Montega's Mistress (20 page)

“Why? I would think that everyone at the schools you went to would come from a background like yours.”

“They did. But there’s a caste system even among the rich, and Sophia was its most fervent devotee. She would say that my friends didn’t have enough money or had lost too much of their money or came from the wrong kind of money—something. It never failed.”

“What’s the wrong kind of money?” Matteo asked, intrigued. He stretched out on the floor and supported his head with one hand, studying her.

Helen selected a morsel and popped it into her mouth. “Money that came from bootlegging, smuggling, that sort of thing. The right kind was the kind my great greatgrandfather made, through the indentured servitude of immigrants who crossed the water to escape the same slavery they found in his factories. That was legal, you see. No less immoral than the rum running or drug trafficking, but that sort of distinction doesn’t cut much mustard with my mother. She would find fault with anyone I brought home and, believe me, she could make things impossible. After a lifetime of that you sort of lose the knack of making friends, you know what I mean? And the work I’ve been doing for the past few years is kind of solitary.” She paused and sought his eyes. “Actually, I didn’t mind it much until I met you. You don’t miss what you’ve never had.”

Matteo didn’t know what to say. He had spent his whole life with the comradeship of others; he couldn’t imagine the existence she described.

“Poor little rich girl,” he murmured as she went back to her snack.

“What?” she said, looking up.

“Nothing. Your mother sounds like a monster.” He was trying hard not to think about such a person raising the sensitive, impressionable child that Helen must have been.

Helen shook her head. “No, she isn’t. She loves me in her way, she really does. She can’t help what others made her; my grandmother, who died when I was two, was supposedly a real horror. I feel sorry for Sophia. I must have been such a letdown.”

“Why?”

“She wanted a daughter just like her, who would run around the world depleting the stock of fancy boutiques and collecting rich, important husbands. And she wound up with me.”

“You must be like someone along the line. I wonder who.”

Helen smiled. “I think I’m a throwback. By the time I was a teenager it was abundantly clear that I had nothing in common with most of my living relatives, so I began to investigate the family tree. I discovered that my great grandfather Harold, the robber baron’s son, spent ten years writing a biography of Richard Lovelace.”

Matteo rolled onto his back and stared up at her. “That sounds about your speed. Who’s Richard Lovelace?”

“Early seventeenth century British poet. He wrote, ‘To Althea: From Prison’ and ‘To Lucasta: Going to the Wars,’ among other things.”

Matteo Shook his head, indicating ignorance.

“I guess the second poem is the better known. The narrator is a soldier explaining to his beloved why he must leave her and go away to war. He says that if he stayed, made her more important than the thing he’s fighting for, then he wouldn’t be the person she fell in love with, the man she wanted.”

Helen was so familiar with the story that she just rattled it off without thinking and then saw that he had become very still. The falling rain suddenly sounded loud, filling the pregnant silence, and his dark eyes seared hers as she coughed nervously and added, “The most famous line goes: ‘I could not love thee, dear, so much/Lov’d I not honor more.”

He didn’t reply for a long moment, then he sat up with one smooth movement and said quietly, “I think I remember it now.”

Helen waited a beat before continuing. “Anyway,” she said, striving to keep her voice normal, “you can imagine Sophia’s chagrin at delivering into the world a dreamer like Harold Demarest rather than the mini debutante she wanted. I don’t think she’s gotten over it yet. No wonder she spends all her time in Europe, romancing candy barons.”

“Candy barons?”

“Her latest husband is a Swiss chocolate heir.”

Matteo dusted crumbs from his pants and said, “You talk like your mother raised you alone. Where was your father when you were young?”

“He was never around. He was always flying off to meetings, spending a week here, three days there. Administering a fortune like his is a full time job. He would call home and issue orders, like a general directing troop movements from the field. When I was small and my parents were still getting along, sometimes Sophia would join him wherever he was, but mostly it was just the two of us, with Sophia dictating who was ‘suitable.’ No one ever was.”

Matteo smiled, and then the smile faded as a cruel thought struck him, one almost too hurtful to bear. He waited a moment before he voiced it, and then said softly, “Is that what you’re doing with me?”

“What do you mean?” Helen asked, puzzled.

“Well, if you scoured the earth, I’m sure you couldn’t find a man less ‘suitable’ for you in your mother’s opinion. Is that what drew you to me, Helen?”

She found the question so preposterous that at first she thought he was kidding. Then she saw the expression on his face and realized that he really believed it might be true.

She crawled next to him and kissed him, settling into his arms when he refused to let her go. “Matteo, listen to yourself,” she finally told him. “You’re saying that I fell in love with you to spite my mother. That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” he asked, searching her face.

“Of course. It may be accurate to say that you exemplify a lot of the qualities she doesn’t have, but it isn’t wrong to seek out a person who has the character somebody else lacks, is it?”

“Well, when you put it that way...” he said, looking sheepish.

Helen grinned. “Besides, you might be surprised. Sophia wouldn’t think you’re so bad. She has an eye for handsome young gentlemen, especially dark-eyed Latino types.” She ran a finger down the line of hair bisecting his middle. “She would find you very sexy,
jefe.”

He groaned. “Give me a break.”

“She’d give you one. Probably put you on the payroll.”

His eyes widened.

“Sure,” Helen went on. “When I was growing up she had a long succession of grooms and stableboys and chauffeurs attending to her needs. Not the right class, of course, but kept around for their expertise in other areas.”

He stared.

“Don’t tell me, man of the world, that you’re shocked,” Helen said. She put her lips to his ear and whispered, “Money changes everything.”

He nodded slowly. “I guess it does. My father and his wife were probably up to some games at his big house on the hill, but I wasn’t around to see them.”

“It must have been hard on your mother, seeing his wife with him all the time,” Helen said sympathetically.

Matteo stared over her shoulder at the guttering lamp, which was almost out. “It was. I think my mother loved him. One time I sneaked up close to get a good look at his wife. I guess I wanted to compare the two women, to try to see what his wife had that my mother lacked, you know. I remember that it was weird because his wife and my mother looked so much alike. Even as a kid I could see it; the resemblance was that clear. I guess his taste didn’t change.”

“Were they both dark?” Helen asked.

“Yeah. Black hair, black eyes, full figured. Faces like icons, features carved in Iberian clay.”

“Like Alma,” Helen said carefully.

He looked at her quickly, then away. “Like that.”

“She is beautiful,” Helen persisted, picking at the sore.

“No more than you,” he said lightly, trying to slide out of it.

“I’ll bet she really fills out a bathing suit,” Helen said sadly.

“Never seen her in one.”

“You’ve seen her in less,” Helen said, unable to resist it.

He sighed heavily. “Okay, we’re going to talk about this once, and never again, got that?”

She didn’t answer, gazing at him stubbornly.

“I slept with Alma to scratch an itch, and that’s it. I don’t love her and never did. Are you satisfied?”

“Does she know you think of her as first aid?” Helen said tartly, pitying the other woman.

“She knows the score,” he said shortly.

“Do I know the score?” Helen asked, her voice not quite steady.

He tumbled her to the ground, pinning her under him. “Will you stop this?” he said huskily. “That was over and done with before I met you and it has nothing to do with us now.”

“She still wants you,” Helen pointed out.

“She wants the
jefe,”
he replied flatly. “She would have been sleeping with Olmos tonight if he’d won the fight.”
 

“That’s terrible,” Helen murmured. “You’re saying that she trades her body for what she wants, like... barter.”

“Alma’s a very practical woman. She doesn’t have much else to bargain with; she makes use of what God gave her.”

“He gave her quite a bit. She makes me look like an undernourished Campfire Girl.”

He shook silently and she realized he was laughing. “Don’t worry about it,” he said at length. “In ten years she’ll be going to Weight Watchers.”

“In Puerta Linda?” Helen asked, smiling.

“Well, she’ll be on a diet, then. And you won’t.”

“That’s true. In my family the women don’t get fat as they get older, just bony and regal, like Katharine Hepburn.”

He grinned.

Helen snuggled closer, noticing with dismay that daylight was creeping under the hem of the tent. Soon she would have to help Theresa and Matteo would be going off as well.

“I never thought it would end up like this,” she said dreamily, rubbing her nose on his shoulder. “The morning you came back after your mission I thought you didn’t want me any more.”

He drew back to look at her. “I thought you didn’t want me. You seemed so distant, so put off by what you’d seen.”

Helen held his gaze, admitting to him what she had known since that day. “You were right. Talking about it is one thing but actually seeing you do it is another.”

“And how do you feel now?” he asked directly, never one to dodge an issue.

“I don’t think anything could change my mind after last night, Matteo,” she answered just as bluntly. And it was true.

She couldn’t tell whether he was pleased by this or not; he was wearing his impassive, nonjudgmental face, what she thought of as his “fearless leader” expression, and it gave nothing away.

They both looked up at the sound of movement outside the tent. The rain was stopping and people were beginning to stir.

Matteo got up and said, “You have nothing left of the clothes Theresa got you?”

Helen shook her head. “We’ve been wanting to wash them, but we had to wait for rain because the supply of drinking water was running low.”

“I’ll send something over for you,” he replied.

Helen could see him changing back from her lover to the leader of the camp. His mind was switching gears and he was already thinking about the problems of the day.

He kissed her swiftly on the forehead. “I have to go. I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Okay,” Helen answered. What else could she say?

She dressed after the clothes arrived and walked through the muddy center lane of the camp to the cookhouse. Water was still dripping from all of the tents, and she had to bypass huge puddles along the way. But it was about twenty degrees cooler than it had been the day before, and the dryer, rain-washed air was like a tonic.

Theresa was already at the cookhouse and surveyed her with a wry, intent expression.

“So,” she greeted Helen, “things have changed between you and Matteo, eh?”

Helen didn’t even try to dissemble. “How can you tell?” she countered, feeling the flush creeping up her neck.

“I figured the fight would do it,” Theresa said sagely. “It took the threat of another man to bring Matteo to his senses and force him to claim you.” She took a sip of her coffee and added, “Besides, Matteo didn’t go back to his tent last night.”

“Why are you so sure about that?”
 

“I saw,” Theresa said airily.

“You mean everyone knows?” Helen whispered, drawing the obvious conclusion.

“Pretty much.”

“Oh, no,” Helen groaned, mortified.

Theresa shrugged. “You cannot keep such a thing secret; we are all in each other’s pots here,” she said, using a Puerta Lindan expression for closeness. “Anyway, Matteo is the
jefe.
Everyone watches him.”

Great, Helen thought. And she would be on display all day dishing out the food, like people’s exhibit number one.

“Tell me,” Theresa said conversationally, “is Matteo a good lover?”

Helen stared at her, turning redder, if that were possible.

Theresa raised her brows, noting her reaction. “You don’t discuss such things in America?” Theresa asked.

“No,” Helen replied, flustered. “At least, I don’t.”

Theresa waved her hand. “I just wondered if he could be as good as he looks.”