfather.
She had to face the fact that she must find Mark herself—with the help of Vitas de Mendoza, and hope that he was the sort of man who could be bribed to keep his mouth shut if Mark had broken the law in any way. The thought made her feel sick with fright and despair, but it also had to be faced.
‘I haven’t got time to wait for the army,’ she said. ‘You don’t even know yourself when they’ll be arriving, and they could be held up. I’ve got to see this Mendoza man immediately. There’ll be arrangements to make, and I want to leave as soon as possible.’
She left her small case standing by the desk and went down the passage towards the closed door. She wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he’d grabbed her arm and tried to stop her as she passed him. When she reached the door she risked a glance back over her shoulder, and saw that he was standing quite still staring after her with an almost bemused expression on his face, and she could have laughed out loud.
All she had to do now was bemuse Vitas de Mendoza into taking her to Diablo, she thought as she opened the door and stepped into the room beyond.
It was a good job that she was still acting—making an entrance—or what faced her when she entered the room might have thrown her, like an unexpected laugh at a serious moment in a play.
The air was so thick with cigar smoke that she could hardly see across the room for the first moment or two, and the acrid fumes caught at her throat. There were six of them altogether, all men sitting round a table covered in a green cloth. There were bottles and glasses, cards and a scatter of money, and she felt bitterness rise in her throat as she surveyed them. So this was the pressing engagement which the hotel-keeper did not want to disturb.
Her gaze flickered round the table. She could read amazement on their faces, and the beginnings of a lewd appreciation in some of their smiles. And on one face—contempt. Her eyes registered this and passed on, and almost in spite of herself, looked back as though she had not believed what she saw the first time.
He was younger than his companions—the mid-thirties at the very most—dark as they all were, with raven black hair springing back from a peak on his forehead. A thin face, as fierce and arrogant as a hawk’s, its harshness shockingly emphasised by the black patch he wore where his left eye should have been.
The man nearest the door pushed back his chair and stood up, smiling ingratiatingly at her. ‘Come in, chica. You want to take a hand with us?’ He spoke with a strong North America accent. The man next to him said something in Spanish, and a ribald roar of laughter went round the table.
But the man with the eye-patch didn’t join in the general amusement. Rachel found her eyes being drawn unwillingly back to him yet again. He was dressed from head to foot in black, his shirt unbuttoned to halfway down his muscular chest. He leaned back in his chair, one booted leg swinging carelessly over its low wooden arm, but it seemed to Rachel that he was about as relaxed as a curled spring, or a snake rearing back to strike.
Isabel’s voice sounded in her brain: ‘Bandidos and other evil men.’
The others seemed harmless enough—lecherous, perhaps, but harmless, but the man with the eye-patch was a very different proposition. She could believe that he was a bandit. She could see him in black velvet centuries before, a bloodstained sword in his hand as he cut down the defenceless Indians who stood between him and his dream of El Dorado. She could see him on the deck of some pirate ship, his face bleak and saturnine under that eye-patch as his ship’s cannon raked the forts at Cartagena and Maracaibo.
And she could see him on the other side of this table looking at her as if she was dirt.
‘Have a drink, chica.’ The man who had got to his feet was leering at her, pushing a tumbler into her hand. The spirit it contained smelled sharp and raw, and her nose wrinkled in distaste, but she smiled politely as she refused. After all, he might turn out to be this Vitas de Mendoza, and she didn’t want to offend him.
She smiled again, but this time there was a tinge of frost with it, setting them all at a distance. All except the man opposite, of course, who had already distanced himself, and him she would just have to ignore. She wondered what he was doing here. The others were obviously local businessmen enjoying the relaxation of a weekly card game. But who was he? A professional gambler, perhaps, if they had such things in Colombia. Certainly he seemed to have a larger pile of money lying in front of him than any of the others—ill-gotten gains, she thought, and caught at herself. This was ridiculous. She was standing here being fanciful and wasting precious time.
She said quietly but making sure her voice carried, ‘I’m here to see Vitas de Mendoza, and I’d like to speak to him privately.’
She waited for one of the bronzed perspiring men around the table to step forward and identify himself, but no one moved, and a cold sick feeling of apprehension began to swell and grow inside her.
She said, ‘He is here, isn’t he?’ and her voice shook a little because she knew already what the answer was, and she wished herself a million miles away.
The man nearest to her said quite jovially, ‘Would I not do instead, señorita? Dios, Vitas, you have all the luck—with the cards and with the women!’
She looked past him to the man with the eye-patch and saw his lips twist, as if this was one piece of luck he would have preferred to do without. He made no attempt to alter his languid pose, merely leaning back further in his chair and staring at her with a frank, almost sensual appraisal which she found offensive in the extreme.
That hotel-keeper, she thought furiously, must be off his head if he imagined she was going to go off into the wide blue yonder with a man who looked as if his career had spanned the gamut of crimes from armed robbery to rape!
Almost as if he could divine her thoughts, he smiled, a lingering, insolent smile displaying even, startlingly white teeth, and she realised with a sickening jolt that a man who could exude such a potent sexual attraction, apparently at will, would never need to resort to rape.
He stood up then, head and shoulders taller than any other man in the room, as she could see at a glance, lean and graceful like the jaguars who stalked in the undergrowth. A great silver buckle ornamenting the belt which was slung low on his hips, a silver medallion nestling among the dark hairs on his chest—they were the only touches of colour about him—and she remembered her joking resolution to come face to face with the devil himself if need be, and a little involuntary shiver ran through her.
His smile widened and she realised he had gauged her reaction and was amused by it. She forced herself to stand her ground as he approached unhurriedly round the table and came to stand in front of her.
‘I am Vitas de Mendoza, señorita. What do you want with me?’
She was sorely tempted to say it had all been a mistake and beat a hasty retreat. But at the same time, she knew this would accomplish nothing except to make her look a complete fool in front of these men, and that was the last thing she wanted. Her brain worked feverishly, and words rose to her lips.
‘I wish to buy your services, Señor.’
Which wasn’t in the least what she’d intended to say, and she saw the dark brows lift mockingly in response.
He said lazily, ‘You flatter me, of course, querida, but I regret that I am not for sale.’
One or two of his companions laughed, but it was uneasy laughter. Rachel noticed it almost without noticing it, because her face was burning with swift embarrassment at having been betrayed into saying something so ambiguous.
‘You don’t understand.’ In spite of her confusion, she lifted her chin and looked steadily at him. ‘I need a guide—a reliable one. You have been recommended.’ She was aware of it again—that intangible sense of unease in the room after she had spoken. She said, ‘You are a guide, aren’t you? The hotel-keeper said….’
‘You’ve been talking to Ramirez?’ He broke across her rather stumbling words. ‘Well, he’s right. I do know this region better than most men, and my advice to you is go back to Bogota and join one of the organised tours. This is no place for a woman.’
He turned away in dismissal.
‘No, wait.’ Almost before she knew what she was doing, she put out a hand and tugged at the sleeve of his shirt. He stopped and looked down at her hand, and there was a kind of hauteur in his expression. Her fingers looked very white and slender against the dark material, the nails smoothly rounded and painted with her usual pale pink polish. She relinquished the silky material hurriedly, the heat rising in her body as if she had inadvertently touched his skin.
She thought, ‘How dare he look like that! He may have a more educated accent than his friends, but he’s only a guide, after all. He’s for hire. He has to work for his living.’
Something of what she was thinking showed in her tone as she said, ‘Perhaps we could discuss this in private. I’m able to pay for your time, if that’s what’s concerning you.’
‘It is not.’ His face was expressionless, but she had the oddest feeling he was secretly amused. ‘You are a stubborn lady, querida, and a reckless one, I think. You should not offer to pay until you know the price you might be asked.’
‘This would obviously have to be part of the discussion,’ Rachel said. ‘Please talk to me about it at least.’ She heard the almost pleading note in her voice with a sense of shock. That wasn’t what she had intended at all.
‘You imagine your powers of persuasion will be more effective when we are alone?’ he asked, and laughed as the colour rose in her face. ’muy bien,chica, we will talk if you think it will make any difference, but later.’
‘We should talk now. This is important,’ she said in a low voice.
‘To you perhaps,’ he drawled. ‘But at the moment, nothing is more important to me than my game which you have interrupted—and I have a winning hand. I will talk to you later.’
His hand came up, and his lean fingers stroked her cheek in the merest flick of a caress.
Rachel heard herself gasp, as startled as if he had struck her. Or kissed her.
She whirled round and out of the room, slamming the door behind her for emphasis, hearing the echo of laughter follow her.
The reception desk was once more deserted, but she heard a chink of glasses coming from behind a half-opened door to the right of the entrance and went and looked round it. It was a large room with tables and a bar, empty now except for the man called Ramirez who was polishing glasses behind the bar. He looked surprised to see her and she wondered waspishly if he’d known exactly the sort of reception she was going to get—had perhaps even been listening at the door.
‘Your bargain is made, señorita?’ he enquired, straight-faced.
‘Not quite,’ she said too sweetly. ‘We’re going to talk later. I’m afraid that you’re going to have to let me have that room after all.’
He gave her another long look. He was probably wondering why she wasn’t scuttling back to Bogota, her tail between her legs, she thought angrily.
‘Señor de Mendoza said he would speak with you later?’ He sounded incredulous, and she smiled kindly at him.
‘Indeed he did, after we’d got one or two points straightened out. He seemed to have some strange ideas about why I wished to hire him—and a very inflated opinion of his own attractions,’ she added for good measure. But she knew she was being unfair. Vitas de Mendoza was not the sort of man to indulge in illusions, and he could not have failed to know by now that his dark, saturnine good looks and the piratical extravagance of that eye-patch would be the realisation of a thousand women’s fantasies. She just happened to be the thousand and first, that was all.
‘He has reason,’ Ramirez said calmly. He chuckled reminiscently. ‘There was one woman—a norteamericana—she came here with her husband to see the country. Later she returned alone, and Vitas took her into the hills. They were gone a long time.’ He eyed Rachel. ‘Her hair was fair, like yours, señorita,’ he added blandly.
‘I can assure you that is the only resemblance,’ she said coldly. ‘Now can I please see this room? I did not enjoy the journey here, and I’m rather tired.’
He shrugged almost fatalistically. ’si, Señorita.’
The room he showed her was not large, but it was scrupulously clean, the narrow bed gay with Indian blankets, soft as fleece. They were selling similar blankets on the market stalls in the square below and Rachel promised herself she would buy one. But that would be later. All she wanted to do now was lie down on that bed and try to forget that foul bus journey. There was a bathroom just down the corridor with a small, rather reluctant shower, and she stripped and washed the dust and some of her aches away. It was bliss to come back to her room and put on fresh underwear from her small stock, and lock the door and close the shutters, so that the noise from the square became a muted and not intolerable hum, and then stretch out on the bed.
Yet in spite of her bone-weariness, sleep seemed oddly elusive. Strange unconnected images kept coming into her mind—trees by a river with the darkness of a mountain rising behind them—a man wearing black clothes riding a black horse so that he seemed part of it like a pagan centaur—and a fair-haired woman who stood among the trees with her arms outstretched, so that the man bent out of the saddle and lifted her up into his arms, her hair falling like a pale wound across the darkness of his sleeve. Rachel twisted uneasily, trying to banish the image from her mind, but the horse came on until it was close enough for her to see the rider’s face with a black patch set rakishly over one eye. As she watched, the blonde woman moved in his arms, lifting her hands to clasp around his neck, drawing him down to her.
Rachel put out a hand to ward them off. She didn’t want to see this. She didn’t want to know, but her gesture seemed to catch the rider’s eye and he turned to look at her, and so did the woman he was holding, and Rachel saw that the face that stared at her from beneath the curtain of blonde hair was her own.
She cried out, and suddenly the images had gone and she was sitting up on the narrow bed in the now-shadowed room, her clenched fist pressed against her thudding heart. She could see herself in the mirror across the room, the gleam of her hair, and the smooth pallor of her skin, interrupted only by the deeper white of her flimsy lace bra and briefs.
She thought, ‘So I was asleep after all.’ It was a comfort in a way to know that what she had seen had been a nightmare rather than a deliberate conjuration of her imagination. And she was thankful that she had woken when she did. She picked up her gold wristwatch from the side of the bed and studied it. To her surprise, she had been asleep for over two hours.
She slid off the bed, and put on the beige linen trousers she had worn earlier, with a shirt of chocolate brown silk under the loose hip-length jacket. Her hair was wrong, she thought, waving loosely on to her shoulders. She unearthed a tortoiseshell clip from her case and swept the honey-coloured waves severely back from her face into a French pleat, anchoring it with the clip. It made her look older, she decided, and more businesslike.
She swung her dark brown leather shoulder bag over her arm, and went downstairs. It was very quiet—too quiet, she thought. She went to the room where the card game had been in progress and opened the door. It was deserted, and the table had been cleared, the chairs put back against the wall.
Rachel said furiously, ‘Well, I’m damned!’
She supposed he thought he’d been very clever, waiting until she was out of the way in her room to do his vanishing trick. It was his way of saying ‘No’ without further argument.
She bit her lip until she tasted blood. Well, to hell with him! He might be the best, but he couldn’t be the only guide in Asuncion. She wouldn’t let this one setback defeat her, and if Vitas de Mendoza was going to feature so prominently in her dreams on such short acquaintance, she told herself defiantly that she was glad to see the back of him.
She turned on her heel, and went out into the evening sunshine. The market appeared to be still going strong, and a group of musicians had even started up in one corner of the square, attracting a small but laughing crowd.
She began to wander round the stalls. As well as the handwoven blankets and ruanas, there were also piles of the round-crowned hats the Indians seemed to wear. She would need a hat herself for the trip ahead, she supposed vaguely, but something with a wider brim and shallower crown than those on offer here. There were fruit and vegetable stalls too, where flies swarmed busily, and Rachel averted her gaze with a faint shudder. There was little point in feeling squeamish, she told herself firmly. Conditions would be even more primitive on the way to Diablo.
She was hungry too. Presumably the hotel served meals, but Señor Ramirez had said nothing about their times, which further underlined the fact that he was not expecting her to stay. She could smell cooking somewhere, or was it just her optimistic imagination? A few moments later she had her answer. One corner of the market seemed entirely given over to a gigantic open-air kitchen. Open fires had been kindled and great cooking pots of meat and vegetables suspended over them, while nearby chickens turned slowly on spits.
It all looked appallingly unhygienic, and it smelt mouthwatering. Rachel could resist no longer. She continued her stroll nibbling at a chicken leg. Every second person she met seemed to be doing the same, and surely they couldn’t all be going to die of salmonella poisoning, she comforted herself.
She had paused by a stall selling ponchos and was examining a beauty in a wild zigzag pattern of grey and black and red, when a voice behind her said urgently, ‘Señorita!’
She turned and saw a small man dressed in a tight-fitting white suit. He had a sallow face and a drooping black moustache, and he was mopping furiously at his forehead with a violently coloured handkerchief.
He said, ‘The señorita needs a guide, yes? I am a good guide. I will take the señorita anywhere she wishes to go.’
Rachel stared at him in bewilderment. For an answer to a prayer, he was not particularly prepossessing, she thought. He was plump and rather shiny and a greater contrast to Vitas de Mendoza could not be visualised.
She said slowly, ‘I do need a guide, yes, but how did you know?’
The man made an awkward gesture. ‘The Señor Ramirez at the hotel, señorita. He said so and …’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Rachel, although actually she didn’t. She seemed to have done the disapproving Señor Ramirez an injustice. Or perhaps he just wanted to get her off the premises, she thought cheerfully. ‘I want to go to a place called Diablo,’ she went on, watching him closely through her lashes for signs of dismay and censure. But there were none.
He merely said, ’si, Señorita. As the señorita wishes. And when does she desire to set out?’
‘I’d hoped tomorrow,’ she said, frankly taken aback.
He nodded. ‘I will arrange everything. The señorita can ride a horse?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I thought I could probably hire a Land Rover and….’
He interrupted, shaking his head. ‘A Land Rover no good, señorita. The tracks are bad, and sometimes there are no tracks. Horses are better. I, Carlos Arnaldez, tell you this.’
‘Very well, Carlos.’ She wasn’t going to argue with him. He knew the terrain better than she did. She was glad she had included some denim jeans in the luggage she had brought with her. And she had seen some soft leather boots on a stall which would be ideal for riding.
She was well pleased when she returned to the hotel an hour later, her new boots tucked under her arm. Carlos’ appearance might not be in his favour, but she had to admit that he was efficient. He had taken her to one of the local store-cum-cafés, where they had agreed on his fee for the trip, and also how much he was to spend on the hire of the horses and other equipment. She had been a little suspicious at the mention of money, wondering if he thought she was naïve enough to simply hand over a handful of pesos and watch him vanish with it, never to be seen again. But he had no such intention, it seemed. He would buy everything necessary, he assured her, and obtain receipts for his purchases, and the señorita could reimburse him before they set off, if that was satisfactory.
Then he had drunk her health and to the success of the trip in aguardiente, while Rachel had responded more decorously in Coca-Cola.
She had not told him the purpose of her journey. Let him think she was just a foolhardy tourist, she thought. There would be plenty of time for the truth once they were on their way, and she knew she could trust him.
The reception desk was deserted again when she entered the hotel, and although she banged on the counter and called, no one came.
‘The perfect host,’ she muttered, ducking under the counter flap to retrieve her key from the board at the back.
It was amazing how dark it had become so quickly, she thought as she made her way upstairs. Outside in the square lamps had been lit beside the stalls, and the sound of music drifted faintly on the evening air, the clear tones of a flauta predominating. The sky looked like velvet, and in the space around the band people had begun to dance. Rachel had stood and watched them for a few minutes, but she had found it suddenly disturbing to be alone and an alien in this crowd, where everyone seemed to be with someone else.
Also, her blonde hair and white skin were once again attracting attention, and she was reminded perforce of the warnings she had received at the hotel in Bogota about pickpockets who concentrated on unwary turistas.
She unlocked her bedroom door and went in, closing the door behind her.
She knew immediately that there was something wrong, and the hairs rose on the nape of her neck. There was someone else in the room—the stealth of a movement in the darkness, a faint smell of cigar smoke. Her hands tightened around the boots she carried. They weren’t much of a weapon against an intruder, but they were all she had, and if she screamed there was no guarantee that anyone would hear her.
She heard the movement again, and following it another sound—the creak of a bed-spring.
Dear God, was she the one at fault? Had she blundered by mistake in the dark passage into someone else’s room? If so, she could only hope they were asleep and she could leave before her mistake was discovered. She remembered Ramirez’ remarks about unescorted women. Would anyone believe she had made a genuine error?
Her hand reached behind her, fumbling for the door handle, and then a voice spoke mockingly out of the darkness, freezing her into the immobility of disbelief.
‘Are you going to stand there in the dark all night, querida?’
There was a click as the bedside lamp was switched on, and Rachel found herself staring at Vitas de Mendoza.
CHAPTER THREE (#u424e6a47-4cff-5582-bf95-eb3584db4d17)
HE was lying outstretched on her bed, very much at his ease, the half-smoked cigar she had smelt smouldering in the ash-tray beside him. Rachel demanded, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing in here?’
He tutted. ‘Such language, chica! What happened to the cool lady I met downstairs?’
She flung the door open and held it wide. ‘Get out!’ ‘Your countrymen say, don’t they, that it’s a woman’s privilege to change her mind. But do you have to be quite so contrary? A little while ago you couldn’t wait to talk to me alone. Now that we are alone and I am prepared to talk, you want to be rid of me.’ A smile twisted the corner of his mouth. ‘Now that is hardly friendly.’
‘How did you get in here anyway?’ she demanded. ‘I locked my door.’
‘Ramirez has a pass-key—naturally.’
‘Oh, naturally,’ she echoed with elaborate sarcasm. ‘And naturally he saw nothing strange in loaning it to you so that you could get into one of his guests’ bedrooms.’
His grin widened. ‘Under the circumstances, chica, nothing strange at all.’
Rachel felt an angry flush rising in her face. Normally, she could hold her own in any interchange of repartee. She could flirt, and she could counter the more pointed sexual teasing that was sometimes levelled at her, but there was something about this man which seemed to paralyse her thought processes and allowed him to get under her guard.
Hot words trembled on her lips, but she bit them back. Not yet, she thought, because she had seen a way in which she could get her own back. If he thought he could treat her completely casually, then he was making a grave mistake. He probably thought she was so desperate to obtain his services as a guide that she would stand for anything. Well, he was going to find out just how wrong he was—but not yet. It might be fun to string him along for a little while—flatter his ego, build him up slowly for the big letdown when she calmly informed him that she wouldn’t go to the end of the street with him.
She said, ‘Perhaps I owe you an apology, Señor.’ And perhaps I don’t, she added silently. ‘It was just that I was—thrown by finding someone in my room. I know you said you’d talk to me later, but I wasn’t expecting it to be quite as—late.’ She spread out her hands and gave a slight laugh, and was pleased to see a look of faint surprise cross his dark features.
And this isn’t the only surprise you’re going to get, she assured him under her breath. Not by a long chalk!
‘That disturbs you?’ He reached for his cigar.
‘Why should it?’ she lied calmly. She fetched the chair from the dressing table and sat down at a safe distance from the bed.
He acknowledged her considered placing of the chair with a mocking inclination of his head.
‘Which answers my question,’ he murmured. ‘And yet, querida, you have nothing to fear. I told you downstairs that I was not for sale. Well, I don’t buy either—or take by force.’
‘How good of you to be so reassuring,’ she said sweetly.
‘I should not be too reassured.’ He sounded amused. ‘If I decided I wanted you, you would share this rather cramped bed with me.’
The smile was just right. Coolly amused, and more than a little sceptical. ‘You really think so?’
’si, querida,’ he said very softly, ‘I—really think so.’
Inwardly Rachel was blazing with temper at his calm assumption that she would tamely co-operate if he chose to seduce her, but she did not let her anger show. And she was angry too at the way he watched her, his gaze wandering between her mouth and the three opened buttons on her shirt. She had the strangest urge to fasten the buttons, cover herself up to the throat, but she controlled it. Such an action would be a blatant betrayal of her own awareness of him which she didn’t want to admit even to herself.
‘I was forgetting,’ she said guilelessly. ‘You have this “thing” about blondes, don’t you? Oh!’ Her hand came up to her mouth in well-simulated dismay. ‘I shouldn’t have said that …’
He stubbed the cigar out in the ash-tray. ‘Ramirez seems to have been busy,’ he commented. He sounded almost bored. As he probably was, she decided. The blonde Señora from the States was now just a memory, and a man like Vitas de Mendoza did not exist on his memories.
He stretched lazily, making her conscious of the lean, muscular length of his body beneath his close-fitting black clothes, then linked his arms loosely behind his head. The lamplight glinted on the silver medallion at his throat.
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