The Spaniard's Woman

by Diana Hamilton

  Better make an effort or her hostess might guess that her lack of appetite and hangdog expression sprang from something even more traumatic than her first meeting with her father.

  While she dutifully sipped the cool fruit juice Elvira sank on to the chair opposite.

  ‘Your father is an honourable man, Rosie. He must have loved your mother deeply to forget his marriage vows. He was so careful of Lucia right up until the end of her life. He would never have left her, and he assures me your mother accepted that. He had no idea she was pregnant with you when she left. You do believe that, don’t you?’

  Rosie nodded, the ever-ready tears misting her eyes. Her mother had experienced so much hardship because of the decision she’d made, but at least she’d done what she’d thought was right.

  ‘Lucia had already lost so much.’ Dona Elvira sighed. ‘Marcus couldn’t take her faith in him away from her. It must have been so hard for him when she fell ill so early on in their married life. They were both truly desperate to have children and, sadly, that didn’t happen. But now he has you, and he’s so happy about it. I tell you the truth—he can’t stop smiling!’

  Cue a big smile of her own. Elvira must be wondering why she looked as if she’d lost a ten-pound note and found a farthing!

  ‘I’m happy about it, too,’ she assured the other woman, and that, at least, was the whole truth.

  And Terrina’s gone. Sebastian is driving her to Seville as we speak. The engagement’s off, thank goodness. She wouldn’t have been right for him.’

  Rosie’s smile faded immediately. Terrina had gone because Sebastian had threatened her. She asked anxiously, Is Marcus upset?’

  ‘Not at all. I think it came as a relief to him that she called it off before he was forced to! I know he’s been having second thoughts—being married to such a demanding creature would have been a high price to pay for getting a child. Which was all he wanted from her, if the truth were to be told. And because you came to find him that space in his life is filled!’

  She had come to Spain and made herself known because Sebastian had forced her hand. Because he’d known that in presenting Marcus with his own flesh and blood he would have been halfway home in his driving need to get rid of Terrina, the woman who, as Marcus’s wife, would stand in the way of his inheritance?

  Left to her own dithery devices she would probably have tried to make some kind of contact with her father, just to satisfy her curiosity. When that had been accomplished she would in all likelihood have removed herself from his vicinity without revealing who she was, because she would have been afraid of an outright rejection, or, even worse, of being laughed at.

  So why hadn’t Sebastian let her go her own way? He must have known that, in insisting that she tell her father who she was, he ran the risk of putting her between him and the inheritance he was so keen to hang on to?

  Perhaps there was more to his threats to Terrina than she knew about.

  She was so muddled now she was sure her head was on the verge of bursting, and when Elvira said, ‘Your father is anxious to spend the day with you. I thought we might start by showing you around the house and the various courtyards,’ Rosie sprang to her feet with more energy than she’d managed to find all morning, desperately anxious to put all thoughts of Sebastian out of her mind until she could speak to him and demand to know why he’d threatened Terrina.

  Peace. Silence and tranquillity. Just the sound of the water playing in the courtyard’s central fountain, the whisper of the breeze in the parasol pines beyond the high stone outer wall.

  Trailing patterns of mist were silvered in the moonlight.

  Rosie breathed deeply of the soft, perfumed air. The household slept. She would never lose her way in the extensive building again. She’d been given the complete guided tour.

  Not that she’d be here for much longer. Marcus was anxious to get back to England. He wanted to introduce her to his friends, his staff, and anyone else with the slightest inclination to listen.

  And to show her around the home that had been in their family for hundreds of years.

  When she’d confessed that she already knew Troone Manor fairly intimately—at floor and window pane level—explaining about the way she’d taken a temporary cleaning job, he’d hugged her fiercely and thanked her for taking the trouble when others in her situation might have written him off.

  It had been a hectic, emotional day, one way or another. And as she and her father had taken the first steps towards getting to know one another she’d been able to stop thinking about Sebastian who had, apparently, decided to combine driving Terrina to Seville—her preferred destination—with a business meeting. He wasn’t expected back until some time tomorrow.

  But now her mind was filling with him. The way he held his head, the way he looked and the way he felt. The palms of her hands ached to touch his face; her lips were tremulously softening for his kiss. No matter how hard she’d tried to convince herself of his mercenary, manipulative nature, or how often she’d told herself that mourning over unrequited love was a huge waste of time, she couldn’t stop thinking of him, wanting and needing him.

  A solitary tear slid down her cheek, and when she heard approaching footsteps over the paving slabs she hurriedly wiped it away with the back of her hand. Her father? One of the staff?

  ‘Querida.’

  She would know that voice anywhere. The softly spoken endearment made her bones quiver. The ground tilted beneath her feet.

  Rosie had to force herself to turn and face him. She knew what damage it could do to the semblance of equilibrium she’d been nurturing all day.

  She’d been so right to be afraid, she acknowledged on an inner sob of despair. He was so beautiful. Moonlight threw the planes of his face into harsh relief, tumbled in his endearingly rumpled hair, darkened the tanned skin which was already emphasised by the white shirt that clung to his wide shoulders. She would love this man to the end of time, forgive him anything; there lay the danger.

  Knowing she had to fight it, remind herself that all she’d ever been to him was a willing partner in a furtive sexual fling, she gathered her defences and stated calmly, ‘You startled me. I thought you weren’t expected back until tomorrow.’

  ‘I was impatient to return.’

  He was close enough for her to feel his body heat, to inhale the heady male scent of him. His lean, fantastically sexy body was tautly held, and she wished he wasn’t so impossibly gorgeous, so utterly tempting…

  ‘Do you want to know the reason for my impatience?’ His eyes glittered beneath the dark, heavy fringe of lashes. ‘Shall I tell you?’

  Tension spiralled inside her. When he looked at her like that, one dark brow indolently raised, a smile playing at the corners of his sensual mouth, and spoke in that low, sexy undertone, she just flipped. Already she could feel hot colour flooding over her face.

  Self-defensively, she turned away. ‘I can guess.’ Was that shaky squawk her voice? Dabbling her fingers in the cool water that trickled from the fountain into a wide, heavily carved bowl, she pulled in a breath and managed calmly, ‘You can relax. I’m not pregnant. And I’m as pleased about it as you must be,’ she tacked on hurriedly, just in case he thought she found the news unwelcome because she’d wanted to have some hold over him, trap him maybe.

  She couldn’t see his face, of course, but he was probably grinning from ear to ear with relief. But when he eventually spoke after moments of silence that made her spine prickle, he sounded sort of heavy.

  ‘If that’s what you really feel, then we must take more care in future.’

  Future? What future?

  An on/off furtive affair? Someone he could count on for no-strings sexual release whenever he happened to visit the UK?

  She might, for her sins, love the brute, but she would not be seduced into being his bit on the side! Or was he really going to ask her to marry him, as he’d told Terrina he would?

  ‘Forget it!’ She whirled round on her heels, gla
ring up into his hard, implacable features. ‘I don’t intend to jump into bed with you whenever you’re around and happen to feel the urge! But at least your offer—if that was what it was—means you’ve stopped being so darn ratty!’ she finished on a humiliating wobble. Dammit all, she was crying again! When would she learn to grow up and be adult enough to hide her emotions?

  ‘Stop it, Rosie!’ Sebastian commanded rawly, his hands curving heavily around her shoulders. ‘Don’t cry. Idiota! I was never angry with you—or only for a few shocked moments when I stupidly thought you were spinning a line when you claimed to be Marcus’s daughter. And I did apologise for that, remember? Remember?’ he reiterated firmly, giving her a gentle shake when she refused to answer.

  ‘You shouldn’t have believed that, not even for a moment!’ she objected thickly. ‘You really hurt me, you know that?’

  They had spent such a perfect evening and night together and she’d really dared to believe that he was beginning to feel something more than just lust for her. Then he’d made her whole world fall apart by accusing her of being out for what she hoped she could get.

  ‘I’m sorry, cara mia, I hope you will some day forgive me for a momentary lack of trust.’ He looped an arm around her shoulders and led her to a seat in a corner of the courtyard, beneath an arbour covered with wisteria, designed to give shade in the heat of the day. ‘Sit and listen to my confession.’

  He settled beside her and took her hands in his. Rosie smartly released them, sensing real danger. He only had to touch her to have every sensible thought flying out of her head. She fished in the pocket of her stylish jacket for a tissue and blew her nose.

  Loudly.

  Hopefully, her elephantine trumpeting would put him off his stride, stop him from seducing her disastrously weak self into agreeing to his dubious and disgracefully demeaning plans for her future.

  It didn’t have the desired effect. Even here, in the shadows where the moonlight didn’t reach, she could see him smile. And his hand as he brushed her hair away from her overheated forehead was bone-shakingly tender.

  ‘I was nineteen when I fell in love for the first time,’ he told her quietly. ‘Looking back, I know it was just a sudden rush of the rioting hormones that young men are prone to. I met Magdalena in a night-club. She was absolutely stunning. And when she made a direct play for me I was so flattered, so puffed up with pride, I could barely stand upright! I was so besotted I did everything she asked of me—bought her anything that took her fancy, squired her to the best restaurants, brought her home to meet my parents. You name it, Magdalena got it.’

  ‘That weekend we spent here she got careless. She wrote a postcard to her sister in Madrid and asked Tomas to post it. She hadn’t bargained on the average human being’s curiosity. Tomas read it and brought it to me. In essence, it was boasting about her divine luck. She’d landed a rich idiot. Five years her junior and still wet enough behind the ears to be as malleable as putty. That weekend, at his fancy home, she was going to get an engagement ring out of him and then she’d be home and dry and looking forward to a life of luxury. After that, I have to admit, I got cynical,’ he continued with a self-deprecating shrug of his wide shoulders.

  ‘Especially when I met more of her kind over the ensuing years. Glossily packaged women trading on their looks, with their eyes on the main chance. And that, cara, will explain—not excuse—why my hard-nosed cynicism made me overreact when you told me who you were.’

  He took her hands in his again and this time she made no attempt to remove them, mesmerised by what he had told her, even pitying him and the circumstances of great wealth, not to mention fabulous good looks, that had made him so wary of women and their motives. It had turned him into a cynic, too, she thought sadly. His only interest the acquisition of more and more wealth.

  ‘And as for being ratty, as you put it, my anger wasn’t directed towards you, mia cara, but against Marcus for what I perceived as a double betrayal—against Tia Lucia and your abandoned mother. For the life of hardship you and she had to bear. When I actually listened to what he had to say I understood and could finally sympathise.’

  ‘You only thought about what you call the “double betrayal” when you began to believe that I might really have proof of my identity. To begin with, your immediate thought was of my father’s money,’ she accused miserably, ‘hating to have to think so badly of him.’

  ‘For that I am sorry. I have told you. Explained why I became so mistrustful. Please forgive me.’

  Rosie mentally stiffened her spine. If she allowed herself to weaken she could easily agree to become his occasional mistress, if only to prove to him that this woman could love him for what he was, not for the depth of his pocket.

  Yet something was niggling at the back of her mind and, try as she might, flustered as her emotions were, she couldn’t access it.

  Until the pressure of his lean fingers on hers increased and he said in a driven undertone, ‘Marry me, Rosie. I want you for my wife.’

  She felt as if she’d been hit by a ton of bricks. She’d been dreading this, really hoping that he wasn’t so self-seeking as to go this far. Terrina’s words punched fiery holes in her brain and pushed daggers through her heart: ‘You’d better get your skates on and slap a wedding ring on his new-found daughter’s finger, hadn’t you? It’s the only way to make sure of your future inheritance.’

  The smooth-tongued, manipulative louse hadn’t wasted any time, had he? How could he do this to her? He was no better than that—whatever her name was—who had tried to trap him into marriage for mercenary reasons all those years ago!

  With a monumental effort, considering how closely her legs resembled a half-set jelly, she made it to her feet. And her voice was all raggedy as she got out, ‘Get lost, Sebastian! And if you value your eyesight you’ll never come near me again!’

  And stumbled back into the house. And got lost all over again.

  When, half blinded by the ridiculous tears she had no sensible reason for shedding, she located her room, she only had time to lock the door behind her and crumple into a heap of misery on the floor before his imperious knock came. His tense request that she open it. Right now.

  She ignored it. The carved door was stout. He’d need an axe to gain entry.

  She would ignore him and whatever he said or did for the rest of her life!

  Strange how that resolution brought her no comfort at all.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  GOING through the motions, Rosie showered, dressed in a sleek cream linen skirt and topped it with a light silk-knit over blouse, did her make-up and forced herself out into the small courtyard where breakfast, so she’d been told, was taken in fine weather.

  Marcus and Elvira were already seated at the white cloth-covered table in the shade of a gnarled fig tree, and as her father rose to his feet, his face a bright welcome, Rosie determinedly returned his smile.

  Today was a new beginning. In turning down Sebastian’s cynical proposal in no uncertain manner, listening to his impatient footsteps retreating down the corridor last night, she’d become stronger, in charge of her own destiny, far less likely to jump when he decided to tweak her strings.

  ‘Good morning, my dear—we have another beautiful day.’

  Elvira’s greeting was just as welcoming. Rosie agreed that, yes, it was, and took a vacant seat, a warm glow melting the block of ice that had been her heart. It was wonderful to feel she was accepted. It went some way towards cancelling out Sebastian’s coldly calculating manipulations.

  The table was set with jugs of iced juice, pots of coffee, hot rolls wrapped in linen napkins, pots of conserve and a dish of sliced tomatoes sprinkled with fresh herbs. Rosie’s stomach closed up as she helped herself to coffee, willing the hand that held the pot not to shake.

  Elvira laid down her napkin and got to her feet, very smart this morning in a light grey tailored suit, her dark hair coiled in a glossy knot at her nape. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me, b
ut duty calls. I have a committee meeting in Jerez—a worthwhile charity. Have either of you seen my son this morning?’

  Was her gaze, her query, directed mainly at her? Had Elvira guessed that there was more to her relationship with Sebastian than his self-appointed mission to deliver her to her father?

  Willing herself not to blush, Rosie shook her head, and at her father’s negative reply she wondered if, after last night’s put-down, he’d taken himself off to sulk and grumble at himself for the lost opportunity to secure his future inheritance.

  She sincerely hoped so, even if a wayward and regrettably treacherous part of her missed him. It would be easier on her if she never had to set eyes on him again.

  ‘What would you like to do today?’ Relaxed, his smile indulgent, Marcus leant back in his chair. ‘Anything you like, sweetheart. Drive to the coast? Explore Jerez, Cadiz? Or we could try to get a flight back to England—I can’t wait to get you back home. Think about it. We can revisit Spain at our leisure whenever you like.’

  Which would be never!

  ‘Going home sounds great.’ Rosie was sure she meant it, any doubts swept away by the beam of satisfaction on her father’s face. Besides, looked at sensibly, putting a great deal of distance between herself and Sebastian was the best way of dealing with this situation.

  ‘You finish your breakfast, sweetheart, while I make a phone call. We may have to wait a day or two, but I’ll book us on the first available flight.’

  Marcus was already on his feet when Sebastian strode purposefully towards them. Dressed in a crisp white shirt tucked into narrow dark trousers, he looked so handsome it was terrifying.

  Rosie’s heartbeat accelerated and her stomach convulsed as she watched like a mesmerised rabbit while he addressed Marcus, his proud head high, his features expressionless, as he stated, ‘Marcus, sir, I would like your permission to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage.’

  In the shocking silence that followed that outlandish request Rosie could cheerfully have throttled him. Then she just wanted to curl up and die! This was so humiliating!