He reached out his hand and touched the Estrela Vermelha. The jewel was as cold and hard as his anger as he remembered his father’s excitement when Vitor had discovered the rare diamond.
‘It’s likely that there are more red diamonds in the part of the mine where I found the first one. If I find more, Earl Bancroft has promised I will receive a share of their value.’
‘Don’t go back there, Papai,’ Cruz had pleaded with his father. ‘That part of the mine is dangerous. Some of the miners say that the roof supports aren’t strong enough.’
But Vitor had ignored him. ‘I have to go back.’
The earl had sent Vitor to search for more diamonds and had sent him to his death. Cruz still had nightmares about when he’d heard the incredible roaring noise of the mine roof collapsing as tons of rock had crashed down on his father and buried him alive.
He snatched his hand away from the Estrela Vermelha. ‘Red is a fitting colour for a diamond which is stained with my father’s blood.’
A shiver ran through Sabrina. She couldn’t explain why she had never liked the Red Star diamond even though she admired its flawless beauty. The only reason she had worn it tonight was because she had wanted to impress the party guests. People booked parties at Eversleigh Hall because they liked the grandeur and history of the stately home, and they had no idea that, short of a miracle, the hall might soon have to be sold and would no longer be the ancestral home of the Bancroft family.
The dark red diamond was the colour of blood, but Cruz’s words did not make any sense to Sabrina. ‘What do you mean? What does your father have to do with the Red Star?’
‘He found it, and it was his right to claim part of the value of the diamond. But he died before he received his percentage share. My father was killed doing your father’s dirty work,’ Cruz said harshly. ‘Earl Bancroft sent him into the mine to search for more red diamonds. Your father has Vitor’s blood on his hands and I have come to Eversleigh to demand compensation for my father’s life.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘I WANT YOU to leave.’
Sabrina whirled away from Cruz and faced him across the desk, breathing hard as she struggled to control her temper. ‘How dare you turn up at Eversleigh uninvited and make a ridiculous accusation against my father, who isn’t even here to defend himself?’
‘He couldn’t defend himself against the truth.’ Cruz welcomed his anger as a distraction from the infuriating knowledge that when Sabrina had squeezed past him, her breasts had brushed against his chest and his body had reacted with humiliating predictability. His eyes were drawn to the low-cut neckline of her dress and the jerky rise and fall of her breasts. He pictured her naked beneath him, the erotic contrast of her milky pale body against his dark bronze skin, and he remembered her soft, kitten-like cries in the throes of orgasm.
Inferno! It was two months since he had dumped his last mistress and clearly he had gone too long without sex, he thought with savage self-derision. The purpose of his visit was to persuade Earl Bancroft to hand over the map of the abandoned mine, but all he could think of was how much he wanted to bend Sabrina over the desk and push her dress up to her waist, baring her silken thighs so that he could...
Ruthlessly he controlled his imagination but he could not control the painful throb of desire in his groin as he tried to focus on what she was saying.
‘I didn’t know your father had died.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m sorry... I know how close you were to him. But I don’t believe my father was responsible. How could he have had anything to do with Vitor’s death?’
‘When my father found the Estrela Vermelha, the earl sent him back to an area of the mine that he knew was unsafe to look for more diamonds.’ Cruz’s jaw hardened. ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t know. Bancroft must have told you about the accident at the mine even if he failed to admit his culpability for what happened.’
‘My father didn’t confide in me,’ Sabrina admitted. ‘We’ve never been close. I grew up at Eversleigh, but my father had inherited land and the diamond mine in Brazil from an uncle and he spent months at a time abroad. I visited him when I was eighteen, which is when I met you, but when I came back to England I had little contact with him.’
She fell silent, remembering the bleakest period of her life when she had hidden away at Eversleigh like a wounded animal. There had been no one she could talk to about the miscarriage. Four years earlier, when she had been fourteen, her mother had walked out of her marriage to Earl Bancroft and abandoned her children for her lover, and Sabrina had learned a valuable lesson—that she could not trust anyone and she had to rely on herself.
When she’d fallen pregnant by Cruz in Brazil she had told her father about her pregnancy. Typically he had said little then, or later, when she’d informed him that she had lost the baby. His only comment had been that he thought she had made the right decision to return to England and take up the university place she had deferred.
The earl had paid an unexpected visit to Eversleigh Hall during the summer ten years ago, Sabrina suddenly recalled. Her father had been in a strange mood and even more uncommunicative than usual, but he had made the surprising announcement that he intended to sell his diamond mine. He’d made no mention of Vitor Delgado’s fatal accident, or of Cruz, and Sabrina’s pride had refused to allow her to ask about him.
She had spent her first weeks back at Eversleigh hoping that Cruz would come after her, but as time went by she had been forced to accept that he wasn’t coming and he did not care about her. Now she’d learned that he had suffered a terrible tragedy soon after she had returned home. Following his father’s death his focus would understandably have been on taking care of his mother and much younger twin sisters.
She studied his face and noticed the fine lines around his eyes and deep grooves on either side of his mouth that had not been there ten years ago. He had idolised his father and would have felt Vitor’s loss deeply. She felt a faint tug on her heart. ‘When did the accident at the mine happen?’
‘Three weeks after you had left me and returned to England. It was the worst time of my life. First you lost our baby and then I lost my father.’
Sabrina stiffened. ‘An estimated one in seven pregnancies ends in miscarriage,’ she said huskily, repeating what numerous medical experts had told her when she had sought an answer as to why she had lost her baby. ‘We were unlucky.’
‘Perhaps it was simply bad luck.’ Cruz’s tone was devoid of any emotion, but Sabrina was convinced she had heard criticism in his voice. She curled her hands into tight balls until her fingernails cut into her palms.
‘Riding my horse did not cause me to miscarry,’ she said in a low tone. ‘I was seventeen weeks into my pregnancy and beyond the risk period of the first three months. The doctor said I was not to blame.’ But she had always blamed herself, she acknowledged bleakly, and she had suspected that Cruz thought she’d been irresponsible to have gone riding.
‘If you’d had your way, you would have wrapped me in cotton wool for nine months,’ she burst out.
His over-the-top concern had been for the baby, not for her. Every day, when Cruz had gone to work at the mine he had left her under the watchful and disapproving eyes of his mother. Sabrina had felt lonely and bored in Brazil. She’d been delighted at her three-month scan when the doctor had said that her pregnancy was progressing well and there was no reason why she should not do the things she normally did. She had thought it would be safe to take her horse for a gentle ride, aware that her mother had ridden during both of her pregnancies.
Cruz’s chiselled features were impassive. ‘There is no point in dragging up the past.’
His harsh voice jerked Sabrina from her painful memories. Her long lashes swept down, but not before Cruz glimpsed raw emotion in her grey eyes that shocked him. Ten years ago her lack of emotion after the miscarriage had made him realise that she had not wanted their child, and her hurried departure from Brazil had proved that she did not have any feelings for
him.
His jaw hardened and he told himself he must have imagined the pained expression in her eyes. ‘You said that the earl is away, but I need to speak to him urgently. I assume you keep in contact with him by phone or email?’
She shook her head. ‘All I know is that he is probably in Africa. He has investments in a couple of mines there, and he often takes trips into remote areas to investigate new mining opportunities.’
Everything she had said was true, Sabrina assured herself. Her father often went abroad on what he called his adventures. But he had never stayed out of contact for this long. She had last spoken to Earl Bancroft when he had called her from a town somewhere in Guinea, but, after eighteen months when nothing had been seen or heard of him, Sabrina was seriously concerned for her father’s safety.
‘I’m afraid my father is incommunicado at the moment,’ she murmured.
There was something odd about the situation, Cruz mused. Something Sabrina wasn’t telling him. With difficulty he restrained his impatience.
‘Well, if I can’t talk to Earl Bancroft perhaps you will be able to help me. I believe your father has some information about the Montes Claros diamond mine. Before my father died, the earl showed Vitor a map of an abandoned section of the mine. The map is the legal property of the mine owner. You might be aware that I bought the mine six years ago, which means that the map belongs to me.’
Sabrina shrugged. ‘I don’t know anything about a map. I told you my father rarely confides in me about his business dealings.’
A vague memory pushed into her mind. At the time she hadn’t paid much attention to the incident, but Cruz’s words made her wonder about her father’s curious behaviour when she had walked into his study and found him looking at a document spread out on his desk. Earl Bancroft had snatched up the piece of paper before Sabrina had got a clear glimpse of it and thrust it into an envelope.
‘This is my pension fund for when I retire,’ he’d said, laughing. ‘It’s much safer to keep it hidden here at Eversleigh than in a bank.’
‘Why is the map important?’ she asked Cruz curiously.
‘I believe it shows a section of the mine that was dug many years ago.’ He shrugged. ‘There may be nothing down there, but the Estrela Vermelha was found in the deepest section of where we currently operate and it’s possible that there are other diamonds in the abandoned mine.’ Cruz’s eyes raked Sabrina’s face and she quickly dropped her gaze.
‘Did your father ever show you a map?’
‘No,’ she said truthfully.
‘Do you know where he might have put a map? Does he have a safe where he keeps important documents?’
She shook her head. ‘He wouldn’t need to lock things in a safe. Eversleigh Hall had dozens of secret places to hide valuables—and people, come to that. Many old English houses have secret chambers and priest holes, which were built hundreds of years ago when Catholic priests were persecuted,’ she explained. ‘For instance, one of the wooden panels in this room conceals a secret cupboard. My father knows the location of all the hiding places at the hall.’
‘And do you also know where the secret chambers are?’
‘I know where some are, but not all of them. Even if I knew every hiding place I wouldn’t show you their location without my father’s permission.’
Sabrina felt a sense of loyalty towards Earl Bancroft despite the fact that they had never shared a close emotional bond. Since her father’s mysterious disappearance she had realised that she loved him. She looked at Cruz steadily. ‘If you are really the rightful owner of the map then I’m sure my father would have given it to you when you took over the mine.’
‘Don’t pretend to be naïve,’ Cruz growled. ‘I won’t go so far as to say that Earl Bancroft is a crook, but some of his business dealings are decidedly shady.’
‘How dare you—?’
‘I worked for him,’ Cruz cut her off impatiently. ‘I saw how your father ignored safety regulations in the mine to save money.’
Sabrina’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘My father isn’t here to defend himself and I only have your word on what happened.’
‘And of course you, with your aristocratic title and privileged lifestyle, would not believe the word of someone who grew up in dire poverty in a slum,’ Cruz said sardonically. ‘You always thought I was beneath you, didn’t you, princesa?’
‘That’s not true.’ During their affair she’d hated it when he had mockingly called her princess to emphasise that they came from different ends of the social spectrum. ‘I never cared about where you came from, or that you didn’t have much money.’
He gave a harsh laugh. ‘You made it obvious that you were desperate to return to Eversleigh Hall.’ He glanced around the comfortable library with its shelves of books from floor to ceiling and plush velvet curtains hanging at the windows. ‘I can understand why you hated living in a cramped miner’s cottage with a corrugated-iron roof, when you were used to living in a grand mansion.’
‘I didn’t hate the cottage, but we lived there with your parents and your mother never made me feel welcome.’ Sabrina saw disbelief in Cruz’s eyes and knew it would be pointless trying to convince him that she hadn’t minded the basic living accommodation in Brazil. But his mother’s unfriendliness had been hard to cope with. Ana-Maria Delgado had patently adored her son, and perhaps in Cruz’s mother’s eyes no woman would be good enough for him, Sabrina mused.
As Cruz had said, there was no point in dragging up the past. It had all happened a long time ago and their lives had moved on. Ironically their fortunes had reversed for Cruz was now a millionaire, while since her father’s disappearance she had spent every last penny she had paying for the upkeep of Eversleigh Hall, and she and the house were practically bankrupt.
‘Some things about you haven’t changed. Your eyes still darken to the colour of storm clouds when you lie.’
Cruz’s deep voice jolted Sabrina from her thoughts and she tensed as he walked around the desk and stood unsettlingly close to her.
‘Ten years ago when I asked you if you were happy to live in Brazil with me and have my child, you assured me that you were, but your eyes were as dark as pewter and revealed the truth—that you wanted to return to Eversleigh Hall.’
She flushed guiltily and looked away from his intent gaze that seemed to bore into her skull and read her thoughts. ‘I missed my brother,’ she said quietly. ‘Tristan was just a kid of eleven. After my mother left we had become very close and I was worried about him living here with just a nanny to take care of him.’
‘I don’t believe that concern for your brother was the only reason for your eagerness to leave Brazil, any more than I believe you are unable to contact Earl Bancroft if you wish to,’ he said sardonically. ‘I also think you know more about the map than you have admitted.’
She had forgotten how tall he was, Sabrina thought, feeling a frisson of panic when she realised that he had moved imperceptibly closer to her. She could see the shadow of black chest hairs beneath his crisp white shirt and the faint delineation of his powerful abdominal muscles. Seductive images taunted her subconscious: Cruz’s naked, bronzed body pressed against hers, hard against soft, dark against her whiteness. She visualised him pulling her down on top of him, his strong arms holding her as he guided her onto his erect shaft while she slowly took him inside her.
Heat coursed through her veins. The few lovers she’d had in the past ten years had never evoked more than her mild interest, and sex had been disappointing. But to her shame she was bombarded by memories of Cruz’s magnificent virility and she was aware of a betraying dampness between her legs.
Anger was her only defence against the insidious ache of longing in the pit of her stomach. ‘I’ve told you I know nothing about a map and it’s not my problem if you refuse to believe me.’
Even though she was wearing four-inch heels she had to tilt her head to look at his face. Ten years ago she hadn’t stood a chance against him, she thought bi
tterly, feeling an ache in her heart for the innocent girl she had once been who had looked forward to going to university. Cruz had taken one look at her and decided he wanted her, but within months of the start of their affair she had been pregnant and facing a very different life in Brazil from the one she had been used to in England.
If he had loved her she would have coped with her new lifestyle, she thought sadly. But when her pregnancy had been confirmed Cruz’s desire for her had died and it had quickly become clear that they had nothing between them to sustain a relationship.
She felt the ache of tears at the back of her throat. It was silly to cry for a lost love that in truth had only ever been an illusion, she reminded herself.
‘I want you to leave,’ she said tautly. She frowned when he made no response, merely raised his dark eyebrows and surveyed her with an arrogance that made her seethe.
‘I suppose you think I should be intimidated by your air of menace. Perhaps you think you can force the whereabouts of the map out of me, but I have plenty of staff in the house.’ She mentally crossed her fingers behind her back as she thought of John and his wife, Mary. The butler and housekeeper were the only remaining staff living at Eversleigh and were past retirement age. ‘If you lay a finger on me I’ll scream.’
She spun on her heels, intending to march over to the door, but his hand shot out and he caught hold of her arm and jerked her round to face him.
‘I don’t think force will be necessary to persuade you to give me what I want,’ he murmured.
Sabrina’s stomach muscles clenched as his sensuous, molten-syrup voice tugged on her senses. Time seemed to be suspended and her breath was trapped in her lungs. Her eyes widened as she watched his dark head descend and she realised that he was going to kiss her. He wouldn’t dare, she assured herself. But this was Cruz Delgado—a man who would dare to make a deal with the devil if he believed the odds were in his favour.
Mistress of His Revenge (Bought by the Brazilian #1) Page 3