Counterfeit Bride

‘It would be no use. Don Luis would not receive him, or allow me to see him.’ Teresita spread her hands helplessly. ‘Nicky, you do not understand.’

‘On the contrary, I understand only too well,’ Nicola told her grimly. ‘You’re not prepared to stand up to this guardian of yours.’

Teresita seemed to shrink. ‘Nicky, it is not possible to stand up, as you say. He follows his own will at all times, and always he is obeyed.’

‘Oh, is he, indeed?’ Nicola said wrathfully. ‘I just wish I could meet this lordly gentleman. I’d do anything to stop him getting his own way for once in his life!’

‘Then why don’t you?’ said Elaine.

‘Why don’t I what?’

‘Stop him.’ Elaine gave a shrug. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Teresita, but you’re not very well acquainted with this Ramón, are you?’

‘No.’ Teresita gave a puzzled frown. ‘As I said, he is Don Luis’ cousin, and many years ago I met him at La Mariposa and …’

‘Right,’ Elaine interrupted. ‘And all he knows is that tomorrow he has to collect you someplace—the convent, I guess—and escort you to Monterrey. Well, Nicky can go in your place.’

There was a shaken silence, then Nicola said, ‘That’s the silliest idea I’ve ever heard.’

‘It’s not so silly,’ Elaine said calmly. ‘Stop and think. You speak Spanish like a native, and if we fitted you out with a brunette wig, some dark glasses and a heavier make-up, you could pass for Teresita—especially with a guy who saw her once when she was a kid, for God’s sake.’

Nicola gasped, ‘But I’d never get away with it! Just supposing I could fool this unfortunate man—which is by no means certain—what would happen when I got to Monterrey? I couldn’t hope for the same luck with Don Luis.’

‘You wouldn’t need it. You take your big leather shoulder bag in which you have one of your own dresses, and your papers and vacation tickets. When you get to Monterrey, you make some excuse to stop off somewhere—a store or a restaurant, and you go to the powder room, where you take off the wig and dump it, change your dress—and—voilà. Goodbye, Teresita Dominguez and hello, Nicola Tarrant, leaving Don Luis with egg on his face because his novia has run away. Oh, he’ll be looking for her, but he won’t be equating her with any blonde English chick, and he won’t be searching in Mexico City, where she’ll be marrying Cliff, with me as chief bridesmaid. When she’s ready, she can write and tell him she’s already married, and let him figure out how she did it.’

Nicola was about to tell Elaine that this time she had finally flipped, when she saw Teresita looking at her, with the dawning of a wild hope in her eyes.

She said, ‘Teresita, no—I couldn’t! It’s crazy. It’s impossible. It wouldn’t work.’

Teresita’s hands were clasped tightly in front of her as if she were praying. ‘But we could make it work, Nicky, in a wig, as Elaine said, and some of my clothes. It will take two days, maybe even three to drive to Monterrey, because there are business calls which Ramón must make on the way for my guardian. Then when you reach Monterrey, there could be at least one more day while Don Luis searches there …’ She turned eagerly to Elaine, who nodded.

‘We’ll cable Cliff right away,’ she said. ‘Maybe Nicky could play for time in other ways on the trip—pretend to be sick or something.’

‘I wouldn’t have to pretend,’ Nicola said desperately. ‘Stop it, the pair of you. You’re mad!’

Elaine gave her a steady look. ‘You said you’d do anything to stop this happening. What Teresita chiefly needs is time—time for Cliff to get back here and marry her himself—and this you could give her.’

‘Yes,’ Teresita said with a little sob. ‘Oh, yes, Nicky. If I go to Monterrey, then I shall never see Cliff again. I know it.’

‘But I really don’t think I could get away with it,’ Nicola said, trying to hold on to her sanity. ‘Oh, I know people congratulate me on my fluency and my accent, but all it would need would be one small mistake and I’d be finished. And I can hardly drive hundreds of miles in stony silence.’

‘But why not? Ramon would not expect me, the novia of his cousin, to talk and chatter to him. It would be indecoroso. And if you pretended that the motion of the car was making you ill, then he would not expect you to speak at all. He is much younger than Don Luis, and when I was a child, he was kind to me.’ She was silent for a moment, then she said pleadingly, ‘Nicky, I beg you to do this thing for me. I could not love Don Luis, and he does not love me. He marries me only because it is time he was married, and because he wishes for a son to inherit this new—empire that he has made. Would you, in your heart, wish to be married for such a reason?’

Nicola was very still. As if it was yesterday, she saw Ewan smiling at her, and heard his voice. ‘Of course I’m not in love with her, darling. It’s you I care about. But Greta knows what the score is. She understands these things. Once I’ve married her, there’s no reason why you and I shouldn’t be together as much as we want, as long as we’re discreet.’

She suppressed a little shudder, remembering how, even through the agony of the moment, there had been a flash of pity for Ewan’s wife, who would never possess the certainty of his love and loyalty. A marriage of convenience, she had thought bitterly. Very convenient for the man—but heartbreak for the woman.

Teresita didn’t deserve such a fate.

She said, ‘All right, I’ll do it.’

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_b2740a66-9db3-5c33-b00c-9a80440baef1)

NICOLA stood nervously in the shadow of the portico and stared down the quiet and empty street. Ramón was late, and at any moment the door behind could open and one of the nuns emerge, and ask what she was doing there.

For the umpteenth time she had to resist the impulse to adjust the wig. It was a loathsome thing, totally realistic, but hot and itchy. Orchid pink silky dress, strapped sandals with high heels in a matching kid, and two of Teresita’s expensive cases as window dressing. The only thing out of place was the bulky leather bag on her shoulder, but it would just have to look incongruous. It was her lifeline.

She glanced at her watch, biting her lip nervously, thinking how funny it would be if it was all for nothing and Don Luis had changed his mind—and then she saw the car and her stomach lurched in panic.

It was too late now to run for it. She could only cross her fingers that the wig and cosmetics and the large pair of dark glasses would be sufficiently convincing. Swallowing, she adopted an air of faint hauteur as Teresita had suggested and stared in front of her as the car came to a halt in front of the convent steps.

There was a uniformed chauffeur at the wheel, but Nicola barely registered the fact. She was too busy looking at the man who had just emerged from the front passenger seat and was standing by the car watching her.

Young, Teresita had said, or at least younger than Don Luis. Well, he was at least in his mid-thirties, so that figured, but what she hadn’t mentioned, either because she’d forgotten or had been too young to notice, was that Ramon was a disturbingly, even devastatingly, attractive man. Tall—unusually so—with black hair, and eyes darker than sin. Golden bronze skin over a classic bone structure that went beyond conventional good looks. A high-bridged aristocratic nose, a firm-lipped mouth, the purity of its lines betrayed only by a distinctly unchaste curve to his lower lip, and a proudly uncompromising strength of chin.

‘Ye gods,’ Nicola thought, ‘and this is only the poor relation! What the Mark II model is like makes the mind reel.’ Somehow the image of the plump, pompous grandee didn’t seem quite so valid any more.

He walked forward, strong shoulders, lean hips and long legs encased in a lightweight but very expensive suit. His black silk shirt was open at the throat, allowing a glimpse of smooth brown chest.

He was smiling faintly, and Nicola thought, her hackles rising, that he was clearly under no illusion about his effect on women.

‘Señorita.’ He stood at the foot of the steps and looked up at her rather enquiringly.

‘I am Teresita Dominguez, señor,’ she said coldly. ‘And you are late.’

Now that the words were uttered, and the charade begun, it was somehow easier.

If Don Luis had informed his cousin that his future wife was a submissive doormat of a girl who would speak when spoken to, then Don Ramón de Costanza had just had the shock of his life, she thought with satisfaction. She was pleased to see that he did look taken aback.

‘My apologies, Señorita Dominguez. I was detained. And of course I could not know—I was not warned what a vision of loveliness awaited me.’

No one warned me about you either, she thought silently. And Don Luis must be off his head to let you out of your cage to prowl round the girl he’s going to marry, cousin or no cousin.

She primmed her mouth disapprovingly as he came up the steps to her side. ‘Don Ramón, must I remind you who I am?’

‘Indeed no, señorita. You are the novia of Don Luis Alvarado de Montalba, the most fortunate man in Mexico. Welcome to our family, Teresita—if I may call you that?’ He lifted her hand as if to kiss it lightly, then at the last moment turned it over, and brushed his mouth swiftly and sensuously across the palm instead.

‘Señor.’ Nicola snatched her hand away, aware that she did not have to pretend the note of shock in her voice. Her flesh tingled as if it had been in contact with a live electric current. ‘I hope I do not have to inform Don Luis of your behaviour.’

‘Forgive me.’ He didn’t sound particularly repentant. ‘I forgot myself. You will have nothing further to complain of in my conduct, I swear. Will you allow me to put your cases in the car?’

She assented with a cool nod, and followed him down the steps, her heart still thumping.

‘And your bag?’

She swallowed, shaking her head and taking a firm hold on the strap.

‘I prefer to keep it with me.’