In Name Only (11 page)

"What are you implying?" Jill asked. "That I'm to find someone else?"

He laughed but did not reply, the laugh the cruelest she had ever heard.

"First I'm the Amazon you want to explore. Then I'm a ripe fruit ready for picking, but you won't be the one to pick it. What next? You must want love. Everyone wants it."

His mouth formed into a thin line. "We made a bargain in Chicago, as I recall. I'm a man who sticks to his bargain." He loosened his grip on her shoulder and pushed her toward her bed. "Go to bed. I think we've had enough for one night."

Jill could not resist a biting last remark. She was wound up and being told to go to bed like a child was the last thing she wanted to hear. "I understand," she said, her voice chilly with contempt. "If you want to make love, you'll find someone somewhere else. That's fine with me. Perhaps you have someone already that you haven't bothered telling me about. I wish I had known. I might have told Derek not to give up hope." She was sorry as soon as the words were out. She turned to look at Simon and was stunned by the expression on his face. He glared at her, his mouth thin ribbons of anger, his eyes, sudden secret chambers of unhappiness. He seemed completely transformed, as if she had found a hidden raw nerve and exposed it. He was in front of her with a step. His fingers gripped her shoulders so tightly that she drew in her breath with pain. She tried to tear herself away.

"You're hurting me," she whispered. "Have you gone mad?"

But his voice, when he spoke, was quite calm and steady, a man used to controlling himself.

"Lest you think I've gone mad, let me make myself understood. I recall your words quite clearly. In fact, they've been imprinted on my brain. 'But I don't love you, Mr. Todd. I could never love you.' Yet a few moments ago, you wanted what we had in there to go on and on. What was that? Romantic love? Of course, according to you. The next thing you'll want would be all the accoutrements of married life. Fidelity. Declarations of undying love. Children. A family room." He laughed. "Not for Simon Todd." He released his grip, but only for a moment. "Get that straight. What I do with my life is my private business. What you do with yours is also my business. I don't know who this so-called Derek is, but don't ever mention his name to me again." He picked her up in one swift movement and carried her to her bed. He reached for the sheet. For a second, before drawing it over her, he looked down at her, his face a marble mask.

"We're married by the terms of your uncle's will. But I'm laying down the rules by which we'll live. According to world outside, we met, we fell in love, we married. According to my personal ethics, I'm resuming the life I lived before my trip north. I'm sure you know what I mean, and I expect you'll get used to it, after a while." He dropped the sheet across her body and strode out of the room.

The door closed behind her. She heard the faint, searing click of the lock, as if to underline his words.

"Never," she whispered fiercely. "This marriage will be run the way I want it, or it will never run at all."

She buried her face in her pillow. What did she want? She was deathly afraid of the answer.

Rain! An insistent tapping at her window, even before Jill opened her eyes. Morning in Manaus. A tropical rainstorm. A rainstorm that would never end, and a fitting climax to a wedding night that never was.

Snuggling deep under her warm cover, Jill never wanted to get up. Her room in Chicago, in the winter, was warmer than this air-conditioned paradise.

Cover. Jill looked down at the pale blue blanket which covered her. Sometime during the morning hours, someone had come into her room and drawn it over her.

She sat up abruptly. The door that separated her room from Simon's stood ajar. For a moment she remained very still, listening, but the room beyond was quiet. She had no desire to see her husband, at least not yet; their dawn scene was too painfully present. Well, the lines had been drawn. You keep to your side, and I'll keep to mine. In spite of the blanket, clearly his silent gift, and in spite of the open door.

She reached over and checked her watch. It was noon, and for a moment she thought perhaps Senhora Cordero had been the Good Samaritan. Not true, she told herself. It was Simon, all right. The world, in this case the world of Las Flores, must believe that there had been traffic between their rooms during the night. Senhora Cordero and whatever other servants there were in the villa, must believe they were lovers. It would never do for them to know the truth, that Jill was Senhora Simon Todd in name only. The door separating their rooms, the door which had clicked shut so firmly only hours before, must stand ajar for the sake of the servants. They must grin knowingly and chatter in the kitchen about the love between Senhor Todd and the young bride he had brought all the way from Chicago.

Jill shuddered, acutely embarrassed over the idea. Still, if that was his game, so be it. No one had forced her to take the marriage vows. Whatever else he was, Simon was honest. No one had forced her to accede to the terms of her uncle's will. It had been made to protect a fortune and to protect a young woman, completely unknown to the testator, from the possibilities of her folly. She could have refused, waited the endless years to receive the fruits of his will. Married Derek. Remained in Chicago.

Chicago in the winter. She had only to think of the strong winds blowing off the lake to climb out of bed eagerly. And after all, nothing had happened between them, had it? Simon had told her in so many words to be a good girl. That was all that had happened. A few kisses, nothing more.

"I must stop taking myself so seriously," she said out loud. "I'm here and that's what counts." She pattered barefoot over to the window, and was delighted to discover upon pulling up the blind, that it hid a small door opening onto a narrow balcony. Through the rain she could see a dense flower garden, and beyond tall trees the top story and red tiled roof of the villa opposite.

From the snows of Chicago to the forceful rains of Manaus in one easy leap. She realized that her dreams of Manaus excluded tropical storms. With all that she had read of Manaus, her mind had simply skipped past the idea of inclement weather. And of course, the books had all told of winter in the Amazon, a winter of almost daily rain that went on until May. It was because of the rain, in fact, that the river could rise as much as forty feet. She had learned all that, and conveniently forgotten it.

Bending under the authority of the rain, were bright pink hibiscus blossoms, the sight of which cheered her considerably. She had lived with the dream long enough. Now it was time to live with the reality. If it was a marriage in name only, so be it. She was going to take charge at last, be the true niece of Daniel Carteret. Her life was her own and she was going to shut Simon Todd out as completely as if he had ceased to exist. Oh, she would play the game all right. She would be the model wife for the sake of the servants and his friends. They might sit opposite one another at meals. They might sleep near one another with the door between them ajar. They might entertain visitors as if they wanted them all to go home so they could make mad love. They might even touch or kiss in public. She might even ask him to pass the salt or the newspaper or to recommend a good movie, but still, Simon Todd had ceased to exist. He was merely a cipher, the means to her fortune, and that was that.

Now, she thought, heading for the bath, if she could only stick to her guns.

Jill was unpacking when she came across the little, pink doll Derek had given her. For a moment she couldn't think why she had brought it along. Sentiment? Perhaps because it was simply very sweet and charming. She placed it on the dresser, where its head flopped forward, and the small body fell flat, as if it were a baby ready for sleep. She let it stay in that position. It was all the baby she might ever have.

Dressed in a pair of navy slacks with a white cotton shirt and red linen jacket, Jill let herself out into the corridor. The villa was quiet. She felt strangely disoriented, a visitor to an empty marble palace in which everyone had gone to sleep for a hundred years.

She walked through both wings, opening doors to empty rooms, closing them again. There were no rugs, no curtains, no furniture in any of them. Turning down the circular staircase to the center hall, she had a feeling of great light and spaciousness matched to the sepulchral quiet of a cathedral. Rooms leading off the hall were furnished sparingly, a salon, a library, a sitting room, a formal dining room. They contained very few ornaments or paintings. Windows were without curtains and the marble floors without rugs. She was genuinely puzzled. The ornate interior trim cried for exquisite period furniture, yet there was none. Rather everything was modern, seats covered with rattan, like lawn furniture.

Las Flores was waiting, stately and elegant, for a family. Well, she thought cynically, it might just have to wait some more.

A room, at the rear of the villa, with a view of the garden, was clearly Simon's study. In it, she found a television set facing a bamboo couch. On his large desk of rosewood, she discovered a photograph of her uncle, standing with Simon, both dressed in khaki and smiling.

She traced down a sudden aroma of freshly ground coffee to a small attractive room, which like Simon's study, overlooked the garden. A glass topped table was laid with a printed yellow cloth and a setting for one. There was a pale wood sideboard with a coffee urn and a covered dish with rolls kept warm. Great glass doors led directly into the garden, a lush, tempting jungle of bougainvillaea and hibiscus in bloom. It was still raining, the sky a heavy mat of grayness.

"Ah, senhora, here we are."

Jill turned as Senhora Cordero came bustling into the room, her mouth broadened into a mischievous grin, a grin reserved for young brides on their honeymoons.

"I guess I did sleep a little late," Jill said shyly, knowing that an appropriate blush was suffusing her cheeks.

"Did you sleep well, senhora?"

"Oh yes. The bed's very comfortable." She turned, still embarrassed, to the window. Why did everything sound so queer?

"Here are rolls, butter, coffee, jam. Would you like some eggs? Something special?" The housekeeper stood in front of her, hands clasped, friendly, comfortable, anxious to please.

"No. I never really eat breakfast. This will do fine."

"Some coffee, then?"

"Yes, thank you."

Senhora Cordero spooned some sugar into the tiny coffee cup and poured black coffee over it before Jill could stop her.

"Well, actually, I don't take sugar," she said timidly.

"
Cafezinho
without sugar!" Senhora Cordero rolled her eyes at the ceiling.

Jill smiled. "Of course, I remember now.
Cafe
zinho." The national custom. Small cups of black coffee laced with plenty of sugar. She lifted the cup and took a sip. Black, tart, the rich aroma almost a taste, the
cafezinho
was syrupy but delicious.

"In Brazil we have a saying," Senhora Cordero told her. "Coffee as black as night, as sweet as a kiss, as strong as love, as hot as hell."