Passionate Protection

'No? You are clutching the edge of your seat as though you expect an imminent assault on your virtue. Or are you simply trying for an effect? If so, it won't work,' he told her laconically. 'Even if I did not know all about you from Jorge, I could never believe that a Northern European woman in her twenties had retained the virginal innocence you are trying to portray.'

'Why not?' Jessica snapped at him. 'That comment has about as much basis for truth as saying that all Spanish girls are virgins when they marry—it simply doesn't hold water.'

'I shall not argue about it,' she was told evenly, 'but if I were you I would not tax my patience too greatly by trying to assimilate a personality we both know you do not possess!'

Jessica didn't know how long it would take them to reach the hacienda, but when eleven o'clock came and went and they were in the depths of the country she started to realise how difficult it might be for her to leave the hacienda if she wished.

'Not much farther now,' Sebastian told her. 'Another hour, perhaps.'

'How on earth can you work so far away from the factory?' Jessica asked him.

'There are such things as telephones,' he told her dryly. 'The hacienda has been in my family for many generations. We still grow the grapes that go to make one of our fine local sherries, although now this is not produced exclusively from Calvadores vines.'

Jessica had already noticed the vines growing in the fields, but pride had prevented her from asking too many questions—that and a growing nausea exacerbated by the fact that she had had no breakfast. In fact she was beginning to feel distinctly lightheaded, but she forced herself to appear alert and interested as Sebastian told her about the local wines, and the art of making sherry.

It was almost exactly twelve o'clock when they turned off the main road, throwing up clouds of dust as they bumped down an unmade-up track. Vines covered the ground as far as the eye could see, and it was only when they crested a small incline that Jessica got her first glimpse of the hacienda.

For some reason she had expected a simple farmhouse-type building, and she caught her breath in awe as she stared down at the collection of Moorish-style buildings, shimmering whitely in the strong sunlight, the cupolas gilded by the sun, for all the world as though the entire complex had been wafted from ancient Baghdad on a magic carpet.

'The original building was constructed many centuries ago by an ancestor of mine,' Sebastian told her. 'He was given this land as part of his wife's dowry and on it he built the first house. Since then many generations have added to it, but always retaining the Moorish flavour—of course there have been times, for instance during the Inquisition, when it was not always wise for people to admit to their Moorish blood, when it has even perhaps

been expedient to deny it.'

Looking at him, Jessica couldn't imagine that he would ever deny his heritage; indeed, she could far more easily see him condemning himself to the flames of the auto de Fe than recanting his Moorish blood and his proud ancestors.

They drove under a white archway and into an outer courtyard, paved and cool. As Sebastian opened her door for her, Jessica was aware of movements, of a door opening and people hurrying towards them. A wave of dizziness struck her, and she clung hard to the nearest solid object, distracted to realise it was Sebastian's arm, and then, catching her completely off guard, Sebastian bent his head, coolly capturing her lips and plundering the unguarded sweetness of her mouth.

Just for a moment time seemed to stand still, crazily improbable emotions racing through her heart. What was happening to her that she should want to cling to those broad shoulders and go on clinging? And then her lips were released and Sebastian was saying lazily, in English, 'Ah, Tia Sofia, allow me to introduce Jessica.'

And Jessica was being scrutinised thoughtfully by a pair of snapping dark eyes, very much like Sebastian's, although in a feminine and less arrogant face.

'You are on time, Sebastian,' was all his aunt said. 'The little one is so excited I have had to tell her to go and lie down for a little while. It is always the same when she knows you are coming.'

'My aunt refers to my… ward,' Sebastian explained to Jessica. 'She lives here at the hacienda with my aunt and will do so until she is old enough to go to school.' His fingers rested lightly on her arm, and although she was looking discreetly away, Jessica knew that his aunt was aware of their intimacy.

'I have had Rosalinda's rooms prepared for your guest,' she was saying to Sebastian, glancing uncertainly at him.

'Rosalinda was the first Calvadores bride to occupy the hacienda,' Sebastian told Jessica. 'Her rooms are in one of the towers, quite secluded from the rest of the house with their own courtyard and stairs leading from it.'

Jessica's face flamed as the implication of his words sank in, and out of the corner of her eye she saw his aunt frown a little and glance at her uncertainly. There was no doubt at all in Jessica's mind that his aunt thought that they were lovers. Lovers! A sharp pain seemed to stab through her heart, her muscles tensing in protest at the images the word invoked. But she and Sebastian were not lovers, she reminded herself, nor ever likely to be. For one thing, he felt nothing but contempt for her, while she, of course, equally detested him… Just for a moment she remembered her mixed emotions when he had kissed her, quickly banishing the treacherous suggestion that there had been something infinitely pleasurable in the pressure of his mouth against hers. How could it have been remotely pleasurable? He had kissed her in punishment and she had loathed and resented it! Of course she had.

* * *

CHAPTER FIVE

It was Sebastian's aunt who showed Jessica to Rosalinda's tower, much to her relief.

They approached the tower via a narrow, spiralling staircase, the smoothly plastered walls decorated with decorative frescoes and friezes in the Arabic style.

At the top of the stairs, Tia Sofia opened a door and gestured to Jessica to precede her. Once inside Jessica caught her breath on a gasp of pleasure. The room was large and octagonal in shape, an arched doorway leading to another room, and the view from the mediaeval slit windows stunned her with the magnificent panorama spread out below.

'This room is the highest in the house,' Sofia de Calvadores explained. 'Although latterly it has not been used—it is too impractical for a married couple, and there have been no daughters of the house to make it their own as was the custom in the past.'

'It's beautiful,' Jessica said reverently, gazing at her surroundings. The walls were hung with a soft apricot silk, matching rugs on the polished wood floor. This room was furnished as a small sitting room, and she guessed that beyond it lay the bedroom. Bookcases had been built to fit the octagonal walls; one of the larger window embrasures was fitted with a cushioned seat, and it wasn't hard to imagine a lovely Spanish girl sitting there perhaps playing her mandolin while she gazed through the window waiting for her husband to return home.

Her guide opened the communicating door to show Jessica the bedroom, once again decorated in the same soft apricot, the huge bed covered with a soft silk coverlet.

'There is a bathroom through there,' she told Jessica, indicating another door set into one of the walls. 'It is fortunate that when the idea of this octagonal room was conceived it was built within the existing square tower, so we have been able to make use of the space between the walls to install modern plumbing. I shall leave you now— Maria will come and unpack for you, and we normally have lunch at one.'