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As Patrick tucked Polly into her chair at the foot of the table she encountered Raul’s level scrutiny, and found herself flushing without knowing why. Picking up her wine glass, she drank.
‘Raul told me to pick out a decent mount for you,’ Patrick shared chattily.
Polly’s wine went down the wrong way. She spluttered, cleared her throat, and gave her companion a pleading look. ‘Can you keep a secret, Patrick?’
He nodded.
Leaning her head guiltily close to his, Polly whispered, ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely honest about my riding ability.’
Patrick frowned. ‘In what way?’
‘I’ve never been on a horse in my life.’
After a startled pause, Patrick burst out laughing.
‘Don’t be selfish,’ Raul drawled silkily. ‘Share the joke with the rest of us.’
Clashing with shimmering dark eyes, Polly flushed. ‘It wasn’t really funny enough.’
‘The English sense of humour isn’t the same as ours,’ Melina remarked sweetly. ‘I’ve always found it rather juvenile.’
Patrick grinned. ‘I have to confess I’m not into your wildly dramatic soap operas. Each to his own.’
Under cover of the ensuing conversation, Patrick murmured, ‘See you tomorrow morning at six while Raul’s out riding. I’ll teach you enough to pass yourself, and then you can tell him you’re just not very good and he can take over.’
‘You’re a saviour,’ Polly muttered with real gratitude, and turned to address Rob Drydon.
After dinner, they settled down with drinks in the drawing room. Melina crossed the room with another one of her super-friendly smiles, saying in her clear, ringing voice, ‘I want you to tell me all about yourself, Polly.’
Sinking deep into the sofa, to show the maximum possible amount of her incredibly long and shapely legs, Melina asked, ‘So how’s married life treating you?’
‘Wonderfully well.’ Polly emptied her glass in one gulp and prayed for deliverance, uneasily conscious that Raul was watching them both from the other side of the room. She wished she was feeling more herself.
/> ‘I don’t think Raul likes to see you drinking so much. He rarely touches alcohol... the occasional glass of champagne on important occasions.’ Registering Polly’s surprise, Melina elevated a brow. ‘So you didn’t know? How couldn’t you know something that basic about your own husband?’
Polly clutched her empty glass like a drunkard amongst teetotallers, bitterly, painfully resenting the fact that Melina could tell her anything she didn’t know about Raul. It reminded her all over again that until very recently there had been nothing normal about her relationship with Raul.
‘That’s none of your business,’ she told Melina flatly, determined not to play the blonde’s spiteful double game. Now, when it was too late, she saw how foolish she had been not to tell Raul about her initial clash with Melina. If she tried to tell him now, he probably wouldn’t believe her, not with Melina putting on the show of the century with her smiling friendliness.
‘Raul is my business, and he always will be,’ Melina said smugly. ‘Did you make a huge scene when he came to see me that very same night?’
Polly froze and then slowly, jerkily turned her head, which was beginning to pound unpleasantly. ‘What are you saying?’
‘That even I wasn’t expecting him quite that soon.’ Glinting green eyes absorbed Polly’s growing pallor with satisfaction. ‘I didn’t need ESP to realise that you’d obviously had a colossal row. It was your first night in your new home and yet Raul ended up with me.’
‘You’re lying...I don’t believe you.’ That night had been the equivalent of their wedding night. Raul couldn’t have—he simply couldn’t have gone to Melina beforehand! But he had gone out riding. In sick desperation, she strained to recall what he had told her. Hadn’t he admitted calling in with a neighbour? Numbly, Polly let the maid refill her glass. Melina was a neighbour. Technically Raul hadn’t lied to her...
‘He came to me to talk. Raul needs a woman, not a little girl.’
Polly took a defiant slug of her drink. ‘He needs you like he needs a hole in the head!’ she said, and then frowned in confusion as Melina suddenly leant past her to start talking in low-pitched Spanish.
‘I hope you’re feeling better the next time I see you, Polly,’ Melina then murmured graciously as she rose to her feet.
An icy voice like a lethal weapon breathed in Polly’s shrinking ear, ‘I’ll see our guests out, mi esposa. Don’t you dare get up. If you stand up, you might fall over, and if you fall over, I’ll put you under a very cold shower!’
Devastated to realise that Raul must have overheard her last response to Melina, and doubtless believed that she had been inexcusably rude for no good reason, Polly sat transfixed while everyone took their leave, loads of sympathetic looks and concerned murmurs coming her way once Raul mentioned that she was feeling dizzy.
Patrick hung back to say with a frown, ‘Do you think you’ll make it down to the stables in the morning?’
