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Her stomach rolled and kept on rolling as she read in growing disbelief what it was she had been handed.
A bequest, it said, and named a figure that scrambled her brain all the more. Enrique Ramirez had bequeathed her just enough money to save Santa Rosa.
Just enough to pay off her debts.
Dared she believe it? The letter had been delivered in a very unconventional manner. Maybe it was a joke—a very sick joke. Maybe she would be wise checking out the source before she—
The door suddenly opened and she looked up just to stare as Luis’s mother walked in.
‘Are you all right?’ Scott-Lee questioned warily.
‘No.’ It was no use pretending she was when she wasn’t.
‘You feel ill? The letter—distressed you?’
The letter, Cristina thought, is a dream come true.
Except for one unattainable dream. ‘I think I need to go to my room,’ she whispered.
‘Of course,’ Luis’s mother said, walking towards her. ‘I will take you there—’ Then she stopped, hesitation in every line of her slender, elegant frame. ‘You know about Vaasco and me, don’t you?’ she thrust out suddenly.
Cristina nodded. ‘You were betrothed to him, but you had an affair with another man. This man.’
Cristina held out the letter. Pale as herself now, hands as unsteady as her own hands, Luis’s mother took the letter, lowered her eyes and began to read.
‘Ramirez again,’ she breathed after a long silence, then on a heavy sigh she folded into the chair next to Cristina’s.
Cristina did not know what to say to her. When you possessed the knowledge that a woman of Luis’s mother’s stature had had some wild affair beneath the very roof of her then betrothed, words just refused to come.
‘You knew Enrique well for him to leave you this money?’
The money. Cristina sucked in a deep breath as her stomach rolled again. She knew why it kept doing that. She understood exactly why she was feeling sickly instead of jumping for joy.
‘I met him only once,’ she replied. ‘He—he saved my life when I was very little…Why did Luis mention his name to me?’
‘Anton,’ his mamma corrected absently.
For some crazy reason, in this mixed-up situation, Cristina heard herself laugh. ‘I know his name, senhora,’ she said dryly. ‘I have known his name for a long time—for six years, in fact, since we first met and fell in love and then—’ Lost each other, she tagged on silently
‘You mean—you are the one?’ Maria Scott-Lee was staring at her oddly.
‘The one?’ Cristina frowned.
So did Luis’s mother. ‘Nothing.’ She looked away. ‘Forget I mentioned it.’
Silence tumbled. And, in the way that everything had been happening in its own peculiar way tonight, the silence was not tense or tight or hostile, as it should have been. It was just—silent.
‘You love my son?’ Scott-Lee asked suddenly.
I refuse to answer that, Cristina thought. ‘I will not be marrying him, if that is where this is leading.’
‘But why not? What is wrong with Anton that you turn him down not once but twice?’
‘Who said that I turned him down twice?’ Cristina asked sharply.
‘No one. My mistake.’ His mother was frowning again. ‘Why are you saying you will not marry him?’
For a million unutterable reasons, she thought hollowly—but named only one. ‘Well, he’s a womaniser, if you must know.’
