Free In Name Only by Roxanne Jarrett Page B

window, the monotony of flat plains flashing by was broken by an occasional light in the distance. The rain continued and they seemed to be suspended in a dark space, the tunnel of love without love, lit only by headlights, making her feel as if she were traveling endlessly, coming from nowhere, going nowhere. Perhaps Manaus did not really exist except on the maps, and this mysterious man had kidnapped her.
    "Simon?" She wanted to hear his voice, to know that everything was all right.
    "Mmm."
    "Where in the city?" She asked the question haphazardly, not expecting an answer, yet knowing somehow that he understood her.
    "You'll see it soon enough."
    She lapsed back into silence. They would live separate lives, perhaps in separate quarters. Simon might even have a woman somewhere, a woman whom he would turn to, a woman who would understand the kind of man he was, and how he had to marry to retain control of Carteret-Todd.
    "You'll have to excuse me," she said. "I suppose I'm being impatient or tired or excited or something." Her voice faded off.
    The cigarette ash glowed. Faint traces of smoke were blown into the air-conditioning ducts. Simon was so silent, that her awkward badinage seemed to hang in the space between them. A full five minutes might have passed before he bothered to answer her. The cigarette had been stubbed out, although he immediately lit another.
    "We're both tired," he said, and lapsed into silence once again.
    In the distance a row of soft-edged lights signaled the outskirts of Manaus, buildings on either side of the highway only dimly lit and ramshackle. It seemed, in the leveler of the night, to be nothing more than a seedy frontier town. Once an army outpost, the discovery of rubber, "black gold," had turned Manaus into the fabulous White City, sitting deep in the Amazonian heartland, where the turbulent Rio Negro joined the calm waters of the Amazon River, a full twelve hundred miles from the Atlantic Coast.
    Rubber barons at the turn of the century, during the years of untold wealth, erected mansions and public buildings to rival those in Paris or Lisbon. When the bubble burst with the importation of cheaper rubber from Indonesia, the White City had gone to sleep, from which only now it was beginning to awaken. Turned into a free port by the government of Brazil, it was thriving again.
    "You're here." Simon gave her arm a reassuring pat. Jill felt her heart begin to beat faster and faster as the car turned down streets and swept past parks and open plazas, buildings with arched doorways and windows, and the modern entrances to skyscrapers.
    The car drew up before a large, white, surprisingly ornate villa decorated with balconies and slender marble columns, set behind a dense screen of low cut bushes. Lit by softly glowing globes on either side of a massive wooden door, the stark white marble seemed to have an unearthly aura about it. Even the street appeared strange and vaguely surreal in the soft rain, shadowed from the streetlights by plump trees shaped to resemble open umbrellas.
    The door was opened at once, and Simon swept Jill into his arms and carried her across the threshold. "Welcome to Las Flores," he said. Standing before them was a plump, middle-aged woman, a wide smile flooding her friendly face.
    "Senhora Cordero, my wife." Regaining her feet, Jill was immediately gathered into the bosom of Senhora Cordero who kissed her on both cheeks.
    "I didn't think the day would ever come," she pronounced in Portuguese. She stood back and examined Jill with frank, delighted eyes. "Well, you've certainly picked a beautiful one. And so young. Good. Just what we need around here." She put her arm around Jill once again in motherly fashion. "He's a terrible tyrant and never smiles."
    "Senhora Cordero is my surrogate parent, and now she's yours, too," Simon announced. "And she runs Las Flores with an iron hand."
    "In a velvet glove." Senhora Cordero tucked her arm through Jill's. "Come on, poor thing. You