Dark Ransom (10 page)

other parts of the ecology can be damaged, as you know. So I have

made sure that all the new seedlings I have planted over the past

eighteen months are well scattered.'

'But won't that mean, eventually, that collecting the rubber will take

more time?' Charlie had wrinkled her nose.

'Yes,' he'd said. 'But time is something we have in abundance in the

rain forest.'

Well, Charlie thought, staring into the darkness, that might be true

for him, but not for her. She couldn't wait to get out of here, and

back to reality. All she had to do was find a way.

One idea that presented itself was to persuade him to take her with

him to the rubber plantation and the collective processing plant, and

that was why she'd tried to evince an intelligent interest in what he'd

been telling her.

And it was quite fascinating, she was forced to admit, although he

undoubtedly had an uphill struggle on his hands. It was also

gratifying that he seemed to possess such sympathy and concern for

the environment. He was clearly a more complex personality than

she'd first imagined, and would not be too easy to forget.

Determinedly she wrenched her mind back to her plan. She would

have to get him to trust her sufficiently to allow her to come and go

relatively unsupervised. And that would be a problem because

Riago da Santana was no one's fool. He wouldn't be convinced by a

sudden pretence of submission.

But she still had her money, after all, intact in her bag, and once

she'd established herself as a regular visitor to the plantation maybe

it would be possible to bribe one of the
caboclos
to take her to

safety.

It all sounded desperately tentative, she acknowledged unhappily,

but she had to grab at any passing straw.

The next morning was dry but humid. Mosquito weather, Charlie

thought as she took her malaria protection tablets.

To her surprise, Riago was at the table in the
sala de jantar
when

she entered. The small, melancholy man standing talking to him she

recognised as one of her abductors.

'Planning another kidnap?' she asked as she sat down, reaching for

the coffee-pot.

'I regret your humour is lost on Pedrinho,' he said bitingly. 'And the

situation we speak about is no laughing matter either. Some of the

caboclos
have reported seeing
garimpeiros
in the locality.'

'What are they?'

'Prospectors looking for gold and precious stones.'

'Aren't people allowed to seek their fortune along the Amazon any

more? I thought it was everyone's dream to find El Dorado.'

'A lot of these men are criminals, seeking to smuggle their finds out

of Brazil. They have faked passports from Bolivia and Colombia,

and are usually armed and violent. If they are operating in our area

the
caboclos
are right to be afraid.'

'Oh.' Charlie sipped some coffee reflectively. Now seemed hardly an

opportune time to request a guided tour of the plantation, she

decided with irritation. She would have to be patient a little longer.

'So what do you do about these people?' she asked at last. 'Organise

a man-hunt?'

'No,' he said. 'Any more than I would deliberately kick a sleeping

snake. We organise patrols—let them know they have been seen,

and so warn them to come no nearer. Living as they do, off the

jungle, with no proper food or medical attention, many of them do

not survive. Sometimes the forest sends them crazy. Often they kill

each other.'

'That's awful.' Charlie grimaced. 'Can't anything be done?'

'How simple you make it sound,' he said softly. 'You come from a

small, law-abiding island, and you think you can impose your

limitations on the rain forest—the Green Hell, as they call it here.

Do you imagine you can police hell as you would your own home

town?'

'If you look on it as hell then why do you live here?'

He shrugged. 'There are worse places. And I have a job to do.'

He was still holding something back and she knew it, but decided

not to press the point. Whatever secrets his life might hold were no

concern of hers. She didn't want to become interested—involved.

That was too risky. At the moment she was merely intrigued, she

told herself staunchly, but unless she was careful that could develop

into a disastrous attraction.

Riago rose from the table with a brief word of apology, and left the

room, Pedrinho following in his wake. They'd both certainly looked

grim, Charlie mused as she tackled her breakfast. These
garimpeiros

must be a genuine menace.

When she'd finished her meal she hung around irresolutely for a few

minutes, wondering where to go and what she was expected to do.

She couldn't face another day wandering from room to room like a

lost soul.

Reluctantly she went in search of Riago. She found him in his

office, and checked in the doorway, startled, when she saw he was

loading a gun, something she'd only witnessed up to then on films

and television. But watching it happen in real life had none of the

drama or glamour of a screenplay, she realised breathlessly. It was

threatening and sinister.

Riago looked round, half smiling as he registered her presence in the

doorway, but his expression changed when he saw her face.

'Is something wrong?'

'You're not actually going to use that?'

His brows rose in faint hauteur. 'Yes, if I need to. You disapprove?'

'Well, of course I do.' Her hands twisted together. 'I hate any kind of

violence.'

'You think you are alone in that?' Riago shook his head. 'But there

are situations when ideals will no longer serve—and realism must

prevail.' He slid the gun into a holster on his hip. 'Believe me,

Carlotta, I will defend myself and what belongs to me. No one takes

what I do not want to give.'

'You sound as if we were under siege.'

'Sometimes I feel as if we are.' His voice was suddenly weary.

'Every day there is the eternal battle with the environment here to

guard my plantation against insects and blight—to protect my

workers against disease and death. There are predators everywhere,

and the worst are the human kind.' He paused. 'But I'm sure you did

not seek me out just to discuss the evil of violence.'

Charlie bit her lip. 'No. I came to ask how I'm expected to occupy

myself here. You have the plantation, and Rosita and the servants

look after the house, but I have nothing to do, and it gets tedious.'

'It bores you to learn how to manage my household?'

'I didn't realise that's what I was supposed to be doing,' Charlie said

tautly. 'Quite apart from the language barrier, your household seems

to manage very well already without my intervention.'

'Rosita is a jewel,' he agreed. 'But until you have learned some

Portuguese I shall have to provide you with an interpreter. Rosita's

nephew Agenor speaks some English. I'll ask him to come up to the

fazenda.'

'That would be a start,' Charlie admitted. 'But it's still a very long

day.'

He was silent for a moment. 'I brought a crate of books when I came

here—some English ones among them,' he said at last. 'I will have

them unpacked for you.'

'Thank you,' she said. 'But I can do without
The Do-it-yourself

Guide to Latex Production.'

His lips quirked in faint amusement. 'I think you will find them

slightly more entertaining than that. Do you sew? According to my

mother, there is always mending to be done.'

'I knew this was a time warp,' she said bitterly. 'What else?'

'You could always pamper yourself a little,' he suggested silkily.

'Make yourself beautiful for my homecoming tonight.'

It was what Fay Preston would have done, she thought,

remembering grudgingly the blonde girl's high-gloss exterior and

faultlessly enamelled nails. Fay would probably have spent hours

bathing and scenting herself, ready for her lover's pleasure.

The thought sent a flare of colour into her cheeks and an edge to her

voice.

'I'm afraid that's not my style.'

'You see no need to make yourself desirable for your man?' His eyes

flicked over her in sardonic enquiry, and her flush deepened.

'Frankly, no.'

'A pity,' he said. 'But you will learn, and it will be my pleasure to

teach you.' His voice was caressing, deliberately seductive, and to

her horror Charlie felt a little stir of excitement deep within her in

response.

'Don't count on it,' she snapped, then turned on her heel and marched

away, hearing his laughter follow her.

She went into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. She

found she was trembling, and this annoyed her even more. She

couldn't afford to let him get to her like this, or to remember what it

had been like in his arms that night.

She walked over to the
guarda-roupa
and opened the door, glaring

at the clothes that hung there as if they were to blame for

everything. From now on, she resolved, anything she wore would be

hers alone, and not some pathetic adaptation.

When Rosita had shown her round she'd seen a sewing-room with

bolts of cloth in it—cotton prints in bright, clear colours. She knew

her measurements well enough and had done a certain amount of

dressmaking in the past. She could surely make herself some basic,

simple shifts, practical but without allure.

She waited until she was sure Riago had left the house before

finding her way by trial and error to the sewing-room.

She chose a pretty yellow fabric, spread it on to the floor, and

marked out a rough pattern before picking up the scissors. She

would just have to improvise, she decided, cutting into the cloth

with gritted teeth.

She was fully absorbed in her task, when there was a tap at the door,

and Rosita peered in at her, her face astonished.

'Ai, senhorita!'
she exclaimed protestingly as she realised what

Charlie was doing.

Charlie gave her a challenging look. 'Is something the matter?'

Sighing gustily, Rosita gave her to understand that Agenor had

arrived. Carrying the roughly pinned dress over her arm, Charlie

followed her to the
sala de estar.

A large wooden crate of books stood in the middle of the floor, and

beside it was a boy of about sixteen, bashfully twisting his straw hat

in his fingers.

'Bom dia, senhorita,'
he greeted her. 'The
patrao
has sent me to

speak for you.'

'I'm very grateful, Agenor. Perhaps you'll also be able to teach me

some Portuguese.' Charlie smiled at him. 'In the meantime, can you

ask your aunt to bring me the sewing-machine?'

Rosita appeared displeased by the request. It was, Agenor relayed,

her pleasure to alter dresses for the
senhorita,
who should not

concern herself with such mundane tasks, and with such plain

material.

'I prefer my own style,' Charlie returned coolly, and Rosita, still

grumbling, reluctantly subsided.

While the sewing-machine was being brought Charlie began to go

through the books in the crate. To her surprise she found some

English classic writers, Dickens and Thomas Hardy among them, as

well as a selection of popular modern novels. And she was delighted

to come across a Wilbur Smith and a Stephen King, neither of which

she'd read.

There were some empty shelves in a cupboard at the end of the

room, and she arranged the books on these, reserving
Bleak House

for her immediate use. Agenor helped her. His English bordered on

the rudimentary, but, with a certain amount of miming and a lot of

goodwill, Charlie found they were able to communicate reasonably

well.

The sewing-machine turned out to be an old- fashioned hand-

operated model. Charlie threaded it, and began machining her

seams, chatting to Agenor while she did so.

He was clearly very much in awe of his surroundings, and of the

patrao,
whose name came often into his halting conversation.

Riago da Santana, Charlie realised, startled, was very much revered

in the locality. The processing plant which he'd built for the rubber

was very modern, Agenor said proudly, and the
patrao
also

organised the transportation and sale of the processed latex in

Manaus.

News that he had found a bride and was soon to be married had