To Abby it was heaven. Not as tangly and scented as the overgrown roses at home, of course. This garden was still properly cared for by professionals. But it was still recognisably natural. She sometimes thought that it was the only thing in this place that was, apart from the horses.
Now she tucked herself onto a mossy stone seat and leaned back, inhaling the evening scents. Content at last, she felt her tense shoulders relax. Immediately both borrowed shoulder straps fell down her arms.
‘Blast, bother and blow,’ said Abby peacefully and left them there. There was, thank God, no one to see.
She tipped her head back, dreaming…
Emilio did not like champagne. It was the first thing he discovered after he won his first big tournament. The second thing was that it was impossible to sign all the autographs they wanted and hold a glass at the same time. The third was that, like it or not, able to write or not, you took a glass and you pretended to drink because that was what made the sponsors feel comfortable. And if they felt comfortable with you, they forgot you weren’t one of them.
Not that he wanted to be one of them. But he wanted to do business with them. And this year was crucial if his ten year game plan was to work. In fact, this evening was probably crucial.
So why was he so restless that he could hardly bear to listen to Felipe Montijo’s important guests? Why did he want to vault over the balustrade and follow the crane fly girl in her escape? Opportunity did not knock twice. He had to seize it with both hands. Concentrate, he told himself.
He sipped the nasty stuff in his glass and bent his powerful attention on what his companion was saying about international wheat prices. The man was too polished to ask him for his autograph but Emilio recognised the look in his eyes, the curiosity about a celebrity. Well, he was a celebrity, for the moment. He had better be grateful and damn well make it work for him. He knew, none better, that it wouldn’t last.
So he circulated, doing oil, bank software, and the prospects for the Argentine wine industry in the process. He gave out business cards and got rather more back. He stored the information for sifting tomorrow, giving thanks for his clear head and computer-accurate memory.
Then his hostess summoned them all to sit at tables set out around the lawn. Tall flambeaux had been driven into the ground and, now that the sun was gone, they were lit. A band set up its music in front of the tennis court. There was laughter from the paddock where the barbecue meats were being cooked. Some of the younger crowd appeared on the lawn and began to dance. Not the crane fly girl, though, Emilio saw.
He wondered where she was. Not chasing one of these callous young studs, he thought, conveniently forgetting that he was only a year older than Bruno Montijo. Emilio had been head of the household since long before his international tennis career started. He had never had anyone to mop up his mistakes for him, like golden Bruno.
Now he thought: someone should make sure that the little crane fly was not deceived by Bruno or one of his cronies. These romantic summer nights, it was all too easy.
He glanced round the tables casually. Bruno was not among the dancers, he saw. Nor was Miguel Santana, another high-octane, low-conscience charmer that Isabel had been out on the town with. Or several others.
Emilio hesitated. But no one was paying any attention to him for the moment. And he had more than done his duty by his ten year plan. He stopped hesitating and escaped.
He found the creek easily enough. There was a pretty circle of trees by a small dock. He could imagine people diving off it. But this evening it was deserted. The younger Montijos were either still eating or had started to dance.
Where was she?
He could not have said why he was searching for her. He told himself that it was because she looked uncertain, another stranger in the Montijos’ magnificent midst. Being a stranger had its dangers. Maybe she didn’t know the creek. Maybe she could have fallen in and needed rescuing.
But it was not that and he knew it. Maybe it was that she looked as out of place as he was. Only in his case it did not show on the outside.
Or maybe it was because Isabel had been an uncertain stranger and nobody had rescued her.
Abby was utterly peaceful for the first time in days. She could hear the soft lap-lap of the creek, beyond the hedge of honey-tinged albas. The darkening sky was splashed with lemon and apricot at the horizon but the impatient stars were out already. In this wonderful clear air, they seemed so close, you could stretch up and touch them if you could bother to bestir yourself. And all around her was the scent of the roses.
They were not roses she knew. There was a peppery pink and a deep, deep crimson that smelled like hot wine. As for the palomino coloured climbing rose that surged around her stone seat—she reached up and buried her nose in it. What did it smell of? Abby shut her eyes. Concentrating.
Emilio found the grotto by accident. At first he thought it was just a gardener’s corner, hedged around to hide tools and a compost heap. But a perverse desire to see the decaying cabbage leaves of elegant Hacienda Montijo pushed him through the break in the hedge.
To find what he had not admitted he was looking for! He stopped dead.
She did not notice him at first, his crane fly girl. She had her nose buried in a big tatty rose. Its petals were the colour of French toast and its leaves were almost black. As he looked she raised her head and, eyes closed, inhaled luxuriously. Her oversophisticated dress was nearly falling off. But she was oblivious to everything but her rose.
‘Paper,’ she said aloud. ‘No—parchment. And something else. Cloves?’
She opened her eyes and bent to take another connoisseur’s sniff. She never got there. She saw him. Her eyes widened in dismay.
Well, at least she wasn’t going to ask him for his autograph, thought Emilio, trying to be amused. But he was not. That look piqued him. His time had not yet passed. People were still eager to welcome this celebrity. He did not like being toadied to, of course he didn’t, but he wasn’t used to people glaring at him as if he was an evil destroyer from another planet, either.
He nearly said so. But at the last moment he changed tack and decided to use the legendary charm instead. If it worked on journalists and crowned heads, who saw a lot of world-class charm, it ought to work on this odd creature in her ill-fitting dress.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ he said with the crooked, rueful smile that the photographers loved.
It did not appear to work. Emilio was taken aback.
The girl frowned mightily. It looked fierce. But of course she must be having to translate in her head, he thought, suddenly understanding the significance of the words he had overheard. Now was she American? Canadian? Australian? English?
He said forgivingly, ‘I’ll go,’ and waited for her to tell him to stay.
She stood up and said with great care, ‘I thought I am—sorry, I thought I was alone.’
All right, she wasn’t going to tell him to stay. But she probably did not have the vocabulary for it. He recognised the wooden accent.
‘English?’ said Emilio in that language, strolling in to the centre of the bower.
She looked annoyed. ‘Yes. But I try to speak Spanish. I did a course before I came out here specially. Only no one will let me.’
He selected another rose from the torrent and lifted it on one long finger.
‘That’s probably because your ideas are too interesting to get lost in first-grade vocabulary.’ He tried another smile. ‘What was it you said this thing smelled of? Parchment?’
She nodded seriously.
‘And what does parchment smell like?’
To his amusement she closed her eyes to answer