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She pulled away, trying to look as if she couldn’t give a damn what his intentions were. But her mind was jumping about in a frenzy. Was he merely being polite? Feeling guilty because she was unused to this kind of terrain and he’d forgotten she was with him? Or was he speaking the truth because he wouldn’t want an exhausted woman in his bed tonight?
Her common sense wasn’t up to dealing with that so she asked in a rush, ‘Not long to what?’
In answer, he pulled her round, pointing further down the mountainside where herds of goats were grazing on the scrub, and further still to where a small hut-like stone building lay in the shade of stunted olive trees. A curl of thin blue smoke rose from the single squat chimney and even as she focused she saw the bent figure of an old man emerge from the shade.
‘El pastor,’ he said softly, the austerity she’d noted earlier leaching from his features. ‘He will welcome us to his home and there you will rest your aching feet for a few moments and drink the finest spring water you have ever tasted.’
‘He lives there?’ Sarah could hardly believe it. There was nothing for miles but the ferocious mountain landscape. ‘Doesn’t he get lonely? Surely he goes back to the village during the winter?’
‘No. He prefers solitude.’ Francisco loped down the steep, narrow track, taking one of her hands firmly in his. ‘He doesn’t like people, generally speaking. He never married and when his mother died, twenty years ago, he moved up here. He tends the goats for the villagers and in return they make payment in vegetables, cheese, the occasional fowl. I usually check up on him once a month at least, more often in the winter.’
By now they were slithering across a barrier of scree and Francisco was laughing, his teeth gleaming whitely, as he caught her up in his arms and carried her over the final unstable yards, then deposited her on firm ground. The old man watched, not smiling until they were near enough for him to reach out and take Francisco’s hand. And although the smile looked rarely used there was deep respect in it, and gratitude too, when a packet of tobacco was produced from the haversack, then the rest of the ham, a great lump of cheese wrapped in cool leaves and enough fruit to keep the old man going for a week.
The remains of their picnic, she recognised. They had eaten very little; they had been diverted… Frowning, she pushed that memory away and, annoyingly, her stomach chose that moment to rumble. She didn’t begrudge the reclusive goatherd so much as a single grape. Relying, as he seemed to have chosen to do, on the handouts from others, he must sometimes go hungry, she thought compassionately. But she did wonder how she was going to trudge all those miles back on an empty stomach.
Good for the figure, she told herself bracingly as the two men conversed in rapid Spanish, the old man’s voice sounding rusty. And then Francisco placed a hand in the small of her back, guiding her to a wooden bench leaning against the stone hut in the shade of the trees, and the goatherd disappeared inside to emerge moments later with two glasses of the coolest, best-tasting water she had ever been offered. It slid down her parched throat like a dream and she was still sipping when a sleek black dog came out of the little house to be fed with chunks of cheese and slices of ham from their picnic.
‘So he does have a friend; I’m glad of that,’ Sarah murmured while this was going on, and Francisco shrugged eloquently.
‘He has many friends, even if he doesn’t know it. People from the village, workers on my estates—very few days pass without someone making the journey to see that all is well with him.’ He turned to the shepherd, spoke in Spanish, then told Sarah, ‘We will go now. We will not outstay our welcome. He has too much courtesy to ask anyone to leave, but he is happier alone.’
He tugged her to her feet, with a few more parting words, then led her into a yard of sorts where an almost brand-new four-wheel-drive vehicle glittered in the sunlight. He opened the passenger door and Sarah questioned, ‘What are you doing? Is this his?’
‘I made it available to him twelve months ago. So far he has used it only once. His dog cut a paw and it wouldn’t heal. He drove it to the vet for treatment.’ While she was digesting that he walked round to the driver’s seat, telling her, ‘I asked if I could borrow it. You have walked far enough. It will be returned to him in the morning.’ He flashed her that sudden, irresistible smile. ‘We must simply hope that his dog won’t injure itself in the meantime.’
She gave him a wavery smile back then stared blindly out of the windscreen. There was a lump in her throat, like a rock. For all his thoughtfulness in borrowing the vehicle she would rather have walked back with him, over the mountain, empty stomach, tired feet and all. She didn’t want their outing to end. Once back at the castle she would have to start remembering that she was his captive, start verbally fighting him again.
The rough track led downwards, dust and stones flying beneath the wheels, and eventually ended in a crossroads of sorts.
‘Left takes us further into the estates, straight on leads down to the village, right goes back to my home.’ He turned briefly, one dark brow questioning. ‘You would like to see the village?’ And, without waiting for her answer, he drove straight on.
A sudden spurt of excitement brought a huge smile to her face. She erased it swiftly. OK, OK, so she was glad the outing was to be extended, that she was to be given a little more time with the man she had idiotically fallen in love with, just an hour or so more before they must return to being captive and captor. But that didn’t mean she could let herself feel
quite so gloriously happy.
He was an unsettling man and he had unsettled her, she informed herself, her eyes on the passing scenery which was becoming less harsh with every metre of the steep, tortuously twisting road. And that was not to be marvelled at, given what she’d been through since leaving London. Little wonder she was unsettled enough to imagine that she’d fallen in love with him. Wasn’t it common knowledge that prisoners formed a special kind of bond with their captors? And if the man who’d done the capturing was as drop-dead handsome, as powerful, as sexually exciting and downright intriguing as Francisco, then she could be excused for the ephemeral insanity of imagining love had anything to do with anything.
As soon as she was on the plane back to London he would become no more than the irritating memory of an arrogant, wrong-minded brute who had stolen time out of her busy, rewarding and successful life.
Having reached that deeply gratifying conclusion, she was able to relax in her seat and enjoy his commentary on what they were seeing as every twist and turn in the narrow road took them further down into the fertile river valley.
The rich acres of cereals, the peach orchards, the olive and citrus groves made fecund patterns across the land, and the lush greenery of oaks and elms made a band of speckled shade along the edges of the river. In the shade of the riverbank he parked the Jeep, and she looked at the cool sparkling water and admitted, ‘It’s all so lovely.’
‘More lovely than the mountains and my home?’ He turned, his hands on the wheel, his look intent, and she shook her head, smiling.
‘No. Just different.’
‘You like my homeland? What you have seen of it? If circumstances were different, would you be happy here?’
‘Who wouldn’t be?’ she evaded, wondering why he was asking, refusing to allow herself inwardly to admit that she would be happy anywhere if she could be with him. Thankfully, he seemed content with her answer, swinging out of the Jeep and helping her down, taking her hand and leading her back on to the road. In moments they were entering the village, a maze of narrow streets, the clean façades of the houses decorated with window-boxes brimming over with geraniums, the tiny gardens awash with roses, honeysuckle and lilies, the walls dripping with purple and scarlet bougainvillaea.
Entering the small cobbled square, she tried to reclaim her hand but succeeded only in making him tighten his grip so tried instead to ignore the warmth of his touch, the sweet sensations that rippled through her body, weakening her until all she wanted to do was cling to him, hold him, never let him go.
Not easy, and not helped by the fact that people went out of their way to greet him. Old men engrossed in animated conversation on the benches facing the central stone fountain ambled over to pass a word or two; young mothers with pushchairs and elderly black-clad matrons who popped out of doorways all addressed him as patrón. Wide smiles of pleasure cracked their faces, smiles for her too, and little sidelong glances, weighing up the suitability of el patrón’s new lady.
Sarah didn’t blame them for being curious but she could have done without it. She wasn’t his lady, despite the way he had now draped a possessive arm around her shoulders, pulling her close, their bodies touching, presenting them as an item. It was a lie, a sham, yet she had almost been his, up there, high in the mountains. She blushed uncontrollably as her body shuddered with yearning for what had almost been and now must never be, and Francisco gave her a quick look of concern and announced, ‘We will eat. Forgive me, you must be hungry. We barely made a dent in the lavish picnic Rosalia provided.’
He dropped a swift kiss on her hectic cheek, said something in Spanish to the growing group of interested villagers, something which raised a gale of laughter, and compounded the felony by telling her, ‘We had other things on our minds, didn’t we, querida?’
