Lure Of Eagles

But once they had gained the comparative privacy of the corridor, his fingers gripped her upper arm without her volition. ‘Let me see it,’ he commanded, gesturing towards her foot, and in spite of her previous intentions, she extended it for his inspection. ‘Idiota! Imbecil!’ he muttered savagely, squatting down beside her and massaging her foot with exquisite gentleness, and Domine caught her breath.

‘Who?’ she asked jerkily. ‘Me? It wasn’t my fault really. It was an accident——’

‘I did not say I meant you, did I?’ he objected, looking up at her with those dark enigmatic eyes. ‘Perhaps I meant myself, for allowing such a thing to happen.’

Domine’s breathing felt constricted suddenly. ‘It—it wasn’t anybody’s fault,’ she got out unevenly. ‘I—will it be all right?’

‘Nothing seems to be broken,’ he reassured her, making a final searching examination. ‘It may be a little stiff tomorrow, but that is all.’

‘Thank you.’ Domine slipped her foot back into her sandal as he rose to his feet. Already most of the stinging pain had left it, and only the bruising of the flesh remained to remind her of the incident. That, and the disruptive tenderness of Luis’s hands upon her skin. ‘I—I suppose we’d better go back to the restaurant now.’

‘I suppose we better had,’ he agreed gravely, supporting himself against the panelled wall of the corridor, but he made no attempt to move away, and Domine’s pulses raced. ‘Tell me,’ he added, the hooded lids shading his expression, ‘how soon can you be ready to leave for Lima? One week? Two? I myself must return in a day or so, but I should like to know when you expect to make the journey.’

Domine’s smile was quizzical. ‘Do you really care?’ Then, when he made no effort to answer her, she continued: ‘I don’t really know—I haven’t thought about it yet. Will I need a visa? And are there injections I should have?’

Luis frowned. ‘You will not need a tourist card, but as for inoculations—yes, I suppose there are certain precautions you should take. Yellow fever, smallpox and tetanus, certainly. And perhaps typhus, too, although that is not absolutely essential.’

Domine grimaced. ‘So many!’

Luis’s expression softened. ‘But necessary, do you not agree?’ His eyes moved over her face to the creamy skin rising from the folds of black chiffon. ‘You would not like to see that smooth skin scarred with pockmarks, would you? And I assure you, typhus has equally unpleasant symptoms.’

‘All right.’ Domine adjusted her sandal strap under his intent gaze. ‘I’ll make the necessary appointments.’ She hesitated. ‘I just wish you weren’t leaving so soon.’

‘Why?’

For once he responded to her wistful anxiety, and she looked up at him with appealing candour. ‘Because—well, because I’ve never made such a long journey alone. In fact, I haven’t made any journeys alone before. Grandpa always insisted I had a companion, usually my mother’s Aunt Barbara. She came with me to Italy last summer.’

His expression was thoughtful now, the finely-chiselled lips drawn into a considering line. ‘Your grandfather,’ he said, as if speaking his thoughts aloud. ‘You feel no antagonism towards him, do you? Do you not feel any resentment towards your cousin either?’

‘Why should I?’ Domine was philosophical. ‘Grandpa did what he thought was best. Perhaps he was right. If he’d left me the mills, he knew Mark would have——’

But she broke off there, realising suddenly what she was saying, and to whom she was saying it. She was not supposed to take sides, and certainly not with the man who represented her cousin. If Mark could hear her …

‘I see.’ Luis straightened away from the wall now, and she could tell from his expression that he understood very well what she had been about to say. ‘So you will come in two weeks, yes? And your brother shall remain here, and we will see what kind of success he has in running the mills.’

Domine gulped. ‘You’re leaving Mark in charge?’

‘Temporarily,’ he agreed. ‘Answerable to Mr Holland, and ultimately to his own board of directors, of course.’

Domine shook her head. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘You do not recommend me to do this thing?’ he enquired, and she made a helpless movement of her shoulders.

‘No! Yes! I mean, why are you doing this?’

‘We have a saying in my country,’ he said, beginning to walk back to the restaurant, and she had, perforce, to accompany him. They reached the glass doors, and through them she could see Mark and Inez still sitting stiffly at their table. ‘It is: if a man can float, he will not drown; but if he can swim, he will reach the shore safely.’

Domine sighed. ‘You—expect Mark to—prove himself?’

‘Or not, as the case may be.’

‘You don’t trust him, do you?’

Luis put a hand on the glass door. ‘I trust you,’ he said quietly, and Domine would never have believed those three words could be instilled with so much meaning for her.

CHAPTER THREE

IT had been a long and frustrating journey.

The flight left London in the middle of the morning, but although they reached Antigua in the Caribbean afternoon on schedule, there was a three-hour delay at St Johns before their take-off for Caracas. Consequently, it was quite late in the evening when they landed at Maiquetia, the narrow airstrip that served the capital of Venezuela.

Domine was exhausted. Her initial enchantment with vistas of blue skies and even bluer waters had given way to weariness, and she was almost relieved when she learned that the flight for Lima had been postponed until the following morning. Darkness had fallen during the trip from Antigua, and now wrapped around the airport like a velvety blanket, reminding her acutely that in England it was already the middle of the night.

Yet it was not only the time change that made her welcome the delay. She was travelling alone for the first time, but that had not really worried her. The feeling of doubt and uncertainty that had gripped her ever since Luis had returned home owed little to her nerves about flying. She was more concerned with the consequences of what she was doing, and the unsettling realisation that her anticipation was not to meet her cousin for the first time, but to see Luis Aguilar again.

Mark thought she was mad for making the trip, but then Mark was unaware of her feelings, feelings she scarcely understood herself. He thought she saw the whole thing as a chance holiday, a break before she was obliged to seek some kind of employment, and fortunately he was too wrapped up in the affairs of the mill to see through her carefully erected defences. He seemed to regard the opportunity he had been given as a challenge, and she guessed Luis’s contempt had achieved what her grandfather’s anger had not. Mark was determined to succeed, and she supposed she ought to be grateful for that.

For her own part, she had been occupied with arranging the necessary injections, and indulging in last-minute bouts of shopping for clothes suitable to a Peruvian summer. She had refused to brood over the rights and wrongs of what she was doing, or allow the doubts she cherished to interfere with her sleep. Whatever happened, she was committed to spending at least two weeks in Peru, and at the end of that time she would know exactly where she stood.

It had taken longer than she had expected to arrange her departure. For one thing, her vaccination against smallpox had reacted painfully on her, and she felt so ill, her doctor had advised her to wait the recommended three weeks before having her typhus inoculation. Consequently, it was three weeks, instead of two, since Luis had departed, and each succeeding day had strengthened her need to see him again, while weakening any faith she had in his attitude towards her. He had treated her politely at the last, shown sympathy when she hurt herself, and interest in her travel arrangements—but that was all! Anything else was pure fantasy on her behalf, and she knew part of her desire to prolong the journey was compounded of the knowledge that she could delude herself for a little longer.

In fact, Domine had little time the following morning to feel any kind of apprehension. Awakening early, her body still attuned to European time, she watched the sun gild the waters of the Caribbean, visible from the window of her hotel room while she ate breakfast. There was freshly-squeezed orange juice, recommended by the black-skinned waiter who served her supper the night before, hot rolls with jelly, and strongly-flavoured coffee. She even made a good meal, in spite of her lack of appetite on the flight out the previous day.

She was glad of the opportunity it had given her to change. The jersey suit she had worn in London was stowed in her case, and out came cotton pants and a short-sleeved cotton shirt. Even her hair felt heavy in the humidity of the coastal plain, and she listened with interest when the elder English man who sat beside her in the Boeing explained that it was much cooler in Caracas itself.

‘It’s the altitude,’ he explained, ‘or in this case, the lack of it. Caracas is over three thousand feet above sea level. They call it the city of eternal spring.’

Domine was intrigued and tempted to ask whether he knew Lima as well, but she decided against it. She would see the city for herself soon enough, and besides, she would not be staying there. Her destination was Puerto Limas.

Luis had left instructions that she should communicate the date and time of her arrival to a firm of solicitors in Lima, who were acting on her cousin’s behalf. They in their turn would make the onward arrangements for her trip south, and no doubt Lisel herself would meet her at the airport in Arequipa.

The flight from Caracas to Lima was the most spectacular stage of her journey, and she could understand any pilot not wishing to make the trip without having complete confidence in the reliability of his aircraft. Climbing out of Caracas, the awesome majesty of the Guayana highlands gave way to the foothills of the Andes, looming before them like an insurmountable barrier to the west. Range upon range of the most treacherous mountains in the world, their snow-capped peaks possessing a terrifying fascination, a cruel beauty, that both excited and repelled. The high plateaux and deep gorges were clearly visible once the shield of rain-cloud rising from the Amazon basin in the south had disappeared; but their size was encapsulated, their vastness condensed, so that the scene was represented in miniature, a compact landscape of mountains and valleys, hiding the jagged rock formations, the icy citadels, where man was as helpless as a lamb in a snowstorm.

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