Passionate Protection

'What was he doing here?' Sebastian demanded angrily, when Jorge had gone. 'You are supposed to be resting!'

'He came to talk to me.'

'Just to talk?' His mouth twisted aggressively. 'Did he have to sit on your bed simply to talk to you?' Jessica couldn't understand his mood. He seemed bitterly antagonistic towards Jorge, for some unknown reason. 'And what was he talking about?'

'He was telling me that Senor Alvarez had invited him to visit Argentina, and how much he wanted to go. I suspect he thought I might be able to plead his cause with you,' Jessica added with wry self-mockery.

'Dr Bartolo tells me that you are not recovering as fast as he had hoped,' he told her with an abrupt change of front. 'He believes a change of scene might be beneficial for you. Perhaps a visit to your family.'

Jessica felt as though all the breath were being squeezed out of her lungs. It was true, he did want to get rid of her.

. She turned away so that he wouldn't see the pain in her eyes. 'Por Dios,' he muttered savagely, 'did you not think to tell someone where you were going? Did it not occur to you that no one knew where you were? If I hadn't thought on the long drive back from Seville of the pequena's secret place, both of you could have died there!'

'Much you would have cared!' Jessica flung at him bitterly. 'Your own child, and you talk about sending her away to some convent—and not even to one of those close enough to her to soften the blow! You tell Pilar, who you must know hates her, even though she is her sister's child. Well, that isn't going to happen to my baby! Poor Lisa, she doesn't even know she is your child, but everyone else does; how can you keep the truth from her for ever? Haven't you thought of her pain and disillusionment when she discovers the truth, possibly at a time when it can do her the most harm?'

'Lisa—my child?' He frowned down at her, making her feel conscious of her flushed cheeks and undoubtedly tousled hair. 'What are you talking about?' he grated. 'Lisa is not my child!'

'I know that's the polite fiction you would want to preserve, but I've been told differently. She's Manuela's child, conceived during the time of your betrothal.'

'Who told you this?'

Jessica trembled under the look of biting anger he gave her. 'I…'

'No matter… You believed it, whoever told you. You think I would actually dishonour the girl I was to have married? A virgin?'

There was so much horror in his voice that Jessica felt acute jealousy of Manuela.

'I am not talking about dishonour, Sebastian,' she said tiredly. 'You loved her and she loved you. What could be more natural…'

'Dios, you talk as though you were reading a fairy-tale!' he snapped at her. 'And what you say contains about as much truth. Manuela did have a child out of wedlock and that child is Lisa, but she is not my child.' He saw her expression and smiled bitterly. 'You don't believe me? I assure you it is quite true, although no one knows the truth apart from myself and Pilar. Perhaps I had best tell you the whole and then there will be no more of these hysterical accusations about my lack of feelings towards my "child".

'Manuela's family and mine had always been close friends, through several generations. The idea of a marriage between us was first mooted when we were quite small, as is our custom, and both of us grew up knowing we were destined to marry, although we were more like brother and sister. The year Manuela was eighteen we were to marry. When she was seventeen we were formally betrothed; it was then that Manuela's father confided to me that he had been seriously worried by her suddenly changed behaviour. There were wild moods, fits of tears, terrible emotional storms that blew up out of nothing. It was decided that she would go to

South America to spend some time with relatives over there. Her father felt that the change would do her good. We parted as the friends we were. If our relationship was not all that I could have hoped for from marriage, it was pleasant and undemanding. I would be free to make a life for myself as long as I was discreet. There would be children.' He broke off when he saw Jessica's expression.

'There is no need for your pity,' he told her brusquely. 'It is an accepted code of behaviour that harms no one. While Manuela was away I prepared for our wedding. She was to return two weeks before our wedding day. I have since learned from Pilar that her father feared if she returned any sooner her bouts of hysteria might overcome her. Pilar was already married at this time and had no idea how serious Manuela's condition had become.

'She had been away eight months, but I barely recognised her when she returned. I met her at the airport, and she was swathed in black garments, her face haggard and pale. She refused to see me when I called at the house. "Wedding nerves", her mother told me.

'A week before our marriage was due to take place I received a phone call from the hospital in Seville. Manuela had been involved in a car accident and was asking for me. They gave me no hint of whether she was injured or how badly, and it was only when I got there that they told me she was not likely to live. They also told me that she was seven months pregnant, and knowing of our betrothal they had imagined that the child was mine and had called me to ask my permission to try to save its life even though they couldn't save Manuela's.

'Of course I telephoned her parents, but they refused to come to the hospital, so great was their shame. How on earth they had expected her condition to go unnoticed at the ceremony I do not know, but it seems they believed by some miracle that once we were married, everything would be all right.

'I didn't know what to do, and then, briefly Manuela regained consciousness. She told me her lover had been someone she had met in Argentina, someone she loved in a way that she could never love me. She knew she was going to die and begged my forgiveness, urging me to try to save the life of her child and look after it. I learned later from… connections in South America that her lover had also been married, something he had obviously neglected to tell her, and in some ways I wonder if it was not kinder that she should have her brief moment of happiness and then oblivion before it was destroyed by the realisation that she had been deceived.

'I stayed with her until the end. She died just after Lisa was born, and I'll never forget the look on her face when she opened her eyes and saw her child. I vowed then that I would bring Lisa up as though she had been our child. I suppose it is inevitable that people should think she was mine.'

'I'm so sorry,' Jessica managed in a husky whisper. 'I should never… You must have loved Manuela dreadfully,' she added.

'Loved her?' He looked at her incredulously. 'As a brother, yes, but as a lover—no. One selfish part of me even rejoices that we did not marry. With the benefit of hindsight I can see that there was a weakness in her—not her fault, poor child, but the result of too much marrying among cousins, too much thinning of the blood. Her hysteria, and bouts of temper… But I am tiring you, and Dr Bartolo says that you are to rest.'

Jessica wanted to tell him that she wasn't tired. She wanted to beg him to stay, but she knew she wouldn't. Not once during their conversation had he said anything about their marriage, and she wondered if he was regretting it as much Pilar had said.

Pilar had led her to believe that he still loved Manuela, she had lied about Lisa, while according to Sebastian… Was Pilar too tainted with her sister's weakness, was that perhaps why, in spite of the obvious suitability of it, he had not married her? She wanted him, Jessica knew that, and she would stop at nothing to get him, she acknowledged with a sudden flash of insight. Her possessiveness was almost maniacal.

Two days passed and Dr Bartolo pronounced that Jessica was well enough to get up. Sebastian as always was scrupulously polite when he saw her, which seemed to be more and more infrequently. When they did talk, it was about the factory, the designs—polite, distant conversation that tore at her heart, leaving it bruised and aching. She couldn't stay any longer, she admitted one afternoon after he had gone to inspect the vines, and she was alone in the house, Lisa and Tia Sofia were out visiting, and Jorge had taken Senor Alvarez and Luisa on a sightseeing expedition.

Only that lunchtime Sebastian had mentioned in conversation that he had been making enquiries about a flight to England for her. His aunt had looked surprised when he mentioned that she might go for a visit, and Jessica had tried to hide the hurt in her eyes that he was so anxious to get rid of her.