Daughters of the Summer Storm by Frances Statham (best sci fi novels of all time .TXT) 📗

plant. And he was forcing them into her mouth. "Chew them," he ordered, but Maranta, shaking her head, struggled against him and tried to spit them out.

Was he trying to poison her? Had she displeased him so much that he had decided to get rid of her?

"Pequena, I pray you. Do not struggle against me. Do as I ask," he begged in a hoarse voice. And Maranta, too tired to keep up the battle, accepted the leaves between her small, white teeth and tasted their bitterness on her tongue. If Dom Ruis wanted to get rid of her, there was nothing she could do to stop him.

A strange, floating feeling came over her. In and out of consciousness she drifted, while she murmured in her delirium. And at times, when she awoke, she saw Ruis sitting by her bed. Never Sassia—never the condessa or Dona Isobel. Always the dark-haired conde. Completely deserted, with no one in the world but Dom Ruis to soothe her hot forehead with the damp cloths, to force the bitter leaves into her mouth, to hold her and make her drink the water—always the cool water.

Once, she thought she saw an angel with long, golden hair and pale blue eyes gazing down at her. Was she dying and at the gate of heaven? But no. That was impossible. Maranta was too wicked to go to heaven. Her tears clouded her vision, and the angel disappeared.

The quietness in the room was disturbed by the chirping of a bird. Fado—and she had not fed him or given him water.

"Fado," Maranta murmured, trying to lift her head from the pillow.

The deep voice was assuring. "Fado is all right, menina. Can you hear him singing for you?"

"Y-Yes," she whispered, and the effort of speaking left her exhausted. Maranta's eyes closed and she slept.

The demons rapidly multiplied, invading her mind and body, sending pain and agony, numbing her legs. Her throat was on fire. Maranta cried out, and the man held her against his chest, rocking her back and forth.

"What is bothering you, menina?" he inquired gently, pushing back the long, dark hair from her tiny, pale face.

"My legs," she answered. "They're numb."

His hand stopped abruptly. And before she could object, Ruis had jerked back the bed cover and was examining the slender legs, the tiny feet.

"Move them, Maranta," he urged.

"I. . . don't think I c-can," she said, too ill to feel any embarrassment at Dom Ruis's intimacy.

"You will move them, Maranta. I order you to do so."

His command meant nothing to her. She lay still, with only the fluttering of her hand to show that there was any life left in her body.

"God—no!" Ruis groaned and stumbled from the bedside.

Far into the night, the candles of myrtle wax burned, and the low chant of the family priest intermingled with the shallow breathing of the small figure that lay in the massive oriental bed.

As the pale sun finally slipped through the window, the priest arose from his knees. He took one last look at the girl on the bed, the sleeping conde in a chair beside her, before walking out into the hall. His steps led him along the gallery, down through the chapel, and to his own room at the back. Three nights they had kept watch together, and he was exceedingly weary.

The room was warm—much too warm for Maranta. She stirred and kicked off the heavy white comforter that covered her. And a laugh of jubilation filled the room.

The man smiling down at her was a stranger. Bloodshot eyes and a heavy growth of beard. And yet, there was something familiar about him too.

"Ruis?"

"You moved your legs, pequena," the conde said, his deep voice sounding relieved.

Maranta frowned. Why should that make him happy? she wondered. A moving of her legs. Did he think she was immobile?

In a few days, Maranta's fever had vanished, and she sat up, with pillows in embroidered lace propped behind her. Every two hours she was brought nourishment and urged to eat. But it was Sassia who now attended her. Dom Ruis had disappeared at the same time as her fever.

20

A week later, Maranta left her room for the first time since she had become ill.

On the veranda she sat, content to be lazy and do nothing more strenuous than gaze out toward the slopes of coffee plants in the distance.

"So you finally decided not to make a widower out of me."

The voice spoken from behind prompted Maranta to turn her head. Vasco pushed his rolling chair toward her and stopped. His calculating inspection of her thin body in the aqua dress that Sassia had altered and the dark circles under her eyes made Maranta nervous.

"D-Dom Vasco," she said, surprised to see her husband on the veranda.

"You gave Ruis quite a scare. And now I see why. There isn't much left of you, is there?"

At his brutal frankness, Maranta paled and could not think of a reply.

Evidently, Vasco expected none. "He thought you had rabies, you know. From the bat."

"I. . . did not know."

"Of course, Ruis said nothing to Mãe about his fears. It would have shattered all her carefully laid plans. And I doubt she could have stood that."

"What do you mean?"

"Come now, Maranta Monteiro é Tabor. Do you think I do not know why you were brought to the fazenda?"

He leaned toward her and with relish, he whispered, "Ruis loves Mãe too much not to give her what her heart desires—even though it means taking to bed a girl he has no feeling for."

Maranta's hand went up to her cheek, and she fled from the veranda, the sound of Dom Vasco's taunting laughter following her.

All the time Ruis had taken care of her, he had been doing it for Mãe. Maranta meant nothing to him. And she meant nothing to Dom Vasco either, except as someone to taunt and tease in her humiliating situation. Why had the conde not allowed her to die? She did not belong on