Montega's Mistress (7 page)

“It’s the only thing I have of value,” he said, “and even that is more sentimental than monetary. Please keep it, so that you’ll think of me when you see it.”

Helen slipped it onto her ring finger, closing the hand that wore it into a fist.

“Now go,” he said huskily, pushing her toward the dock. “I can’t delay any longer.”

Helen accepted his assistance in climbing up to the wooden walkway, turning to look down at him once she was out of the boat.

“Go,” he urged her. “Walk to your car and don’t look back.”

She hesitated.

“My safety is in your hands,” he warned her. “Farewell,
majita.”

That convinced her, as he had known it would. She hurried back to the car, not risking a glance at the basin until she was behind the wheel.

The
Estrellita
was still there, but its deck was empty. He had gone below.

Helen started the car and drove out of the marina, seeing the road before her through a blur of tears.

Chapter 3

The night Matteo left was the longest night of Helen’s life. It was ridiculous, but she couldn’t sleep without him. She, who had prized solitude since childhood and had lived alone since she graduated from high school, was surrounded by the emptiness of the beach house as if lost in the Siberian wasteland. The compact, functional rooms seemed cavernous, and the bedroom where he had slept was a desert. She wound up dragging her pillow and blanket out to the living room couch and sleeping there, where the memories weren’t quite so painful.

In the days that followed she tried to go back to her old routine, but the 1500’s no longer held the charm for her that they once had. She found she didn’t much care any more what had inspired Christopher Marlowe to write
Tamburlaine
; she had met her own twentieth-century adventurer, and he was the one on her mind.

Helen spent a lot of time sitting on the beach, staring out to sea, thinking about the changes Matteo had brought to her life. She finally decided that she wasn’t going to get any work done as long as she remained in St. Augustine, so she made arrangements to go back to her apartment in Massachusetts. On the day before she was to fly north she went to the supermarket for cleaning supplies, intending to leave the house the way she had found it. Her father employed a housekeeping service, but Helen always felt an obligation to tidy up before she left. When she was younger her mother used to tell people laughingly that Helen cleaned her room before the maid could get to it; she didn’t want the poor woman to face a mess.

After she parked her car in the lot, Helen entered the air- cooled supermarket, picked out a cart and wandered the aisles aimlessly. She stared at the array of sprays and cleansers, soaps and scouring pads, seeing instead the empty deck of the
Estrellita.

She missed Matteo terribly. She felt half alive without him, purposeless, incomplete. She didn’t realize until he was gone that she had admired his dedication, the single mindedness that took him away, because while he was with her she had also resented it. She felt, no, she knew that he had wanted to stay with her, but he had put his ultimate goal before his personal desires. And after twenty-five years of her mother, Helen found his attitude a refreshing, even enlightening, change.

She picked up a box of steel wool pads, looked at the price stamped on it and put it back. She couldn’t organize her thoughts enough to make a decision and finally started tossing items into her basket in rapid succession, eager to finish. She was at loose ends. Taking care of Matteo had made her feel needed for the first time in her life. She had never before experienced the fulfillment associated with helping someone she had grown to care for, and she felt its loss deeply.

She got in line at the checkout counter and picked up a newspaper on a nearby stand, scanning the stories for word of Matteo, as she did every day. She had seen nothing and, as desperate as she was for answers, she kept silent and made no inquiries, determined to keep his presence in her life a secret, as he wished.

As Helen paid her bill, she wondered idly how long it had been since her mother had shopped in a supermarket. Queen Sophia, as Helen’s father still called her, never bought her own groceries. Clothes and jewelry, however, being far more important, commanded her personal attention. One of Helen’s earliest memories was of being dragged around to various salons while her mother tried on samples, took fittings for alterations and ordered up originals from designer sketches. Helen could also recall very clearly sitting in the reception rooms of Tiffany’s or Van Cleef and Arpels, fidgeting with a crystal paperweight on the salesman’s desk while her mother shopped. Sophia sipped tea with lemon from a Limoges cup and shook her head repeatedly, waving away the trays of rings, bracelets and necklaces presented for her inspection. The patient clerks, hoping for a big sale, tried to amuse the fractious child, but Helen was finally sent away with her nanny so Sophia could get on with the important business of selecting a new bauble to add to her collection. What a disappointment I must have been to her, Helen thought suddenly. She really wanted a friend to share her interests, and since Helen’s lay elsewhere, Sophia was forced to resort to the likes of Claudia Fierremonte. Claudia, who lived in Rome but didn’t know who the President of Italy was, could pick out any dress at a charity ball and tell you which designer’s house had made it.

Helen realized that she was standing in the store’s foyer, carrying her bag and looking through the plate glass window at nothing. She shook herself and walked out to the parking lot, blinking in the blazing sunshine and pausing to extricate her keys from her purse. When she reached the car, she inserted her key into the door lock. As she did so, a black sedan came roaring to a stop next to her and two figures bolted from the rear doors on either side. Before she could react one man snatched the bag from her hands and the other one took her arm in an iron grip and hustled her into the back seat. In the space of several seconds she found herself sitting with a captor on either side of her as the driver took off again, tires squealing, the car bulleting into the street and rounding a corner almost instantly.

“What’s going on?” Helen sputtered, looking from one man to the other. “Who are you?”

Neither answered, gazing directly ahead.

Helen’s first thought was that she had been kidnapped for her father’s money. Once, when she was about ten, he had been having trouble with the union at one of his plants. The fighting had been bitter, finally resulting in threats against Helen’s life by anonymous members of the local. The dispute had been resolved eventually, but she always remembered the incident, which served as a warning that wealth carried its penalties as well as its privileges.

“Where are you taking me?” Helen demanded, trying to sound braver than she felt.

The man on her right turned to look at her. “Do not be afraid,” he said, in thickly accented English. “We mean you no harm.”

“What is this about?” she said slowly, beginning to change her mind about the purpose of her abduction. His accent, though cruder and far more pronounced than Matteo’s, sounded hauntingly familiar. Could it be...? Her heart leaped into her throat as he reached inside the collar of his shirt and withdrew a silver chain. A medallion hung from it, and he held it out, displaying it for her. A tropical bird inscribed in a circle glowed in the filtered light from the tinted windows. Helen looked down at her ring; the symbols were the same.

“Matteo,” she whispered. “Does Matteo want to see me?”

Her companion nodded. “Si, Matteo. We take you to him; you come with us. Yes?”

Helen didn’t ask why Matteo hadn’t come himself or why he had chosen such a dramatic method of providing her with an escort. She knew from experience that he had his own reasons for doing everything, and she was so happy at the prospect of seeing him again that she didn’t question them.

She sat back in her seat and watched the passing scenery as the driver, who was clearly familiar with the area, skirted Crescent Beach and St. Augustine and headed for the highway, turning toward Jacksonville. They drove for almost an hour in silence, while her guards stared out the windows and the efficient driver piloted them through downtown Jacksonville and into a seedy, rundown area near the docks. It was the sort of neighborhood Helen would not have ventured into alone, but she was sure that her two companions, both the size of pro linebackers, were under orders from Matteo to protect her with their lives. When the car pulled to a stop and they got out, the men materialized on either side of her like secret service men flanking the President.

Helen looked over the facade of what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse as her companions led her to a rear entrance. It was approached by walking through an alley littered with refuse remaining from a time when business was conducted inside. Sheets from newspapers, handbills and pamphlets crunched underfoot as one of the men opened a door set into the barnsided wall and they stepped through it.

The interior was vast and empty. The man who had spoken to her in the car gestured for her to follow him, and he took her to a small inner office, which must have served as the center of commerce in its day. The second man fell in behind her as Helen entered the glass walled room and was asked to take the only available seat. She did so, wondering uncomfortably where Matteo was. The guards remained with her, obviously waiting for him also.

Helen sighed and tried to get comfortable on the folding chair, ready to remain until he arrived.

* * *

As Helen was settling in to wait, Matteo was on his way to the warehouse by another route, lest anyone should be following his car. He was driving; two of his lieutenants sat in the back seat. As he looked into the mirror he saw the two men exchanging glances. He knew exactly what they were thinking, though they would never be bold enough to say it.

Before leaving for this meeting he had explained his plan to the two of them, and it had met with a less than enthusiastic reception. Disputing their leader’s judgment was out of the question, but their covert looks, their unspoken incredulity, had said it all. They thought Matteo had finally lost his mind.

Relying on the help of an effete American heiress was preposterous. If Helen Demarest did what Matteo proposed, she would be required to fly off to the jungle of a country she’d barely heard of to aid people she didn’t know. To even suppose that she might do so was absurd.

Matteo disagreed. His men were sincere, but their knowledge of Americans was limited to what they heard in political diatribes and read in slanted newspapers. Matteo had lived in the United States for thirteen years while attending school. He knew that Americans loved underdogs and causes, but most of all they loved their freedom, and they admired others who wanted the same thing for themselves. Helen might help him, not in spite of her nationality but because of it.

Matteo turned into the alley leading to the warehouse, schooling himself to keep his inner conflict from showing in his expression. His main reason for leaving Helen in Florida, without the promise of future contact, was to keep her out of danger. Now he was about to ask her to immerse herself in it. He had to dismiss the contradiction because he was desperate. He knew that her feelings for him would convince her to go along with his scheme when other arguments might not, and he was out of options, forced to use her. He saw no alternative.

He stopped the car and got out followed by his men, who trailed him closely, their hands at their belts. The local police were still on the alert for him, and extra patrols had been assigned to the waterfront area. Matteo strode purposefully into the warehouse, heading for the room where Helen had been sequestered.

He had wanted to be there when she arrived, to minimize her anxiety, but his men had persuaded him that it would be better to arrive later and be certain that she was not tailed. He could see the back of her head through the glass as he approached, and his steps quickened.

Helen got up the minute she saw him, momentarily taken aback by the change in his appearance, and then flinched when the men with her took a step toward her as she rose.

Matteo lifted his hand as he came through the door, and they fell back. Helen looked at him, and he returned her stare. Neither said a word.

He had undergone a remarkable transformation. His hair, which she remembered as longish and wavy, was cut short in a contemporary style and tinted to give it an auburn cast. He had a short beard, but unlike the one she had shaved off, this was clipped and neat, like the three day growth worn by models in sportswear advertisements. While it gave him a stylish and slightly rakish air, it also had the desired effect of making his features less sharp and identifiable. He wore aviator glasses with grayed lenses for the purpose of concealing his eyes; Helen knew that his vision was perfect.

His clothes completed the picture. Helen had spent enough time in expensive stores to recognize top quality merchandise: pleated linen pants with a cowhide belt, cotton lisle shirt, soft lamb’s wool sweater. The total image was chic, upscale, preppie. For reasons she didn’t understand he wanted to look that way.

Helen glanced nervously at the guard nearest her, and Matteo nodded toward the door, dismissing the men. All four departed immediately without a questioning glance, but she noticed that one remained just outside the door, within calling distance, his back to the room.