Hostage of Passion

by Diana Hamilton

  ‘He’s waiting in the small sala. We didn’t know how long you’d be so Rosalia fed us and they’re chatting away like old friends now, with the brandy bottle for company!’

  That figures, Sarah thought bleakly, forcing herself to trail behind the other two as Francisco took his sister’s arm and stalked in through the door. Rosalia was just the motherly, jolly type Piers normally went for. So why hadn’t he stuck to merry widows and kept his hands off beautiful virgins?

  If he’d stuck to the pattern of the last decade and more, none of this would have happened. She wouldn’t have met Francisco and fallen blindly and hopelessly in love in the space of a few traumatic days, and that, at this precise moment, seemed no bad thing because the way the Spanish devil and his prodigal sister were an obvious entity, shutting her out, hurt unbearably. He was acting as if she didn’t exist, as if he’d never opened his heart to her, shared his feelings of guilt, told her he wanted her, needed her, asked her to stay…

  Her heart was several feet below the soles of her sensible shoes when she followed them through to one of the cosy family rooms she’d investigated the day before. She felt, she recognised sickly, like a faithful old dog which had been discarded by an uncaring master but was tagging along anyway.

  Rosalia bobbed out, beaming, as they entered and Piers rose from an armchair at the side of the empty stone hearth, putting his brandy glass down on a side-table. He didn’t look in the least bit ashamed of himself, but then he had never been ashamed of his rumbustious lifestyle and was obviously not thinking of taking that bad habit on board at his time of life.

  At least he was wearing clean fawn trousers and although his blue shirt was obviously old and faded it wasn’t too badly crumpled and it wasn’t covered in paint stains. His long hair, grey for a few years now, was still thick and healthy, tied back at the nape of his neck with a bootlace, and the tan he’d acquired made his few wrinkles unimportant and deepened the colour and brightness of his very blue eyes.

  The glance he gave Sarah was comprehensive but brief, and, seemingly satisfied that she wasn’t actually dragging a ball and chain behind her, he walked towards Francisco, speaking in fluent but probably very ungrammatical Spanish.

  Anger whiplashed through Sarah. She would not be ignored, not by any of them! She refused to behave as if she were a dispensable player in this charade. It was her turn to demand, ‘Speak English! I’ve as much right to know what’s been going on as anyone. So don’t try to shut me out as if I didn’t exist!’

  This last had been meant exclusively for Francisco but apparently Piers took it personally, turning to her, his hands outstretched.

  ‘Sal, I’m sorry. You’re all right, though, aren’t you?’ He took her hands and held them tight and Sarah blinked, biting her lip because the way she was feeling she might easily cry and she wasn’t going to let herself. Piers actually apologising shook her up. He roistered through life thinking he could do as he pleased, and if people didn’t like it then it was their tough luck.

  Francisco said darkly, ‘Your father was just explaining—quite colourfully, too—exactly what he would do with men who abducted innocent young ladies for their own advantage. A rather hypocritical stance for him to take, in the circumstances, don’t you think?’

  ‘Now look here!’ Piers growled, but the Spaniard quelled him with an icy glare of intense dislike. Sarah had never seen him look so forbidding and accepted, with an inner shudder, that her father was going to get such a scathing run-down of his character that his ego would be smarting for years.

  Instinctively she moved closer to the older man and was astonished when his arm went around her shoulder, as if he actually felt some concern for her, some affection. When she’d been little more than a child she had tried to carry on her mother’s efforts to act as a regulator in his life and he’d seemed bewildered by it. He’d packed her off to boarding-school and years later, when she’d decided to go her own way, he’d been relieved. When they had, on occasion, met up he’d seemed wary of her, the time he spent with her never short enough.

  She glanced up at him quickly but he was frowning, trying to outglare Francisco, whose withering, contemptuous stare now encompassed her.

  Encarnación broke the tension, urging, ‘Stop it, both of you! If it weren’t for Piers, Francisco, I probably wouldn’t have come back for ages. He made me understand how anxious you were, and talked me into coming home when I didn’t much want to because I was really enjoying myself and he was teaching me things—’

  ‘Teaching!’ Francisco exploded, his face white with rage. ‘Is that what you call it?’ Sarah had never seen him look so ferocious. Piers deserved what was coming to him, but she shuddered for him all the same. ‘Dios!’ His black eyes pounced on his sister, his lips pulled back against his teeth. ‘Teaching you what, exactly?’

  ‘How to draw!’ Piers snapped. ‘What did you think? Though I can guess from what my agent said about your visit, the message you left, the insanity of keeping my daughter hostage.’

  After a moment of shivering silence, Francisco turned to his sister.

  ‘Is this true? Do not lie to me.’

  ‘Of course it’s true,’ Encarnación muttered mutinously. ‘You didn’t care about what I wanted, so long as I stayed at home and behaved myself. When I told you I wanted to study art and have a career you wouldn’t hear of it,’ she pouted. ‘So when Piers offered me a place at his summer school I took it. He didn’t know I’d run away from you, so don’t blame him!’

  Francisco swung back to Piers, his face taut with strain, and the older man answered with a helpless shrug.

  ‘To put the record straight, I don’t go in for seducing schoolgirls. I was sitting outside a café in Seville, sketching—’

  ‘And I went up to him to watch,’ Encarnación put in quickly. ‘He didn’t chat me up, if that’s what you think. You were at a business meeting and I’d got bored with shopping, and when I realised I was actually talking to Piers Bouverie-Scott I couldn’t believe my luck. When he offered me a place at his summer school—with students from England as well as Spain—I jumped at it. If I’d asked if I could go you wouldn’t have let me. I told you who I’d be with in that note. You knew I wanted to study art; you should have made the connection,’ she accused sulkily.

  ‘You didn’t realise she wasn’t free to take up your offer?’ Francisco questioned.

  Piers looked as if he didn’t understand and countered, ‘Free? What’s freedom got to do with it? Everyone should be able to do what they feel impelled to do. But if you’re asking me if I knew she was running away from home, and not telling her family where she’d be, then no, I didn’t know that, not until I got your crazy message.’ He gave a sudden grin. ‘Though not so crazy now I come to think of it—given the reputation I seem to have earned myself.’

  Francisco gave him a long, considering look then dragged in a breath through pinched nostrils.

  ‘You have my unreserved apologies, señor. You too, señorita.’ The cold pride in his black eyes froze her and raw apprehension turned her stomach to knots. ‘As it’s too late for you to leave tonight I’ll ask Rosalia to prepare a guest room. She will tell you when it’s ready. Now, excuse me, if you will,’ he added, very formal, very Spanish in his straight-backed, arrogant dignity. ‘My sister and I have many things to discuss.’

  Watching him shepherd Encarnación out of the room, Sarah felt ill. So correct, so formal, so politely dismissive of her. The formal señorita had said it all. Where had Salome gone? she wondered despairingly.

  She knew he had much to discuss with his sister, bridges to mend, a freer future to offer her, but couldn’t he have shown her—with a single word or look—that his invitation still stood, that he still needed her?

  But perhaps he didn’t need her, not any more. His sister was back, piqued but unscathed, and he’d been given a chance to mend his mistakes. So he wouldn’t need her body in his bed to divert him from his uneasy feelings of self-blame, make him feel b
etter about himself.

  But maybe he did still want her? Maybe, after the heart-to-heart was out of the way, he would come to her, beg her to stay with him—

  ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am that you got involved in all this, though I must admit I wasn’t too worried about you. Miles had him rapidly checked out—who and what he was. He’s too wealthy and well-respected to do anything to bring his life down in ruins. I knew he wouldn’t harm you. I even got to feel sorry for the guy at one stage.’ He grinned at her. ‘That girl of mine has more prickles than a porcupine and a tongue like a razor, I told Miles. He’ll probably put her on the next plane back to England just to get a bit of peace and quiet!’

  Piers reclaimed his brandy glass and lifted it. ‘Want some?’ She shook her head abstractedly and he confided, ‘Well, I feel I need it, even if you don’t. It’s all been a bit of a nightmare. As I said, when Miles phoned, and—’

  ‘He knew where you were, how to contact you?’ Sarah asked, her brows knotting together. ‘He told me he didn’t know where you were, but hinted at Spain.’

  She watched her father gulp at his brandy. He looked uncomfortable, and that wasn’t like him.

  ‘I forbade him to tell anyone. I’d set up this summer school in an old farmhouse outside Jerez. Fabulous vineyards. Offered tutorials—a kind of working holiday free of charge to underprivileged kids who’d be mugging old ladies and stealing cars, left to their own devices. Most of them hadn’t held a paintbrush since junior school but you’d be surprised what a metaphorical kick up the backside and a bit of motivation can achieve. Using creative talents they never knew they had takes their mind off their problems like you wouldn’t believe.

  ‘There’s one lad in particular—he’ll go far. I’m in the process of persuading him to let me sponsor him through college. He comes from a Liverpool slum and can barely read or write so he thinks he wouldn’t fit in. But I’ll twist his arm yet—’

  ‘Dad!’ There was a smile in her eyes and a lump in her throat. She had always been proud of his genius but was prouder still of the way he had given his valuable talents, time and energy to helping those society had rejected, and what Francisco would think if he ever found out the type of company his ‘princess’ had been mixing with didn’t bear thinking about. But, ‘Why was I forbidden to know how to contact you?’ she wondered.

  ‘It was strictly off the record,’ he said shamefacedly. ‘If it was a success, and it is, it would be an annual thing. But if it got known I’d come over as a do-gooder, and that wouldn’t suit my image!’

  ‘Dad!’ This time there was a definite giggle. ‘You can’t possibly like the image you have!’

  ‘Like it?’ Blue eyes crinkled. ‘I’m proud of it! I keep all my Press cuttings—the more way-out the better. They’ll be something to amuse me when I’m ninety, creeping around on my Zimmer-frame!’ He tossed off the remainder of his brandy, then told her firmly, ‘If you ever thought I horsed around while your mother was alive, forget it. I can’t say I haven’t looked, but so far I’ve never found another to come near my Patience. I know you don’t approve of me, but—’

  He broke off, relief on his face, as Rosalia walked in, speaking to him in Spanish, and he translated, ‘My room’s ready, it seems. I’ll turn in.’ He touched the top of her head briefly. ‘I’d like to make an early start in the morning—can’t have those tearaways missing too many sessions. I can take you to the airport—unless you’d like to spend a day or so with me at the farm?’ he suggested warily, as if it was too much to expect.

  She said, ‘I’ll think about it,’ because she didn’t know yet whether Francisco wanted her to stay.

  She took herself off to his suite, her stomach feeling as if it was home to a colony of grasshoppers, and waited for him. She spent ages in the bath, and because she couldn’t bear to wear the torn, dull nightie she took a silky robe of Francisco’s and wore that instead, cinching her waist with the tie-belt she found in one of the pockets. Then she perched at the head of the bed, waiting, still waiting, tortured by the spicy, tangy male scent of him that came with the soft fabric.

  She wished she didn’t love him so much that her heart was hurting, her body aching just to be near him, her soul calling out to his. Why didn’t he hear it?

  At three o’clock she knew the waiting was over. He couldn’t have been talking to Encarnación all this time. He was not going to come to her, tell her how his interview with his sister had gone, what had been settled between them, ask her to tell him what she’d decided about staying on with him. She had already told him she’d made up her mind, didn’t need to sleep on it. And that, she decided with a misery that overwhelmed her, could mean only one thing.

  He had no further interest in her.

  Curling herself into a dejected ball, she tried to sleep, but knew she couldn’t, and didn’t, and got up with the dawn. She dressed in the grey trousers and shirt Rosalia had laundered, dragged her blazer from the wardrobe, stuffed the torn nightdress and spare underwear in her flight bag and walked out of the room without a backward glance.

  She would wait in the inner courtyard until Piers was ready to leave. It couldn’t be soon enough. And it was all for the best, she assured herself dully. Why get herself more emotionally involved than she already was? It wasn’t worth it, not for a few days and nights of bliss with the man she had been crazy enough to fall in love with.

  With his sister safely returned to the fold, everything sorted, the last thing he would want would be to have her around, reminding him of yesterday, of things he would now wish unsaid, undone.

  And with his kid sister under the same roof he wouldn’t want to set a bad example, indulge in a short-lived affair with a woman he would send packing without a moment’s regret the moment she began to bore him.

  So she would leave with her dignity intact, and no one would ever know that her poor heart was breaking up. As she emerged into the fresh morning light she waited, staring at her feet because she refused to look around her. This was the place of her dreams; everything she held most precious to her was bound up here. She didn’t want to add to her burden of memories.

  ‘So. You are leaving.’

  She froze, her body rigid, then killed the tiny unbidden hope stone-dead because his voice had held nothing but a cool lack of interest, either way. Forcing herself to turn and face him, she was shocked by what she saw, but wouldn’t let herself feel any concern. Any display of emotion, from hereon in, could be her downfall.

  He was wearing the same clothes he’d had on yesterday. Hadn’t he been to bed at all? He didn’t look as if he had. His face looked grey with fatigue, and he needed a shave, and the soft dark hair was rumpled. But his eyes were like stone, the glance he swept over the trousers and shirt he had so deplored faintly contemptuous.

  She dropped her eyes, unable to bear his coldness, his cruelty. If he had given her just a hint of a smile, a look that said he still found her desirable, she would have come right out with it and asked if he still wanted her here. But there’d been nothing, and that had to be for the best, in the long run. Then she closed her eyes, pain washing over her, as Piers popped out from nowhere.

  The fantasy, for that was all it had ever been, was over.

  ‘Ready, Sal?’ Piers sounded full of himself and Sarah managed a wan smile.

  ‘When you are.’

  ‘Then we’re off. The minibus is parked out the front. Not luxury travel but useful for ferrying a bunch of students about.’ He marched over to Sarah and took her arm. ‘We won’t hang around for breakfast,’ he decided, as if he’d been asked. He gave the bleak-eyed Spaniard a cocky stare. ‘What do you think, Sal? Shall we sue the crazy man?’

  He seemed to think it was funny and she wanted to scream at him, tell him this wasn’t a joke, that she was being torn apart, tell him to get lost, to give her two minutes of privacy to say goodbye to the arrogant black-hearted devil who’d stolen her heart.

  But she didn’t; of course she didn’t. Her eyes f
ixed on her father, she said brittly, ‘I couldn’t be bothered. He did provide me with a free holiday of sorts, excellent food and even better wine. He even threw in some vaguely amusing entertainment—when he was in the mood. Let’s go, shall we?’

  ‘He’s here again!’ Jenny practically sang over the internal phone. ‘I thought you told me it was just a casual holiday thing. He didn’t look casual to me! All dark and brooding and definitely edible! Anyway, I told him to go on through.’

  The line went dead, the door opposite her desk bounced open and he was standing there, six feet plus of dark Spanish arrogance, and she knew that the scant two weeks she’d had, including the few days she’d spent at the summer school with Piers and the students, hadn’t been nearly enough time to prepare herself for actually having to see him again.

  He was wearing a soft-as-butter cream-coloured leather jacket over black shirt and trousers and he shattered every last one of her senses. She supposed, light-headedly, that the English spring would feel positively frigid after the Andalusian heat.

  She didn’t know what he was doing here. Had he come to torment her? Was he that cruel?

  ‘Say something!’ he ordered, his hands planted on his lean hips, his eyes alarming. ‘Or have you forgotten your tongue, along with the things I taught you? How to be a real woman, for instance.’ He covered the space between the door and her desk in a blink of her startled eyes, snatched at her hands and dragged her to her feet. ‘All that beautiful hair scraped back as if you were ashamed of it. A suit that makes you look like a prison warder! I came only just in time. Another day and you would have been set in concrete, a frigid, uptight single lady to the end of your dreary days!’

  He had only come to insult her and she couldn’t bear it. She didn’t want to remember how he’d made her feel—gloriously, wickedly feminine for the very first time. So she wouldn’t remember. She shook his hands away, took two paces back, avoiding his impatient eyes, and said coldly, ‘What do you want?’