The Spaniard's Woman

y knowing him, she had jumped into bed with him ‘—after we became close you could have told me why you were there.’

Close. Did his mind only work on the sexual level where she was concerned? Of course it did. ‘We were only close in the physical sense,’ she mumbled, blushing like fury. In every other way we’re miles apart.’

‘Really?’ Bitter?

‘Of course.’ Not bitterness. Probably sarcasm. What could he possibly have to be bitter about in that context? A cleaning woman brought up on a sink estate, and someone like you who has never had to worry about mundane things like how to pay the gas bill.’ Another knot in the soggy handkerchief. ‘We’re not remotely close in anything that matters. But the real reason I didn’t say anything was because I didn’t want to upset you,’ she explained, her conscience pricking her into confessing.

‘You obviously thought the world of your aunt. And you’d have been sickened if I’d told you your aunt had been betrayed and the result had been me. I just knew you’d despise what I was. A nasty stain on your family. And I wasn’t going to do anything horrible, like blackmailing him into paying up for all those years of neglect,’ she said in breathy self-defence.

‘I just wanted to find out what kind of man my father was. If I liked him I would have told him who I was and that my mother had passed on and had never stopped loving him. Given him the pendant back and vanished. If I hadn’t liked him I would have sent the wretched thing back anonymously.’

‘Yet you did tell me, in the end,’ he pointed out with supreme dryness, ignoring the greater part of her gabbled speech.

‘Why?’

Rosie wriggled on her seat. He asked the most awkward questions in the coolest of voices. How could she possibly tell him she had fallen in love with him and couldn’t bear to go on deceiving him?

Ignoring the love bit, she hunched her slender shoulders and managed to mutter, as if it were something to be ashamed of,

‘I didn’t want secrets.’

His brilliant eyes had narrowed, but his smile was something else. He simply said, ‘Ah, I see,’ but he looked like a man who’d just been told he’d won the lottery.

Rosie’s breathing went on hold, and when he stood and said, ‘Let’s go face the music, shall we?’ she could only scramble to her feet and follow, knowing she would never understand him in a trillion years.

Knowing, sadly, that she would never be given the opportunity to try.

CHAPTER NINE

‘WELCOME to my home, Rosie. My son has told me so much about you.’

Dona Elvira looked genuinely pleased to see her and Rosie, nervously returning the older woman’s smile, flicked Sebastian a puzzled sidelong glance.

‘I do know how to use a telephone,’ he supplied drily, and Rosie returned her attention to his mother. Of course, he would have had to let his parent know he would be arriving with a guest.

Stupid of her to have imagined she would have come as an awkward surprise.

‘Paquita, will take your suitcases to your room, but before you freshen up after your journey Carlota is bringing cold drinks. I always find that travelling gives me the most enormous thirst. My dear husband used to say that I couldn’t have been a camel in a former life!’ The dark eyes sparkled as she motioned Rosie to a chair. ‘Sebastian can go and winkle Terrina out from wherever she is hiding—by the pool, I think, hijo—and leave me to talk to Rosie; I want to get to know all about her.’

Oh, no, you don’t! Rosie muttered inside her head, but the first real smile of the day brightened her features as she sank into the elegant, brocade-covered chair. Sebastian had been right about one thing: his mother—with her warm smile, her charm and slender elegance—could put the guillotine-bound occupants of a tumbril at their ease with no trouble at all.

As they had approached the house, awe had been added to her nervous trepidation. The white walls, arches and intricate ironwork and towers gave it the look of a Moorish fortress.

Some house!

Her knees had knocked alarmingly as Sebastian had escorted her through a spacious colonnaded courtyard, too preoccupied to actually see the beauty of the ancient stone fountain, the flowering perfumed vines that clung to the high walls. She’d felt as out of place as a hamburger at a Lord Mayor’s banquet. But Dona Elvira had immediately put her at her ease, and just for a few moments she was determined to make the most of a state of affairs that was bound to be short-lived.

‘Momento, Mama. Terrina can wait.’ She would have to, Sebastian thought grittily. Other things had taken precedence over the need to send the gold-digger packing. ‘How is Marcus?’ His godfather and partner had collapsed from the strain of overwork at the turn of the year, and before he was presented with his illegitimate daughter—and his own anger at the older man’s dereliction of responsibility—he needed to know that he was strong enough to take it. Despite the growing certainty that Marcus had behaved dishonourably all those years ago, he still held him in high affection.

‘Fighting fit.’ Doha Elvira smiled an acknowledgement as a young maid carried in a tray of the promised cool drinks. ‘He insists he can’t wait to get back into harness and visits the Cadiz office most days.’ She rose gracefully to pour from the jug of iced fruit juice. ‘Needless to say, that doesn’t please Terrina. She would far rather he took her shopping.’

Glass in hand, she paused. ‘From observation, I would say that he’s beginning to have many second thoughts in that direction.

You and I saw through her, but—’ She gave an eloquent shrug and carried the glass to Rosie, apologising, ‘Forgive me.

Prattling on about family concerns that can be of no interest to you.’

She was wrong there, Rosie thought, taking the glass. Her own feelings about Marcus’s marital intentions had been ambiguous to say the least. On the one hand, she had nothing against people taking a second chance of happiness. On the other, there was the hard, resentful little feeling that, after his wife’s death, he might have tracked her mother down. That he hadn’t done any such thing reinforced her opinion that Molly Lambert had been just a casual secret fling. Men in his position didn’t marry beneath them.