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dawned at last and she felt a great tide of burning colour wash over her face. She felt such a fool, and hated it.
‘Exactly,’ he said drily. Then, his tone reeking of boredom, he admitted, ‘I left out some of the truth when I translated what the helpful señora was happy to tell us. She keeps an eye on the house when your father is absent—it’s an arrangement they have. He left a few days ago for an unspecified length of time and didn’t say where he was going. But a young woman exactly answering Encarnación’s description was with him.’
He held up an imperious hand when she opened her mouth to tell him exactly what she thought of liars, his sudden ferocious frown pushing the words back down her throat. ‘I am a reader of souls, señorita. You have a cold, suspicious mind. Had I offered to drive you here on the pretext of confronting your wretched father with his sins, you would have immediately suspected my change of heart and removed yourself. My plans for your father don’t involve having you running round loose, free to warn him.’
One dark brow shot up to his hairline. ‘And you would warn him, help him avoid the justice he deserves—perhaps, even for you, blood is thicker than water, I couldn’t take that chance.’
He shrugged minimally, the tiny dismissive gesture making Sarah’s blood run cold. ‘I decided that you were the best bargaining counter I had in my quest, and decided to help you to follow me. I allowed you to know how I’d kept track of you, just to sow the seeds of the idea. Made sure you knew which receptionist spoke your language, gave you ample time to make your arrangements—’
‘How did you know I wouldn’t see through it?’ she blustered, furious with herself because he’d led her by the nose. She’d been too busy congratulating herself over outwitting him to notice the obvious ‘help’ he’d been giving her. And his drawled answer didn’t raise her bruised self-esteem any higher.
‘There was a risk,’ he conceded, tacking on drily, ‘But not a very large one. Your arrogance outweighs your intelligence, señorita. You set out to do something and you achieve it, coldly believing that no one will stand in your way. As I told you, I’m a reader of souls.’
Sarah’s palms burned to hit him. How dared he make such snap judgements? He barely knew her, much less what made her tick. She would honestly have admitted to being single-minded, with clearcut views about the way she wanted to run her life. But arrogant? Never! And if she’d allowed him to make a fool of her then it was only because she’d been too worried over what might happen to Piers if that black-hearted monster got his hands on him.
‘You can’t keep me here against my will!’ she reiterated shrilly. ‘What do you take Miles Hunter for? A fool?’ Her eyes blazed with blistering, nearly hysterical scorn. ‘After getting such a threatening message concerning one of his clients, he will have already been in touch with the police—and they’ll track you down and lock you up and throw away the key. Which is what criminal oafs like you deserve!’
‘Not if he has any thought for your father, he won’t.’ He sounded almost bored again and thinly veiled impatience glinted in his black eyes as he added insultingly, ‘Compose yourself, señorita. Try to find some self-discipline from somewhere. After all, I’m quite certain you believe you’ve cornered the market in that commodity. Treat this apartment as if it were your own. You may be here for some time, so you might as well settle in and get used to it.’ He shot her a last, contemptuously dismissive glance. ‘I’ll be back when you’ve had time to control yourself.’
With that, he spun round on his heels and walked out, closing the heavy door quietly. Which was worse, she thought disjointedly, than if he’d slammed it. She heard the key turn in the lock and shuddered. Cold now, the heat of her panic and anger subsiding into a sick sense of inevitability, she wrapped her arms around her quivering body and squeezed her eyes tightly shut.
She would not cry. She would not!
And although Francisco Garcia Casals was obviously mad with damaged family pride, a throwback to the Inquisition, he had spoken the truth when he’d referred to her loss of control.
His mention of her lack of self-discipline— though who could wonder at it in the circumstances?—had struck right through all that uncharacteristic and fruitless rage. It was something she had to remedy, and quickly. Willing the shakes out of her limbs, she forced herself to take several deep, calming breaths.
Shrieking like a fishwife wasn’t the way to subdue an enemy, she reminded herself tautly. That her captor showed every indication of being utterly unsubduable—by anyone—was something she wasn’t going to think about.
Barely sparing the opulent furnishings a glance, she walked purposefully to one of the many windows that marched down the length of the far wall, dragging open the louvred shutters. The interior courtyard they’d entered by was far, far below, the smooth, sun-warmed stone walls holding no viable footholds whatsoever. She turned back into the room, sighing disgustedly, and began to wrench open the interior doors.
The first led to a beautifull
y appointed sitting-room, which didn’t interest her in the slightest, and the second to a bathroom, which interested her a lot. The third and final door opened on to a spiral stone stair which would lead, at a guess, to the battlements she’d seen from below. Closing the door on that impossible escape route, she gave up and marched into the bathroom.
Since he’d locked the only entrance to the suite of rooms and she couldn’t get out through the windows or conveniently sprout wings and fly from the battlements, she would have to try to cultivate patience and forget any ideas of escape for the time being.
She was almost completely sure that the wretched man meant her no physical harm, personally, so the only sensible thing to do was to try and reason with him. And she herself would be in a calmer state of mind, better able to persuade him that what he was doing was madness, if she could at least soak the stresses and stickiness of the day away in a nice soothing bath.
And the surroundings could have been expressly designed with relaxation in mind, she decided, her mind freed now from the muddle of indecision and panic and sheer rage, enabling her to take stock for the first time since he’d manhandled her into the apartment.
Misty, silvery pale marble lined the walls, ceiling and floor and glass shelves floated ethereally, looking too insubstantial to bear the weight of the crystal bottles of perfumed bath oils, rare essences and costly body lotions. The partly sunken bath looked big enough to swim in and the wide surround was bedecked with graceful ferns in alabaster pots.
In a place this size the skeleton staff of two must have their work cut out maintaining such perfection, she thought as she turned on the dolphinshaped gold-plated taps and watched the water gush steamily into the bath before gathering her thoughts and stripping thankfully out of her wrinkled clothes.
At least she wasn’t alone here with the dauntingly unpredictable, fiery-tempered Spaniard, she thought as she added oils generously to the water. There would be someone around she could appeal to if he ever allowed his violent antipathy towards her father to spill over on to her. And she might be able to persuade one of them to help her get out of this place and back to civilisation and sanity. It wasn’t totally beyond the bounds of possibility, she comforted herself.
The oils she had lavishly added filled the room with the sweet perfume of lavender, jasmine, rose too, she decided as she slid blissfully into the warm depths, and some other essence she couldn’t quite put a name to. Whatever, they had obviously been blended with complete relaxation in mind because the stresses and worries of the long, troubled day seemed to melt away and, in the perfumed mists of the seductive fragrances, the hedonistic surroundings of the luxurious bathroom, the soft, silky warm water, even Francisco Casals became a force that could be reasoned with.
Sarah might have stayed exactly where she was all night, adding extra hot water and oils when she felt the impulse, but for the thought that she’d end up looking like a pale pink prune. So she eventually pulled herself languorously out, her toes curling into the thick-pile bath-mat as she released her hair from the heavy plait she’d secured on the top of her head with her one remaining hairpin and let it cascade down over her shoulders.
When she’d dressed she would sit down quietly— perhaps in the graceful sitting-room she’d poked her head into—and sensibly work out how best to reason with her unreasonable captor. Common sense and logic would be the best, the only way to get through to him, she decided, wrapping herself in one of the luxurious dark green towels before padding through to retrieve her overnight bag from the bedroom, relaxed enough now to mourn vaguely the fact that apart form a change of underwear and a nightie she had brought nothing with her.
It was dim in here now with velvety twilight but she would look for the light switches later because she could still see her way around and this soft bluey light was soothing. Reluctant to get into her travelcreased trousers and blouse when her skin felt so deliciously soft and fresh after her unaccustomedly long wallow, she hung her jacket in one of the capacious hanging cupboards she discovered behind a set of sliding doors. Reaching up, she lost her precarious grip on the towel, and she stepped over it where it pooled to the floor, enjoying the subtle caress of the cooler evening air on her body—then went into shock as the door opened and her dark captor walked in.
He must have depressed a light switch because every lamp in the room and the two delicate crystal chandeliers overheard glittered into immediate light. Shamefully revealing light, she realised as her insides twisted and tightened in panicky knots when she saw his black eyes slowly rake over her nakedness.
Ineffectively trying to cover herself with her hands, she made a raw sound in her throat as she stepped slowly backwards, trying to locate the fallen bath-towel with her feet. She didn’t dare take her eyes off him.
