Hostage of Passion

And that would make sense in the twisted, devious, wicked labyrinth that passed for his mind, she decided furiously. She spat out, ‘Then go and sleep in the other room! There are some perfectly comfortable-looking chairs and sofas, as I recall.’

‘I do not sleep on chairs,’ he said with the lofty arrogance that made her want to slap him.

The need to give vent to her boiling emotions by resorting to crude physical violence appalled her. Sensible Sarah Scott brawling and sounding off was not a picture that pleased her. This impossible man had an unnerving habit of making her act out of character, showing her a side of herself she hadn’t known existed and was certainly most unhappy with.

Hastily gathering her split and ruined nightdress around her rigidly outraged body, she slid smartly off the bed, telling him tartly, ‘Well, if you won’t I will.’ She would have chosen to sleep on a clothesline rather than a bed that had him in it! And the back of her neck prickled as she marched firmly into the adjoining sitting-room, but he didn’t say a word, much less pounce on her and haul her back to lie beside him as she had initially feared he would.

Closing the sitting-room door behind her, she leaned wearily back against it for a second or two before pushing herself into locating a light switch, opening a couple of windows, selecting a sofa and perching uneasily on the edge of it.

Her situation was impossible, and getting worse by the second, she fretted, and she vehemently wished she’d never set out to warn her father, advise him to send Encarnación back to her doting family or suffer the consequences of his own irresponsible, reprehensible behaviour.

She had always refused to believe in the old adage that whatever couldn’t be cured must be endured. As her father had refused to be cured of his behavioural follies—and goodness only knew she had tried—she had, long ago, decided to endure it no longer and had gone her own way, leaving him to go to the devil in his.

So why had she decided to stick her oar into these muddled, troubled waters at this particular moment in time? she asked herself. A surfacing of filial affection which was stronger than she’d consciously known? An acknowledgement, at last, of her pride in his genius—a pride she had always tried to smother beneath clouds of disapproval of his wild lifestyle?

Whatever, soul-searching wasn’t going to get her out of her present predicament, was it?

She arranged a cushion at one end of the sofa and curled up, trying to get comfortable. What she should have been concentrating on was the best approach to take when trying to reason her way out of the mess Piers had landed her in with that utterly impossible Spaniard.

Or not. She scowled into the cushion. What she really should be doing was emptying her mind of all contentious matter and getting some rest!

But it was easier said than done, and two hours later she was further from sleep than she’d ever been, fidgeting and wriggling and, worse, needing to visit the bathroom.

Which meant going through the bedroom, from which her black-hearted captor had effectively banished her, disrupting her sleep, taking over the big, blissfully comfortable bed, forcing her to find what rest she could on one of the sofas. Because surely he hadn’t actually expected her to lie with him, their bodies barely inches apart—his naked as the day he was born and probably wallowing around during the night, tangling with hers?

The mind pictures that popped up into her head were alarming, adding another, deeper layer to her heated discomfort. She thrust them decisively away. She had quite enough to contend with without that!

Squirming to her feet, she assured herself that the oaf was certainly sound asleep by now. His conscience wouldn’t keep him awake because he almost surely didn’t have such a thing.

Tiptoeing to the door, she opened it a fraction and listened intently. No sound but his soft, regular breathing. Holding her breath, she padded silently through, moving slowly, making sure she didn’t bump into furniture as she wended her way to the bathroom. And she stayed there as long as she dared, aware of the fact that he too might need to make a nocturnal visit.

That possibility was more than enough to have her creeping back out, reluctance to face another few hours of tossing and turning on the sofa making her pout. She hated the self-centred, arrogant brute for putting her through all this, she really did, and she racked her tired brain for a way to pay him back. She couldn’t come up with a single thing. Except the resolve not to spend another minute stewing on that sofa.

Which didn’t mean creeping back into that bed with him, of course. There had to be something else. And there was. Of course there was!

The third door!

It opened silently, like a dream, and the stair beyond was faintly illuminated by light-sensor bulbs set into the stone. Closing the door behind her, she padded on up, pulling open the stout door at the top and walking out on to the great rooftop, surrounded by the battlements.

The air up there was much fresher and cooler than it had been in the sitting-room, despite the windows she’d opened, and the pale fingers of dawn in the sky added to her unexpected sense of exhilaration.

Up here, at least, there was a sensation of freedom. Spurious maybe, but something she intended to hang on to for as long as she could because suddenly she felt much more alive than she could ever remember feeling before, could hardly wait for a new day to start, when she could begin again to pit her wits against the black-hearted Spaniard who, in her opinion, needed to be taken down a peg or two after the way he’d treated her.

Her eyes glinting with new-found energy, she fled over the huge stone roofing-slabs and leaned against the battlements, the stone rough beneath her hands, still holding a residue of the past day’s warmth. She stretched over as far as she dared, squinting, eagerly trying to pierce the dark, velvety night for landmarks, and registered a sudden rush of bare feet a fraction of a second before she felt strong arms encircle her body, whirling her round to be crushed against a heaving, naked torso.

‘Idiota!’ His strong arms tightened convulsively as he dragged her away from the parapet and she could hear the rapid thundering of his heartbeats, feel the pulsating heat of his tall, sinewy body as her lightly clad flesh was crushed against him. ‘Launching yourself down into a rocky chasm isn’t the answer! I mean you no har

m, you must understand that,’ he assured her thickly, one hand sliding up to cradle her head, pulling it against the proud angle of his shoulder, his long fingers tangling in her hair. ‘My quarrel isn’t with you—you know that.’

The warmth of that smooth olive skin stretched tautly over hard muscle and bone was distinctly distracting, tugging her mind away from the obvious advantage he was unknowingly offering her. The intimacy of being held by him like this was clouding her senses, and when she felt the tremors of his inner tension shake his impressive male frame she had to fight hard to resist the impulse to cuddle in closer and surrender to the rapidly gathering sensations that were as strangely exciting as they were hitherto unknown.

Sarah shook her head desperately and fought instead to catch hold of the ideas that were poking at the edges of her fuddled brain, and he mistook the gesture, telling her rawly, ‘If I frightened you, I’m truly sorry. And I promise you I will never lay a finger on you in anger. You will not be harmed in any way while you are a guest beneath my roof— consider your time here as a holiday. Will you do that, Salome?’

She could almost have capitulated to the urgency of his pleas, the very real—though utterly misguided—anxiety he had felt on her behalf. She had been on the point of coming clean, responding honestly to his deep concern, reassuring him that she simply wasn’t the type to fling herself from a great height on to rocks, or whatever, no matter what dire circumstances she found herself in, because she had a whole heap more character than that, but his use of that ridiculously flamboyant name, the name she had firmly discarded years ago and which he had, in his meddling, prying, sneaky manner, somehow dug out, put her firmly on her feet again, back in control and knowing exactly how she would play this scene, get every last ounce of advantage out of the situation he had so conveniently misread.

The trembling part wasn’t difficult because shock had ensured that she’d been shaking inside right from the moment when he’d crushed her into his arms, tugging her into the warm, safe haven of his strong body, but she had a hard time keeping her glee hidden, the exquisite pleasure of knowing that she could now get the upper hand and, hopefully, keep it, as she injected a weak quaver into her voice and said words she would never have believed herself capable of uttering.

‘Why did you stop me? I—I can’t bear it, I tell you! Locked away here with—with a violent stranger.’ Her voice quivered nicely up to the level of hysteria as she tried feebly and ineffectually to pull away from him. ‘You’d kill my father as soon as look at him—you said so yourself! What’s to stop you killing me too? You’d have to, wouldn’t you? To stop me from talking!’ Her voice fell piteously. ‘I can’t stand it—waiting for the worst to happen. I’d rather—rather do—do anything. Anything at all! And—’ she made herself give a huge gulp ‘—I can’t bear being locked in. Not anywhere. It’s enough to send anyone crazy!’