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‘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!’
