The Spaniard's Woman

It turned into a sigh when Sebastian’s mother scolded, ‘You haven’t touched your breakfast. You must eat. The coffee will be cold. I will send for fresh.’

‘No, really—the juice will be fine; I never touch much for breakfast.’ A whopping fib—in normal circumstances she ate like a horse—and Rosie condemned herself as she resignedly obeyed the imperious gesture inviting her to sit at the small table.

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.