His arms had always been strong to excite her, but now they were strong to keep her safe. Nobody had ever offered her safety before, and she reached for it, eagerly, blindly, startling him with the emotional depth of her response.
‘Margarita,’ he murmured.
‘Hold me,’ she begged. ‘Don’t let me go.’
‘Never,’ he said swiftly. ‘I’m here-always-’ His face was close to hers, his eyes holding hers. ‘Now,’ he whispered.
She drew a long breath and suddenly she was a whirlwind in his arms, calling his name, drawing him closer, seeking something only he could give. For a blinding moment everything was well between them, just as it had been when passion was uncomplicated and all they asked. Then suddenly it was over and his heart was beating as never before. Something had happened, beautiful, alarming and beyond his experience. He wasn’t sure of anything, except that passion alone would never be enough again.
He lay on his back, his arm beneath Maggie’s neck, while she turned towards him, flinging an arm confidingly across his chest, snuggling against him as though seeking refuge.
He thought she murmured something. It might have been,
He awoke in the small hours to find her asleep on his chest, still in the circle of his arm.
‘Margarita,’ he said softly, ‘are you awake?’
There was no answer, only her soft rhythmic breathing. When he was sure she was still asleep, he kissed the top of her head.
‘Where are we now?’ he murmured. ‘You came to me, but why? Was it only to drive him away? If so, how can I complain? Who should defend you from him but I, who brought him back to torment you?
‘I knew in Sol y Nieve that you’d returned to that place you spoke of, the place without feeling that you entered when your baby died. There was no hate there, but no love either, no warmth, no joy. Nothing for Roderigo-and nothing for me.
‘But now the feelings have returned, haven’t they? Why am I afraid to look into your heart? What would I find there? Love for me? Love for him? Despite everything, is some part of you still his? Is that why he haunts you?
‘What would you say if I spoke to you of love? Would that bring you closer to me, or drive you further off? Why haven’t I the courage to take the risk?’
He made a sudden convulsive movement, sitting up so sharply that he was afraid she would awaken. But she only rolled over and buried herself more deeply in the bed. He rose, pulled on his robe and went to the window overlooking the garden, opening it quietly and slipping out into the cool night air.
Down below he could see the Patio de los Pajaros, where he’d sat on the first evening and she had come wandering out amidst the stone birds, talking of truth and paradise, and they had mysteriously understood each other. But it had ended in a quarrel, as it always did, because this woman was born to torment him. And now that he’d discovered something of her heart and mind, she tormented him more than ever, posing questions that couldn’t be answered in bed, and that undermined everything he’d thought was certain in his life.
‘Margarita Alva,’ he murmured desperately to the night sky, ‘how I wish I had never met you!’
Maggie’s tour of the de Santiago estates was a triumphant success. Those she met knew only that she was English and had prepared themselves for the worst. But her fluency in their language disarmed them, and the discovery that she was a Cortez, born in the region and knowledgeable about it, completed her conquest. They even began to use her as a channel to Sebastian.
‘Of course, I realise that you find it incredibly boring to discuss these things with a woman,’ she teased him one evening.
‘No, no, that horse won’t run,’ he defended himself, grinning. ‘Not after things I heard you say to Alfonso in Sol y Nieve. Besides, I only said it in the first place to annoy you.’ He glanced at the papers she’d put before him. ‘Why didn’t Senora Herez bring this problem to me ages ago? She’s left it almost too late to do anything.’
‘She finds you rather alarming.’
He was perturbed. ‘I never knew.’
‘Is it really too late?’
‘We’ll be in Seville next week for the opening of the regional parliament. I’ll talk to some people.’
In Seville she found herself at the centre of a new world. Now it was Sebastian’s fellow politicians who crowded around, eager to know her. Over a series of tiring but triumphant dinner parties she completed what her husband called, ‘the conquest of Seville’. His pride in her was enormous. Their closeness seemed to grow every day. By the time they returned home three weeks later they both felt they could dare to hope that the problems were behind them.
Sebastian reached the Casa Mayorez in the middle of the afternoon. Carlos was waiting for him.
‘I don’t know if I did the right thing in calling you, Senor,’ he said nervously.
‘You were very vague and mysterious on the telephone. Why don’t you simply tell me what had happened?’
Carlos picked up a newspaper, bearing the picture of a ruffianly, unshaven man, whose face Sebastian found unpleasantly familiar.
‘It’s him,’ Carlos said, indicating the picture. ‘His name is Miguel Vargas, and he’s just been arrested for murder. It was on television too, and when my master saw this man’s face on the screen he became very agitated.’
Sebastian studied the picture and went cold. Now he knew where he’d seen Miguel Vargas before-at the trial of Roderigo Alva. He was an associate of Alva’s and had given evidence against him. According to him, Alva had boasted of having robbed the Casa Mayorez once already-something which Alva had been eager to admit, since his defence had been that the previous burglary accounted for his fingerprints on the scene.
‘He said the place was stacked with riches, and he was going back,’ Vargas had claimed. But this Alva had frantically denied. The two men had had a screaming match across the court. Vargas was an unpleasant character, but nobody had doubted he was telling the truth about this.
‘How-agitated?’ Sebastian asked Carlos now.
‘He kept saying, “Him”, “Him”,’ Carlos said. ‘I asked him what he meant, and he said, “He killed me.” And then he began to weep. He kept repeating over and over, “He killed me.”’
Sebastian tried not to listen to the thoughts that were shouting at him. It was monstrous, impossible. For if it was true-
If it was true, then Roderigo Alva was innocent of the crime for which he had been convicted. And that meant…
He pulled himself together and read the rest of the newspaper story. Miguel Vargas had been arrested for shooting down a policeman in cold blood in the presence of witnesses. There was no doubt of his guilt, or the fact that he would spend the rest of his life behind bars for this crime alone. Nothing Sebastian did or didn’t do would make any difference to that.
‘What am I to do, Senor?’ Carlos asked. ‘I thought of going to the police, but an identification by such a sick man after four years-’
‘Would be very little use,’ Sebastian agreed.
‘And they would question my master and upset him further. Shouldn’t I spare him that? Advise me, Senor.’
‘Let me think about this,’ Sebastian told him. ‘In the meantime, say nothing. Try to keep him calm, and if possible, don’t let him watch the news. I’ll be in touch.’
He spent a troubled evening at home, glad that they were entertaining guests, and his preoccupation might pass unnoticed. When the guests had gone he told his wife that he would work late, and spent the night pacing his study.
On the face of it, there was no doubt where his duty lay. If an innocent man had been wrongly convicted, then, even though he was now dead he was entitled to have his name cleared. It was all very simple. Except that…
Except that the discovery of her husband’s innocence would reconcile Maggie to his memory. At just the moment when she had begun to turn to himself, she would learn something that would be like a new barrier between them.
It dawned on Sebastian, with a kind of relief, that he could do nothing without first taking this up with the
