The Caged Tiger. PENNY JORDAN

fino, dry and clean to the palate. The first time she had tasted it Davina had found it too dry, but habit had accustomed her taste-buds; all those long, lazy afternoons whose end had been signalled by the serving of sherry and tapas on the patio. She clamped down on the thought. On too many thoughts.

      ‘You are not hungry?’

      It was Rosita who whispered the words understandingly, but Ruy who answered them for her, even though they were separated by the length of the polished table, gleaming with silver and crystal. The Silvadores had no need to parade their wealth ostentatiously, and Davina knew that the fine china plates and silver cutlery they were using were nothing compared with the exquisite Sèvres and Meissen china locked away with the gold plate which was a legacy from the Conde who had sailed to the Americas. The family’s wealth derived from many sources—from the sherry business, from land they owned all over Spain, from the young bulls raised on the estancia; from business ventures involving the development of exclusive holiday resorts—but it was here in this ancient Moorish castle that they had set their deepest roots. And Ruy was the sole ruler of this empire. How had his accident occurred? By what means had he been robbed of his independence? Davina glanced down the length of the table. Seeing him seated no one could guess that the powerful muscles moving smoothly beneath his dinner jacket were all that remained of his old physical perfection.

      As the meal dragged on images as sharp and crystal clear as the day they were formed imposed themselves relentlessly on her mind; Ruy swimming in the pool; Ruy riding at the estancia, tending the young bulls destined for the arena; Ruy dancing… making love… She shuddered deeply and wrenched her thoughts back to the present, trying to tell herself that it was divine justice that Ruy, who had cruelly and callously used her to get back at the woman he really loved, should now be deserted by that woman. Why had Carmelita done it? Davina wondered. She had been a bride of a matter of weeks when the sultry Spanish woman had sought her out at this very house, reinforcing what Davina had already heard from her mother-in-law—that Ruy loved her; that there had been an understanding between them for many years; that they were on the point of announcing their betrothal when they had quarrelled, and Ruy in a fit of pique because she, Carmelita, did not choose to run to his bidding like the milk and water English miss he had married had chosen a bride as different from the seductive Spaniard with her night-dark hair and carmine lips as it would have been possible to find. She would get him back, Carmelita had told her. A milksop like her could never hold a man like Ruy, whose lovemaking demanded from his partner a deep-seated understanding of the complexities that went into the making of a man whose blood combined the fiery fanaticism of early Christianity with thousands of years of Moorish appreciation of the sensual arts—a woman such as Carmelita herself.

      And yet now Carmelita had abandoned him. Because he was no longer the man he had once been; no longer capable of outriding the wind, of making love until dawn tinted the sky, or because her pride would not allow any child she bore him to come second to the son his English wife had given him? Under the polite mask of Spanish courtesy lay deep wells of passion that were a legacy of their Moorish ancestors, as Davina already knew. Who could say what had prompted Carmelita to desert Ruy and make her life with another?

      At last the meal drew to a close, but instead of feeling relieved Davina felt her nerves tighten still further, the implacable determination in Ruy’s eyes like the fiendish threat of a torturer ready to turn the screws that final notch which separated excruciating pain from oblivion by the mere hair’s breadth.

      All through the meal she had answered her mother-in-law’s questions about Jamie’s upbringing as politely as she could. Once she might have been intimidated by this woman whose ancestors had numbered kings and queens among their intimates, but where Jamie was concerned she would allow nothing to stand in the way of what she considered right for her child, and this she had been making coolly and firmly clear to Ruy’s mother throughout the meal.

      By the time she realised she was carrying Jamie she had been too numbed by pain to care, for by then she had known exactly why Ruy had married her, and why too he spent so many hours away from the Palacio—away from her bed. The baby she had been carrying had been incidental to her pain, but after his birth she had been overwhelmed by such love for Jamie that that pain had started to recede, if only minutely. As she held him to her breast and felt him suckle strongly she had known that whatever the cost to herself Jamie would not be brought up in a house where his mother was despised. And her mother-in-law had aided her in her flight. She had been the one who had brought those damning photographs of Ruy and Carmelita together at the estancia, while she, his wife, bore his child alone. She had left the hospital one cold, grey winter afternoon, taking a plane for London, not knowing what path her life would take, but only knowing that she must get away from Spain and Ruy before her love for him destroyed her completely.

      She had been lucky—very lucky, she acknowledged wryly. The chance entering of a competition in a women’s magazine had led to a contract for illustrations for a magazine serial and from there to her present work on children’s books. She was not rich, but she had enough to buy a small flat in a Pembrokeshire village; enough to keep Jamie and herself in modest comfort, but not enough to give the little boy the warm winters he needed until his strength was built up.

      After dinner while Rodriguez served coffee in the sala Sebastian came and sat beside her.

      ‘You must try to forgive Ruy,’ he told her awkwardly in a low voice while his brother was speaking to the manservant. ‘He has changed since his accident.’ He shrugged explicitly. ‘Who would not, especially a man like Ruy who was always so…’

      ‘Male?’ Davina supplied wryly, watching the blood surge faintly beneath Sebastian’s olive skin. ‘Oh yes, I can guess at the devils that torment him now, Sebastian, but what I can’t understand is how your mother dared to conceal from him that she was sending for me.’

      Sebastian shrugged again, this time avoiding her eyes completely. ‘You have seen how Ruy reacted. Just as she knew that you would not come if you knew the truth, so she knew that Ruy would not allow you to be sent for. He has his pride…’

      ‘And was deserted by the woman he loves,’ Davina supplied.

      Sebastian looked surprised and uncomfortable. ‘That is so, but my brother is not the man to enforce his emotions on a woman who does not want them. You need have no fears on that score, Davina.’

      ‘I haven’t,’ she told him dryly. ‘I’m well aware that the only reason I’m tolerated here is because of Jamie; the son Ruy has always refused to acknowledge… the son who even now he tries to pretend might not be his…’

      The telephone rang and Sebastian excused himself hurriedly, leaving her alone. Stifling a yawn, she closed her eyes, meaning only to rest them for a few minutes.

      Whether it was the faint hiss of the wheelchair, or some sixth sense alerting her to another’s presence that woke her, Davina did not know. When she opened her eyes the sala was in darkness apart from one solitary lamp casting a pool of soft rose light over the ancient Persian carpet.

      ‘So, you are awake. I seem to remember that you had difficulty before adjusting to our hours.’

      ‘You should have woken me before.’ A glance at her wristwatch confirmed that it was late—nearly two in the morning. They were the only occupants of the room, and her sense of vulnerability increased as she realised that Ruy had watched her as she slept, observed her in her most unguarded moments. No, not her most unguarded, she acknowledged seconds later; those had been when they made love. She shivered involuntarily, the light shining whitely on Ruy’s teeth as he bared them mockingly.

      ‘Why do you shake so, querida?’ he asked dulcetly. ‘Can it be that you are afraid of me? A man who cannot move without the assistance of this chair? You fear the caged tiger, where you would not fear the free?’

      It was on the tip of her tongue to point out that caged tigers could be unmercifully lethal, driven to scar and wound by the very virtue of their imprisonment, and so it was with Ruy himself. In him she sensed all the dammed-up power and bitterness of a man for whom life has lost its sharp sweetness and turned to aloes on his tongue.

      ‘What