THE GOLDEN MADONNA

Rebecca Stratton

Sally Beckett and her friend Michael were looking forward to spending a very pleasant and instructive three months in Spain, as members of a little party who would be studying art with a world famous Spanish artist. In particular, Sally hoped the interlude would help her make up her mind once and for all whether or not she really wanted to marry Michael. But neither of them had reckoned with the irresistible force what was Miguel Cordova. Sally was disturbingly aware of him from the start - but what did he think of her? Certainly she had the face and hair of the golden Madonna he wished to paint, but wasn't only as a Madonna that Miguel saw her? Wasn't it far more likely that his more worldly thought should be centred on the sophisticated, so suitable Ines Valdaques?

CHAPTER ONE

SALLY BECKETT stirred uncomfortably on the hard seat, and a moment later sighed with relief when the train panted its tortuous way to a standstill. She felt hot and dusty and not a little ill-tempered as she pushed back the long fair hair from her face, managing a brief smile at Michael as she did so. The journey had seemed interminable, and quite the most unpleasant part of the trip from London, although it was the shortest. Spanish railways, she felt, were definitely not to be recommended for the fastidious traveller.

From the window she could see a small, rather ramshackle building which was presumably the station, and surrounded by what appeared to be an endless panorama of hills, fields and hot sunny stretches of valley. The rest of the party were already on their feet, talking among themselves, and apparently far less discomforted by the horrible little train than she was herself. She got up, thankful to stretch her legs, but reminded again that they would soon be meeting the great man at last.

It had seemed like a good idea when her father had suggested she spend three months in Spain, indulging her talent for painting under the expert guidance of Miguel Cordova. The prospect of a villa on the warm, sunny coast of southern Spain with nothing to do but paint and enjoy herself had been » irresistible, and she had agreed without hesitation.

Her father had met Miguel Cordova at some grand function where the artist had been guest of honour, and he had been impressed both with the man and his talent, although his description of him had been rather too vague to be satisfactory. Miguel Cordova was well known all over the world, of course, and recognised as one of the greatest of the modern painters, despite his comparative youth. He was about thirty-four or five, according to her father's guess.

It was Cordova himself who had mentioned that he ran a kind of summer school for young artists, with the idea of passing on some of his expertise, and her father had been very keen for her to go. As was to be expected, of course, the students chosen to attend the course, paid well for the privilege, but they were housed in Miguel Cordova's beautiful fifteenth-century house, the Casa de Principes, so the exchange was a more than fair one.

One thing had marred Sally's anticipation of the next three months, and that was the absence of Cathy Burton who was to have accompanied her, not only as a companion but as chaperone too, for the other members of the party were all male. But Cathy, a lifelong friend and a married woman, had unfortunately fallen victim to some mysterious virus only days before they were due to leave.

Sally had laughed at the idea of a chaperone being necessary in this enlightened age, saying it was not only outmoded but laughable. Her father, however, had assured her that it was no means outmoded in Spain, even in this day and age, and that both he, and he felt sure Don Miguel Cordova, would feel much easier if Cathy was with her.

There had been some rather hasty rearranging when Cathy fell ill, and Michael Storer had eventually gone in her stead. The party, thus reorganised, left Sally as the one female in a party of five males, and her father had been a little dubious about the wisdom of it even though, or perhaps because, Michael was going too.

Michael, of course, was in love with her, or so he had been telling her for the past two years, ever since her nineteenth birthday party, and she could never quite understand her own reticence about accepting him. After all. he had everything a girl could possibly ask for in a husband - wealth, looks and charm, but she still hesitated about committing herself to a lifetime with him.

She sighed, wishing she had had more time to appreciate the country they had passed through so far, but their schedule had been a tight one. By air from London and then on this dreadful little train from Seville, without even time to change into something cooler. She had not anticipated the Andalusian spring being so much hotter than the English one, especially as London had been enjoying a particularly warm and sunny May when they left. Herneat blue crimplene suit had seemed summery enough then, now it felt heavy and uncomfortable.

Maybe a bath would be forthcoming when they finally arrived at San Gregorio; she hoped so. She looked across at Michael, and he turned and smiled, his blue eyes appreciating her golden-haired loveliness, as always.

Even after that uncomfortable journey she still looked quite cool and lovely, although perhaps slightly more pink-cheeked than usual. A small oval face, with huge blue eyes and a full soft mouth gave her an almost waif-life look at times, which was very deceptive, for Sally was never a docile character, although she was good-natured enough as a rule, and Michael adored her.

'You look as cool as a cucumber,' he told her, a little enviously, and sotto voce so that the others should not hear. 'I'm boiled alive!'

'I'm hot and dusty,' Sally complained. 'This has been just about the worst journey I ever remember.'

'It has been pretty grim,' Michael agreed. He stepped down on to a small rough platform and looked around him for a moment before taking her luggage and his own, then lifting her down from the hot, stuffy coach. His fingers squeezed hers gently and he smiled. 'You've survived it beautifully as always, darling.'

Sally managed another smile, curious now that they were at last nearing the end of their journey. The sun blazed down from a sky that was unbelievably clear and blue, and she suddenly felt a sense of excitement that stuck in her throat and set her heart pounding so rapidly that it brought a bright spot of colour to each of her cheeks. She had barely time to look around her, however, when someone spoke, so close beside her and so unexpectedly that it startled her enough to make her gasp.

It was a deep, quiet and barely accented voice, and Sally swung round swiftly to face the speaker. 'You will be Miss Beckett,' he said without preliminaries, and it was a statement rather than a question.

Sally nodded, deprived of words for the moment by sheer surprise. Presumably this was either their host or someone sent on his behalf to meet them. On second thoughts she decided that this man was unlikely to have been sent anywhere, by anybody.

She had never seen a picture of Miguel Cordova, it was said that he hated being photographed, but somehow she had always imagined him as a man of perhaps middle height and a little stocky in build. Dark, certainly, and possibly rather 'arty' in his dress. In fact, everything that was in direct contrast to this man.

'Como esta usted, Senorita Beckett? I am Miguel Valdaquez Cordova. I hope you had a pleasant journey.' He bowed briefly and formally over her hand, but Sally had time only to murmur a faint 'How do you do?' before he turned and gave his attention to the rest of the party.

They were impressed, Sally could see that, and they murmured their own names, rather like new boys at school, while Sally studied Miguel Cordova with undisguised interest. He was tall, exceptionally so for a Spaniard, and he had a lean and lithe look that reminded Sally discomfitingly of a large, sleek and very dangerous cat, which, she realised a moment later, was quite ridiculously fanciful of her. At any rate he was not a bit like an artist, at least not Sally's idea of an artist.

He was certainly dark, as she had expected, perhaps darker than she had expected, so that she was reminded that the Moors had occupied Spain for some seven hundred years, and their occupation was evident in more than the architecture.

His eyes were black and heavily fringed with thick lashes that would have looked effeminate in any but that stern, arrogant face, now turned in profile to her so that she could fully appreciate the long, straight nose and firm jaw.

Miguel Cordova, she realised ruefully, was more than a surprise, he was a distinct shock, and he could prove very disconcerting, to say the least, if she was to spend the next three months in his company.

She was still wondering how on earth her father could have been so vague in his description of him, when he turned again, a small frown showing between straight, black brows. 'It is unfortunate that you came unaccompanied, Miss Beckett,' he said. 'Most unfortunate.'

Sally looked at him for a moment, puzzled as to why Cathy's absence should make all that much difference, at least to him, but it was obvious from his frown that he disliked the situation. It seemed her father had been correct in his assumption about that.

'I'm sorry for Cathy, having to miss this opportunity,' Sally told him with a smile. 'But I don't mind for myself so much, and it can't make any difference to anyone else. Senor Cordova.'

He frowned over that too, so that Sally began to think nothing would please the man. 'It makes a great deal of difference, Miss Beckett,' he informed her sternly. 'In Spain a young lady of good family does not travel in the company of several young men. without a chaperone. Such a thing may not cause comment in England, but I must remind you that you are now in Spain and, what is more, a guest in my house.'

Feeling rather like a fallen woman, and resenting it, and with the eyes of the party fixed on her with interest, Sally flushed, tossing back her hair in a gesture designed as much to defy the rest of them as for Miguel Cordova. 'In that case, senor,' she said, 'perhaps I'd better go straight back to England!'

He obviously considered the suggestion either frivolous or unworthy of his notice, for he did not answer her, but instead turned to the others, his firm, straight mouth still showing signs of disapproval.

'Gentlemen,' he said, 'I'm sure you will be relieved to know that you will be travelling the rest of the way to San Gregorio by car.' He glanced over one shoulder at the old-fashioned little train, puffing its laborious way out again, and for a moment white teeth showed in startling contrast to his dark face. 'I hope you do not imagine that all Spanish trains are as antiquated as that one. We are a country of contrasts, as you will discover.'

'It was an experience,' Michael ventured, and Sally noted his ingratiating smile with disbelief.

'It was awful,' she declared bluntly. 'Even British Rail at its worst doesn't sink that low. I've never been so uncomfortable in my life!'

For a moment the deep black eyes studied her in silence, then he nodded as if something in his mind had been confirmed. 'Then you are very lucky, Miss Beckett.'

Before she could reply, he had turned away again and was calling over the only other human being in sight beside themselves, then addressed himself to the rest of the party again. 'You will probably find our roads here a little hair-raising, gentlemen,' he told them. 'But it is the price one pays for the privilege of being undiscovered by tourists.'

His faint smile was greeted with appreciative laughter and Sally looked at her fellow travellers disgustedly. It was obvious that they were impressed with their famous host and were going to hang on to his every word with the fervour of disciples.

'I imagine the scenery will compensate for any discomfort,' someone suggested, and Miguel Cordova nodded and smiled again.

'I hope so,' he said. 'You will see much that is beautiful as we go along.'

It was his hands that drew Sally's gaze, as he used them to lend stress to his words. They were long, lean and strong-looking, almost cruel, like that golden-skinned, black-eyed face, and the tall, lean figure that looked somehow primitive even in the civilising influence of a light fawn suit and a cream shirt and tie. Involuntarily she shivered, and at once felt the black eyes turn to her again, as if drawn by that uncontrollable reaction.

'Miss Beckett will ride with me,' he announced, as if it was unthinkable that anyone would disagree with the idea. 'You also Mr. Clark and Mr. Blane. The rest of you gentlemen will go with Jose in the Bentley, if you please.'

No one made a move to disagree with the arrangement, not even Michael, who was apparently quite happy to leave her in the care of this arrogant autocrat, and simply do as he was told. Not so Sally. She looked at their host from the shadow of her lashes and smiled, a small tight smile that her father would have recognised as the prelude to an argument.

'I'd prefer to go with Michael,' she told him. 'In the Bentley.'

Michael, along with all the others, gazed at her uneasily as if they found her argument embarrassing, while Miguel Cordova drew his black brows together and regarded her down the length of his autocratic nose. 'I have arranged it as I think best, Miss Beckett,' he told her. 'Since you are unaccompanied by another lady, I prefer that you are in my company until we reach the Casa de Principes, where my mother and my cousin can be responsible.'

'I don't need a—a guardian,' Sally objected, her blue eyes glowing angrily at him. 'I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself, Senor Cordova!'

His straight mouth tilted a little at one corner for a moment in a smile of disbelief and he raised one black brow to emphasise his opinion. 'I will take no chances when your father has put you in my care,' he informed her, and Sally stared at him for a moment unbelievingly.

'Father?' she said then. 'You've been in touch with my father?'

'More accurately,' Miguel Cordova informed her, 'your father has been in touch with me, Miss Beckett, and requested that I—keep an eye on you.'

His pedantic tongue managed the colloquialism with some hesitation, but Sally was much too dismayed to notice it. Her father could have no conception of what he had done by making that simple, and to him quite metaphorical, request. Miguel Cordova would interpret his words literally, if his present behaviour was anything to judge by, and she looked like spending most of her three months' stay in some form of Spanish purdah, which did not appeal to her at all.

Too stunned to think of a reply for the moment, she followed him obediently when he walked out to a small open square behind the railways building, mtrcifully shaded by one of the tall palms that she was, in time, to accept as an inevitable part of the landscape. The rest of the party tagged along behind her, and a short, stocky man appeared as if from nowhere, out of the shadows, to assist the lone railway official with their luggage.

There were more palms on the other side of the square, and parked under their shade were a gleaming grey Mercedes and the more English luxury of a Bentley. It seemed no expense was to be spared on the last part of their journey.

'Miss Beckett!'

She was given no opportunity to climb into the Bentley beside Michael, but was ushered, politely but firmly, into the front seat of the Mercedes. Her host, it seemed, intended keeping as close an eye on her as possible, and she was already planning in her mind to ring her father and tell him what he had let her in for.

With two of her fellow travellers installed in the rear seat, Miguel Cordova slid into the driving seat beside Sally, and she felt herself instinctively curl her fingers into her palms as she watched those long brown hands manipulate the controls of the big car effortlessly. There was an aura of masculinity about him that she found almost overpowering in the close proximity of the car seat, and she sensed, rather than saw. the black-eyed gaze he directed at her as they drove on to the road, followed by the Bentley.

From thereon, for a while at least, she became so absorbingly interested in new things to see that it kept her from feeling too dismayed at her own reaction. The road climbed fast, initially, steep and breathtaking, so that she gasped almost audibly once or twice and hung on to the door of the car with one » hand.

The road took them through a small village and after that down into a valley, turning for the coast at the same time and meeting a slightly cooler breeze that she welcomed with half closed eyes as it cooled her hot forehead.

The long, low valley, she thought, looked so much more Eastern than European that she was again reminded of those hundreds of years that Spain had been under Moorish rule. The houses betrayed it in their high walls, with iron grilles and arched gateways, built round a central patio, or small courtyard, that looked blessedly cool and inviting with the shade of lemon and orange trees, and the inevitable palms.

Small brown children played in the hot sun with nothing to shade their heads and little enough on their little brown bodies either. The vineyards, with their complicated irrigation systems, were busy with men and women working with a slowness that was deceptive to the untrained eye. It was all so new and exciting that Sally turned suddenly Without hesitation to smile at the man beside her, her wide blue eyes shining with the excitement of it all.

'It's wonderful!' she said impulsively. 'Absolutely wonderful!'

Miguel Cordova's black eyes met hers for a brief moment and he smiled. 'I am glad that we have something you approve of, Miss Beckett,' he told her, and she flushed at the unmistakable sarcasm, her delight at the countryside banished for a moment in a frown.

'You said it was beautiful,' she reminded him.

'And now you see that I was right, yes?'

As he no doubt always would be, Sally thought ruefully, and gave her attention again to the scenery. They were climbing again now, high above where the Atlantic hurled huge waves at the rocks and received them back shattered into a million glistening fragments that glistened in the hot sun like the spray from a fountain.

It was not the grey Atlantic that she knew at home, but the deep, bright blue of its southernmost point just before it mingled with the Mediterranean in the Straits of Gibraltar. It was all so wonderful and so exciting that she would refuse to let Miguel Cordova, or anyone else, spoil the mythical enchantment of Spain for her.

'Is it far to go now?' she asked, without turning her head, and he answered promptly and without hesitation.

'Less than one kilometre.'

'Oh!' It was wonderful to think that Casa de Principes was situated in this magnificent part of the country, but at the same time she was not at all sure that travelling would not prove to be the better part of the experience.

Despite his preoccupation with the twisting, tortuous road, he turned his head briefly and looked at her. 'You have never been to Spain before, Miss Beckett?' he asked.

'Never,' Sally agreed. 'It's—it's so different, some- - how. I mean,' she added hastily, 'different even from what I expected.'

'Oh? How is that?'

The question was premonitory, as if he suspected criticism and was prepared to defend his country at any cost. Sally could not resist a smile as she chose words carefully to try and explain just what she meant.

'I'm not quite sure,' she said at last. 'It's just that it seems so much more—foreign, somehow.'

'Foreign?' He turned the car as he spoke and they passed through a gateway flanked by tall wrought- iron gates, driving along a narrow driveway between sweet-scented shrubs and palm trees, interspersed with orange and lemon trees that made the breathtaking view of the blue Atlantic below spasmodic but none the less impressive. He drove as far as another gateway and braked the big car to a halt before passing an opinion on her remark. Turning in his seat, he regarded her for a moment with a glitter in his black eyes. 'Here, Miss Beckett,' he told her, 'you are the foreigner.'

'Oh yes, I know,' Sally said hastily, 'but I meant--'

She was given no time to explain her meaning, for he slid from his seat, swift and lithe as a cat, and in a few strides was standing with the door of the car open and a hand extended to help her to alight. After a brief hesitation Sally accepted the offer and the long, strong fingers curled over her hand with what she felt was unnecessary force, as she swung her feet to the ground. She was left with the impression that the strong, almost cruel grip was meant as a reprimand for her temerity, and she felt her pulses respond by fluttering urgently, as if in fear.

The gates before them led into one of the most beautiful gardens Sally had ever seen. Strictly speaking it was a much larger version of those shady little patios she had so admired along the road through the valley.

This house was bigger than any she had seen so far, and far more beautiful too. But its setting was something quite breathtaking so that she felt a thrill of excitement run through her right down to the soles of her feet as she looked at it.

Miguel Cordova swung open the gates and, without a word, invited her to step inside, into the courtyard, his black eyes watching her reaction. It seemed as if the shaded arches and balconies literally grew out of the profusion of flowers.

They grew in every conceivable corner, trailing and twining everywhere, from pillars and huge earthenware pots, even tumbling over the borders of the central fountain that sounded so softly cool in the heat of the afternoon.

Jasmine, red and white roses, scarlet geraniums and purple bougainvillaea, sweet scented orange trees and the shady, ubiquitous palm, all combined to delight the eye and stir the senses with their profusion and their perfumes. It was all so incredibly beautiful that Sally could only gaze at it with wide, shining eyes.

'You find it attractive?' The deep quiet voice spoke close beside her and she turned for a moment to acknowledge the truth of his words.

'It's quite incredibly beautiful,' she told him, a little breathlessly. 'I never dreamed anything could look like this, not in real life.'

For a brief second she felt the brush of those long fingers against the back of her hand, and he smiled, as if her response pleased him. But he made no reply, and a moment later two menservants appeared. They bobbed their heads briefly to Miguel Cordova, then bent and took up several of the pile of suitcases taken from the two cars.

An elderly woman stood in the background, sharp black eyes watching the men's labours critically, then she too came forward, bobbing a slight bow to her employer. Curiosity glinted sharply in the brief gaze she cast at Sally, and left an impression of not quite approving.

'My housekeeper, Ana.' Miguel Cordova performed the perfunctory introduction with a wave of one hand. 'She will see that you are all comfortable and have everything you require. Ana, haga usted! el favor.'

'Muy bien, senor.'

The housekeeper led the way across the courtyard, followed by the whole party, including their host, while Sally still looked around her, dazzled by the novelty of it all. Even the ground they walked on was tiled with colourful Moorish style mosaics so that she felt it was almost a sacrilege to walk on them.

On the right-hand side of the courtyard an arched doorway gave access to the house, though it was not the main entrance, that was obvious. But it was there that their little procession came to a halt, except for the two menservants who continued on through into the cool dimness of the house with their burden of suitcases.

'Un momento, Carlos!' Miguel Cordova's peremptory command stopped the second man in his tracks and he came out into the courtyard again, looking at his employer curiously.

A brief exchange in Spanish followed, of which Sally could interpret only her own name, then the man set down her suitcases and carried on into the house with only one, belonging to one of her companions, while Sally looked at her host suspiciously.

'Gentlemen,' Miguel Cordova said with a smile, ignoring her frown, 'the rooms in the north side of the house have been put at your disposal for the duration of your stay here. I think you will find it cool and comfortable, but please do not hesitate to say if there is anything else you require. The dining- room is in the main part of the house and Ana will show you the way when you are ready.'

He smiled briefly. 'You may find our mealtimes a little strange at first, but after a day or two in my country you will appreciate the reason for the arrangement.'

'I read something about that before we came,' Michael told him, sending a satisfied smile at Sally. 'Breakfast only if one asks for it, lunch any time between two and four and dinner some time between nine and ten. Isn't that right, Senor Cordova?'

His knowledge drew a smile. 'Approximately right, Mr. Storer,' he agreed in his pedantic English. 'This household is well ordered, however, and there will be no need for you to go hungry if you cannot at once adjust to the new times. However, I am sure that even Miss Beckett will see the reason for our different hours, once she has sampled the Andalusian sun.'

So he had not missed Michael's smile of triumph, evidently, and had correctly interpreted its meaning. She had stated pretty firmly, before they had left England, that surely no civilised country would think of eating dinner at ten o'clock at night. Now, it seemed, he was right. She refused to be drawn at the moment, however, and seeing her silent, Miguel Cordova returned his attention again to her companions.

'If you will be good enough to go with Ana, gentlemen,' he said, 'she will show you to your rooms and see that you have everything you need. Miss .Beckett, you will come with me, if you please.'

Sally stared at him for a moment, then stuck out her chin. Not for anything would she consent to be parted from her companions. She preferred the company of her fellow travellers to that of her host, and she intended that he should know it - politely if possible. She looked up at him with a determined gleam in her blue eyes, her usually soft mouth set firmly.

'I would prefer to stay with the rest of my party if you don't mind, Senor Cordova,' she stated firmly. 'I expect no special privileges, just because I'm a woman.'

'It is because you are a woman alone that you are being accorded special treatment,' he told her. 'I cannot allow you to share the sleeping quarters of five young men, without suitable supervision. There are two other ladies in my household, and it will be much more suitable in the circumstances, Miss Beckett, if you are near them, in the main part of the house.'

'You seem to have a very poor opinion of my morals, Senor Cordova,' Sally retorted, and was not at all surprised when the firm, straight mouth tightened and a dark glow of anger showed in his black eyes as he looked down at her.

'Not at all,' he denied coldly. 'I merely have a sense of propriety. Now will you please come with me?'

'But I don't want to be——' Sally began, only to be silenced by a raised hand and a look that would have quelled a much braver soul than herself.

'It is arranged, senorita, please do not make things any more difficult than they already are. Your father approves of my arrangements, and I am sure you would not consider defying his wishes.'

If only he knew just how often she had done justthat, Sally thought wryly, but her father was neither as strong-willed nor as autocratic as his self-appointed in loco parentis. She debated for a moment on the wisdom, or use, of sticking to her guns, but it seemed to be deadlock, and the rest of the party, including Michael, were waiting curiously to see what the outcome would be.

With a great sigh of resignation, she decided to disappoint them. 'Oh very well,' she said ungraciously. 'If it's all been arranged.'

She was angry with Michael too, for not intervening on her behalf, and she vowed to have words with him on the subject, at the earliest opportunity. Nothing, she decided, was going her way so far, and it was not a situation she was either used to, or liked very much.

She walked across the beautiful, shaded courtyard with Miguel Cordova, aware of the fact that he was controlling his normally lengthy stride to accommodate her, and wondering how on earth she was going to put up with his arrogance for another three months.

The house itself was as lovely as its exterior promised, and a wide arched entrance doorway gave access to a wide hall, cool and restful after the sunshine outside. It was quiet too, and she realised that this was the time of the siesta, when everyone took time off to relax from the heat of the day. No wonder the servants had looked a little disgruntled at their arrival.

There was an air of peace in the wide hall, with its high arched ceiling and dark panelled walls. Everything, doors and windows alike, was curved and arched with not a harsh angle anywhere, and Sally was reminded suddenly of old churches, a feeling confirmed by a huge brass crucifix on one wall, with a bowl of white roses below it.

For some inexplicable reason she shivered again, as she had done at the station, and as then, Miguel Cordova looked down at her and smiled faintly. There was something exciting and exotic about this strange new world she was discovering, and something almost sinister too, that applied as much to the man beside her as to her surroundings.

She hastily avoided meeting his gaze head on, and instead looked around her, trying to still the rapid and quite unnecessary thudding under her ribs. He was a very disturbing man and, despite her professed dislike of him so far, she still responded, however unwillingly, to some deep, unquenchable instinct that found him dangerously but irresistibly attractive.

'This way, Miss Beckett.'

His deep, quiet voice broke into her thoughts and startled her for a moment, his fingers holding on to her arm as if he suspected she might turn and flee, given the opportunity. Sally went with him, her heels clicking softly on the mosaic-tiled floor, like an echo of castanets.

He did not turn her towards the wide curved staircase as she expected, but across the hall towards what was obviously the door into one of the downstairs rooms. 'Where are you taking me?' she ventured, suspicion edging her voice, so that he smiled briefly, his fingers tightening on her arm.

'I shall introduce you to the ladies,' he told her. From then on my responsibility ends.'

CHAPTER TWO

SALLY did not know quite what to expect when Miguel Cordova opened the door of the room and ushered her in ahead of him. She was immediately aware that there were two women in the room, and that two pairs of eyes were regarding her curiously, one friendly and welcoming, the other not so.

The elder of the two women rose at once and came across the room towards them. Tall and dark, with black hair that was just turning grey at the temples, handsome rather than pretty, she would have struck Sally as typically Spanish but for a pair of startlingly blue eyes that smiled at her from the fine boned features.

'Madre, mi amada,' Miguel Cordova greeted her with a smile. 'May I introduce Miss Beckett? Miss Beckett, my mother, Dona Alicia Valdaquez.'

Sally was relieved, more relieved than she dared admit, to see that friendly smile, and her hand was clasped in both Dona Alicia's. 'You are very welcome to Casa de Principes, Miss Beckett. Did you have a good journey?'

'Miss Beckett was not very impressed with our railway,' her son informed her, before Sally could reply, and Dona Alicia laughed softly, drawing her across to the window where she had been sitting.

'I don't blame you in the least, Miss Beckett,' she told her. 'The local line leaves a great deal to be desired, I believe.'

Her English was excellent, and much less pedantic than Miguel Cordova's, also the difference in the name puzzled her, although she could scarcely remark on it at the moment. Instead she sought to dispel the impression he had given of her.

'I'm afraid I was feeling very hot and tired, and I may have been rather—well, perhaps a bit outspoken,' Sally told her. 'I wasn't really meaning to be critical, Senora Valdaquez.' She bit on her lip uncertainly. 'I'm sorry, I'm not quite sure how I should address you, senora.'

This time it was Miguel who was forestalled, and that gentle laugh put Sally at her ease again. 'I'd like it if you called me Dona Alicia,' she was told. 'I do so hope we can be friends, Miss Beckett. My own mother was English,' she added, and produced the information as if it was a trump card, so that it was obvious she was very proud of the fact. She laughed again. Hence these blue eyes!'

'And your excellent English,' Sally said with a smile, while Dona Alicia nodded her gratification at the compliment.

'Oh, but we are being very remiss, Miss Beckett!' She turned to the younger woman, and Sally was at once aware of the undisguised dislike in the narrow dark eyes that studied her closely. 'Ines, my dear, this is Miss Beckett, from England. Dear Ines was the wife of Miguel's cousin, Carlos Valdaquez, Miss Beckett, she's staying with us for the time being.'

Taking the long, slim hand so grudgingly offered, Sally had to admit to curiosity about Ines Valdaquez. Miguel Cordova had referred to her as his cousin when he spoke of her earlier, now it seemed she was a cousin only by marriage, and that a marriage that existed no longer, judging by Dona Alicia's wording of the introduction, and the hint of sympathy in her voice.

She was dressed in unrelieved black, so it was possible that she was a widow, Sally thought, but the way she looked at Miguel Cordova made it fairly obvious that she did not intend to remain in that state for very long.

She was possibly thirty years old, although she could have been younger, for Sally remembered reading somewhere that women in hot climates tended to age more quickly. She was handsome, rather than pretty, in the same way that Dona Alicia was, with a smooth golden skin and dark eyes. Her black hair was drawn back in the traditional Spanish style and worn in a loose chignon in the nape of a long, smooth neck, and she could have been so much more attractive, Sally thought, if only she learned to smile more and frown less.

'Como esta usted?' She used the formal greeting with even less warmth than Miguel Cordova had done at the station, making no attempt to use English, although it was obvious that she understood it well enough.

'Have you been shown to your room yet, Miss Beckett?' Dona Alicia asked, in such a way that it was possible she sought to relieve the small, hostile silence that followed the introduction. 'I'm sure you'd love to have a bath and change into something cooler, wouldn't you?'

'I would,' Sally agreed fervently. 'I feel terribly hot and crumpled and not at all fit to meet anyone.'

Dona Alicia smiled kindly. 'You're a very pretty girl,' she said. 'And that blue suit does wonders for your eyes, although it must be rather hot. Our Spanish caballeros will find your golden hair and blue eyes quite irresistible, I'm sure. We shall have to be on our guard, shall we not, Miguel?'

He stood beside a huge ornate container that overflowed with musky-scented geraniums, one arm outstretched along its edge, one foot crossed over the other, confident and at ease, and so arrogantly male that Sally felt that betraying curling sensation in her stomach again. His smile was brief, but it glowed darkly in his black eyes when he looked across at her.

'Miss Beckett is of the opinion that she can take good care of herself, mi amada,' he told his mother, in that deep, quiet voice. 'She has had no experience of Spanish men yet, of course.' The black eyes raked over Sally's slimness from head to toe with a boldness that took her breath away and left her feeling naked and horribly vulnerable.

She hastily looked away, but was aware that he still watched her, and probably enjoyed her discomfiture, especially when she felt the warm colour in her cheeks that betrayed the sudden and erratic way her heart was pounding at her ribs. Somehow she managed a smile for Dona Alicia, praying that her reaction was not too plainly obvious on her face.

'I would like that bath and a change of clothes, Dona Alicia,' she said in a strangely husky voice that she hardly recognised. 'If I could--'

'But of course,' the elder woman smiled. 'I'll get Ana to show you to your room.'

'Ana will be attending to our other guests,' Miguel reminded her. 'I'm afraid you will have to manage with Rosa, Miss Beckett, but I am sure you will find her quite efficient.' Sally looked at him and would have liked to say something very tart, but for one thing Dona Alicia would have been more upset than he would and for another he gave her no time to say anything, but reached for the ornate bell rope that hung only inches from his hand.

'You have plenty of time before dinner,' Dona Alicia told Sally with a smile, while they waited for the maid to appear. 'We do not dine until nine o'clock. You do realise that our times are somewhat different from what you are accustomed to, Miss Beckett, don't you?'

Sally glanced across at Miguel, remembering how accurately he seemed to have interpreted Michael's teasing glance earlier, and the look she met in the dark eyes challenged her to state her opinion. She declined to meet the challenge, however, and instead smiled at Dona Alicia.

'Oh yes,' she said. 'I've heard about it.'

'Miss Beckett does not approve of our late hours either,' Miguel said softly, and Sally flared swiftly in her own defence.

'I didn't say so, Senor Cordova!'

'It was said for you by Mr. Storer,' he insisted, still in that same quiet voice and, looking across at him angrily to deny it, Sally realised with a flash of certainty that he was baiting her deliberately.

She had heard that the Latin temperament relished a display of passion, and it seemed he was trying to provoke something of the kind in her. Whether for his own amusement, or for some other devious reason, she had no way of knowing. Perhaps for no better reason than to satisfy that lurking streak of cruelty that she suspected lay not far below the surface of his smooth urbanity.

'Michael said nothing of the sort,' she declared firmly, and he smiled.

'Sometimes words are not always necessary, Miss Beckett, are they?'

Since she was very unsure how much longer she could contain her temper, Sally welcomed the appearance of the maid, and followed her from the room thankfully. Rosa was a quite different proposition from Ana, the housekeeper, and Sally ventured a smije as they made their way up the curved staircase, the intricate wrought iron balustrade smoothly cool under her finger tips.

Rosa was much younger than Ana too, and her dark eyes glowed with a smile that encouraged Sally further. 'Have you worked here for very long?' she asked, thinking it as good an opening as any, and Rosa's young face creased for a moment's deep thought as she tussled with the strange tongue.

'Si, senorita,' she said at last. 'Por dos—for two year.'

That was something of a surprise, because she looked little more than fifteen or sixteen now, but Sally smiled encouragingly. 'So you like working for Dona Alicia?' she said, and Rosa looked at her with a small, puzzled frown.

'But this is the house of Don Miguel, senorita,' she corrected her, gently polite. 'It is for Don Miguel that I am at work.'

'Oh, I see.' So he had not been merely boasting when he claimed the household was his. Dona Alicia must simply be a guest, although she was probably a permanent one. 'And you like working for Don Miguel?' she asked, without quite knowing why, but appalled by the small sly look that greeted the question, from the corners of Rosa's dark, expressive eyes.

'Ah si, si, senorita,' she said with a wide smile, her small brown face glowing. 'Muy mucho!'

There was no doubt about Rosa's feelings for her employer, and Sally was forced to recognise that he had at least one devoted slave in his household, and she suspected there were more. She would have been the first to admit that she had undoubtedly started off on the wrong foot with Miguel Cordova and was therefore somewhat prejudiced, but he had done little to prove himself worthy of such adoration as far as she was concerned and she sighed resignedly. Ah well, perhaps he would improve on closer acquaintance. Although closer acquaintance with Miguel Cordova could well prove to be even more disconcerting.

Her room was beautiful; light and airy, cool and full of the fragrances of flowers. It opened out on to one of the arched balconies she had seen from below, and overlooked that wonderfully exotic inner courtyard. so that there were climbing roses and great masses of purple bougainvillaea almost inside her room. Even the soft cool voice of the fountain was audible in the quietness.

Rosa smiled at her obvious delight, and showed her a small but luxurious bathroom opening off the bedroom. Sally took a moment or two to wonder if the accommodation given to her fellow students was equally luxurious, and saw no reason why it should not be, for the house was big and used to accommodating visitors in the summer for the three months the school was open.

Rosa was watching her, her dark head tilted to one side enquiringly. 'Is there more I can do, senorita?'

Sally shook her head, anticipating the pleasure of a long soak in that luxurious bath. 'No, thank you very much Rosa. I'll be able to manage fine now.'

'Muy bien, senorita.' She bobbed her head and withdrew with a smile, 'Gracias.'

Rosa-closed the door softly behind her, and Sally stood for a moment in the middle of the room, breathing in the warm, soft air and the dozen fragrances from the garden below. If only there was not Miguel Cordova to consider, she could have thoroughly enjoyed the prospect of three months at the Casa de Principes.

As she had been told that she had plenty of time before dinner, Sally took a very leisurely bath and lay back amid the fragrant steam of her favourite bath essence. She dried herself on huge soft towels, then scented and talced her body, revelling in the luxury of it. She chose to put on a short, cool lime- green dress that was fairly low cut in the neckline and revealed the smooth creaminess of her neck and shoulders to definite advantage, although she wondered for a brief moment if her seemingly very fussy host would frown over it. The sleeves, at least, he could find no fault with, for they were of soft pleated chiffon and fell from her wrists in a flattering, wing-like softness.

She wore no jewellery, but impulsively plucked one of the red roses that grew over her balcony and tucked it into the loose chignon she made of her long fair hair. The effect, she decided when she looked at herself in a mirror, was satisfyingly cool and very unlike her usual self. It was in fact rather Spanish, she realised with a start, except for her colouring.

Hearing voices in the courtyard below, she left the mirror and hurried over to the wide, curved window and looked down over the intricately carved stone balcony, anxious to see if it was her fellow travellers coming over to join her for dinner.

It took Michael a second or two to spot her up " there on the shadowed balcony, behind a profusion of roses and bougainvillaea, but when he did his lips pursed in a far from silent whistle of appreciation, and he stopped in his tracks to gaze up at her.

'You look gorgeous,' he told her in a stage whisper, at which his companions smiled knowingly. 'I'll see you inside, darling.'

His whistle had attracted the attention of Carlos the manservant too, as he led the party across to the main body of the house, and he too looked up at her. Not for Carlos, however, the crudeness of a whistle, but a deep, meaningful glow in his dark eyes that immediately reminded Sally of Don Miguel's remarks about Spanish men. She hastily withdrew to the shadows of her bedroom and spent a brief, intriguing moment, wondering if the master would be as appreciative as the servant had been.

The dining-room at the Casa de Principes was even more grand than Sally had expected, and she felt that somehow the informal mode of dress adopted by the English party was out of place there. It had, however, evidently been accepted by their host that to be too formal would probably prove discomfiting to a group of artists on holiday, for even Miguel Cordova had merely exchanged the light suit he had worn earlier, for one of very dark grey. The spotless white of his shirt made his dark, arrogant face look even darker.

It was a large room, light and airy, with artificial light from an overhead chandelier boosting the failing daylight that now came in but faintly through the windows, the darkness exaggerated by the windows being set back under those cloister-like arches.

The long table, Sally guessed, must be as old as the rest of the furniture, and equally beautiful in its dark, polished surface. There was a touch of formality in the heavy silverware and the silver bowl of red and white roses that graced the centre of the table, but none in the smile that Dona Alicia gave Sally as she took the seat to her right.

Ines Valdaquez, Sally noticed was seated to the right of their host, at the head of the table, and the thoughtfulness of placing Michael on the other side of her she attributed to Dona Alicia, for surely Miguel Cordova would never have been so considerate.

The Spanish girl appeared more formally dressed than anyone. She wore a black, full-length dress, modestly high at the neck and with long lace sleeves, tight at the wrists. Her blue-black hair was dressed in its smooth chignon still, the severity of the style relieved to some extent by a beautiful tortoiseshell and silver comb that must have been meant for wearing with a mantilla.

She looked as sulky as she had when Sally first met her, and she wondered if the other woman ever smiled, other than when Miguel Cordova looked at her. Her feelings for him were fairly obvious, although he appeared to treat her with no more than ordinary politeness, and, although she had no way of knowing how recent her bereavement was, Sally wondered if Miguel found her display of adoration distasteful, in view of her mourning garb.

It was the first opportunity Sally had had of talking to Michael since their arrival, and she tried to give him her attention without too pointedly ignoring her hostess. Not that Dona Alicia seemed at all worried by her preoccupation with Michael, for she talked most of the time to Robert Blane, seated on the other side of her, and smiled indulgently when Sally smiled at her, and nodded her head as if in approval.

They made quite a handsome couple, in fact, Sally and Michael. Both fair-haired and blue-eyed, they were as typically Anglo-Saxon as their host was typically Spanish, and the contrast to him was most noticeable when he came over to speak to them as they left the dinner table.

Engrossed in some topic with Michael, Sally failed to see him coming and turned swiftly, momentarily startled when he spoke close behind her, his dark head bent over to make himself heard. 'You look most attractive, Miss Beckett,' he told her.

He was closer than she realised, so that when she turned so hurriedly, she found his face within inches of her own and those dark, arrogant eyes met hers full on. Suddenly the neckline of her dress felt even lower than it was, and she put up a hand to touch her shoulder so that an arm covered at least part of the exposed skin.

'I hope my dress isn't too' She left the rest of the sentence unspoken, aware that Michael was looking at her curiously, and that Miguel Cordova was speculating on the reason for her half-apologetic question.

'We do not insist on formality during the time our visitors are here,' he told her gravely. 'That dress is perfect—in every way.'

'Thank you, senor.' She sounded deceptively demure, and looked up in time to see one black brow shoot upwards into an expressive arch. 'I wondered, seeing Senora Valdaquez, I mean--'

'My cousin is in mourning.' he informed her, confirming Sally's suspicions. 'Also she is very conventionally Spanish and prefers to dress so.'

'I see—I'm sorry.'

He ignored the sympathy, perhaps sensing that it was more polite than sincere, and stood looking down at her, drawn up to his full height now and towering over her. That mysterious and disturbing aura of maleness setting her pulses racing again and bringing on that curling sensation in her stomach.

'You did not hear what I told the others at dinner, I think,' he said, now including Michael in the conversation. 'We will begin work in the morning, with a supervised session. So that I can see what each of you is capable of.'

'Oh, good!' It was Michael, of course, being so enthusiastic. I confess, I didn't hear you say so before, senor, but I was probably talking to Sally at the time.'

'It is possible,' Miguel agreed, and again the black „ eyes turned on Sally. There was a deep, dark glow in their depths and he studied her with an intensity that amounted to insolence, so that Sally felt that small, uncontrollable shiver run over her again. It was almost as if he had touched her in some intimate, caressing way that brought colour to her cheeks. She shivered yet again and, as he had done twice before, she knew that he had sensed her reaction and knew the cause, and he smiled slowly. 'It is to be hoped that your Sally does not prove too much of a distraction from your work,' he told Michael softly, although his eyes were still on Sally. 'It is as well, perhaps, that I shall be demanding most of her time from now on.'

The sun had a soporific effect on Sally and she was feeling pleasantly lethargic as she pored over her canvas, the tip of her tongue just poking out between her lips. A long hand reached over her shoulder suddenly and took the paintbrush from her unresisting fingers, holding it at arm's length for a moment as if it was some repulsive insect. It was turned first in one direction and then in the other before being discarded with an impatient 'tch!' into the box beside her.

Annoyed, not only at the gesture and the interruption, but because it was not the first time it had happed ed during the past two days, Sally looked up and frowned. She knew exactly the expression she would see on Miguel Cordova's face, and the way his black eyes would be challenging her to object to his criticism.

He stood close behind her, a habit he had and which she wished she could break, for he was close enough for her to feel the warmth of his body through the thin, sleeveless frock she wore, and the fingers of his left hand brushed against her bare arm as he discarded the brush, making her flinch as if the touch scorched her.

'You are painting a picture, Miss Beckett,' he told her in his quiet but penetrating voice, sounding impatient as usual. 'That brush is suitable only for painting your nails, not for putting paint on to canvas. I have told you before, muchacha, do not be afraid of colour.'

'I'm not,' Sally argued, her bottom lip betraying her dislike of the uncalled-for criticism.

'Then use it boldly, nina,' he retorted sharply. 'With some feeling, you are much too afraid of taking chances, too—timida!' His long slim hands were used to emphasise his criticism, and as always they fascinated Sally, drawing her gaze and making her silent when she would have argued. He always seemed so much more alive, somehow when he was talking about painting, less formal but no less arrogant. 'Bring colour to your canvas, nina,' he told her, his hands sweeping disdainfully in front of her canvas. 'Bring colour as a lover brings gifts to his enamorada, mi pichon. Be generous, you are too cautious!'

'It's my English upbringing!' Sally retorted in self-defence. 'We're not a flamboyant race!'

'Madre de Dios!' he breathed piously, and put a hand to his forehead in a gesture of despair.

They sat, the Avhole group of them, out on the driveway that led up to the house, with the shade of the trees keeping the fierce heat of the sun from being unbearable. The house itself, glimpsed at through the colourful, exotic beauty of the patio, was to be their inspiration, and Sally felt sure it would have proved just that, if it had not been for her critical tutor.

The others sat with their heads down industriously, as if they were unaware of the conversation going on behind them, but Sally knew very well that they could hear, and were taking in, every word that was said. Each in turn had been subjected to just such a critical appreciation, and not one of them had made a word of protest. Now it seemed it was her turn.

She looked up at the tall figure towering over her, and frowned. His working garb was much less formal than those meticulous suits she had first seen him in, and made him appear a little more 'arty', but unfortunately no less disturbing.

Light-coloured trousers hugged the lean hips and gave emphasis to the length of his legs, and a white shirt, open well down in the front, showed that the deep golden brown of his face went at least as far as a glimpse of dark hair on the broad chest. The sleeves of the shirt, too, were much more full than the conventional variety and fastened at the cuffs, so that he had a dangerously rakish, almost mediaeval look about him.

She hastily looked back at her painting, and hoped to heaven that he would not recognise the reason for it. 'I needed to use that fine brush for the lines down--'

'Eso es ridiculo!' he interrupted shortly. 'I think I know best about such things!'

He also seemed to use much more Spanish when he was instructing, Sally had noticed, and added that to her list of dislikes. Mostly, she admitted, because she had almost no knowledge of the language and sometimes suspected that he was being far more rude to her than he would dared have been in English.

'I'm not denying that you know best,' Sally told him. 'I was merely trying to explain my reason for using that particular brush.'

She glimpsed a brief smile when she glanced up at him again, and a second later, whether by accident or design, his hand brushed lightly against her cheek so that she found herself having to resist the urge to respond by laying her face against it. It was possible, of course, that the gesture had been quite accidental, but her own reaction to it both startled and appalled her.

'I do not want explanations, mi pichon,' he said softly, adding to her confusion. 'You just do as I say, hmm?'

The long fingers again brushed against her cheek, and she hastily glanced at Michael, wondering what he would do if he realised what was going on behind his back. Nothing, probably, seeing that it was Miguel Cordova, he would simply think she was imagining things.

'It's no use my trying to paint while you stand over me,' she told him, her voice trembling almost as much as her hands were.

'Does it disturb you?' The softly voiced question could have been quite innocent of any but the obvious meaning, but Sally glanced up at him and something in the black eyes made her doubt it.

'I—I just don't like being watched,' she said.

His laugh was low and soft, and it was doubtful if anyone else heard it, but it trickled along Sally's spine like ice-water. 'Then I will leave you,' he said quietly, and moved away towards one of the others, leaving Sally with one hand to her face and her eyes dark and troubled. It was nothing more than that lurking streak of cruelty, she felt sure, that made him behave as he did, and his laughter at her obvious discomfiture had proved it.

CHAPTER THREE

'I WAS wondering how you like it here after all,' Michael said, and Sally looked up at him curiously.

'I like it quite a lot,' she said. 'Why?'

He shrugged, a brief gesture that barely disturbed the smooth fit of his light jacket. 'I just wondered, that's all. Whether it came up to expectations.'

Sally hesitated to be too frank about Miguel Cordova, knowing how Michael admired him, but at least she could be quite honest about every other aspect of their stay. 'The house is quite beautiful,' she told him. 'And I love the country, as much as I've seen of it so far.'

'But you have some reservations?'

Sally hesitated—this was leading somewhere, she felt sure, but at the moment she could not quite see where. 'I might have,' she admitted cautiously. 'Nothing's perfect, is it? For one thing I feel that I haven't been doing very well with my painting, and after all, that was the prime reason for our coming here. After just over a week, I seem to have got nowhere—-in fact, if anything, I'm far less confident than I was when I arrived, and it seems such a waste of time and money in the circumstances.'

Michael shrugged: obviously he wasn't concerned about her artistic progress. 'But you are enjoying yourself,' he insisted.

He was looking at her from the corners of his » eyes, in an oddly sly way that Sally recognised. It meant that he was about to be frank about something, and that she probably would not like what he said. He always gave her that curiously slant-eyed look when he had something pointed to say, and she wondered what it could be this time. It also surprised her, to some extent, to discover how some of Michael's idiosyncrasies irritated her so much more lately.

'Of course I'm enjoying myself,' she agreed. 'I've certainly no complaints about the house, or these wonderful gardens.' They had just passed through the arched gateway from the patio and were strolling along the steep driveway that led down to the road. There was certainly nothing she disliked out here.

'Especially the company?' Michael suggested, and Sally turned and looked at him curiously, smiling but uncertain. Something was wrong, and she had a feeling that she was about to find out what it was.

'I've no complaints about the company either,' she agreed cautiously.

'Robert Blane in particular!'

So that was it! She almost laughed to realise that it was merely his jealousy rearing its head again. 'Robert's nice,' she said quietly. 'So are the rest of the group. We're lucky to have found such a compatible party.'

'I thought you might have found Robert Blane especially compatible,' he told her, and Sally sighed deeply.

Last night Robert Blane had approached her as they left the dinner table and asked if she would like to walk a little way in the garden with him. He had been quick to notice that Michael was engaged in serious conversation with their host and taken advantage of the fact that Sally was walking on alone.

Sally had said nothing to Michael about going, but simply walked on with Robert Blane. After all, she was not engaged to Michael, and perfectly free to go walking with whoever she liked. It had been quite late when they came back, admittedly, and she had gone straight up to her room, so that Michael had had no opportunity of speaking to her alone until now. He had probably been brooding on it all day, and now she was expected to explain herself.

Tonight had been different; there were no other distractions because Miguel Cordova had not been there for dinner. Michael had been able to forestall a repeat performance by Robert Blane, but his show of possessiveness irritated Sally rather than pleased her.

'I walked a few yards down the drive with Robert last night, if that's what you're getting at,' Sally told him. 'You were otherwise engaged and it looked like being a long conversation. I felt like going for a walk and Robert asked me to go with him, so—I went.'

'And went straight to your room when you came back,' Michael accused.'That's right, I did!' Sally's blue eyes shone with impatience. She was getting a little tired of displays » of male temperament lately, but Michael was much easier to deal with than Miguel Cordova. 'I was tired and I wanted to get to bed early,' she told him. 'Do you mind?'

'I mind you going off with Robert Blane,' Michael declared shortly.. 'And I felt such a fool when I asked if anyone knew where you'd got to.'

'I've no doubt Senor Cordova found it very amusing,' Sally guessed, and from his frown she knew she must be right. 'He's got a sadistic streak, that man!'

'Oh, what nonsense you talk!' Michael retorted, determinedly aggressive. 'Don Miguel was no more amused than the rest of them. And for God's sake try using his right name for once, darling!'

'As far as I know I am using his right name,' Sally argued. 'He seems to have a whole string of them. Rosa and the housekeeper call him Don Miguel, Carlos and the other menservants seem to favour a plain 'senor' and Dona Alicia's last name is Val- daquez. I vaguely remember that name among the string of them he told us at the station, although I'm not at all sure of it.'

'Miguel Valdaquez Cordova,' Michael quoted precisely. 'The Spanish always tack the mother's maiden name on to the end of their own, and he uses his mother's maiden name for his professional one. It's really quite simple.'

'And so am I, probably,' Sally retorted. 'And if Don Miguel or Senor Valdaquez, whatever he is, doesn't like the way I address him, why hasn't he corrected me before now?'

'Too polite?' he suggested, and Sally laughed the idea to scorn.

'I don't believe that!' she told him. 'In fact I'm only surprised that he hasn't produced it as yet another example of my incompetence.'

'Maybe he will one day!'

His good-looking face looked aloof and sulky, and she guessed he was still brooding about last night, and her going off with Robert Blane. She could have quarrelled with him, but it was such a lovely night that she did not feel inclined to quarrel with anyone, least of all with Michael.

The stars were huge and brilliant in a clear sky, and looked just as if they dipped right down into the sea on the horizon. There was a big yellow moon too, much bigger and brighter than any she had seen at home. From the drive it looked a very long way down to where the Atlantic scattered silver spray over the dark rocks below, and Sally felt a sudden longing for a different kind of situation from the one she found herself in at the moment.

Bickering with Michael was quite the wrong thing to be doing on a night like this. She should have been feeling dreamy and romantic. Strong arms should have been holding her tightly in the shadow of those sweet-smelling orange trees, and a deep voice whispering in her ear.

'It's such a beautiful night,' she said softly, half to herself but hoping to instil some of her own feeling into Michael.

Instead of agreeing with her, however, he merely looked down at their lightly clasped hands and kicked moodily at the bordering flower bed. 'Like it was last night,' he said.

'Oh, Michael!'

He looked startled at her vehemence for a moment, realising at last what she had been trying to do, but the damage was done now. 'Darling, I only said'

'I heard what you said!' Sally told him, her eyes dark in the moonlight, her fair head tilted so that her chin stuck out angrily. 'And I refuse to quarrel with you. It's a beautiful night, and if you won't behave like a civilised human being then I'll walk on my own!'

'Sally, you can't' he began, but Sally had already shaken off his hand and was running down the steep driveway, like a fleet-footed little ghost in the moonlight, some strange, inexplicable urge driving her on. 'Sally, come back!' His voice sounded jerkily from behind her, as if he too was running, and she increased her pace, unwilling to be caught.

'Go back!' she called over her shoulder as she ran. I don't want you!'

'Sally!'

He called again, but his voice was already fainter as she turned the corner out of the gates and on to a narrow winding road that led up from the valley. She paused for a moment and listened, but heard no sound of his following her, and sighed her satisfaction. The fact that she was quite alone on a lonely road in a strange country did not worry her at the moment—somehow Michael's company was not what she sought tonight.

It was so quiet and peaceful out here, and yet there was some indefinable something in the air that had been disturbing her peace of mind ever since she came to San Gregorio. An atmosphere as different from the stillness of the English countryside as it was possible to be.

Perhaps it was the different, more exotic scents that filled the night air, or that huge yellow moon sitting in a star-bright sky and almost smiling, as if it foresaw so much and remembered so much. There were lights further on, in the valley where the village was, and she guessed there would be music, and probably dancing. Perhaps the beautiful and exciting Andalusian flamenco that Michael had spoken about once. The temptation to go down there and find out for herself was almost irresistible.

There was something strange and inexplicably restless about her mood tonight, and she found the sensation exhilarating without quite knowing why. Something she had never felt before and which at once thrilled and frightened her a little.

Her shoes were hardly suitable for walking on the rough, uneven surface of the road and although she barely noticed it at first, after a time she slowed her pace, and finally came to a halt beside a big boulder that looked as if it was balanced precariously above the dizzying drop down to the sea.

It said much for her state of mind that she did nob' even see the danger of it, but took off her shoes and sat down on the rock. It gave a breathtaking view of the sea and the long, rocky dark way down to it, with a sense of endlessness that was completely in keeping with her mood.

Still with that strangely restless feeling of anticipation making her heart beat at about twice its normal rate, she sat there at the side of the road, wondering what she could do about it. There was a light, warm breeze and it blew fine strands of long fair hair from the Spanish style chignon she was wearing again. Her short, full-skirted dress was a soft rose pink and, almost out of bravado, she had tucked a purple bougainvillaea flower into the chignon. She knew the style suited her and the addition of the exotic bloom gave her an added sense of not being her ordinary self.

She knew Robert Blane found her attractive, and would have been only too willing to step into Michael's shoes, had Michael given him the opportunity. And yet she was not convinced that it was for Robert's benefit either, that she sought to be so different. Tonight she had felt a cool chill of disappointment when Dona Alicia had apologised for her son's absence, and the implication of that had both puzzled and worried her.

Miguel Cordova was very talented, very successful and very unlikely to be even remotely interested in a young girl who was foolish enough to be always arguing with him about a subject of which he was an acknowledged master. Further more he was old enough to have appointed himself in loco parentis on behalf of her father, and took the job seriously— almost too seriously.

She brushed her fingers gently against her cheek and remembered other, long, strong fingers briefly touching her in the same way, shivering at the recollection. But that brief, disturbing touch had been no more than a deliberate taunt, designed to discomfit her, and she had obliged by colouring furiously like a schoolgirl. Miguel Cordova had a streak of sophisticated cruelty that she would be no match for, she felt convinced, and yet that undeniable fascination he exercised refused to be denied.

It was so warm that not even a warning chill reminded her of how long she had been there, gazing down at the sea. Her shoes clasped in her hand, outlined against the star-bright sky like a slender, fair- haired Madonna at some roadside shrine, she was deep in her own thoughts. It was the sound of an approaching car that brought her back to reality, and she turned her head curiously.

Headlights flashed intermittently along the steep, winding road up from the valley, and for the first time she felt a vague flutter of unease when she realised how alone she was. She remembered the number of times that Miguel Cordova had hinted about the passionate nature of his countrymen and the possible consequences of her going about alone.She had no way of knowing who or what the driver of the approaching car was, but there was nothing- she could do about it, whoever it was.

Attempted flight from her seat on the boulder would be less than useless, for she would have no time to go any great distance before the car arrived. The best thing, in the circumstances, was to simply sit tight and hope that she would be either unobserved or taken for a roadside statue.

The big car flashed past at an incredible speed for such a road, with its headlights glaring, but she had barely time to draw a sigh of relief at its passing before she heard the shriek of tyres on the road's surface, as brakes were applied.

With her heart thudding urgently at her ribs Sally stayed quite still, scarcely breathing, her fingers curled tightly over her shoes. Holding them like a weapon that she was quite prepared to use, if necessary.

The car came back in reverse, almost as rapidly as it had passed, and she kept her head determinedly averted while the driver sat for a moment studying her across the width of the road. She looked small and softly pale in the brilliant moonlight, and he smiled to himself as he spoke. 'Un virgen dorada,' Miguel Cordova's quiet voice remarked, and Sally turned swiftly, unsure whether relief or dismay was uppermost in her heart.

She said nothing, nor did she move, but stayed exactly as she was, perched up there on the big boulder above the sea, with her shoes held tight in her hand, while he got out of the car and came across the road. He, too, was silent for several moments, while he studied her again from the edge of the road, then he came and stood right beside her.

He stood so close to her that she could feel the smooth texture of his dinner jacket against her bare arm, and inevitably shivered at the contact. There was warmth in the touch and the inevitable reaction from her senses, so that she turned her head again hastily and looked down at the sea. His first words, however, shattered completely, any illusion of intimacy.

'Are you quite without sense, muchacha?' he demanded. 'Why do you sit up here alone on a deserted road? Are you mad?'

'Not at all,' Sally declared, turning a discouraging shoulder to him. She experienced a sense of disappointment, which she hastily dismissed, for it was only what she should have expected from him.

'Then why are you here?'

She felt like telling him that it was absolutely no concern of his, but instead she answered him, sounding almost childishly defiant. 'Because I felt like being on my own.'

His shrug of contempt brushed again on her arm, and she could easily imagine the way his lip was curling. 'You have quarrelled, I suppose,' he guessed. 'I expected something of the sort would happen when I saw you go off with Robert Blane last night. You did it deliberately, of course.'

It was not a question, it was not even an accusation, just a statement of fact as far as he was concerned, obviously, and Sally turned swiftly to deny it. 'I did no such thing!' she said indignantly. 'How dare you say that?'

'Because it is true,' he insisted smoothly. 'You must have known that Michael Storer would resent you going off with another man, but it did not stop you from going. You are a coqueta, I think, Miss Beckett.'

I don't know what that means, but I can guess it's not very complimentary, and I deny it,' Sally declared, and blinked hastily when a glint of white in the brown face revealed a smile.

'Oh, but you are,' he insisted softly. 'A—a'

'Coqueta,' he obliged, and smiled again. 'You would call it—a flirt, I think.' - 'I'm not!' Sally denied. 'And anyway, it's nothing to do with you, what I am!'

'It is if you disrupt my classes with your games,' he said quietly. 'And whether you have quarrelled with your Michael or not, you were extremely foolish to have come so far on your own at night.'

'I haven't come so very far,' Sally said, and looked at him through her long lashes as she added, 'I had thought of going down into the village.'

She had been right to guess what sort of a reaction that would have, but she was not prepared for the strength of the fingers that gripped her upper arm so tightly that she cried out in protest. 'You do not mean that,' he said quietly, and she turned, originally to glare defiance, but the expression in the black eyes stunned her for a moment.

They blazed at her like coals in the bright yellow moonlight so that she stared at him with wide eyes and her lips parted in surprise. 'I—I do mean it,' she managed at last, almost choking on the words because the blood was pounding so heavily in her head that she had difficulty in thinking straight. 'I saw no reason why I shouldn't go down there,' she added.

'If you ever do such a thing, if you even think of going down there alone at night, I will lock you in your room until your father comes to fetch you home,' he told her, and the gripping fingers shook her hard. 'Do you understand me, Sarita?'

'You have no' Sally began, but he shook her again, and his black eyes seemed to scorch her as they raked over her from top to toe.

'Do you wish to discover how warm-blooded Spanish men are?' he asked harshly. 'Is that why you were going down there to the village? Is it, Sarita?'

Sally stared at him, shaking her head, her hands and legs trembling as she saw from the look in his eyes what he meant to do. 'No,' she whispered. 'No, it wasn't that at all.'

'I think you are lying.'

Sally tried to look away, but those gleaming black eyes seemed to have hypnotised her and she could only stand there shaking her head slowly back and forth, like someone in a trance. 'No, I'm not lying, I'm not!'He ignored her denial, and reached out with his other hand to take her right arm, pulling her, un» resisting from her perch on the boulder. For a moment he looked down at her in silence, while Sally fought with such a tangle of emotions that she was unsure how she wanted to react. 'If you are so curious, mi pichon,' he said softly, 'it is better I am your teacher, much better.'

She could not have evaded him, even had she tried, but somehow this seemed to be the moment she had been waiting for all evening. The culmination of that inexplicable sense of exhilaration she had felt ever since she ran away from Michael, and came out here to sit above the moonlit sea—waiting.

She was trembling like a leaf as he drew her closer, her shoeless height bringing her only as high as the vee of his jacket. His tall figure blocked the moonlight and she instinctively put both her hands to his chest, her open palms feeling the warmth of him through the softness of the frilled dress shirt he wore, spreading her fingers over the strong, steady beat of his heart.

'Your first lesson, mi Sarita,' he said softly, and bent his dark head to brush her throat with his lips.

Sally's heart was beating so fast and so furiously that she had not even breath enough to resist, while some secret part of her admitted to not wanting to resist. It seemed so right, somehow, what she had been waiting for and she closed her eyes as, with a slow deliberation that was in itself exciting, his mouth moved from her throat to a spot below her left ear, then to her neck where the coil of soft fair hair lay. Strong, gentle fingers brushed it aside, caressing her neck as they did so.

The soft and pretty pink dress slid down her arm, moved by persuasive fingers, and he kissed the smooth skin it had hidden, his mouth warm and sensuous, and evoking such emotions in her as she had never dreamed of with Michael.

Almost on the point of responding more actively, Sally's senses flicked in panic suddenly, and she made a small, soft sound of protest, putting her hands flat against his chest. But the exulting sense of excitement that coursed through her like fire would not so easily be stilled, and she yielded again as his mouth came down over hers and stifled the whisper of sound she made.

Ironically it was the fierceness of his kiss, the hard demanding pressure of his mouth on hers that reminded her sharply of his reason for playing this incredible scene. He had spoken of himself as her teacher, with the intention of showing her what she might expect if she was ever foolish enough to stray down into the village alone at night. Teaching her a lesson about Spanish men, and betraying that innate streak of cruelty again.

'No!' She managed to free her mouth at last, and brush a hand fiercely across her lips as she looked up at him. her eyes bright and curiously luminous in the moonlight. 'No! Please let me go!' Her hands beat at his chest fiercely, and she squirmed in the grip that still held her tightly.

He eased his hold on her a little, but did not let her go completely, and the black eyes glowed like, live coals as he looked down at her. 'Ah!' he said softly. 'I think you find your lesson a little too much for you, mi pichon. Am I right?'

'Oh, you despicable—unscrupulous'

'No!' A hard note crept into the quiet voice, and the fingers holding her arms increased their grip. 'You sit by the roadside in the moonlight, senorita, waiting for someone to come along, or deciding whether you should go down into the village and see for yourself what my countrymen are like when they see a beautiful woman. You cannot claim to be I'innocente, after such an obvious expedition!'

'I claim nothing!' Sally cried desperately, shaking her head and very close to tears. She felt weak and trembly and suddenly chill, as if that warm, exciting feeling had gone, and left her drained of emotion. 'I just walked down the road a little way and sat here, looking at the sea. I—I wasn't waiting for anyone.'

The way her voice shook dismayed her, and also she sounded so much as if she was apologising, when she had really no cause to. For a moment he said nothing, but stood and looked down at her steadily, the tightness about his mouth gradually easing.

'But someone came, nevertheless,' he said quietly. 'And it is fortunate that it was me, Sarita.'

'Fortunate!' Sally stared at him, the words choking in her throat, then hastily lowered her eyes rather than see the arrogant, calculating look on his face. 'Please let me go,' she begged huskily. 'I'll walk back to the house.' She sounded suddenly weary and she felt sure she would cry before long if he did not go away and leave her.

'You will come back with me in the car,' he told her, a hand on her arm again making sure she did not escape. 'Have you not yet learnt your lesson, muchacha?'

'No!'

'Please do not argue with me!' The grip on her arm tightened, and she cried out in protest as he drew her across the road to where he had left the Mercedes. 'Come!' He opened the door and almost pushed her into the car, and Sally slumped miserably into the seat.

The moon still shone as big and brilliantly as before. over the glistening ocean, and the stars still promised a thousand romantic dreams, but Sally, keeping as far away from her captor as she could, wished she had stayed and shared the evening with Michael. At least she knew what Michael was all about, and she knew just what her own feelings for him were too. With Miguel Cordova she was painfully uncertain on both counts.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE narrow strip of golden sand looked bright and almost copper-coloured in the hot sun, seemingly endless as it swept off into a hazy infinity, with the soaring skyline of rocks behind it. The craggy, impressive rock face that was dotted here and there with clusters of green, where white villas perched like birds among the lushness of their own gardens. Palms and orange trees, and the kind of massed geraniums and roses that surrounded the Casa de Principes.

It was all so lovely, though perhaps slightly unreal, and it should have proved a source of inspiration to any artist, Sally thought, but she had sat here now for over an hour, and the canvas in front of her was still maddeningly and dismayingly blank.

She chewed on the end of her brush, her mouth, slightly pouting, betraying her dislike of the situation. She felt she should have been able to paint as she had never done before, in such surroundings, but far from that being so, she found herself devoid of any kind of inspiration at all.

In the two weeks since she came to San Gregorio she had done nothing worth mentioning at all. Not that she had ever considered herself any more than a passably good amateur, but at least at home she had been able to produce something that she was not ashamed to show her friends. Two weeks under Miguel Cordova's expert tuition and she had nothing at all to show for it. She had no hesitation, either, of placing the blame for her failure firmly at the feet of her tutor.

She avoided Miguel Cordova as often as she could, although she was forced to bear his harsh and unrelenting criticism during teaching sessions. It was ridiculous to feel as sensitive as she did, but since that episode when he had found her alone by the roadside and played such havoc with her emotions, she felt unable to face him without wanting to run away and hide.

He had made it plain enough to her that he considered it no more than a lesson to teach her never to go wandering out alone at night. Nevertheless, she was aware that she had responded to him, if only for a few minutes, with far more lack of inhibition than she should have done.

As for helping her to improve her painting, from his manner he seemed far more intent on discouraging her, until she had reached the point, only a couple of days ago, when she had been ready to pack up and go home. Only Michael's persuasion had changed her mind, and she thanked heaven that he could not possibly have known what other, more disturbing, factors lay behind her wanting to leave.

She was sure that Dona Alicia would have regretted her early departure, for the older woman had shown, quite unmistakably, that she liked her, but she would probably have seen the reason for it far more easily than Michael would. Dona Alicia, Sally thought, would know exactly what sort of an effect her son would have on other women.

No one saw anything of Ines Valdaquez, except at mealtimes, and Sally thanked heaven for it, but she was also feminine enough to speculate on what the Spanish girl's reaction would have been to that incident on the coast road. Ines Valdaquez showed quite plainly, in her manner towards him, that she looked upon Miguel Cordova as something more than just her late husband's cousin; even if she did receive little in the way of encouragement—in public at least.

It was annoying, Sally thought, how often she found herself thinking about Miguel Cordova, and she frowned now to find herself so preoccupied yet again. No one could deny that he was a brilliant artist, of course, but his manner towards her fellow students and herself was one of such arrogant impatience and barely concealed contempt that she found it very hard to understand why they did not object, as she did herself. Their acceptance of it all only added to Sally's sense of injustice.

Michael had surprised her by proving quite amazingly knowledgeable about their host, although Sally had hesitated to enquire too closely into the source of his information. He had informed her, only yesterday, that Don Miguel had, during the past few years, numbered several famous beauties among his conquests. Of course Michael had hastened to add, as if it made everything all right, he was always very discreet, and never so obvious as to create a scandal.

The latter had made Sally smile wryly to herself when she heard it. Perhaps some of those famous beauties too were merely being taught a lesson on the danger of tempting the Spanish male. It was iTi- evitable, of course, that his dark, almost stern, looks would prove irresistible to a good many women. Even his arrogance would probably be in his favour with some.

His reputation too would be an added attraction and he had been commissioned to paint any number of wealthy and beautiful wives and daughters. His work hung in some of the most luxurious homes in the world, and perhaps it was not surprising that he looked upon the rest of the world with arrogance and the conviction of his own importance.

She sighed again, resignedly, and looked at the blank canvas in front of her. This was not the first time she had managed to slip off alone to sit on the rocks above the sea, and she expected her tutor's wrath to descend on her any day now. She had managed to give Michael the slip several times lately, and come out here instead of joining the rest of the class.

Instead of lifting her spirits, however, her truancy had merely added to her low feeling, and she sighed deeply as she stared at the copper-coloured sand and the incredible blue glitter of the sea below her. Her head was bare and the sun was much too hot for even her thick, corn-coloured hair to be any sort of protection, and she knew she was squinting her eyes against it.

There was a despondent droop about her shoulders too, as she slumped on the little canvas stool with her slim brown legs curled away under it. The brief cotton dress she wore exposed a great deal of golden tanned skin to the scorching sun and she began to wonder if she had been unwise to sit here so long without protection.

'So, nina. You not only miss my class, you also expose yourself to too much sun!'

Sally turned sharply at the sound of the familiar voice, and frowned. Miguel Cordova stood behind her, close behind her, bare-headed, his face wearing that stern, dark look that she had learned to know as a prelude to criticism. It dismayed her, too, to feel the way her pulses were racing wildly when she realised she was alone with him again. That irrepressible sense of excitement was running away with her common sense again and she fought against its influence determinedly.

'I felt like being alone,' she said, hastily on the defensive, and he gave a short laugh.

'I seem to remember that you told me that once before, nina,' he said.

'Well, it happens to be true,' Sally insisted, hating him'for reminding her of that time. 'I like being alone sometimes, and it's such a lovely view from up here.'

'Muy hermoso,' he agreed quietly. 'But you are foolish to sit so long in the sun without a hat.' A hand rested lightly on the crown of her head for a moment, and she started almost nervously at the touch. 'You will become ill if you do not protect your head.'

Sally glanced up briefly but meaningly at his own black head. 'You never do,' she told him, and he smiled.

'I am used to the sun, mi pichon,' he said softly. 'You must accustom yourself to it gradually. Do not sit out here again without some protection for your head.'

It was the implacable way that the order was given that annoyed Sally, and she instinctively lifted her chin in defiance of it. 'I want to get brown,' she informed him. 'That's one reason for coming to Spain, after all. To go back with a good tan.'

'But not to go down with insolacion, I think,' he retorted impatiently. 'You will please do as I say in future, Sarita, and not be so stubbornly foolish about wearing a hat. Also,' he added, before she could object, 'you are here to improve your talent as an artist. I can well imagine that you find the view from here more inspiring than sitting in on one of my teaching sessions, but it is surely rather pointless for your father to pay for something of which you have no intention of taking advantage.'

'He'd understand, if he was here,' Sally informed him swiftly, unable to resist the dig. 'He'd realise I had to escape occasionally.'

'Escape?' He raised a black, expressive brow at the blank canvas before her. 'Escaping seems to have been of little use to you this morning, does it?'

Sally looked at him, her blue eyes dark with anger and reproach, her fingers tightly clenched on the brush she still held in her right hand. 'I just forgot about the session this morning,' she told him, untruthfully.

'I see. But not for the first time, I think.'

Sally made no answer for a moment, but fought with the almost overwhelming variety of emotions that crowded her mind, so chaotically that she could have cried out. Why, oh, why had he had to come and find her?

'I have been here before,' she confessed at last, unwillingly, and the black eyes seemed to bore into her so that she swept down a curtain of thick lashes to hide her eyes.

'Why?'

'Oh—I don't know!' She got up from her stool, shaking her head so that the long hair fell about her face, hiding her expression. 'There just doesn't seem much point,' she went on recklessly. 'Not when I learn nothing.'

Again a brow expressed more than words, and he frowned. 'So—you feel you have nothing to learn, is that it?'

'No, of course it isn't,' Sally denied. 'It's just that —I never seem to learn very much when I do come.'

'And you blame me for that?'

She shook her head, seeking a way to explain, that would not be a blow to his undeniable pride. 'Oh, how do I know who's to blame?' she asked with a sigh. 'I just know that you discourage me rather than encourage me, and I haven't been able to do anything worthwhile since I came here.'

'But to learn to do something worthwhile is surely why you are here,' he suggested quietly. 'The idea is for you to learn, muchacha, but you do not like being taught, do you? You do not take kindly to learning, and most especially from me, I think. Is that not so?'

'No, of course it isn't,' Sally denied, glancing up at the stern, dark face, trying to make him understand. and at the same time wishing he need not stand quite so close, because she could almost feel the warmth and magnetism of him, like an irresistible force.

His black eyes were almost incredibly brilliant, and they looked down at her as if he guessed exactly the effect he had on her, and wanted to see just how far he could push her. Hastily she shifted her gaze to the far less disturbing subject of the scene below them.

'Then why do you constantly fight me?' he asked softly. 'Why will you not let me teach you, nina, hmm?'

Sally kept her eyes on the glittering sea and the sweeping strip of sand that dazzled like beaten gold, her heart thudding wildly in response to the persuasive softness of his voice. 'I do try to learn,' she said, her voice betrayingly unsteady. 'I want to learn, Don Miguel, but'

'But?' he prompted, and Sally shook her head.

'I shouldn't have come,' she told him. 'I should never have come here at all.'

He laughed shortly, and she knew that his pride was resenting her refusal to be persuaded as much as her words. 'It was what I told you when you arrived, if you remember,' he reminded her. 'And for all the good it has done for your work, you would probably have been better not to come.'

The brutal frankness of his reply made her turn swiftly and eye him with as much anger as reproach. 'Thank you,' she said bitterly. 'At last I know the truth.'

'I presumed that you wanted the truth,' he told her icily. 'It was of your own choosing, senorita.'

'And you wouldn't hesitate to tell me, would you?' Sally asked, a catch in her voice. 'It's been very obvious from the start that you didn't like my being here.'

'That is not true,' he told her shortly, 'and you are well aware of it, Sarita!' She was too slow to realise his intention until those long gentle fingers reached out and brushed caressingly against her cheek again, making her pulses skip wildly as she hastily looked away. 'You know it is not so, amada,' he said softly.

Suddenly the villa seemed an incredibly long way off and she swallowed hard on the urgent desire to flee as fast as her legs would carry her. Instead she glanced up at him from under her lashes, and saw the suspicion of laughter that glistened in his eyes.

'Oh—oh, you—' Her tightly curling fingers snapped in two the slender handle of the paintbrush she held, and she felt the sharp, painful jab of the splintered wood in her flesh, drawing in a sharp breath at the shock of it.

'Sarita! You have hurt your hand!' He was suddenly and unbelievably anxious, and he pulled open her curled hand with his own strong fingers. 'Splinters can be dangerous, amada—let me see.'

The pieces of broken wood fell unheeded to the ground as he spread her hand in his, palm upwards, and showing the red and angry marks on her fingers. 'It's nothing,' Sally insisted hastily. 'Only a splinter, I can get it out myself.'

The minute sliver of wood prickled sharply when he ran a finger over it, and she winced involuntarily. 'Ah!' It might almost have been a sound of satisfaction as he raised her hand to his mouth and placed his lips over the spot, drawing at the fragment, while Sally fought with an ever-increasing sensation of panic.

With his head bent over her hand, he was only inches away, and she was overwhelmingly aware of the essential maleness of him. Of the warmth of his touch and the pressure of his lips on her palm, of the shadow that those almost feminine-looking lashes made on the brown face. The intimate, warm sense of touch and awareness made her head spin dizzily, and she would have reached out and touched his cheek gently with her finger tips if he had not looked up at that moment and ejected the offending splinter from his mouth before smiling at her.

'It is gone, nina. Is that better?'

Sally nodded, not immediately trusting herself to speak. 'Thank you, senor,' she said huskily, at last.

'There are no more?' He still held her hand in his, and ran gentle, exploratory fingers over the red marks, while Sally shook her head.

'No! No, thank you.' She withdrew her captive hand, and he released it reluctantly. 'I'd—I think I'd better go back to the house,' she said.

She noticed with dismay that her hands were trembling as she folded up her easel and collected her paints, and it was he who bent and picked up her stool and the abandoned canvas, tucking them both under his arm.

'You will not sit out here again,' he told her, mildly but firmly. 'Especially not during a lesson, and certainly not without a hat.'

'I'm not prepared to give you an assurance on either,' Sally replied, equally quietly. She was still shaky-voiced, but she was not prepared to allow herself to be bulldozed into meekly accepting his instructions.

'I must insist that you do,' he told her, and Sally turned her back on him, making her way up the short, steep incline to the driveway.

'And I must insist that I be allowed to do as I please,' she insisted.

'That I cannot allow.'

'Then I shall pack up and go home,' Sally declared, her adamant statement suffering some loss of force from having to be spoken over one shoulder.

'Ah!' He seemed to find some satisfaction in that, and for a moment she wondered if his behaviour until now really had been calculated to achieve just that move on her part. 'I could have guessed that you would relinquish the rest of your tuition rather than take instruction,' he told her with maddening certainty. 'You are just too stubborn to listen to anyone, are you not?'

'No, I'm not!' Sally denied swiftly, and half turned to glare at him over her shoulder.

The move, however, was almost her undoing, for she missed her footing on the rocky incline and would have fallen if he had not put out a hand to save her. For a moment she was pulled against him, and the faster than usual beat of his heart thudded heavily in time with her own.

He held her there, with his strong fingers gripping her upper arm tightly, looking down at her with an impatient glitter in his black eyes. 'You are wilful and stubborn,' he told her, his breath warm on her cheek when he spoke. 'More strict discipline when you were younger would have made some difference, perhaps, but like most of the women of your country you are wilful and have little notion of your proper place!'

'Proper place!' Sally wrenched at her arm, trying to free it. Most of all anxious to move away from such close contact with him, for he could undermine her strength of will with dangerous ease. She looked up at the dark arrogant features, and the black eyes looking at her down that straight, aristocratic nose. Even the way he walked—tall and confident, spoke of his pride in what he was, and his conviction that most other species were inferior.

'Si, mi poco pimienta!' She was horribly uncertain whether it was laughter or anger in his eyes.

'Well, I thank heaven I wasn't brought up in a country that, lives in the Middle Ages!' she told him. 'We're not second-class citizens, no matter what the likes of you think, senor!'

'I did not suggest that you were,' he denied quietly, 'but you are—different, you will not deny that, Sarita, surely, and that is what makes the natural rule of man as the dominant one.' An eloquent shrug conveyed his meaning more precisely, and Sally hastily turned her head away again rather than meet the challenge that glittered in those bright, dark eyes. 'It is to be expected, of course,' he went on, 'that you can wrap your father around your little finger, probably without his realising it.'

'I don't need to wrap anyone round my finger,' Sally told him. 'I'm quite capable of running my own life without having to exert pressure on anyone, even my father.'

'Just as long as you are getting your own way,' he suggested. 'That is why you are talking now of giving up your course and going home.'

'No, it isn't!'

'Because you cannot wrap me around your finger, you will go home, give up and refuse to learn anything.'

The taunt stung like a whiplash and Sally gritted her teeth as she turned round, stopping in her tracks so that he was forced to stop too, his eyes glittering a challenge at her. The sun beat down mercilessly on the back of her neck and she was breathing unevenly, partly from the exertion of the climb and partly from the tumult of emotions that threatened at any moment to burst into verbal assault.

'All right,' she said after a long moment, and drawing a deep breath before she spoke. 'I'll stay on for the whole of the three months. No matter what you do to provoke me, I'll prove you're wrong, and that I don't give up because you bully me. I'll stay on and prove you're not only a—a bully, but prejudiced too!'

His brief, soft laughter was a surprise, and the fingers of his free hand reached out to caress her bare arm before she could draw back. 'I thought perhaps you might,' he said softly.

Mealtimes were an opportunity for conversation, and as usual the big, cool dining-room buzzed with voices as everyone talked at once. Sally smiled across at Robert Blane, and was immediately aware that Miguel, at the head of the table, had not missed the brief exchange.

Robert's persistence amused her, and she wondered if he would ever pluck up the courage to come and sit next to her, in the chair that Michael normally occupied. Certainly their host would view the incident, should it ever occur, with less tolerance than she would herself.

After her encounter with Miguel Cordova that morning, she was feeling vaguely and rather defiantly restless. She felt more uneasy than ever in his presence, and the sensation annoyed her. It was all too obvious that his behaviour towards her was a calculated and deliberate campaign to amuse himself at her expense, and in the cruellest possible way.

Knowing she was susceptible to his undeniable power to attract, he went out of his way to charm her, only to turn on her, moments later, and treat her as if she was no more than a rather difficult child. She had dubbed him cruel from the beginning, and further acquaintance had given her no cause to change her opinion. She sighed inwardly—two more months and weeks could well prove too much for her staying power, but she would do her best to stick it out.

She was giving her attention to her lunch when Michael chose to raise the subject of her absence that morning. He spoke close to her ear, his words almost lost in the general hubbub around them. 'Where were you this morning during the teaching session?' he asked, and Sally shrugged resignedly.

She had much rather he had not asked her, particularly when it would mean her being evasive about Miguel Cordova's appearance. 'Did you miss me?' she asked, hoping to avoid having to be too specific.

'Of course I did,' Michael told her. 'And so did the Maestro.'

Her fellow students' use of that rather pretentious title for their host always irritated Sally, perhaps unreasonably, but somehow she could never bring herself to use it. 'I gathered he did, when he came to find me,' she said. She did not look at Michael, but carefully extracted a morsel of delicious zarzuela de pescado from its coating of butter, herbs and sauce, trying to identify the fish before popping it into her mouth.

'Good God!' Michael breathed, evidently in awe. 'But where on earth were you?'

'Down on the rocks, below the driveway,' Sally told him. 'I sat there trying to do some work, but without success, needless to say.'

'But why, for heaven's sake, darling?' he asked. 'You must be crazy!'

'Possibly,' she agreed, a little tartly. 'But it was better than being lectured. I just wasn't in the mood for being taught.'

He looked puzzled, and for a moment Sally felt rather sorry for him. He would never see the need to escape from Miguel Cordova's constant criticism. He would never be disturbed in the same way that she was, by the man himself, and she could not explain to him, or even try.

'Sally darling,' he said slowly, his own meal forgotten for the moment, 'you can't mean that you deliberately missed out on a teaching session, can you?'

'I mean just that,' Sally assured him. 'Not for the first time, either,' she added. 'I'm surprised you haven't missed me.'

'I have,' he replied absently, still trying to believe that her absences had been deliberate. 'But do you mean he actually took the trouble to come and find you?'

She nodded. 'That's right.'

'But what on earth did he say?'

'What could he say?' Sally asked, beginning to quite enjoy shocking him. No one, she felt sure had ever treated Miguel Cordova in such a casual, offhand manner before, and Michael's reaction was doing something to restore her self-confidence. 'We had an argument, and I said I'd leave.'

'Oh no!' He looked so utterly dismayed that she was tempted to laugh. Though whether it was her own possible departure or her defiance of his hero that worried him most she had yet to discover. 'You promised the other day,' he reminded her. 'You promised you wouldn't leave, darling.'

'I know I did,' Sally told him. 'But you don't realise what I have to put up with from that man. I object to being treated like a half-wit. Anyway,' she added, returning to her meal, 'you needn't worry, I changed my mind about going.'

He leaned over and lightly kissed the tip of her ear. 'I'm glad,' he told her. 'You mustn't be so touchy, darling.'

'Touchy!' Sally looked at him reproachfully, then realised that it was unlikely he would realise just how vulnerable she was with a man like Miguel Cordova. She sighed. 'I decided to stay and show him I can paint,' she said, 'however much of a sadistic bully he is!'

'Sally!'

'Well, he is,' she insisted. She spoke as quietly as she could because she did not want Dona Alicia to hear what she felt about her famous son. It could only hurt her, even if it was true. She turned her head and looked at Michael's blue eyes, round and blank with disbelief, trying hard to restrain her impatience. Michael was such an ardent disciple that he would never understand her own dislike of the man. In fact no man could ever understand the chaos of emotions that Miguel Cordova aroused in her. 'I'm sorry I don't share your blind adoration of him,' she said, more calmly.

'It isn't blind adoration,' Michael denied. 'He's a brilliant artist, darling, everyone knows that.'

'No one more than Miguel Cordova, I suspect,' Sally said wryly, and immediately wished she had not made that rather spiteful comment.

'Well, he is brilliant, darling,' Michael said quietly.

'I know he is!' She sighed again, deeply. 'But the fact that he's brilliant doesn't excuse his belittling other people's efforts the way he does. If anything it should make him more—more tolerant and understanding. Instead he's rude and boorish, just because we can't match his standards.'

He put a comforting hand over hers and smiled. 'You let him get under your skin, darling,' he said. 'Your painting's pretty good really.'

'Thank you,' Sally told him dryly. 'But that would have sounded more convincing if you'd told me sooner.'

She gave her attention once more to the delicious food, but her mind was so full of questions that she was almost unaware of what she was eating. She had not only to cope with the almost irresistible force that was Miguel Cordova for the next two months, but also with the question of whether or not she was living in a fool's paradise as far as her artistic abilities were concerned.

She was so preoccupied that it took her a moment or two to realise she was being watched, surreptitiously, by the dark, malicious eyes of Ines Valdaquez. Two weeks or so had done nothing to mellow the Spanish girl's feeling towards her, and Sally wondered if she knew, or perhaps guessed something of Miguel Cordova's behaviour towards her.

Not that his relationship with her bore the slightest resemblance to an affair, but his affaires d'amour with all those wealthy beauties that Michael had told her about could hardly have been a secret from his family, she thought, and for the first time felt a twinge of sympathy for Ines Valdaquez.

Her adoration of her late husband's cousin was so obvious that she must suffer agonies every time he looked at another woman, and Sally wondered if he realised it, and was uncaring. Showing that slight but undeniable streak of cruelty again. Having Sally there, at the villa, must have been an added cross for her to bear. It would, Sally thought, have suited the other woman admirably if she had decided to leave and go back home.

'We will go into the matter of perspective again this afternoon,' Miguel Cordova said suddenly, and startled Sally out of her reverie. He spoke to the company at large, but his eyes were fixed firmly on Sally. 'If that will suit everyone,' he added.

There was a chorus of assent from the others, only Sally remaining silent, embarrassed by the pointed implication. The black eyes were watching her steadily from the far end of the table, and she knew she was being challenged to miss the afternoon session as she had done the morning one. 'Miss Beckett?' The soft, relentless voice sent a warning trickle along her spine and there was a small, inscrutable smile on his face as he raised a questioning brow. 'Does that suit you also?'

Sally's hand curled tightly over the handle of her knife, and she felt the colour warming her cheeks as all eyes turned to her. They would no doubt appreciate the Maestro's joke at her expense, she thought bitterly. Even Michael was smiling with the rest.

It was very tempting to be outrageously rude to him, but she refused to allow him the satisfaction of that, so instead she merely shrugged her shoulders carelessly, and resumed her meal. 'By all means, senor,' she said with studied politeness. 'If you think it. worthwhile.'

There was a brief startled silence, during which she would have sworn her own rapid heartbeat was audible and, without quite knowing why, she glanced briefly and half apologetically at Dona Alicia. The glance startled her, for she was prepared to swear that she saw amusement in the older woman's eyes before she hastily looked down.

'Are you not interested in getting the perspective right?' He spoke quietly, but there was an edge of hardness on the deep voice and Sally fought with an increasing pulse-rate that threatened to stifle her. 'You know all that there is to know about it, perhaps?'

'No! No, of course I don't,' Sally denied. Her own voice was betrayingly unsteady, but she refused to back down now, although she kept her eyes downcast while she spoke and the fingers of her right hand played restlessly with the stem of her wine glass. 'I simply meant that—that I can't learn anything at all when all I get is—is unrelieved criticism.'

'I see.' He took a sip from his wine glass and the black eyes studied her for a moment over its rim before he spoke again. 'It is strange that no one else seems deterred by my criticism. Can it be that you are perhaps ultra-sensitive, Miss Beckett? That you do not learn so well because you do not have enough attention? If that is so, there is a solution that I can offer.' The black head bowed mockingly. 'If you are agreeable, of course.'

Sally's head was spinning wildly and she was held by that steady black gaze as if she was hypnotised. 'I^-I'm agreeable to anything that you think would help,' she told him cautiously, and he smiled.

It was a smile that did little to reassure her, and again he reminded her of a big, dangerous cat as he had done when she first met him. 'Good,' he approved softly. 'Then I will arrange to give you private tuition in the evenings.'

Sally stared at him in disbelief, and even Michael, she sensed, was at least startled, if not disapproving. She would have refused, but his gaze dared her to do so. 'But——' She swallowed hard, one hand to her throat in an oddly defensive gesture, her eyes wide and uncertain. 'I don't think that will be necessary, Don Miguel,' she said huskily. 'I can take lessons with the rest.'

But he was not so easily denied, as she should have known. 'I am your tutor,' he reminded her quietly but firmly, 'and I think it will prove to be the answer to your lack of progress so far. It is evident that you do not learn well in a crowd, perhaps you are distracted by the presence of others around you.' He glanced briefly but meaningly at Michael. 'And consequently you are more than usually sensitive to being criticised. So' he spread his large, capable looking hands, 'private tuition is obviously the answer.'

'No, please, I don't' An imperious hand waved her objections aside.

'I am here to instruct you, senorita,' he informed her. 'I shall do so to the best of my ability.' He put a hand to his chin and thought for a moment. 'We will start tomorrow night, I think.'

'Please!' Sally begged, but he ignored her.

'You have missed several sessions lately,' he said. 'You have much to catch up.' She looked startled, but of course he would have missed her, if no one else did. 'You think I would not notice your absence?' he asked, catching her expression. 'You do yourself an injustice, senorita.'

'I'm sorry.' It was an added humiliation, having to apologise to. him in front of everybody, but she had to try and change his mind about those private lessons. The thought of being alone with him for heaven knew how long at a time both panicked and excited her, and the latter must on no account be allowed to get the upper hand. 'I promise not to miss any more classes,' she told him. 'I promise, Don Miguel. It won't be necessary to give me extra tuition.'

He was shaking his head, adamant as she should have expected, a firm, relentless look about his mouth. 'I am decided,' he told her. 'We will start tomorrow, as I said, and in the meantime, while I am instructing the others this afternoon, you may come along and follow as best you can.'

Sally was beyond words, seething with anger and humiliation, and unable to express it without saying something she would regret later. She also felt inexplicably tearful and bit on her lip as a gentle hand reached over and covered her own. She turned wide, troubled eyes to look at Dona Alicia.

'It is well meant, mi cara,' the older woman told her kindly. 'Please believe me.'

Sally nodded, drawing comfort from the gentle plea, and prevented from acting impulsively and regretting it later. 'I know,' she said, quietly. 'Thank you. Dona Alicia.'

Ines Valdaquez, how^7ever, was taking a much less tolerant view of the situation, and she sat sternly upright in her seat beside Miguel, her straight dark brows drawn together above glittering eyes. With his insistence on teaching her privately Miguel had made the Spanish girl her enemy, and a pretty formidable one too, unless Sally had misjudged her.

'Miss Beckett is surely not so backward as to need any more teaching than the rest of them,' she stated in her harsh, precise voice. 'You are being injusto, surely, Miguel, are you not?'

'Permit me to know what I am doing,' Miguel told her firmly. 'Miss Beckett is fully aware of her own shortcomings as an artist. Are you not, Miss Beckett?'

'You've left me in no doubt of it.' Sally told him bitterly, hating the looks of sympathy that were being turned on her now. As if he thought any more of their talents, Sally thought. 'You are the acknowledged expert, Don Miguel.'

'You see?' he said to his cousin. 'Miss Beckett is perfectly agreeable.'

'It just happens that I have arranged to go out tomorrow night,' Sally ventured, remembering a rather vague arrangement with Michael to visit Cadiz on the small, rattly local bus.

But Michael too, it seemed, was bent on thwarting her, and spoke up unhesitatingly, quite willingto forgo the pleasure of her company, apparently, if it was for her own good.

'Oh, please don't mind me, darling,' he told her hastily. 'I don't mind in the least if it means you getting extra help with your painting.'

Sally's heart sank dismally when she saw her last avenue of escape blocked. 'But I don't' she began, but Miguel Cordova brushed her further efforts aside with as little concern as before.

'You see,' he told her, 'Michael is willing to give up an evening with you so that you may come to me.'

His choice of such a provocative phrase, Sally felt sure, was deliberate, although Michael seemed not to take it amiss. 'It seems I have no choice,' she said resignedly, and hastily avoided the glint of satisfaction in her tormentor's eyes. She raised an almost full glass of wine to her lips and drank the contents down in one long draught, then shivered involuntarily when a flick of panic curled icily in the pit of her stomach.

CHAPTER FIVE

ALL day long Sally had been praying for something to happen that would make Miguel Cordova change his mind, either that or that something would prevent him from keeping his private tutoring appointment with her. Any small hope she had nurtured, however, vanished when she was leaving the dining room with Michael the following evening.

Feeling a hand slide under her elbow, she turned swiftly and stopped in her tracks, her own instincts telling her who it was even before she turned. 'Oh!' Her dismay was so apparent in her expression that he smiled briefly, the black eyes gleaming with amusement.

Michael, of course, was unaware of anything but the obvious, and he smiled down at her, squeezing her hand to remind her. 'Of course, darling,' he said. 'You have some homework to do tonight, remember?'

Don Miguel's strong fingers curled over her arm and they squeezed much harder than Michael's did. 'Had, you forgotten, Miss Beckett?' he asked softly, and Sally looked up at him, shaking her head, her mouth pursed in her usual soft pout of disapproval, when something displeased her.

'I was rather hoping you had,' she told him, and he looked at her sternly down his arrogant nose, his black brows drawn into a straight line.

'I do not make arrangements and then forget them,' he informed her quietly. 'I am not very flattered that you supposed I would.'

'I didn't really,' Sally confessed. She was being very ungracious about it, she knew, but her own impulsive emotions were driving her on to try and delay, if not cancel, the moment when she would have to be alone with him again. 'It's just that—I was rather hoping you'd have second thoughts about it, Don Miguel.'

He regarded her in silence for a moment with that steady black gaze, while Michael stood looking from one to the other, probably wondering if she had taken leave of her senses. 'Of course Don Miguel hasn't had second thoughts, darling,' Michael told her. 'Have you, senor?'

Miguel Cordova smiled, one of those small, enigmatic smiles that troubled her so. 'Never,' he said firmly.

'I just thought'

'You hoped,' he interrupted softly, and the fingers on her arm tightened again until she could have cried out. 'Come, Sarita, we are wasting time.'

There was an implacable glint in the black eyes that even Michael noticed, and he laughed a little uneasily, as if he was less sure of letting her go. Darling, if you'

'I "am not accustomed to being kept waiting,' Don Miguel informed her quietly.. 'You will please come with me. Adios, Mr. Storer, we have work to do.'

'Yes. Yes, of course.' Michael's blue eyes looked at Sally uncertainly for a brief moment, then he smiled, apparently reassured. He gave her hand an encouraging squeeze and kissed her lightly beside her mouth. 'I'll see you later, amada,' he told her. 'Adios, senor!'

Sally saw him walk off to join the others in the garden, and her eyes followed him reproachfully for a moment, but she was given little time to feel sorry for herself or to blame Michael, for an insistent hand under her elbow turned her about, and guided her back across the dining-room.

'Is Mr. Storer learning to speak Spanish?' Don Miguel asked, and Sally shook her head, too concerned with her own situation to worry about Michael.

'I don't know; probably,' she said. 'He seems prone to using Spanish words lately, although he probably doesn't know what half of them mean.' She felt she owed Michael that much for deserting her.

'Have you no inclination to learn my language, Sarita?' The question was put in a soft, sensuous voice that was bound to arouse all sorts of reactions in her, and she curled her hands tightly as she shook her head.

'Not really,' she said. 'I'm not very bright at things like languages, and I haven't Michael's desire to go native.'

'I see.' He obviously had no difficulty in recog-nising pique when he heard it, for the hand under her arm shook her gently, as if in reprimand. 'Do not be angry with him for leaving you in my charge,' he told her. 'He is being very understanding, and you should appreciate that.'

'I wish I could,' Sally said, in a small voice. 'The trouble is, he doesn't understand at all.'

'You think not?'

The grip on her arm tightened again and she could imagine how tight and firm his mouth looked when he spoke again. 'And I am not at all sure that I understand your attitude, Sarita,' he said quietly.

'I'm sorry if I sound ungracious.'

'I'm glad you realise you sound ungracious,' he told her. 'At the risk of sounding conceited, most young artists would count themselves very fortunate to be offered the opportunity of being privately tutored by Miguel Cordova. You merely seem to look upon it as some kind of punishment.'

Sally looked up at him at last, but only warily from under her lashes, all too well aware that what he said was true. She was, as he had suggested, very privileged to be given special attention from him, but all the same she would much rather not have been singled out for the honour. Perhaps it was conceited of her, but after her previous experience with him she just could not believe that his suggesting the private tuition had been prompted only by a desire to improve her art.

'You're quite right about the others jumping at the opportunity,' she said, trying hard to ignore the sensation his hand on her arm aroused in her. The impression of warmth and strength and the cat-like grace of him as he walked beside her was hard to ignore. 'Most of them would be very—honoured.'

'But not you?'

She did not answer for the moment, then she shook her head slowly. 'It's not that I don't appreciate the honour,' she told him. 'I do.'

He sighed deeply over the reluctance of her admission as he opened a door she had never been through before, or even really noticed. It was tucked away in one corner of the dining-room, and led through into a narrow, coolly dim passageway, arched and silent as cloisters. The white walls were starkly bare except for a big bronze crucifix, similar to the one in the hall, and this one too had its offering of heavily scented roses that filled the narrow passageway with their perfume.

'You would run away now,' he suggested softly, looking down at her, 'if you thought you could manage to escape me. Would you not, Sarita?'

Sally did not answer, intrigued and, at the same time, vaguely alarmed by her new surroundings. This narrow, bare corridor with its arched windows and its cool silence, and only the huge crucifix on one wall to relieve the starkness of it, reminded her uneasily of a convent or a monastery. The sensation made her feel trapped and, almost instinctively, she hung back against the guiding hand on her arm.

'Where are you taking me?' she wanted to know, and the black eyes looked down at her, as if he knew exactly what her reactions were and the thought amused him. 'To my studio,' he said, and took her to where a flight of steep, narrow stairs led upwards, taking up the full width of the passageway. 'You are surely not afraid of that, are you, nina?'

'Of going to your studio? No, of course not!'

'Then come!'

Sally wanted to resist that firm, persuasive hand that urged her on, but something deep inside her also fought for recognition. Curiosity and another emotion, even stronger that she dared not admit to, even to herself. He had a studio, on the ground floor of the house, where he sometimes took them, and she had expected it would be there that he took her now. This new and unexpected revelation troubled her.

'I—I thought your studio was on this floor,' she ventured, and he smiled briefly, following her line of thought all too easily.

'Not this one,' he told her. 'Now are you coming with me to do some work or do you intend to turn and run away like some timid schoolgirl?'

The jibe stung harshly, and Sally felt the colour in her cheeks, recognising it as a challenge too. After a moment she nodded, looking upwards at the dim outline of a doorway at the top of the stairs. 'I'm not a timid schoolgirl, Don Miguel,' she told him. 'If your studio is up there, then of course I'll come.'

'Bueno!'

He nodded his satisfaction as she moved with him to the foot of the stairs. She took the first step too hastily in her anxiety, trying to match his long stride, and missed her footing. Her fall threw her against him, and in a flash his hands caught her and held her firm, with her palms spread instinctively on his chest.

The gesture reminded her immediately that she had stood like this once before, when he had come and found her on the coast road. He had held her then, tight in his arms, with her hands spread wide over the steady beat of his heart, and she closed her eyes briefly to shut out the memory and the sudden, wild longing that his touch aroused in her again.

'Are you hurt?' His voice was so quietly matter-of- fact that Sally looked up at him for a moment, startled and confused because his reactions were less emotional than her own.

'No.' She eased herself free of the hands that still held her. 'No, I'm not hurt.'

'You are sure?' For all his coolness he seemed reluctant to release her, and she felt a steady, urgent throbbing under the hand she put to her own throat.

'I'm quite sure, Don Miguel, thank you.' It was difficult to match his coolness, but she tried, and she glanced upwards at the flight of shadowy, unlit stairs between stark white walls, her heart beating warily fast. 'Is—is it straight up these stairs to your studio?'

He nodded, putting a helping hand under her arm again. 'And take more care this time, nina.'

They mounted the narrow stairs with Sally one step ahead and, as they reached the door at the top,he tightened his hold on her arm momentarily, so that she looked up at him in the dim coolness. She thought for one moment that he was going to have second thoughts about bringing her there, and then, just as inexplicably, he shrugged and reached past her to open the door.

He pushed her through before him, with a hand in the small of her back as if he still feared she might turn and run, and Sally stood in the doorway for a moment, looking around her, not knowing quite what to expect, a strange and head-spinning sense of excitement stirring in her suddenly.

Miguel Cordova was a proud and, in some ways, a strangely reserved man, and yet he was admitting her, of all people, to his holy of holies. The studio that none of his other students had ever seen. Always sensitive to atmosphere, she felt a faint tremor through her body when she experienced a feeling of intimacy that disturbed and excited her.

Even had she not known it was his room, she felt she would have sensed it instinctively, for it was filled with his strong, dominant personality. It was here that his enormous creative talent released the deep, innermost secrets of his mind and revealed them in the beauty of his paintings, and the impression of his personality was almost tangible.

A room where he painted the things he wanted to paint, like the harsh brilliance of a picture that caught her eye, over on the far wall. Vivid and alive With all the colour, movement and barbarity of the bullfight, detailed in cruel perfection by a master of his craft. It stirred a response in her, despite her dislike of the subject.

The room itself smelled of the inevitable mixture of oil and paint and new canvas. Of the completed and part-completed pictures that stood propped against the walls, giving tantalising glimpses of form and colour. It was a big room and still retained its essentially Spanish air, like the rest of the house, except that one of the windows at the far end had been much enlarged and gave a breathtaking view of the sea and the rocks on which the house stood.

The big window, being unshaded, made the room much warmer and must, in the full light of day, have been dazzling in its brilliance. White walls reflected the light and even this late in the evening, gave the impression of being at the heart of some great light force. An oddly disturbing sensation.

An easel was set up, practically in the centre of the room and lower down, nearer the big window, was a model's dais with a chair. The silk-draped chair had a bare and sadly tatty look, somehow, without an occupant, and Sally found herself wondering who had sat in it last.

She glanced up at Miguel Cordova, and her silent question was answered by a brief nod, the persuasive hand still under her arm. 'You are very silent, nina,' he said softly after a moment, and the sound of his voice set her heart beating rapidly again as she tried to ease herself free of his hold without appearing too obvious about it.

'I'm very impressed,' she told him. 'It's—it's an unusual room, beautiful in a way, but'

'But?' he prompted gently, and Sally hesitated. To put exactly what she felt into words could equally easily amuse or anger him. It might even cause him to reveal that disturbing hint of cruelty again, so she moved away from him, shaking her head, declining to explain herself.

Her evasion was short-lived, however, for he followed close behind. 'But?' he asked again, and a long forefinger brushed lightly against her neck, as it lifted her long hair gently. 'Tell me just what impression my studio makes on you, mi pichon.'

'I—I'm not sure.' She closed her eyes briefly when a shiver slid along her spine at the touch of his hand. 'It's—disturbing. I can't explain!' she added hastily before he could laugh the idea to scorn.

'It—disturbs you?' He echoed her hesitation, but he sounded neither angry nor amused. A hand smoothed aside her long hair, and the long fingers almost reached round to her throat as they curved about her neck, the palm warm and firm at the nape of her neck. 'Why should it disturb you? Do you know?' He laughed softly. 'Or will you not tell me?'

'I don't know,' Sally admitted huskily, resisting the almost overwhelming urge to respond to that caressing hand.

'You do not know?' There was a gentle mockery in his voice and she would have answered it, but at that moment she noticed the unfinished portrait that was propped on the easel, and something familiar about it caught her eye irresistibly.

Although the painting itself was half covered with a cloth thrown over it, the uncovered part revealed enough of the subject for it to be recognisable. Dark, haughty features, one compelling dark eye, the autocratic angle of the head—they were all unmistakable. Even though only half the face was visible, Sally knew without doubt that the last occupant of that empty model's chair had been Ines Valdaquez, and she felt suddenly and quite inexplicably guilty.

It was as if the Spanish girl was there with them in the studio, her dark gaze watching them and passionately disapproving of Sally's near surrender to the persuasion of that sensuous hand at her throat. So well had the artist captured the character, as well as the features of the young widow, that Sally wondered if his sitter would appreciate the all too revealing truth of it. As much of the painting as she could see was brilliantly executed, but perhaps almost cruel in its depth of perception, and it disturbed her intensely.

She shook back her hair and dislodged the hand from her neck, moving away from him and nearer to the easel, standing for a moment before the painted gaze of Ines Valdaquez. Then she reached out a hand and would have drawn back the cover still further, except that a much stronger hand than her own clamped hard on her wrist and pulled her back, at the same time pulling the covering to completely conceal the painting.

'Can't I see it?' she asked, suffering the grip for the moment, without protest.

'No, you may not.' He spoke firmly, in a voice that discouraged argument. 'It is not yet finished.'

'It's very good.' she said, to let him know that she had recognised the sitter, despite his efforts.

For a moment the fingers on her wrist squeezed tight enough to make her protest, then he released her, one brow raised, the black eyes glittering down at her with covert amusement. 'I am flattered that you approve,' he told her. 'But can you comment so authoritatively with no more than a glimpse of one eye?'

Sally shrugged uneasily. Many artists preferred not to let their work be seen until it was completed, but it crossed her mind suddenly that perhaps there was some other reason behind his reluctance. Maybe she had inadvertently intruded upon something more personal than she at first realised.

It was possible that the portrait was more a labour of love than a professional commission. Perhaps he did not spend all the time working when his glamorous cousin sat for him in this warm, white room full of light. It was possible that here Ines Valdaquez was treated with less polite coolness, and in a fashion more satisfying to the passionate emotions that showed so often in her eyes. It was a possibility that Sally regarded with a sudden sense of revulsion when she recalled her own position only a moment since.

'I'm sorry!' She felt a desperate urge to escape suddenly, and turned ready to flee, but before she could take even one step towards the door, a hand reached out and stayed her, the fingers digging into the flesh of her arm and drawing her back.

'Sarita! Where are you going?'

'I—I don't know.' She stood there in the middle of the big, bright room with him, her eyes carefully avoiding the steady black gaze that watched her, until she could stand it no longer, and looked up at him. 'I didn't mean to pry,' she said, in a soft, unsteady voice, then hastily looked away when a brief smile dismissed the idea.

'You were not prying,' he told her. 'It is merely natural curiosity to want to see the picture, but I do not allow anyone to see my work until it is completed to my satisfaction.'

'Not even Senora Valdaquez?'

She could not imagine what on earth had made her ask him that, and for a moment she saw his mouth tighten ominously, but then he smiled, in a way that confirmed his opinion that her curiosity was natural, though possibly childish.

'Not even Senora Valdaquez,' he agreed quietly. 'Why should you think otherwise?'

'I don't know,' Sally confessed. 'I just thought——'

A long finger ran lightly down her throat to where the low neck of her dress began. 'You think too much, pichon,' he told her softly, and after a second or two, indicated a tall wooden stool that stood on the far side of the room against one wall. 'Now please, will you sit down for a moment? When Ihave set up a new canvas we can begin.'

Sally glanced out at the bright golden evening sun, and frowned. 'Isn't it rather late for trying to paint?' she asked, and he looked down at her sternly, one brow making comment on her remark.

'Do you allow me to know what I am doing, Sarita?' he asked quietly. 'Or do you still presume to tell me how to follow my profession?'

'No, no, of course not,' Sally denied, a flush colouring her cheeks. 'I just-'

'Please—sit down on the stool, si}' Sally walked across obediently and perched herself on the high stool as she had been told, sitting rather primly upright and with her heels hooked on the bar of the stool because she could not reach the floor. Her mind was a strange and disturbing tangle of emotions as she watched him, but what troubled her most was the quickening and irrepressible sense of excitement that fluttered around in the region of her heart and made her feel almost light-headed.

She sat quite still while he moved the partly finished picture of Ines Valdaquez from the easel and stood it carefully against the far wall, then replaced it with a blank canvas. He said nothing while he was so occupied and Sally was left to study every small intimate detail of him with an awareness that seemed to glow warmly in her from head to toe.

Those long, strong-looking hands that she knew could be so gentle, or so ruthlessly hard, were competent and sure as he handled the tools of his profession. The way he held his head, with an almost unconscious arrogance. Even when he was relaxed that arrogance was there, part of the magnetism, like the almost animal-like grace with which he moved. The tall, lean body with its long legs, giving the impression of power for all its grace.

There was a fascination in just watching him that had an evocative, stimulating effect on her senses so that, without realising it, she smiled and leaned back against the wall behind her with her heavy lashes lowered to half conceal the expression in her eyes.

It was several minutes before he finished what he was doing and turned swiftly to look across at her, catching that dreamy, sensuous look in her eyes and the full softness of her mouth. For a moment he held her gaze steadily, responding to what she unwittingly revealed in her eyes, then, suddenly realising, Sally pulled herself up sharply and smoothed down the brief skirt of her frock, her hands trembling and without conscious purpose.

'Que es esto, Sarita?' he asked quietly, and Sally shook her head, without even knowing what it was he asked.

'I was just thinking,' she told him. 'What we call in England, being miles away.'

For a moment he smiled before turning away again. 'I think not, pichon,' he said softly.

Sally felt that curling sensation in her stomach again and tried to assume a slightly bored expression, swinging one foot against the bar of the stool. 'What do I do?' she asked him. 'Do I paint, or do I watch you?'

He looked at her for a moment with a speculative gleam in his eyes, as if he expected her to argue with his decision, whatever it was. 'In view of your efforts to date,' he said at last, 'it would seem rather pointless to ask you to do anything while I watch you and correct you when you go wrong, since you do not take kindly to correction.'

'I'm not too proud to learn,' Sally objected. 'It's just that I don't like it when you stand over me and tear my work to shreds, at least verbally.'

'As I said,' he averred, 'you do not take kindly to correction.'

'I never did,' Sally told him with her chin in the air, and saw his eyes gleam for a moment before he looked away.

'For the moment you will watch me,' he told her. 'I will try and show you where you go wrong, point out the—pitfalls?—as we go along.'

'I see.'

Her reply was non-committal, but he saw through her apparent unconcern and shook his head. 'I can imagine such an arrangement does not suit you very well,' he told her. 'But it is what I will do. Now— if you will please pay attention.'

Sally got down off the stool, but instead of going across to join him, she walked over to the big window and stood for a moment gazing down at the sea below, already looking dark and indistinct in the dying light, her own spirit as restless as the waves that pounded at the rocks.

'The view is wonderful from up here,' she said, and he looked at her over the top of the easel, his eyes less stern than the lines of his mouth.

'It is,' he said. 'But you are here to learn, nina, not to admire the view.'

She did not immediately move, but spoke again over her shoulder. 'You surely can't do much,' she said. 'It's getting dark already, and the light's going fast.'

'All the more reason for haste,' he told her shortly. 'It is good enough for our purpose, and bright sunlight does not always make the most beautiful pictures.'

'I know, but'

'Sarita!' The black eyes caught and held her gaze as she looked back at him, and he looked at her sternly down the length of his aristocratic nose, his patience gone. 'Come over here and stand beside me,' he told her adamantly. 'Inmediatamente!'

There was no mistaking the gist of the last order, and Sally thought of defying it for a moment, then shrugged and left the sanctuary of the window reluctantly. Standing beside him, she kept her eyes carefully on the canvas in front of him, and refused to meet that implacable gaze so that eventually he shrugged and turned back to what he was doing. 'Now watch me,' he told her.

It was fascinating just to watch him work, the skill and care he brought to even the sweeping strokes of the first few lines were beyond anything she could ever hope to achieve, and she sighed deeply after a moment or two. Mistaking her sigh for boredom, he turned swiftly and frowned at her, 1 bringing his black brows into a straight line above glittering eyes.

'I am sorry if you find this wearying,' he told her. 'But you will nevertheless watch me for as long as I tell you to, senorita. Your father has paid for you to learn to improve your artistic skill, and if you do not mind if he wastes his money, I have more consideration. Now pay attention!'

Sally felt her colour rise, and she curled her hands into fists at her sides, resisting the temptation to hit him only with difficulty. Why, oh, why did he have to be so infuriating, just when she was admiring him too? 'Si, senor,' she said pertly. 'I hear and obey!' Answering him with such mock meekness, she knew, must inevitably bring a response, and she saw from his eyes that she had provoked him to further anger, for they glittered like coals as he turned to her.

'Vaya con cuidado, senorita,' he told her, his voice harsh and barely above a whisper. I do not like to be made fun of, even by a beautiful woman. This arrangement was made for your benefit, not for mine, although you seem to think it is not so. Why else would I bring you here to my studio, if not to learri about the art you think you know so much more about than I do?'

It was a question designed especially to embarrass her. Daring her to voice the suspicions that had been in her mind ever since she had so reluctantly climbed those narrow stairs to the studio. The words, the steady black gaze and even the way he stood there, so overpoweringly tall and aggressive, it was all aimed at making her feel small and foolish, and Sally had to admit that it succeeded to a large extent.

She felt suddenly very ungrateful and rather childish. 'I'm sorry,' she said meekly, and kept her eyes downcast, adding to her look of apology. 'I—I do appreciate what you're doing for me, Don Miguel. I am grateful.'

'But still suspicious, si?'

'I suppose so.'

She admitted it reluctantly and there was silence for a moment. A taut, meaningful silence that she began to find unbearable, then a hand reached out and cupped her chin in its strong fingers, lifting her face to him and sending those uncontrollable impulses surging through her again.

He studied her for a moment in silence, the shadow of her lashes still hiding her expression from him, then he sighed and slid his hand down from her chin to lay with a warm palm on her neck, the thumb moving caressingly on her cheek.

'Asi hermosa,' he said softly.

'Don Miguel' She hesitated, not sure what she wanted to say exactly, only that she wanted to do something to break that sensual feeling of lethargy that threatened to possess her again. 'I—we really can't do much tonight, can we? It's too dark, I mean the light's going, and we'

'Again you try to tell me my business,' he said with a brief tight smile. Then he turned and looked at the dying sun through one of the smaller windows along the side of the big room. 'It is a beautiful evening, Sarita, do you not think so?'

'It is,' Sally agreed, her senses responding all too rapidly to the effect of that light hypnotic caress on her cheek. 'Why—why do you call me Sarita?'

He smiled. 'It is your name,' he told her. 'I use the Spanish, do you mind?'

'No.' She raised her eyes briefly. 'It's rather pretty.'

'It is very pretty,' he agreed softly.

The sunlight was becoming a deeper gold every minute, as the day slid away, and Sally looked at the west windows and laughed, a little wildly, trying to keep common sense uppermost when it was rapidly losing ground. There soon won't be any daylight left,' she said.

'And you are such a little philistine that you think only of bright sunlight to paint your pictures by, hmm?' He pulled her round so that her back was to the evening sky, holding her there, his hands sliding down her arms to clasp her waist and pull her against his body. Every nerve in her responded to the pressure of his hands, and she tried not to want so much that he should hold her in his arms and kiss her as he had done once before.

'I'm not a philistine,' she denied, her head back so that she could look up into his face, the blue of her eyes deep and dark and as provocative as the soft mouth that pouted in mock reproach.

He studied her for a long breathtaking moment in silence, his hands holding her close so that she could feel the warmth of his skin through the light shirt he wore, and the strength of the muscles that strained her to him. 'You would look like a golden Madonna, if I painted you as you are now,' he said, in a voice that shivered through her. 'With your face half in shadow and your beautiful golden hair catching the last of the sun. I will paint you so, Sarita.'

'You—you will?'

The black eyes glistened down at her in the golden light and heavy lashes hid her gaze when he bent his head still lower and brushed his lips against her brow. 'I must,' he said, his voice strangely harsh as if he fought with his own weakness. 'You will be famous, nina. Cordova's Golden Madonna!'

'Miguel!'

He must have felt how she was trembling, for every nerve of her body was aware of the warmth and strength of the arms that held her close, and the steady but more rapid beat of his heart under her hands. A hand moved up and grasped a handful of her hair, pulling her head back. 'For me you will be even more beautiful,' he told her and, even as she closed her eyes to anticipate what he would do, his mouth came down over hers in a kiss that banished every other thought from her head but the desire to surrender completely to the sensuous excitement that engulfed her.

His sudden, almost brutal rejection of her a moment later sent a chill like ice-water over her burning senses and she stared at him with wide, unbelieving eyes. Her mouth still burned from his kiss and the impression of his hands must surely be imprinted on her body from the strength of his grip, and yet he was calmly turning his back on her, and smoothing non-existent creases from his impeccable jacket.

'You'

No words came, only a small harsh sound that could have been a cry, and he turned again to face her, his dark face stern and older-looking suddenly. I must apologise for my lapse from good manners,' he said quietly, and Sally shook her head slowly, still not quite believing either that any of it could have happened, or that he could so abruptly bring her back to earth.

'Please don't!'

He was insistent, however, and she kept her eyes downcast, her hands tight together to stop them from shaking, wishing he would do anything other than apologise. 'I do not always remember that the English temperament is unused to our Latin ways. My actions could perhaps be misinterpreted.'

'Oh, please, there's no need to apologise,' Sally said 1 ft a small, cold voice. She felt she had been slapped hard, and there was a heavy chilling sensation in the pit of her stomach. 'I—I understand perfectly .j For a brief moment she raised her eyes, then hastily lowered them again because they were bright with threatening tears and she refused to let him witness that.

'I am glad you are so understanding, Sarita.' She wished he had not used that particular name, for somehow it made it so much more difficult to remain calm as she so desperately wanted to. The black eyes looked down at her with a hint of curiosity, as if her calmness puzzled him. 'You are very young,' he said, in a voice that threatened her self-control. 'And the fact that I am acting for your father in taking care of you makes my behaviour the more reprehensible. I am sorry.'

A great wave of anger and humiliation swept discretion before it and Sally clenched her hands as she faced him, the glistening tears threateningly close. 'Oh, for heaven's sake don't sound so apologetic !' she told him. in a voice made harsh and dry by the threatening storm. 'I've been kissed before, Don Miguel—and by you!'

'Sarita!'

His voice followed her as she ran blindly from the room and down the narrow, dark stairs, her feet stumbling on the unaccustomed steepness, but he did not follow her, and she tried, as she hurried away, to be more certain that it was relief she felt and not disappointment.

CHAPTER SIX

&APOS;AH, Miss Beckett!'

Sally turned swiftly,., jolted out of her daydream, but smiling when she saw who the intruder was. 'Good afternoon, Dona Alicia,' she said. 'It's a beautiful day again.'

Dona Alicia smiled as she nodded agreement. 'You are not yet accustomed to our sunshine, my dear,' she said kindly. 'You do not have so much of it in England, I think.'

'We don't,' Sally agreed with a laugh. 'Although it was lovely when we left England three weeks ago. It was a beautiful spring day.'

Sally had been seated on the patio alone, having refused Michael's invitation to accompany the rest of the party to a bullfight. She had never actually witnessed a bullfight, but her instincts made her reject the idea out of hand.

The patio was pleasantly cool and shaded, and the scent of the hundreds of flowers had a heady effect, as always on her. Dona Alicia came and joined her where she sat on a wrought iron seat under one of the orange trees. As always, Dona Alicia looked tall and elegant in a dress of some dark material, with her greying black hair neatly coiled. She was a kindly, gentle woman, and the wonder to Sally was how she had ever produced a son like Miguel Cordova.

There was no trace of arrogance in Dona Alicia's manner, and she could never be cruel, Sally felt sure, not in the subtle, barely discernible way her son was. 'You do not like the corrida?' she asked quietly, smiling, as if to assure Sally that she would understand her not caring for her country's national sport.

Sally shook her head. 'I've never been to one, actually,' she confessed. 'But I know I wouldn't like it.'

Dona Alicia smiled gently. 'You remind me so much of my mother,' she said. 'Although that is possibly rather an odd thing to say to a young girl. But you understand, I am sure, Miss Beckett. She lived here in Spain for almost fifty-eight years, and she never once attended a corrida. She felt much as you do.'

'Of course, she was English, you said,' Sally remembered. 'Are you very like her, Dona Alicia?'

'Very little, I'm afraid,' Dona Alicia admitted with a light laugh. 'I am very Spanish, except for my blue eyes, of course.' She touched Sally's cheek lightly with a finger tip for a moment. 'I did not even inherit her wonderful English complexion, unfortunately. I often wished that I could have had a daughter as well as a son. so that I could perhaps have passed on some of my mother's characteristics, even though they did not occur in me.' She shook her head, smiling slowly. 'Perhaps, I console myself, Miguel' She broke off and shook her head again.

'I am prone to daydreaming, Miss Beckett, an old woman's pastime.'

'Not always,' Sally argued with a smile. 'I was doing just that when you joined me, Dona Alicia, and please—won't you use my christian name instead of Miss Beckett?'

'But of course I would love to, my dear.' The blue eyes studied her for a moment steadily. 'My son calls you Sarita, I believe, doesn't he?'

Sally looked surprised and a little uneasy for a moment. She had no way of knowing just how much Dona Alicia would approve of her son's familiarity with one of his students. The Spanish could be very formal, she remembered. 'Sometimes,' she admitted warily. 'But I'm afraid that Don Miguel is rather inclined to take his role as father figure a bit too seriously, even though it's a role he took upon himself. He treats me like a little girl.'

Dona Alicia's "eyes glowed with amused disbelief for a moment and she reached out and touched Sally's hand gently. 'Oh, I think not, Sarita,' she said softly, and reminded Sally quite alarmingly of her son.

'Oh, but he does,' Sally insisted, drawn into being frank by the kindly, encouraging smile of the older woman. 'He talks to me as if I'm a not terribly bright four-year-old, Dona Alicia.'

And it makes you angry?' Dona Alicia guessed, ; shaking her head. 'Sometimes clever men can be incredibly silly, my dear. You must forgive him, for my sake.' She glanced at Sally in a way that puzzled her for a moment, until she spoke. 'Did you know that he wishes to paint you?' she asked, and Sally gazed at her for a moment, startled by her knowledge.

'He said something about it, about a week ago,' she confessed. 'But I—I imagine he's had second thoughts about it since then.'

'My son does not have second thoughts about anything,' Dona Alicia assured her with a smile. 'Especially about his work. He means to have you sit for him, Sarita.'

The thought of sitting for hours up there in that isolated studio alone with Miguel Cordova made Sally's head spin. She could never bear to be that long in his company alone, and he would sense how she felt and taunt her unmercifully about it.

Her fingers played restlessly with the hem of her dress. 'I think you'll find he's had second thoughts about that,' Sally assured her. 'And anyway, I couldn't do it, Dona Alicia.'

'My dear child!' The gentle hands touched hers again, and Dona Alicia's kindly blue eyes were shadowed with doubt. 'What has happened?' she asked. 'Why is it that you had only one lesson with Miguel?'

Sally raised her eyes, so tempted to explain what had gone wrong, why she could not spend all that time with Miguel alone. 'Didn't Don Miguel explain?' she asked.

'He has said nothing,' Dona Alicia assured her, 'beyond saying that he is going to paint you as a golden Madonna.'

'It was just a—joke,' Sally protested, her heart racing wildly at the prospect of it being a reality. 'He didn't really mean it, Dona Alicia.'

'Then why should he be so sure that he did, when he spoke to me about it?' Dona Alicia asked, her brows drawn into a small frown. 'And why are you so reluctant to sit for him, Sarita? Would you not like to be painted by my son?'

'It would be quite an honour, I know that,' Sally admitted. 'But it would be—awkward.'

'Awkward?' The strange word sat clumsily on her tongue, and she frowned again. 'Sarita, what is wrong with you and Miguel?'

It sounded so strangely and disturbingly intimate put like that that Sally shrugged uneasily. 'There's nothing wrong, Dona Alicia,' she said at last, and knew she was not believed when her hands were gently squeezed in reproach for the untruth.

'That is not true,' she was told. 'Have you quarrelled with him, Sarita?'

It would have been untrue to say that they had quarrelled, although the manner of their parting had been much the same as if they had. And since that evening she had avoided him as much as possible, although she sat in on the classes now, and never missed one.

'It wasn't exactly a quarrel,' she said slowly, at last. 'It was—it was more a misunderstanding, Dona Alicia.'

'And that is why you have not had any more private lessons?' Sally nodded, and she sighed. 'It is a pity, for it would have been a great help to you, I'm sure, Sarita.'

Sally smiled wryly. 'Oh, I think I'm a pretty hopeless case,' she said. 'I'll never make a good artist.'

'I'm sure you must be wrong.'

Sally was shaking her head. 'Ask Don Miguel,' she advised. 'He'll tell you how useless I am. He's told me often enough.'

'Oh, my dear!'

'It's true,' Sally laughed, determined not to be made gloomy by it. 'And he's probably right, much as I hate to admit it.'

Dona Alicia sighed deeply, as if she despaired of her famous son. 'He is sometimes incredibly foolish for a clever man,' she said, endorsing her former opinion. 'He does not understand the English character, I'm afraid.'

'I'm quite sure he doesn't,' Sally agreed willingly.

'And I had such hopes of an English daughter- in-law,' Dona Alicia said. 'I'm afraid I shall be disappointed in that at least.'

'I am afraid you will, amada!'

Both women turned sharply, almost guiltily, as the object of their conversation came upon them unseen from behind the concealing thickness of a bougainvillaea. Dona Alicia smiled, her momentary surprise soon banished, a hand extended to greet him.

'There is a saying in England, Miguel hijo,' she told him. 'That listeners hear no' She looked at Sally for assistance in quoting the half-forgotten phrase, and Sally obliged with a smile.

'Listeners hear no good of themselves,' she said.

The black eyes gleamed at her for a moment until she lowered her gaze. 'And neither in this case do speakers,' he said softly. 'When I marry, as I must one day for the continuation of the family name, I shall not want a pale timid woman, but a Latin with a passion to match my own.' The black gaze switched to Dona Alicia, and he smiled, a small tight smile that barely moved his straight stern mouth. 'Does that answer you, mi querida madre?'

'Miguel!' His mother's blue eyes reproached him, although Sally told herself it was no more than anyone had a right to expect from him.

He raised his mother's hand to his lips and brushed his lips across her fingers lightly. 'I am sorry to disappoint you, cara,' he told her.

Dona Alicia shook her head, looking up at the dark, stern face of her son as if she despaired of him. 'I was not only reproaching you for your disappointing me, Miguel,' she told him quietly. 'I think you owe Miss Beckett an apology for your rather ungracious statement.' '' He stood between her and the sun, and Sally sat in his shadow wishing she could simply get to her feet and go, but there was no way of escaping without being discourteous to Dona Alicia. Instead she sought to make little of his contempt for her countrywomen by smiling, chancing a brief upward glance at him as she spoke.

'I think the English race will survive without Don Miguel's approval, Dona Alicia,' she said, and laughed shortly as she cast Dona Alicia a mischievous glance. 'Also,' she added softly, 'Don Miguel seems to forget that he is one quarter English himself.'

'That's true, Miguel,' his mother reminded him with a smile. 'Had you forgotten?'

The black eyes were watching Sally, as if he blamed her for his being reminded that he was not a hundred per cent Spanish, as he would so obviously prefer to be. 'I am as Spanish as my father was,' he told her. 'The fact of Abuela Cordova was—a trick of fate.' He smiled down at his mother. 'And I adored her,' he said softly.

'I know you did.' Dona Alicia took his hands in hers, her eyes gentle. She obviously doted on her only son, and for a moment Sally pitied her if Miguel ever did marry his cousin's widow. The two women were so completely unalike, and with Ines Valdaquez as mistress at the Casa de Principes, Dona Alicia's life would be much less pleasant than it was now. 'I have been telling Sarita that she reminds me of my mother,' she said, and Don Miguel frowned.

'I cannot agree,' he stated with certainty. 'There is no resemblance at all, madre.'

'But I can see Mama in so many things that Sarita does, so many things she likes and dislikes, and I think I can claim to have known her rather better than you did, amado.' She spoke softly, but Sally realised with a start she could be as adamant as her son, when she was convinced of her right.

Again the black gaze turned on Sally, a steady, almost clinical gaze that sent a shiver right down from her spine to the soles of her feet. 'I can think of one point of similarity,' he said after a moment, and a small, cruel-looking smile curved his straight mouth briefly as he looked at her. 'Abuela Cordova was also squeamish about the corrida.'

Sally felt the colour flood into her cheeks at the softly spoken jibe. If Dona Alicia had understood and allowed for her dislike of the national sport, her son would be far less tolerant. It is a matter of taste, Don Miguel,' she told him, appalled to find how shaky her voice sounded when she spoke. 'I'm glad I have that much at least in common with Dona Alicia's mother. She must have been a very nice lady.'

'Nice!' He put enough scorn in the retort to shrivel a less resilient spirit than Sally's. 'Apart from that one thing, she had fire and spirit. My grandfather would never have married her otherwise—he was a thorough Spaniard, and had no taste for pallid creatures I' x 'Miguel!'

Dona Alicia's voice brought him up sharply, and after a second, he bobbed a brief, very formal bow in.Sally's direction, his stern-looking face more harsh than she had ever seen it. 'I apologise, Miss Beckett,' he said. 'Yet again I am having to apologise to you for being discourteous. Please excuse me, Madre.' He bobbed his head politely to his mother and strode across the patio to the house.

Dona Alicia watched him go without a word, while Sally fought to control that inevitable clamour in her heart that even his anger could arouse. She thought the older woman was more startled than she was herself at his outburst, and wondered what she thought was the cause of it.

They sat there for a long moment in silence, after he had gone, then Dona Alicia turned and looked at Sally, her blue eyes curious, a tiny frown between her brows. 'I am at a loss for words, Sarita,' she said in her quiet voice. 'How can I explain Miguel's behaviour? I have never seen him behave so before; his manner was unpardonable.'

'Please, Dona Alicia!' Sally put a consoling hand on her arm, her eyes downcast so that she should not see what she was afraid her eyes revealed. That his deliberate and calculated contempt had hurt her far more than she would have believed possible. 'Please don't trouble yourself about it,' she begged softly.

I—I don't take much notice of Don Miguel's opinion of me.' She laughed, a little shakily it was true, but at least it should dismiss any idea that it mattered one way or the other to her what Miguel Cordova thought of her. 'I'm afraid I started off on the wrong foot,' she added, 'by arriving on my own with a party of young men. Your conventions are somewhat more strict than ours in England, I believe.'

'They are,' Dona Alicia agreed. 'But that does not excuse my son behaving as he does towards yeu.' The gentle blue eyes looked at her for a moment, then she shook her head. 'I can see now why it is you have had no more than one private lesson with him,' she said. 'You could not be expected to tolerate such discourteous treatment with no one else there to protect you.'

'It wasn't because' Sally bit on her lip hard.

In those three words she had probably betrayed more than she wanted to, indeed Dona Alicia's eyes were already looking at her with a certain shrewdness.

'It is no concern of mine, of course,' she said quietly. 'But if you could find it in your heart to forgive Miguel for the way he has behaved towards you, I am sure he would be grateful for the opportunity to resume your tuition.'

'Oh no!' Sally was shaking her head firmly, her golden fair hair swinging about her face. 'No, I couldn't do that, Dona Alicia!'

'And Miguel's Golden Madonna?' the soft voice asked gently. 'Will you not allow him to do that? It is important to him, I think, Sarita.'

'Surely not!' Her heart was thudding heavily at her ribs and even though she had her hands held tightly together on her lap, they trembled. How could she sit for him, when every time he spoke to her he either scorned her or seduced her? She was never sure enough of either herself or of him to spend all those hours alone up there in the studio with him. 'No, Dona Alicia, I couldn't do it!'

'Not even if I sat with you?' Dona Alicia suggested softly, and Sally stared at her for a moment, wide-eyed.

'You?' she asked. 'You sit with me, Dona Alicia? But you'

'It is important to Miguel, this idea,' Dona Alicia told her, almost as if she was begging for a favour. 'I know him, Sarita. I know my son better than anyone else does, and I know how important it is to him to paint this picture he has set his heart on. He will not beg you to do it, but I am doing it on his behalf.'

Sally sat there with her hands in her lap, her head bent, the exotic fragrances of the garden all around her, fighting an almost overwhelming desire to see her own portrait set on the easel where Ines Valdaquez's had been. She had not realised how serious he had been about the painting when he had spoken of it that evening, but now Dona Alicia was prepared to spend hours sitting with her in the studio, if only she would consent to be his model.

'If you think it's important to him,' she said at last, and Dona Alicia's smile answered her.

'You will do it!' she said with certainty, and added a few, whispered words in Spanish.

Sally looked up at last and smiled, her eyes curious as she questioned the older woman. 'I—I would like to know why it's so important to him, Dona Alicia,' she said.

For a moment Dona Alicia merely smiled, then she put a hand on Sally's, hesitating as if seeking the right words to explain. 'I have not presumed to ask your faith, Sarita, but I think you are not of our I faith, since you have not attended our church while you have been here.'

Sally shrugged, her smile uncertain. 'I'm—I'm just a vague sort of Christian, Dona Alicia,' she confessed. I'm afraid England abounds with them.'

The vague hint of apology was politely ignored, and the gentle hand still covered hers as she spoke. 'The church here in San Gregorio was badly damaged during the civil war, Sarita. The Iglesia de la Virgen Dorada is now completely rebuilt, but for one thing. Miguel is to paint a picture for the church, it has been promised, although as yet he has not begun it.'

'Oh, I see.'

'You understand?' Dona Alicia asked softly. It is a very important work, Sarita. Our church is a rich one and every part of it must be as beautiful as the one which was destroyed. Miguel's Madonna will be a part of something that could last for another thousand years. It is very important to him.'

'I can see that,' Sally agreed, although she felt a certain disappointment that the painting was not for his own personal satisfaction and pleasure. 'The Iglesia de' She attempted the unfamiliar Spanish words, and smiled at her own failure. 'What does it mean exactly, Dona Alicia?'

'Iglesia de la Virgen Dorada,' Dona Alicia told her with a smile. 'Church of the Golden Virgin, so you see how right you are for the painting, Sarita?

A Golden Madonna.'

'Yes, I can understand that,' Sally agreed, and after a moment, looked at the older woman and smiled. 'Very well, Dona Alicia, I'll sit for Don Miguel, if he still wants me to.'

'Oh, he does, nina, please believe me about that.'

'I do,' Sally said with a smile. 'I also believe he would never have asked me himself—not again.'

The comforting hand patted hers gently, and Dona Alicia's blue eyes smiled at her with understanding. 'I will not ask why that is so, Sarita, but you will find my son grateful, I promise you that.'

'I never knew you were keen on old churches, darling,' Michael told her when Sally asked to be taken down into the village to see the church, and she smiled.

'You don't have to come if you'd rather not,' she said. 'I just hapen to be interested in the Iglesia de la Virgen Dorada, that's all, and I want to go and see it.'

Her glib pronunciation of the Spanish words surprised him, and puzzled him too, Sally could see that, for he could not know what long moments of practice that perfection had cost her. 'You've got that off pat,' he remarked. 'Who's been coaching you?'

She smiled. 'Dona Alicia,' she said. 'She's been telling me about the church and how it's been rebuilt after it was destroyed during the civil war.'

'Oh yes?' He took her arm and turned her towards the patio gates. 'Well, shall we go, then?'

'Not like this,' Sally told him. 'I'll have to go and change into a dress with sleeves and find something to cover my head.'

Michael sighed deeply and flopped himself down on to the only spare foot of space on the low wall surrounding the fountain that was not overflowing with flowers. 'O.K., but don't take all day,' he told her. 'It's a pretty long walk down there, you know.'

She laughed at his complaint and hurried across the patio to change into something more suitable. She had mentioned a visit to the church to Dona Alicia earlier that morning, and been advised that a dress that covered her arms and a covering for her head would be necessary because, unlike some of the more tourist-geared places in Spain, San Gregorio required women to conform to certain standards when in church.

She chose a dress that she had not expected to wear very often in the bright Spanish sun, but it was not too uncomfortable when she put it on. Dark green nylon nestled softly under her chin when she tied the bow at her throat and long transparent sleeves looked cool over the creamy skin of her arms. What to wear on her head was another matter, for she had only a bright, rather garish yellow scarf with huge red flowers, and that hardly looked suitable for churchgoing.

It was the only thing she had, however, so she picked it up with a grimace for its colour and went out on to the landing. She was already at the head of the stairs when Dona Alicia's voice called after her, and she turned hastily in answer.

The older woman was coming towards her, something in her hand that was soft and black, and Sally smiled at her enquiringly. 'You will need something for your head, Sarita,' she said to her. 'Have you something suitable ?'

'Not very, I'm afraid,' Sally admitted, holding out the brightly coloured scarf for inspection. 'It's a bit garish, but it's all I have.'

'It's very pretty,' Dona Alicia told her with a smile. 'But I think perhaps you will find this more suited for the church, my dear. Have you ever worn a mantilla?'

Sally shook her head, holding the black lace as if she feared it might fall apart in her hand. 'But this is a beautiful thing, Dona Alicia. Aren't you afraid of my losing it, or spoiling it?'

'Oh course not!' She took the lace and draped it gently and expertly over Sally's golden fair hair, the soft points of the border falling on her cheeks at either side. 'You look quite beautiful,' she said softly. 'Just as Miguel's Madonna should look.'

'I actually feel beautiful,' Sally confessed with a soft laugh. 'I've always rather envied the Spanish ladies their mantillas.'

She carefully gave the word its Spanish accent, but even so Dona Alicia smiled and shook her head. 'Mantilla, Sarita,' she said correctly. 'By putting on the "s" at the end, you change the whole meaning of the word.'

'Oh! Oh, I'm sorry.'

'There is no need to be sorry,' Dona Alicia assured her kindly. 'But since you were showing some interest in using the Spanish pronunciation, I would have been remiss not to correct you.'

'Thank you.'

The kindly blue eyes smiled at her curiously. 'Are you going to visit the church alone?' she asked, and Sally shook her head.

'Oh no, I daren't do that,' she said, without thinking, and saw Dona Alicia's dark brows question her meaning. 'I mean,' she added hastily, 'I've been warned not to go down to the village alone.'

'Not by Mr. Storer, I think,' Dona Alicia guessed with a smile. 'He would not warn you, I'm sure. Your wording suggests that it was my son who— warned you, Sarita. Am I right?'

Sally nodded her head, smiling ruefully. 'I have been threatened with being locked in my room and sent home,' she said, being very frank. 'So I'm going with Michael to see the church.'

'Is he, too, interested in old churches, or rebuilt ones?' Dona Alicia asked, as if she already knew the answer, and Sally shook her head.

'Not really,' she said. 'But he's ready to suffer on my account.'

'He loves you.' The statement was so simple and matter-of-fact that it touched Sally deeply, and she nodded.

'He says he does,' she admitted. 'But'

'You are very young,' Dona Alicia told her softly.

'Let yourself live a little first, Sarita, before you decide. And now,' she patted her hand, 'you should hurry before even Mr. Storer's patience is tried too sorely.'

Michael was indeed impatient when she joined him again in the garden, and he looked at her darker dress and the mantilla with some misgiving, although both suited her admirably. 'You look a bit keep-off-the-grass in that outfit,' he declared when she spun round for his approval. 'But it has a certain spiritual look that should go down well in the village church.'

'I feel rather good,' Sally informed him, smoothing a hand over the black lace that covered her fair head. 'And I don't mean in the way you do either, Michael. I think it's the effect of the mantilla, it's beautiful, isn't it?'

'Where did you acquire that?' Michael asked.

'Dona Alicia,' she replied. 'She caught me as I was coming out.'

'It seems to me,' Michael said, after a moment or two considering the matter, 'that you and Dona Alicia are getting pretty thick lately.'

'She's a very charming lady, and I like her,' Sally said.

'Which is more than you'd say for the smouldering-eyed Ines, I'll bet,' he laughed. 'She isn't exactly a fan of yours, darling.'

'I don't have to see her very often,' Sally said, taking a rose from one of the arches as they passed through the patio gates on to the driveway. 'But she doesn't like me, it's true, though I can't think why.'

'Oh, come off it, darling,' Michael teased her. 'You're a very beautiful girl. Ines Valdaquez would dislike you on principle, and especially when she has the Maestro in line for the altar before too long.'

'You think so?' She asked the question thoughtfully, wondering how much more the men of the party knew than she did herself. True, she was in the house and in closer contact with the family, but at least two of the men in the party spoke Spanish and they had many more opportunities to gossip to the servants. Sally had never subscribed to the belief that women are bigger gossips than men, she had seen it disproved too often.

'We think so,' Michael told her with a knowing smile. 'But we're not too sure how the Spanish church stands on the point of a man marrying his cousin's widow. Otherwise we reckon that's the only thing that'll stop it.'

'You could be right, I suppose.'

Sally was thoughtfully silent all the way down to the village. Even the copper-bright landscape with the sea hurling itself at the rocks below the narrow road did not enthrall her as it might have done. She was thinking all the time of Ines Valdaquez installed at the Casa de Principes and demanding all Miguel Cordova's time and attention. How, she wondered, would those wealthy and beautiful mistresses fare then?

The church they sought was set back from the small, dusty village square. Mellow stone carved and ornamented as the old one must have been, perhaps even copied faithfully from its predecessor. It was small but so beautifully proportioned that even Sally, who had little knowledge of such things as architecture, could recognise its merits.

Inside it was cool and quiet, and reminded Sally as much of the Casa de Principes as the house always did of a church. There was that same air of stillness about it, and the same richness, in dark polished wooden screens and pews, carved as the old pews must have been carved, by craftsmen who put time and love into their work as well as skill.

Candles burned at the altar, and Sally's eyes were at once drawn to the curved arch of bare wall behind it. That was where Miguel Cordova's Golden Madonna would hang when it was completed. The painting that he wanted her to sit for, and she gazed at the blank space for a long while trying to visualize the finished picture up there.

'Darling! Sally!' Michael's voice brought her back from her dream world, and he smiled at her, puzzled by her preoccupation. 'What's the matter w^7ith you, darling?' he asked, taking her arm. 'You looked as if you were seeing visions or something.'

'Not visions,' Sally told him quietly, looking up again at the empty wall behind the altar. 'Michael —can you imagine a painting up there?'

He looked up, frowning over the question for a moment or two, then he nodded. 'Yes, I suppose I can,' he admitted. 'They usually have something of the sort behind the altar, don't they? Why? What's your interest in it?'

'It could be quite a big one,' Sally said, wondering for the first time about his reaction to the news. 'Don Miguel wants me to sit for the painting he's doing for the altar.'

'You?' He stared at her as if he thought she might have taken leave of her senses. 'But why you? Surely a dark model would have been more appropriate. Why you?'

Sally put a hand to her hair, her eyes smiling as she looked up at the blank wall. 'Because it's the Church of the Golden Virgin,' she said softly. 'Miguel sees me as his Golden Madonna.'

She realised even as the words left her lips that she had made it sound much more of a personal thing than it would in fact be, and Michael was staring at her with a small frown between his brows. 'I see,' he said at last. 'Well, I hope for your sake, darling, that Ines Valdaquez is ready to accept you in the role, or you could find yourself on the receiving end of a very unsaintly temper.'

CHAPTER SEVEN

IT was not easy to judge just what Michael's reaction really was to the news that Sally was to model for Miguel Cordova's Madonna. He had assured her that she should be very honoured, that it would be a wonderful experience for her to be portrayed by one of the world's greatest painters, but somehow, beneath it all, she suspected he was not as pleased as he professed to be. As soon as a suitable opportunity offered itself, she would ask him about it.

It was very near dinner time by the time they got back from the village, for the walk back up the hill had taken them longer than they had anticipated. She had much less time than usual to wash and change for dinner, and she was not only hurrying but preoccupied when she reached the head of the stairs, so that she did not see anyone there until a hand on her arm brought her to a halt, with a small cry of surprise.

'Sarita!'

Sally experienced with dismay the inevitable curling sensation in the pit of her stomach, and her pulses were racing with much more than the climb upstairs. Don Miguel,' she said breathlessly. 'I didn't see you there!'

She still had the black lace mantilla draped over her hair, and his eyes went straight to it, appraising the picture she made. The dark green dress flattering the lightly tanned fairness of her skin, and wearing the traditional headdress of his country with as much effect as any Spanish girl had ever done.

'The mantilla suits you,' he said, and when she would have removed it, stayed her hand with his own. 'No, leave it!'

'It isn't mine,' Sally explained, her voice betraying the effect he had on her senses when he touched her. 'Dona Alicia lent it to me.'

Briefly the whiteness of a smile touched the sternness of his face. 'Ah yes, you have been to visit the church?' Sally nodded, and the pressure of his fingers increased momentarily. 'You have been to see where my Madonna will hang?'

'Yes,' she said. 'It—it needs something there to fill that space. A Madonna would be very appropriate.'

'A golden Madonna,' he said softly. 'That is why I need you to sit for me. My mother tells me that you have agreed, and I have to thank you for that, Sarita.'

Sally could not resist it. She looked up into the dark face, shadowed by the dimness of the daylight on the landing, disturbed by a strange gentleness she saw there. 'Because you've been told you should thank me?' she asked quietly, and a swift frown banished the gentleness for a moment.

'No, nina,' he said softly then, 'because I think I should.'

She knew she had been unfair, perhaps even childishly spiteful to make that dig at him when he was trying to apologise, and she regretted it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. 'I'm sorry,' she said.

'Are you?'

'Yes. I shouldn't have been—bitchy,' she insisted, and saw him frown again.

'That is not a good word to use,' he told her. 'Especially when it is not true.'

'Oh, don't you think so?' she asked, chancing a swift glance at him from the shadow of her lashes. 'I thought you had a pretty low opinion of me, judging by your implications yesterday. You said, if I remember, that English women were timid and pallid, amongst other things.'

Why she was being deliberately provocative, she did not quite know, except that it acted as a sort of defence mechanism against the way her whole being was responding to being this close to him. That same turbulence of emotions that he could arouse in her so easily was making her behave as she would never have dreamed of doing normally.

'Did I say those things?' he asked quietly, and she felt a shiver run through her at the softness of his voice, and the way the black eyes were looking at her.

'You did,' she said.

'Then will you please believe me when I say how sorry I am?'

Sally smiled, a small, slow smile that showed in her eyes and gave them a soft, glistening look that teased him for taking her so seriously. 'I'm not sure I do,' she told him. 'You're a very unpredictable man, Don Miguel.'

'I mean it when I say that I am sorry I was rude to you,' he said, and made a wry grimace. 'You will be no doubt pleased to know that I have been—how is it you say?—-told off.'

'Oh?' Sally looked at him for a moment, then laughed, unable to resist it. The vision of anyone being brave enough to tell off a man as proud and arrogant as Miguel was irresistible, and she knew that it could only have been Dona Alicia. Sally's blue eyes shone with mischievous delight, and she tipped back her head as she laughed, looking at him through her lashes, her throat softly pale above the high neck of the dark dress. 'That's something I'd love to have witnessed,' she told him.

'So!' He looked at her for a moment with a dark gleam in the black eyes that rested so intently on her mouth. Then he took her face between his hands, the palms warm against her skin and his fingers strong as they cupped her face. 'You like the idea of me being reprimanded, do you?'

'Yes, I do rather!'

His mouth was straight and stern and she should have taken warning from it, but she felt quite blithely uncaring as she stood there, aware only of the touch of his hands, and the irresistible longing she felt to have his arms around her. Her eyes reflected something of what she felt, and glistened like jewels as she laughed again, softly provocative.

'Because you think I deserve to be—how is it?— put in my place?' he demanded. 'Is that what you want?'

'Something like that,' Sally agreed, her eyes daring him to deny that he deserved it.

He was still for a moment, and she could feel the tense strength of him in the hands that cupped her face, then his fingers moved bruisingly hard on her cheeks. 'You —poco salvaje!' he whispered harshly.

'No!' She tried to move her head, but could do no more than cry a protest.

'You would enjoy seeing me punished, would you?' he said. 'You would see me on my knees, perhaps? Like a criado?'

'I didn't say that,' Sally denied, a flick of panic in the erratic thudding of her heart when she saw the anger she had aroused in him. 'You said yourself that you deserved to be told off.' She met the brilliance of the black eyes and shivered, her heart almost deafening in its clamour. 'And you're being rude to me again, I know. That—poco, something.'

'Little savage!' he told her, in a tight, harsh voice.

'Oh, that's not fair!' Sally objected, but the hands either side of her face were holding her so tightly that it seemed almost as if he was trying to crush her between his palms.

'It is true!' he said tersely. 'You enjoy seeing me without defence!'

'Miguel!'

'I tried to thank you for agreeing to sit for me.' He spoke through tight lips, ignoring her cry of protest. 'I meant only to be—grateful. As anyone would be grateful to a young girl who has consented to give so much of her free time to helping me, but' He shook his head and there was a searing look in his eyes that for a moment Sally found hard to face up to. 'You will not let me simply thank you. You do not behave as I expect you to. You do not behave as a young girl, but as a woman does.' His voice was a harsh whisper and the hands that held her, cruelly hard. 'You laugh at me, taunting me with your eyes, until I—Madre de Dios! What am I to do with you?'

The outburst was unexpected and it startled her, but it did nothing to still the longing that she felt for him to hold her in his arms, and she could not deny, in all honesty, that a good deal of what he said was true. She had provoked him deliberately, and she could have curled up and died when she thought of how it must look from his point of view. She should have considered the effect such behaviour would have on a man of his temperament.

She put up her hands to free herself of the relentless grip, but he seemed not to notice her efforts until she made a verbal protest. 'You're hurting me,' she said huskily. 'Please don't, Miguel, you're hurting me!'

He stared at her for a moment, then let his hands fall to his sides. 'I am sorry.'

There was such an oddly vulnerable look about him for a moment that she instinctively put out her hands to him, in a gesture that was almost an appeal. 'Miguel!'

He drew a deep, steadying breath, shaking his head as if he sought to dismiss the past few minutes from his mind. 'It seems I have to apologise to you, yet again,' he said in a cold, calm voice, more like his own. 'I have promised your father that I will take care of you while you are under my roof, and again I allow myself to forget that you are a young student in my charge.'

Sally's fingers curled into her palms, and there was a brightness in her eyes that now owed nothing to laughter. 'Stop talking to me as if I was a child,' she told him in a taut angry voice. 'You're not in charge of me, Don Miguel, no one is. I'm a grown, responsible woman and perfectly capable of taking care of myself, no matter what you and my father have connived between you.'

His straight mouth was set firm, but it tipped briefly at one corner in the ghost of a smile. 'I am a man of my word, Sarita,' he told her. 'If I promise your father that I will—how is it?—keep an eye on you, then that is what I will do!'

'And I've told you you don't have to!' Sally declared.

It was humiliating, after the previous few moments, that he should resort to treating her like a recalcitrant child, and she suspected that it was as much to salve his own conscience in connection with his promise to her father as to punish her.

He said nothing for a moment, but studied her from the concealment of his own thick lashes, leaning back against the wrought iron balustrade, almost casual after the tension of a few minutes before.

'I suppose,' he said slowly at last, 'that you will refuse to sit for me now?'

Sally had forgotten the Madonna for the moment, and when she was reminded of it, she found herself strangely reluctant to surrender her role to anyone else. Especially if there was a chance of it being Ines Valdaquez. She shook her head slowly, rubbing her sore cheeks with her finger-tips as she looked at him.

'No,' she said. 'I'll still sit for you, if you want me to.'

He looked at her for a moment, then a brief smile relieved the stern expression on his face. 'Ah, but of course,' he said softly, 'you now have a duena.'

'Dona Alicia has promised to sit with me,' Sally agreed. 'She offered to come, it wasn't my idea.'

He nodded, but it was plain from his expression that he knew exactly why Dona Alicia had volunteered for the task. 'Because if she had not, you would not have come, I think,' he said.

'I told her I couldn't.'

'Or wouldn't,' he suggested softly, and Sally looked up swiftly to argue, but he held up a hand before she could speak. 'I think we should prepare for dinner,' he said. 'It is almost time and you have not yet changed, Sarita. Will you perhaps come down as you are?'

'Like this?' She looked down at the dark green dress with its high neckline and long sleeves, slightly dusty from her walk down to the village. 'I can't very well,' she told him. 'I'm much too dust-stained to appear at table.'

He looked, for a moment, as if he would argue with her opinion, but then he thought better of it, and shrugged instead. 'As you wish,' he said, and turned on his heel to go downstairs. 'Adios, Sarita!'

'But when does he intend starting on this portrait of the Madonna?' Michael asked, and it was obvious from his tone of voice that he was definitely not as much in favour of the idea as he had first appeared, as Sally had suspected.

'You don't sound very enthusiastic about it at all,' Sally told him. 'I thought you weren't very keen when I first told you about it.'

'But it didn't stop you from taking it on, did it?' Michael asked.

'You were the one that told me I should be honoured to be immortalised by Cordova,' Sally reminded him, and he shrugged.

'Well, I suppose that still applies, but it doesn't do much for my prospects, does it?'

'I shall still see you, like I do now,' Sally said. 'He said something about next week, but I suppose it depends on how things go.'

'Things?' Michael echoed. 'How what things go?'

Sally looked down at the sea lace patterned and crested with gold from the evening sun. Everything was so bright and glowingly lovely that it seemed wrong to behave so pettily, to bicker with one another as she and Michael seemed bound to do.

'Oh, just—things,' she replied vaguely.

She was thinking of the portrait of Ines Valdaquez that Miguel Cordova had so hastily hidden from her view, and her own interpretation of what went on while the Spanish girl was sitting for her portrait. She had never mentioned the existence of the painting to Michael, because she did not want the fact bandied about among the other members of the party, perhaps taken as a further indication that their host was destined for the altar with his cousin's sultry widow.

Michael did not press her on the matter of an explanation, but returned to his original complaint. 'And I suppose when he does start on it, I shan't see you at all?'

'But of course you will, Michael!'

'But when?' he demanded. 'If he's working on an important religious painting it could take ages, and with only evenings to do it in, God knows how long it'll take. Years probably.'

That was an aspect that had not so far occurred to Sally and she took a moment to absorb the realisation that what he said was true. There was less than a couple of months left of their scheduled stay at the Casa de Principes, and she knew it was impossible for the work to be finished in that time.

'I don't know how long it'll take,' she said at last. 'But obviously he'll have to get as much as he can done before we go back home. Maybe he can work from—from drawings or something, after we've gone.'

Michael gave her a brief, not very complimentary look from the corners of his eyes. 'The way Miguel Cordova works?' he said. 'You really don't know much about painting, do you, darling?'

'Then I don't know what he means to do,' Sally declared shortly. She was getting a little tired of Michael arguing, he seemed more and more prone to the habit lately, and she felt that there was no one she could turn to, in the way she had once turned to Michael.

'Even if he does work only in the evenings,' Michael went on, 'I shan't be able to see you, shall I? He'll be demanding your presence daytime and evenings as well, lean see that, just to get the blessed thing done in time.'

I'm sorry, Michael.' She felt suddenly very small and vulnerable. With Michael so out of temper with her, and Miguel treating her with a formal politeness that hurt even more than Michael's bad temper, she would have liked nothing better than to go home, right there and then, and forget all about the portrait.

'Ooh!' He hugged her tightly to him suddenly, as if he realised how she felt. 'I'm sorry, darling. I shouldn't take it out on you, but you know how I'd looked forward to this holiday with you, and now you're going to be stuck up there in that wretched studio of the Maestro's day and night, it seems.'

'Hardly that,' Sally objected with a wry smile. 'But it will take some time, I expect, and I can't back down now, Michael. Apart from Don Miguel, I promised Dona Alicia I'd do it, and I can't let her down.'

'No, of course not.' His fair brows rose in comment, an arm round her shoulders hugging her closely. 'You get on pretty well with the old lady, don't you?'

Sally shook her head. 'I wouldn't call her an old lady, Michael,' she said. 'She was very young when Miguel was born, and she's very charming and— and kind.'

'Kind?' He looked puzzled. 'Does she need to be kind, darling? Why, for heaven's sake?'

'Oh, you wouldn't know,' Sally told him, unwilling to be too specific about the occasions on which Dona Alicia had spoken out on her behalf. 'It's just that sometimes she—well, she comes to my rescue when your precious Maestro starts throwing his weight around.'

'With you, you mean?'

'With me,' Sally agreed, not at all sure that she should have started this trend of conversation. 'He's a real bully given half a chance, you know.'

'I know you always say he is,' Michael allowed. 'He's an arrogant devil, of course, but that's all part of the Spanish character, and nobody takes too much notice of it, except you.'

'He's a bully,' Sally insisted. 'You're not always there to know how much of a bully he is.' She wrestled with her conscience for a moment or two. 'It's not all that often, to be honest,' she confessed, 'but it's often enough to make me grateful that Dona Alicia's there to stand up for me.'

'Oh, I see.' His arm tightened around her shoulders. 'I'd no idea it was as bad as that for you, or that there was anything more—personal in your grudge against him. It sounds as if you're almost part of the family, with Dona Alicia speaking up for you like that.'

'Oh, I wouldn't go that far,' Sally denied hastily. 'But I think Dona Alicia likes me, and I like her very much.'

Michael looked at her with a wry smile. 'Well, mind you don't get too involved, darling. Miguel Cordova's quite a man with the ladies, you know.'

'So you've told me, more than once,' Sally said shortly, and he looked at her curiously.

'I was only joking, darling,' he said. 'I know you better than to worry about you falling for the Latin charm.' He kissed her lightly beside her left ear, and laughed as he nuzzled his face against her neck. 'You prefer the Anglo-Saxon type. I know that. Blue eyes and fair hair is what you go for, isn't it, my sweet?'

'That's right,' Sally agreed, but wondered as she said it how true it was, for she had so far been alarmingly affected by Miguel Cordova's Latin charm.

'Sarita!' Sally, about to leave for the teaching studio with Michael, turned to see Dona Alicia making her way across the dining-room towards her. Instinctively her eyes sought Miguel too, but there was no sign of him and, since he had not passed her and Michael, he must have left the room via the door leading to the studio.

Sally's heart skipped wildly for a moment when she thought she saw the reason for Dona Alicia's call. It seemed this might be the moment she had been expecting, and she met it with a strange confusion of emotions. She did manage a smile, however, when she looked at Dona Alicia.

'Did you want me, Dona Alicia?' she asked.

Michael too stopped and turned, and he looked at the older woman curiously for a moment before the reason became apparent to him, then he frowned.

'I am a messenger for my son,' Dona Alicia said. 'You have a programme laid down for this afternoon, I think. You will be working unsupervised.'

'That's right, senora.' It was Michael who answered her, and Sally wished he need not sound quite so resentful, as if he knew what she was going to say and did not like it at all.

Dona Alicia's kindly blue eyes looked a little anxious, Sally thought, as if she was less sure now about asking her to go. 'Miguel has asked me to see if Sarita would come to his studio this afternoon instead,' she said, and Sally smiled, mostly to relieve her of any further uncertainty.

'Yes, of course, Dona Alicia,' she told her. 'Am I to come now?'

'If you will.' She was evidently relieved at her response. 'It will be for only an hour or two, and Miguel will be very grateful, Sarita.'

The idea of Miguel being quite as grateful as his mother gave the impression seemed to strike Michael as rather unlikely and he looked at her unbelievingly. Sally nodded, all sorts of misgivings coming to mind now that she was faced with the actual prospect. Her heart was thudding wildly and she unconsciously curled her hands into tight little fists against her breast.

'You'll—you'll be coming too, Dona Alicia, won't you?' she asked, and the older woman smiled reassuringly.

'Yes, of course, nina,' she said softly. 'I promised that I would.'

'You're having a chaperon?' Michael asked, puzzled, and Sally nodded.

'It's the accepted thing, Michael, you should know that,' she told him, and prayed that Dona Alicia would not see fit to deny it. She need not have worried, however, for her duena did no more than smile gently and look at Michael.

'Oh well,' Michael shrugged resignedly. 'I'll see you at dinner time, darling.' He planted a kiss firmly on her mouth, and Sally thought she detected a certain air of defiance in the gesture. As if to remind her chaperon that she was still his girl, no matter if Don Miguel did have first call on her time at the moment.

'I expect so,' Sally said. 'I presume I'm to be allowed to eat between sessions.'

Dona Alicia seemed to take no offence at the implication, but merely smiled and nodded herhead. 'I shall see that you are not subjected to Miguel's usual gruelling schedule, Sarita,' she promised. 'Shall we go?'

Michael watched them go through the door from the dining-room, not quite happy about it, but unable to produce a reasonable argument against it. Dona Alicia was silent for a while as they walked down the narrow passageway towards the studio stairs, then she turned and smiled at Sally.

'You have no regrets about this, have you, Sarita?' she asked quietly, and Sally shook her head.

'No, of course not,' she said. 'But' She sought for the right words to voice something that had been puzzling her for the past few minutes. 'I—-I was wondering,' she confessed, 'why Don Miguel asked you to see me—why he didn't tell me himself that he was ready to start on the painting.'

For a moment Dona Alicia said nothing, but there was a faint glint of laughter in her eyes when she looked at her. 'It is possible that he feared you would refuse to do it,' she suggested quietly.

'Oh! Oh, I see!'

'I told him that you would not let him down with anything so important to him,' Dona Alicia went on, 'but he is not as sure of that as I am, I think.' The kindly gaze turned on her for a moment as they mounted the stairs to the studio. 'You would not have refused, would you, Sarita?'

'No, of course I wouldn't,' Sally affirmed. 'Not after I'd promised.'

'So I told Miguel,' Dona Alicia said, nodding her satisfaction, and Sally pulled a wry face.

'I'm afraid Don Miguel hasn't a very good opinion of me, Dona Alicia,' she said. 'In fact it's just about as low as it can be.'

'Oh no, nina!' She put a hand on Sally's arm and her eyes showed anxiety for a moment, a desire to be believed. 'He does not think so badly of you, Sarita, believe me!'

'If you say so, Dona Alicia,' Sally allowed, and the older woman smiled as she knocked upon the studio door before opening it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

SALLY followed Dona Alicia into the bright, white room she remembered so well from what seemed like a lifetime ago, and saw that Miguel Cordova was already standing near the easel with his back to the door. He had one hand on his hip and the other to his face as he rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

He turned when he heard them come in, and smiled at his mother. 'Adelante, Madre!' His expressive hands guided her to a large, comfortable- looking armchair that was a new acquisition since Sally's last visit.

He looked quite incredibly tall and dark against the light background that the studio provided, and Sally felt that betraying curl in her stomach again when she looked at him. An open shirt showed a flash of hard, golden-skinned body as far as the first dark hairs, and the full sleeves gave him that mediaeval look that was so devastating. It was so perfectly in keeping with the stern arrogance of his features and the way he held his head, so that he looked down "his nose at the two women, so much shorter than he was, now that they stood nearer.

The black eyes held Sally's for a moment, then he smiled. 'Muchas gracias, Sarita,' he said softly, and for one wild moment she thought he was going to add a kiss to his thanks.

Her heart turned a somersault at the prospect and she hastily looked away, and across the room towards the high window that now admitted the full light of day, and gave the room a still more dazzling look. 'I—I wasn't expecting you to need me today,' she said. 'I don't know if my dress suits you.'

He looked at the short, sleeveless dress she wore with a long, slow, sweeping glance. Multi-flowered cotton in bright colours, it flattered her colouring and her excellent figure, and made her look far younger than her years, and he smiled his approval of it. 'It suits you,' he told her softly. 'But your clothes do not matter at this stage. Later I will ask you to borrow that mantilla again. The effect of black lace on your golden hair is very beautiful.'

'You—you're going to paint a Madonna wearing a mantilla?' Sally ventured, and he barely showed more than a slight drawing of his brows for her questioning his decision.

'It will not appear as a mantilla in this painting, pequena,' he told her softly.

'Oh! Oh, I see.'

He saw his mother seated comfortably in the armchair before he turned to Sally again, and he had a slightly quizzical look in his eyes when he spoke, almost as if he expected her to disagree with what he was about to say.

'For the moment,' he told her, 'I shall simply be making sketches, seeking expressions, discovering the best features, the way you hold your head, that sort of thing. I have to learn to know you much more than I do, Sarita.'

'I see.'

It had not occurred to her before just how closely she would be under the intent scrutiny of those disturbing black eyes for hours at a time, and her reaction to it was a jumble of mixed emotions. One part of her foresaw impatience on his part and resentment on hers, another wanted to "stay for as long as he wanted her to, indulging in the luxury of having his undivided attention.

'Does it matter where I sit?' she asked, and he shook his head.

'Not as long as you are where I can see you clearly,' he told her.

With a brief, enquiring glance at Dona Alicia, who smiled encouragingly at her, she went and sat near the big window at the far end of the room. She curled herself on to a low stool, with her slim legs tucked under her. Just high enough to be able to see out of the window and enjoy the wonderful view of the sea and the rocks that the house stood on, with a strip of hot, copper-coloured sand in the distance.

She rested her chin in one hand, her profile outlined against the background of endless blue sky, and tM sun hot on her skin. Her long gold-coloured hair was loose, because she had supposed he would want her to have it that way, and it caught the sun and gleamed softly.

She had been there for no more than a few minutes, however, when he called across to her. 'Sarita! It is much too hot for you to be sitting in the sun like that. Move away from the window.'

'I'm O.K.,' Sally told him. 'I'm not too hot.'

His dark face looked at her sternly over the top of the easel and he paused in his sketching for a moment. 'Do as I say,' he told her quietly.

For two pins Sally would have stood her ground, although it was already uncomfortably warm in the direct sun, but Dona Alicia was watching her a little anxiously, and she had no desire to upset her by quarrelling with her son over such a small matter. So she got up from her stool with a deep sigh of resignation, swinging back her hair, and looking at him steadily.

'Where would you like me to sit, Don Miguel?' she asked with pseudo-meekness, and knew^7 he had seen through it by the way his brows drew together.

'Over by the west window!' he said shortly.

Sally made no demur, but went and sat in the deep stone sill of the smaller west window. It was through this window that the sun had poured like molten gold on that evening she had come up here with him, and she felt something of the same warm glow she had then when she looked across at him busily sketching and frowning over what he was doing.

'Keep your head still!'

Sally started guiltily, then frowned at the imperious tone. She was very tempted to remind him that she was there for his benefit alone, but she thought better of it and turned her head back to look out of the window again. 'I'm sorry,' she said instead.

He worked in silence for some time, while Sally sat as still as she could, watching the sun gradually moving round towards the west in a sky as blue as glazed porcelain. It was quite a lazy way to spend an afternoon, and she was beginning to feel quite sleepy. Once she dared to move from a position she had held for rather too long, trying to ease a crick in her neck, and was scolded by a sharp 'tch!' from Miguel. She glared at him, then caught Dona Alicia's eye and smiled.

It was Dona Alicia who broke the silence at last, calling across to Sally. 'It is getting late, Sarita,' she told her, ignoring her son's cluck of annoyance at the interruption. 'You will wish to change for dinner, will you not?'

'Sit still!' Miguel ordered sharply when she turned to answer, and Dona Alicia shook her head at him.

'Poor Sarita is tired and hungry, Miguel, mi hijo,' she said. 'You must allow her to have her dinner.'

'Condenar!' He swore softly under his breath and for a moment the black eyes met and held Sally's, her emotions responding in the inevitable way. 'Perhaps,' He suggested softly, 'you will leave us for a while on our own, si, madre amada}'

Dona Alicia looked to Sally for guidance in her own reply, but Sally had hastily sought refuge in the view outside again. 'I was to stay with Sarita while she was up here, Miguel,' she told him quietly, uncertain just what she should do.

'But you have to attend to other things, mi amar,' he said, softly persuasive. 'And Sarita does not mind being here for just a few moments, do you, nina?'

Sally looked at Dona Alicia, her eyes betraying her uncertainty, and while she hesitated Miguel frowned, disliking to be kept waiting and impatient with her reluctance. 'I—I suppose not,' she said at last.

'Madre de Dios!' Miguel breathed piously, raising his black eyes to heaven. 'You are always telling me that you are a grown woman, and yet you behave like a frightened baby when I ask you to sit for me a moment longer without your duena!'

Sally felt the colour flood into her face at the scorn he put into the words and she looked across at Dona Alicia with the light of battle in her blue eyes, her chin in the air. 'Don't worry about me, Dona Alicia,' she told the older woman. 'I'll stay for a little while longer, if that's what Don Miguel wants.'

'If you are sure, nina.' Dona Alicia looked across at her doubtfully, and Sally smiled.

'I'm quite sure, thank you.'

'Muy bien.' Dona Alicia got to her feet and went to the door, turning in the doorway to smile at Sally. 'I will see you at dinner, Sarita. Do not let Miguel keep you from your meal.'

'I won't,' Sally promised, and caught a gleam of malice in Miguel's black eyes when he looked at her.'May we now continue?' he asked, with exaggerated politeness, and Sally tossed back her hair without answering.

It was several minutes later when she got up from the stone sill and walked across the studio. Her legs felt stiff and cramped, and no matter what he said, she simply must move. To her surprise he said nothing, but his eyes followed her as she crossed the room, and he smiled briefly when she chanced a glance at him over her shoulder.

'I'm so stiff from sitting so long,' she told him, and sounded unconsciously defiant, but he shrugged, and abandoned his sketching for the moment to speak to her.

'It is because you are not yet used to sitting still,' he told her, with, she suspected, little sympathy for her complaint. 'When you have had more practice it will come more easily to you and you will not be so—uncomfortable.'

That raised the question again in her mind of how long he would need her to sit for him, and she looked across at him questioningly. 'I was wondering about that,' she told him. 'How long are you likely to need me to sit for you, Don Miguel?'

He raised a curious brow, another question answering her. 'How does that matter?' he asked.

Sally hesitated, she had no special desire to tell him that she did not want to spend the rest of her stay being his model, but she had to know just how much of her time he was going to demand. 'It matters to me, in a way,' she said. 'I only have about seven or eight weeks of my stay left, and according to Michael it can take months to paint a work like this Madonna.'

'That is so,' he agreed quietly. He was watching her in such a way that she could feel her heart leaping in her breast like a wild thing, so that she instinctively put a hand to her throat in a vague, oddly defenceless gesture.

'Then how' she began, and he shook his head, a small wry smile just touching his straight mouth.

'You have a saying in England, I think,' he said quietly. 'We will cross that bridge when we get to it, hmm?'

'Yes, but if' She looked at him earnestly for a moment, then hastily lowered her eyes when realisation dawned. 'Oh yes, of course,' she said in a flat little voice, 'you can always use someone else for the finishing touches, once you get to a certain stage, can't you?'

The thought of someone else, possibly even Ines Valdaquez, taking her place as his model, was not to her liking at all and she had a cold little core of misery in her heart when she realised she was dispensable after a certain stage of the work.

'I could,' he agreed quietly. 'But would you have me do that, Sarita? Would you not like to see me finish the Madonna? Just for the sake of a few more weeks.'

Sally could not answer for several minutes. Every nerve in her body cried out for her to tell him that she would stay just as long as he wanted her to. &APOS;I could stay on, I suppose,' she said at last. 'If that's what you want me to do, Don Miguel.'

'Would you?' She nodded. 'Gracias, pequena,' he said softly.

The silence in the big, bright room hung like a tangible thing between them, and Sally wondered what she could possibly do about the positive chaos of emotions he had aroused in her. There was gentleness in the black eyes as he looked across at her, but she remembered all too well just how easily passion could kindle in a moment in that volatile Latin temperament.

'Do I take it that you consider me a better model than I am a painter?' she asked, without quite realising that her smile and the look in her eyes were a challenge to him to deny it.

She saw the sudden drawing together of his brows above the glistening black eyes, and he did not smile. 'Very much better,' he agreed quietly.

Sally laughed, a husky, shaky sound that she fought to control. 'Well, at least you're honest about it,' she told him. 'But if that's so, then why do you find it necessary to snap at me so often?'

He said nothing for a moment, but looked at her with a steady gaze that almost unnerved her completely. Her heart was turning over and over, and she bit on her lip when he spoke again. 'Do I snap at you?' he asked quietly.

'Often!'

'I was not aware of it,' he said, apparently taking it all quite seriously. 'Perhaps I have been unconsciously harsh.'

'Oh no, I didn't mean it like that,' Sally exclaimed breathlessly. 'I just meant that'

'I am sorry if you find me a harsh master,' he went on in that same quiet voice. 'I shall try not to drive you too hard. I promised that.'

'But you don't!'

'My mother probably agrees with you,' he said, ignoring the denial, and Sally shook her head, drawn across the room towards him by something she could not resist.

Her eyes were half hidden by lowered lids, and their expression betrayed something of the inner conflict that set her heart thudding wildly and curled her fingers into her palms as she looked up at him.

'I really didn't mean you to apologise,' she told him softly. 'I wasn't complaining.'

He stood by the easel that now acted as a prop for the sketch pad he had been using, and she vaguely registered the rough black lines of her own head and features from various angles. There was a taut, tingling sense of tension about him, and his fingers, where he held the charcoal he had been using to sketch with, looked tight and white-boned. His grip tightened suddenly and the black stick snapped in two and fell to the floor, leaving his fingers powdery black, while Sally started, even at such a tiny sound.

'It will soon be time for dinner,' he said quietly, and in a voice that was strangely harsh for all its quietness. 'I promised that I would not keep you from your meal.'

'I have time.' She smiled, although he did not look straight at her, but at the sketches he had been doing.

'I am sorry I kept you so long,' he said. 'Now you must go, before you are too late.'

'But I' She looked at him for a moment with wide eyes, and one hand reached out, vaguely appealing, for all it did not quite touch him.

'Do as I say!' he urged, and, when she hesitated, shook his head slowly. 'Please go, Sarita!' he said harshly.

Sally looked at him for a moment, wanting to do something about the way he was dismissing her, but afraid of what it would arouse in him if she stayed and argued with him. Her own heartbeat was a wild clamour that deafened her, and she sought for words that refused to come. She lowered her eyes at last, and the movement of her head sent her long golden hair cascading forward until it half hid her face.

'Very well,' she whispered. 'I'll go.'

She made no deliberate move to touch him, although perhaps instinct brought her closer than she realised, and the act of turning away from him brought her bare arm in contact with his left hand.

The touch on her sensitive skin was like fire, and it kindled a swift, exultant joy in her that forced a cry from her lips as he swept her against him.

His mouth was hard, almost punishing, on the softness of her lips, and his hands gripped her as if he was angry with both himself and with her. Then his fingers moved up and twined themselves into her soft hair, pulling back her head, holding her firm while his mouth sought the smooth warmth of her neck, and the soft, vulnerable spot at the base of her throat.

She made no effort to resist the wild feeling of exultation that swept her along, uncaring, but reached up with her hands to pull his dark head even closer. The lean, hard urgency of his body seemed to possess her until she could think of nothing else but the ecstasy of the moment and the delirious joy of belonging to him.

Not even the sudden opening of the studio door meant anything for several moments and then it was Sally who became aware that they were no longer alone. She fought for breath to tell him, while Miguel whispered her name over and over again, his voice muffled by the thick softness of her hair.

'Miguel!' The harsh voice, the imperious tone could belong only to Ines Valdaquez, and Sally's heart skipped in sudden panic when she recognised it.

She used her hands to push herself away from Miguel, and looked at the Spanish girl standing in the doorway. Her dark eyes blazed with such fury that Sally shivered, and looked at Miguel appealingly.

He put her away from him with a gesture so slow as to be reluctant, and his hastily assumed calm would have fooled her if she had not been near enough to feel the passion and intensity that still emanated from him and made her tremble.

'What is it that you want, Ines?' he asked, and his quiet question came as a shock to her, if her expression was anything to judge by, while Sally marvelled at his iron self-control.

Harsh-voiced, Ines poured out a spate of rapid Spanish, her eyes gleaming darkly and her mouth twisting into a tight, cruel look that made Sally more apprehensive than ever. She had suspected, more than once, that Ines Valdaquez would make a formidable enemy, and unless she was very much mistaken, she was now due to discover just how formidable.

When Miguel spoke again, Sally looked at him in surprise, for he answered in Spanish, and normally, when any of the English party were present, he always spoke English, so that they were not excluded. His use of his native tongue now dismayed her, especially as he appeared to be making some sort of an explanation. For him to find it necessary to explain the situation to Ines Valdaquez was bad enough, but to have him do it in a language he knew she could not understand was worse.

She looked at him for a moment with wide, hurt eyes, then she shook back her hair from her face, her mouth trembling when she spoke, cutting across his words. 'I'll go,' she said, hoping her voice did not betray too much of what she was feeling. 'I have to change for dinner, and I'm late already.'

'No, Sarita!'

He put a hand on her arm to stay her, but Sally evaded him, quickly moving away and almost running towards the door. To get out of the room, however, she had to wait for Ines Valdaquez to move out of her way and, for the moment, the Spanish girl looked like holding her ground firmly.

'Please——' Sally began, and the dark eyes blazed furiously.

She did not catch the word that was spat at her viciously in Spanish, but its meaning was plain enough and so was the hand that reached out and grabbed a handful of her hair, tugging viciously hard as she was swung round by it and almost brought to her knees.

'Ines!'

He was across the room in a flash, with his dark face stormy, black eyes blazing at his cousin. Sally, recovering, stared at her wide-eyed, for the attack had been both vicious and unexpected and she wished now only to escape as quickly as she could.

'Please don't!' she begged Miguel when he would have taken her hands, and with a swift glance at her attacker she turned and ran down the narrow stairs. It was only as she gained the passageway at the bottom that she was reminded that this was the second time in a couple of weeks that she had fled from Miguel's studio with her emotions shattered and in a state of complete chaos.

Sally said nothing to Michael about her treatment at the hands of Ines Valdaquez, nor of the way she had fled from the studio with angry voices ringing in her ears. She had been aware during dinner last night, that things could not go on as they were. She must never again stay alone with him, but leave whenever Dona Alicia did, as her common sense had urged her to last night.

Miguel had shown little sign of the incident as he sat at the head of the table, although he had looked more stern-faced and hard-eyed than usual, so that the one time that she inadvertently caught his eye, she hastily lowered her own gaze.

This morning, however, things seemed to be very different. All during breakfast Michael showed signs of being full of something that he was bursting to tell her about, although he made no attempt to tell her at the table. It struck Sally in a sudden awful moment to wonder if the news of last night's episode had reached the ears of the rest of the household.

The thought of such a thing happening made her stomach crawl with embarrassment, but her consolation lay in the fact that whatever it was that Michael knew, he was quite cheerful about it, and that would not have been the case if he had heard about her and Miguel.

Her and Miguel. She felt the colour warm her cheeks when she even thought about it, and she wondered if Ines would have told Dona Alicia about it. Certainly the older woman was much quieter and less communicative than usual this morning, she would have sworn it. Perhaps Dona Alicia too had hopes of a marriage between her son and Ines Valdaquez.

A swift, wary glance at. the Spanish girl had revealed a face more woebegone than haughty this morning, and there were unmistakable signs of weeping rimming her dark eyes. Miguel, Sally thought, would be as ruthless in punishment as he was in everything else, and she actually felt sorry for Ines Valdaquez.

With breakfast over, there was usually time for a stroll round the patio before they were needed for the morning session, and Sally always enjoyed it. The scents of the flowers and the cool, tinkling sound of the water in the fountain had a soothing effect on her, and she did not really want to have Michael regale her with whatever it was he was bottling up so impatiently.

She had little choice, however, for he took her arm in a firm grip and led her to a wrought iron seat beneath one of the palms, with an air that was both insistent and purposeful. He sat her down and turned beside her on the seat to put an arm along behind her.

'I have some news to impart,' he said, and looked at her expectantly with a gleam in his blue eyes.

'I thought you must have,' Sally told him with a wry smile. 'You looked about ready to burst all the time you were eating breakfast.'

'Did I?' He laughed, then reached out and took one of her hands in his. 'The senora is leaving,' he pronounced solemnly, and Sally stared at him for a moment unbelievingly.

'Ines?' she said, and Michael nodded.

'Bag and baggage—she's been slung out on her . proud Spanish neck.'

Sally still stared at him, unable to absorb it yet, but with a cold sense of realisation slowly forming in her stomach. 'But how do you know?' she asked.

She thought of Ines Valdaquez's woebegone features and the traces of tears round her eyes, and her heart began a rapid tattoo against her ribs. It wasn't possible, she told herself, it just wasn't possible that it could be because of what had happened up there in the studio.

'Well, aren't you pleased she's going?' Michael demanded, obviously peeved because she was not showing the enthusiasm he expected her to. 'You've never liked her, darling, I thought you'd be glad to see the back of her.'

'I—I don't care for her very much,' Sally admitted. But I wouldn't want' She bit on her lip hastily. The less said to Michael at this moment, the better, and it was quite possible that there was some other reason for Ines Valdaquez to be leaving the Casa de Principes.

'Well, anyway,' Michael went on, anxious to impart the rest of his news, 'Dick, as you know speaks Spanish, and he overheard an almighty row last night when he was out on the patio before he went to bed. It was mostly Ines and the Maestro, so he says. Apparently Dona Alicia was there too, but she didn't say much—the other two were going at it hammer and tongs.'

'And he stayed and listened!' Sally said scornfully.

'Well, he couldn't help overhearing, 'Michael said defensively. 'Naturally he was interested, and so should I have been if I could have understood what was being said.' He looked at her a little crossly, as if he did not understand her reticence. 'I must say I thought you'd be a bit more interested than you appear to be.'

'It—it doesn't really concern any of us,' she said. 'What Don Miguel and his family do is their own affair.'

Michael frowned at her impatiently. 'Oh, for heaven's sake, darling, don't be so prissy! Just because you've got that bee in your bonnet about not liking the Maestro, you don't have to act as if the comings and goings are of no interest at all to you.' He kissed her lightly on her left cheek. 'It seems the Maestro's been up to his tricks again!'

'Oh, Michael, please!' Hearing him say that, and with such obvious relish, made her stomach crawl and she wished she need not hear any more of this distasteful gossip, but it was too much to hope that she would be spared the rest of it, having gone so far.

'He's been dallying with some fair maid and Senora Ines doesn't approve—naturally,' Michael went on with a suggestive grin that put Sally's teeth on edge. 'Dick says she was fair boiling with fury, and the Maestro was giving her a right royal dressing down.'

Sally looked down at her hands lying tightly clasped together in her lap, the thickness of her ; lashes concealing the expression in her eyes. 'Did— did Dick hear who the lady was?' she queried, almost afraid to ask, and he chuckled.

'I knew you'd be interested,' he said. 'But according to Senora Ines, whoever she is, she's no lady! But you could say she was prejudiced, of course. Anyway,' he sighed his satisfaction, 'eventually the Maestro told her to leave.'

'She'd been crying this morning,' Sally said quietly, and Michael nodded.

'She probably hoped for a reprieve in the cold light of day,' he guessed. 'But knowing the Maestro, he wouldn't budge once he'd made up his mind.'

Sally looked up at him, wondering if she knew him as well as she had always supposed she did. 'And don't you feel any pity for her at all?' she asked.

Michael shrugged. 'Why should I?'

'Because,' Sally said softly, 'she's very much in love with him.'

'Then she should know better!' Michael retorted. 'No woman in her right mind would expect to hold a man like the Maestro for life. He's an artist first and foremost, and that's what matters most to him.'

Sally knew the words were true, but somehow her heart refused to accept it. She had read somewhere once that no woman will ever admit that any man is immune from the lure of her sex, and the more reluctant HE is, the more determined SHE is. Perhaps it was only that age-old reluctance to admit that Don Miguel was unattainable, but she thought not, and put a hand to touch the spot at the base of her throat where the warmth of his mouth still seemed to linger.

She must have sighed, unconsciously, because Michael was looking at her a little strangely, his blue eyes questioning her quiet, almost sad mood this morning. One hand touched her neck and he moved a little closer to her on the seat.

'What's wrong, darling?' he asked, and Sally looked startled for a moment, then shook her head with a smile.

'Nothing's wrong,' she told him. 'I'm just a bit tired and edgy, that's all.'

'Is that modelling business too much for you?' he asked. 'If it is you must give it up.'

'I couldn't do that,' Sally said with a smile.

'How did you get on?' he asked. 'I didn't ask last night because you seemed a bit—silent, and I didn't want you to explode. I thought maybe you'd been— well, arguing.'

'We hadn't,' Sally denied. 'It went quite well, I think. He's only sketching at the moment, of course, but he seems to have done quite a lot.'

'No problems?'

Too easily suspicious, Sally looked at him for a moment, but there seemed to be no hidden meaning behind the question, and she shook her head. 'No, no problems,' she said. 'Except that I have to learn to sit still for long periods at a time, and it can be a bit wearing until one gets used to it.'

'I can imagine,' he said sympathetically. 'Did he give you any idea of how long he'd need you?'

Sally reached out and took the falling petals from a rose and held them in her hand for a moment, gazing at them thoughtfully before she answered. 'It's going to take quite a long time, Michael,' she said at last. 'Maybe longer than the time we have here.'

'I expected it would,' Michael said. 'But he won't need you for the whole time. It's not like a personal portrait, you know, he can use someone else's hands and everything. It's been done before.'

Sally said nothing for several minutes, but held the rose petals to her face and inhaled their fragrance. 'I know it can be done like that,' she said after a while. 'But I promised I'd stay on, until it's finished.'

'You' He stared at her unbelievingly. 'What on earth possessed you to do that?' he demanded. 'Have you gone quite crazy, darling?'

Sally's cheeks had a flushed and rosy look, and there was a defensive gleam in her blue eyes when she looked up at him. 'No, I haven't gone crazy,' she denied. 'But I want to see it through, Michael, all the way through. I don't want some—some other woman's body put on to my face. I want to do it all. It's my Madonna as much as it is Miguel's!'

Michael gazed at her for a moment, as if he could not believe what he heard, then he shook his head, and there was a dark, speculative gleam in his eyes and a firmer look about his mouth. 'You've had a change of heart, haven't you?' he said. 'If you don't watch your step, darling, you'll have Senora Firebomb wanting to scratch your eyes out too!'

CHAPTER NINE

IT was a relief, Sally admitted it, when Dona Alicia appeared to be more her usual self at lunchtime. She talked as usual and with no sign of being upset about anything, although her eyes did stray several times to her son, at the head of the table. What she really thought about last night's episode with Ines Valdaquez, Sally could only guess, but judging by her manner, she attached no sort of blame to Sally for what had occurred.

'Are you prepared to come to the studio again this afternoon, Sarita?' she asked, while Michael's attention was diverted, and Sally nodded. It settled a question that had been in her mind ever since last night.

'Yes, of course, Dona Alicia.'

An elegant hand reached out and patted hers gratefully. 'I am so glad, my dear. Miguel was afraid you would refuse in the circumstances.'

Sally shook her head, not quite sure how frank to be at the moment. 'I—I believe Senora Valdaquez was under a strain,' she said carefully. 'I wasn't hurt, senora.'

'Your beautiful hair!' She glanced at Sally's head. 'I should have asked if you are suffering any ill effects, my dear. Does your head ache?'

'Not at all,' Sally assured her. 'Please don't worry about it, Dona Alicia.'

'But I do worry about it,' Dona Alicia told her. 'I was as angry with Miguel as I was with Ines. They both behaved disgracefully towards you, and I have told them so.'

'Oh, please don't blame Miguel!' Sally begged her, without stopping to think, and Dona Alicia's blue eyes looked at her for a moment steadily.

'I can scarcely blame you, nina,' she said softly. 'You are little more than a child, and I could not bear to see you hurt.'

'But I won't be—I—I mean I wasn't,' Sally hastened to assure her, wondering if she was getting herself in too deeply by trying to protest Miguel's innocence in the matter. She laughed shortly and did not look at the older woman. 'I—I did know that Don Miguel likes—that he likes feminine company,' she said. 'Please don't think it was all his fault.'

She was aware that Dona Alicia's gentle blue eyes were studying her with a glimmer of something in their depths that she could not quite interpret at the moment. 'Sarita!' she said softly. 'Oh, mi cara, I am so sorry!'

'Dona Alicia' It was an impression that must be corrected at once, Sally thought wildly. Not for one minute must Dona Alicia be allowed to think that she was in love with Miguel. She could not bear the humiliation of it, besides which it wasn't true. It simply wasn't true.

'I did not realise,' Dona Alicia was saying softly, and her blue eyes looked clouded and thoughtful. 'Please forgive him, Sarita.'

'There's really nothing to forgive,' Sally assured her, smiling determinedly. 'I'm none the worse for having my hair tugged. I had the same treatment at school, many times!'

Dona Alicia looked at her for a moment in silence, then she nodded her head, and began to slice a peach carefully and precisely, giving it all her attention. 'Ines is leaving us tomorrow,' she said quietly, and Sally composed her features to look suitably surprised, although she felt terribly two-faced for doing so, and wished, yet again, that Michael had kept his piece of gossip to himself.

'I'm sorry,' she said politely. 'You enjoy having her here, I know, Dona Alicia. You'll be sorry to see her go.'

'Perhaps,' Dona Alicia allowed quietly. 'We have known Ines for most of her life, and one grows accustomed to people.'

It was perhaps not very tactful in the circumstances to ask questions, but Sally was curious to know if Dick, the eavesdropper, could possibly have been mistaken. In one way she rather hoped he had, for if Miguel had really sent Ines Valdaquez packing, then Dona Alicia would have been more troubled than she showed, and Sally hated to think that she had been hurt, however indirectly, by her actions.

'Is—is Senora Valdaquez going home?' she asked, and Dona Alicia nodded.

'She has a very beautiful home in La Rabida,' she said. 'She is recovered from her loss now, and it is better that a woman is in her own home.'

Could there have been discord between the two women in the one household? Sally wondered. 'Yes. Yes, I suppose it is,' she agreed, but doubted very much if Ines Valdaquez saw it that way.

Sally was not sure just how soon she was required for her modelling duties, so she planned to do some work of her own in company with the rest of the students when they left the dining-room. Her own studies had been very much neglected lately. Her good intentions were not to be allowed to materialise, however, for as she walked across the patio with Michael she heard her name called.

'Sarita!'

She turned, her pulses responding swiftly and alarmingly to Miguel's voice. Michael turned too, frowning as he did so and looking at their host with less favour than ever before. 'Oh, damn!' he said under his breath. 'I'm going to lose you already!'

Sally scarcely heard him as she watched Miguel come across the patio towards them. He was impeccably dressed as usual, in slim-fitting cream trousers and an open shirt, the sort he always wore and which suited him so perfectly. It was his usual working garb, but somehow she could never get used to how disturbingly attractive he looked in it.

The black eyes gave Michael a mere passing glance, then settled on Sally, and she would have sworn that there was the faintest hint of uncertainty q in his voice when he spoke again. 'Are you going to sit for me again, Sarita?' he asked.

Sally met his eyes for a moment, then hastily lowered her own when her heart began that crazy tattoo against her ribs, and she felt that curling sensation in her stomach again. 'Yes, of course, Don Miguel,' she said quietly, and was amazed to hear how calm she sounded when his just being there could play such havoc with her common sense. 'Didn't Dona Alicia tell you?' she asked.

A tight little smile just touched the sternness of his mouth for a moment, and he tried to make her look at him by gazing at her steadily. 'I was not sure whether she had understood you aright,' he told her quietly. 'I am glad she was right.'

'You—you want me now?' Sally asked, and immediately wished she had worded it differently.

'If you please.' He might almost have followed her train of thought, the way he answered her in that low, soft voice, and she sensed Michael's annoyance as he shifted his feet on the tiled patio.

'You'll never do much for your own art, darling,' he told her, in a short, irritable voice, and Sally glanced up in time to see Miguel's dark brows draw together above the black eyes as he answered him.

'Miss Beckett has no illusions that she will ever make a good artist, Mr. Storer,' he told him, his stern dark face expressing the dislike he felt at being criticised. 'She is, however, an excellent model for my purpose and you may rest assured that no one will be cheated. I have already returned the fee for her stay here to Mr. Beckett, as he will no doubt inform his daughter in his own time.'

'Oh, but you shouldn't have!' Sally protested, quite unable to understand how this man's mind worked. 'There was no need to have done that, Don Miguel!'

There was no glimmer of a smile on the stern features as he looked down at her, arrogantly confident, as usual. It was difficult for her to believe that he was the same man who had held her in his arms and kissed her so passionately last night. He was so stern and reserved this morning, almost cold, she thought, except that she knew it was not coldness that made him appear so stern, but iron self-control.

'It is a matter between men, Sarita,' he informed her. 'You need not concern yourself with it.'

'But I do!' Sally insisted. 'You make me feel as if you've' She stopped hastily and he looked at her enquiringly, one brow raised.

'Si, senorita?' he asked softly.

'Oh—nothing!' Sally said. 'If you want me to come now, I'm ready.'

'Bueno!' He indicated with one hand that she should precede him back to the house, but Sally looked at Michael's disgruntled face, and shook her head.

'Give me a moment,' she begged. 'I'd like to have a word with Michael.'

For a moment she thought he was going to refuse, but then he shrugged briefly and turned on his heel, t striding off back across the patio, while Sally watched and wondered, yet again, at the marvelously lithe and cat-like grace of such a tall man.

'Damn him I' Michael said vehemently. So vehemently that Sally looked at him with startled eyes.

'You don't usually talk about him like that,' she said. 'What's wrong, Michael?'

'I wish I knew,' Michael confessed unwillingly. He looked down at the beautiful mosaic tiles that covered the patio, and kicked at them with one foot, aimlessly. 'I've just got a feeling, Sally.'

'A feeling?'

He nodded. 'Oh, I know I'll probably get a rousting from you for even suggesting it, knowing how you feel, but—Sally, has the Maestro ever—well, made a pass at you?'

Sally's heart was hammering uncomfortably hard against her ribs and she sought for words as she had never done in her life before. It occurred to her to lie, to hope that he would never find out what a fool she had been, not once but three times, but it would be useless, she thought. If he did not learn it from someone else, sooner or later she would give herself away, somehow, as she had to Dona Alicia. Better now, while she was comparatively cool and calm, than wait for a quarrel with Michael to let it slip.

She moved a little way away from him, and sought concealment in the cascading bower of a climbing rose, burying her face in the cool fragrance of the blooms, her voice muffled and indistinct when she spoke. 'I can't say that,' she said slowly. 'Because I can't blame Miguel for what happened. It was my fault—after the first time, it was anyway.'

'The first time!' Michael, she knew, would be staring at her in disbelief and she did not want to face him, now that he knew. He was not prepared to talk to her back, however, and he grabbed her right arm and swung her round to face him, his blue eyes dark and angry. 'How many times have there been, for God's sake?'

'Only three,' Sally confessed, a warm flush colouring her cheeks, and Michael stared down at her, his good-looking face blank with disbelief.

'Only!' he said at last, and laughed bitterly. 'And you made such a big show of disliking him! Playing me for a fool, and all the time—my God! Up in that damned studio of his, I suppose?'

Sally nodded, her whole body crawling with humiliation and wanting to get away from Michael and his accusations before she cried. Whether his anger was because of his love for her, or for her stupidity in allowing herself to be fooled by a practised seducer she did not really care at the moment. Certain she could not face the accusing look in his eyes any longer, she wrenched at the arm he held. 'Let me go, Michael!'

He said nothing for a moment, the hand that held her sliding slowly down her arm to fall at his side as he stood there and stared down at her. Then gradually she saw realisation dawn, and he shook his head slowly from side to side. 'It was you,' he said in a voice that threatened to break. 'It was you that Ines Valdaquez was talking about last night. She knew about you!'

'I don't know that it was,' Sally said. 'It might have been something else, I don't know! Ines— Senora Valdaquez came up to the studio when— when'

'Oh, in God's name spare me the details!' Michael begged harshly. 'And because he was caught in the act, he's sending her packing! What a gallant Spanish gentleman!'

There was no more bitter discovery, Sally thought, than finding an idol had feet of clay, and on whatever pedestal Michael had put Miguel Cordova, it had just come crashing to the ground, and she could not help feeling sorry for him. Dalliance with other women, he could accept as the Maestro's due; when it concerned what he considered his own girl, it was vastly different.

'It wasn't Miguel's fault,' Sally insisted: 'It—it was mine, if it was anybody's.'

He looked at her with such hurt in his eyes that she almost cried out. 'And that's supposed to comfort me?' he asked bitterly.

'Oh, Michael!' Sally felt close to tears, because she knew that explanations were useless. As useless as the love she had for Miguel and which she had only now recognised for the deep and enduring passion it was.

'I loved you,' Michael said dully. 'I really loved you.'

'Michael, I'

'Don't say anything else, Sally, for heaven's sake,' he begged. 'Especially don't say you feel sorry. I don't think I could stomach that right now!'

For a moment she stood there, feeling very small and vulnerable, her long gold-coloured hair catching the hot sunlight and seeming to blend with the pale yellow dress until she appeared golden from head to foot, then she turned without a word, and walked across the patio to the house. Miguel still wanted her for his golden Madonna, if for no other reason.

When Sally made her way through the house a few minutes later, she saw no one, except for a brief glimpse of Ana, the housekeeper, and the woman's dark, smileless face never gave her call for encouragement anyway. The dining-room was quite deserted now, even the evidence of their recent meal had been cleared away, and she walked across the cool, silent room to the door leading out to the studio passageway.

She had no need of a guide now to find her way to the studio, and she expected Miguel was already waiting for her and not very patiently. It would never do to keep him waiting for much longer.

The scent of the white roses, freshly picked and placed before the big brass crucifix in the passage, filled the narrow space, and, almost without thinking, Sally paused in front of the tiny shrine. Still without conscious reason she reached out and touched the brass cross lightly with her finger tips, finding the metal almost incredibly cold.

Her pause was brief, and as she walked on towards the stairs she was surprised to find tears trickling down her face, so that she put a hand to brush them away. The same movement reminded her of how cold the brass crucifix had been to her touch, for the coldness of the metal was transmitted to her skin and made her shiver involuntarily.

Her own footsteps sounded softly on the stairs, but she could hear no sound from the studio when she knocked on the door. Another knock produced no call to come in, and she ventured at last to open the door a fraction and peep in. The big, sunny room was empty and had a strangely deserted look, despite the paraphernalia of the artist, and for a moment Sally hesitated, then, looking round at the silent stairs warily, she went in and closed the door.

Only the sound of the sea below the rocks disturbed the silence, and it had a more peaceful air than she had ever noticed in it before, probably owing to the absence of its usual occupant.

The sketch pad he had used was still propped on the easel, and the temptation to look at what he had done so far was too much to resist. There was no sound of anyone coming yet, and she would surely hear them on the stairs, but just the same she lifted the paper cover of the pad very gingerly and peeped under it.

She blinked for a moment, for the page was completely blank save for a smudgy thumb-print on the top left-hand corner. Picking it up, she stared at it unbelievingly, curiosity overcoming any fears she had had of being caught. As she picked it up, however, several sheets of torn-up paper slipped from behind the back pages and scattered over the floor in every direction.

Fluttering in panic now, she bent to retrieve them and stared at the piece she held in her hand, gazing at it in disbelief. Clearly against the white paper was a black line image of the top half of her own face. It was beautiful in its simplicity and Sally felt a cold twisting sensation in her stomach when she thought of the hate that had gone into its destruction, making a great ripping gash across the mouth.

One by one she gathered the other pieces, her hands trembling, until she had the whole of Miguel's work for all those hours yesterday afternoon and evening in her hands, gazing at them in silence.

She felt as if the attack had been made upon her physically, and she stood there, holding the torn pieces and shaking her head, while tears rolled down her face for the wicked waste of it, and the hurt it must have given Miguel.

Miguel! She looked up, wide-eyed and suddenly panic-stricken, when she heard footsteps on the stairs and recognised his tread. Suppose he did not know about the drawings being destroyed, and he caught her there with them in her hands? There was no time for her to do anything about them now, and she turned and looked across at him as he opened the door.

She looked small and tragic, standing there in the middle of the room with the remnants of hours of work in her hands and tears flowing unchecked down her face. He stopped in his tracks for a second when he saw her, and it was hard to determine just what his reaction was. Then he came swiftly across the room and took the pieces from her unresisting hands and laid them against the easel board.

'I—I didn't do it, Miguel,' she said, huskily breathless. 'I didn't—I couldn't. '

'I know.' His voice was incredibly soft and gentle, and he hesitated only briefly before reaching out to lay a hand on her head. It touched her soft fair hair in a stroking gesture that both soothed and caressed and played havoc with her senses. 'I know you could not do it, mi pichon,' he said. 'I do not blame you.'

'But it's wicked,' Sally whispered. 'How could anyone do such a thing?'

He looked at her steadily for a moment, and she tried to guess what he was thinking, but there was a deep, unfathomable look in his eyes that defeated her. 'I could if I was angry enough,' he told her, and, seeing her look of disbelief. 'You do not yet understand the Latin temperament, pequena.'

Sally stared at him in dismay for a moment, shaking her head against the possibility his words suggested. 'But—you didn't—you didn't destroy them, did you?' she begged. 'You didn't, Miguel!'

'No, I did not destroy them,' he assured her quietly. 'But I can understand the kind of anger— the passion that could do such a thing, while you do not, Sarita.'

'If that's the kind of thing it can make people do, I don't think I ever will understand,' Sally said. She brushed a hand across the tears that still stained her cheeks, and looked up at him, already on the defensive against the expected opinion of her own tearfulness. 'I—I suppose you think I'm all kinds of an idiot for crying about it,' she guessed, and he shook his head.

'No,' he said quietly. 'Weeping for something that is lost is a form of emotion, amada, and being Spanish that is something I also understand, you see.'

She forced her gaze away from the demoralising effect of the black eyes, and instead looked again at the fragments of paper that lay on the easel. 'They were beautiful drawings,' she said softly.

'And you were going to look at them, without being told that you might?' he asked, very softly, but with enough accusation to make Sally look up at him again.

'I—I just wanted to see how it was going,' she told him.

'Even when you know I don't like anyone to see unfinished work?'

Sally bit her lip and held her hands closely together in front of her. At one time she would have been fiercely defensive about it, and it seemed incredible, even to her, that she was being so quiet and apologetic now. 'I—I suppose I shouldn't have looked,' she said. 'Not without asking you—I'm sorry.'

'Sarita!'

For a moment the black eyes held hers with that deep, heart-stirring intensity that she had thought she would never see again, after last night, and her brain began to spin chaotically. He stood so close to her that she could have touched him without moving an inch, but even as the thought came into her head, he stepped back and away from her, half turning his back to her as he picked up the sketch pad.

'We will do more drawings,' he said, in a voice that sounded hard and cool after the gentleness of a few moments before. 'In a few moments my mother, your duena, will be with us. At the moment she is with Ines, but she promised to come straight away.'

Mentioning Ines Valdaquez brought to mind the Spanish girl's imminent departure, and she thought she saw the reason for her dismissal now. Obviously Ines had destroyed the drawings during that angry scene last night. Miguel himself had not done it, and it was unthinkable that Dona Alicia was suspect.

She reached out and touched the torn fragments on the easel. 'Was—did Senora Valdaquez do this?' she asked, and a moment later wondered at her own temerity in raising the question.

Miguel turned slowly, his black eyes searching her face, as if to discover how much else she knew. 'Of course,' he said at last, quietly. 'That is why I am sending her away.' He raised a querying brow. 'You knew she was going away?' he asked.

Sally nodded. 'Yes, Dona Alicia told me at lunch- time.'

He smiled briefly and wryly. 'Yes, of course,' he said.

'I'm—I'm sorry.'

Again the black eyes questioned her. 'You are sorry?' he asked. 'I would have thought it was to your liking, Sarita.' She had never heard him laugh before, and the deep, quiet sound of it prickled her senses and sent her heart racing like a wild thing. He shook his head slowly. 'I do not think I know you very well, amada,' he said softly.

'She's—I mean, I feel sorry for her,' Sally ventured, and again he frowned in curiosity.

'For being a widow?'

'No, for being so much in' She stopped short, her eyes widening in horror at the awful gaffe she had so nearly committed.

'For being in love with me?' he asked, so quietly that she barely heard him, still appalled at her indiscretion.

'I'm sorry, Miguel,' she said, her voice half choked in her throat. 'I didn't mean'

He turned away from her again, so that his stern, arrogant profile stood out against the stark white of the opposite wall, and Sally's emotions were a tangle of wild longings and almost uncontrollable desires, with somewhere a spark of pity for Ines Valdaquez, because she too, must be suffering the same torment if she was in love with Miguel.

'We cannot always have the things we most desire,' he told her in a cold hard voice, his own emotions apparently under complete control. 'Love is a comparative emotion. It cannot be allowed to cloud our judgment in matters more important.'

'More important?' Sally asked breathlessly, wishing he would turn and look at her while he was speaking, and realising suddenly why he did not.

'Ines is my cousin's widow, and I could not marry her, even if I had the wish to,' he went on, swiftly sorting pieces of charcoal with hands that seemed unusually aimless for him.

'You don't love her?' Sally asked softly, and resisted the temptation to reach out and still those restless hands.

'I do not love her!' he affirmed coldly.

'Is—is there someone you do love?' she asked, and he was still suddenly, although he did not turn and look at her.

He was silent for a long time, and Sally stood there so close, and yet feeling so far away as he stared at the blank pages of the sketch book. His mouth was tight and straight and looked cruel as it sometimes did, his black eyes hidden by those incredibly long eyelashes.

'How old are you, Sarita?'

The words startled her and for a moment Sally merely stared at him unanswering, then she swallowed hard, and shook her head. 'I—I'm twenty- one,' she told him, and just had to add, 'Why?'

He did not answer, but busied himself with the charcoal again so that Sally at last reached out and put her hands over his, the very touch of him filling her with a sense of elation so that her heart thudded heavily at her breast and the blood coursed through her body like fire. 'Why, Miguel?' she asked softly.

He let her hands stay there for a moment, then he raised his own and threw them aside, as if he could no longer bear to touch her. 'I have done many things I should not have done, in my life,' he said, in that same cold, hard voice. 'Other men's wives, other men's mistresses have' He waved an eloquent hand. 'I have been discreet, at least, I can claim that, but those women have been there in my life, Sarita. Women who were experienced in the ways of the world, in the ways of men.' The black eyes turned to her at last, and the expression in them made her reach out again to touch him. 'You are a child, Sarita.'

'No!' She had no hesitation now, needed no other encouragement but what she had seen in his eyes, and she slid her arms around his lean hard body and pulled him as close as she could, until at last he gave a cry that sounded almost like a cry of pain and his arms crushed her against him.

'Sarita!' His mouth was at her throat, her neck and fiercely hard and passionate on her lips, every muscle of his body straining her to him as if he wanted to make her part of him.

Sally's hands slid smoothly over the soft shirt, feeling the warmth of his sl^in through the thin material, her whole body crying out for him. 'Oh, Miguel!' She looked up at him at last, her eyes huge and shining like blue jewels as she shook her long hair. 'You won't send me away too, will you?' she begged, and one long hand smoothed back the hair from her forehead as he looked down at her.

'I should,' he told her. 'But—Madre de Dios! I cannot when you look at me like that!'

Sally laid her hands on his chest, one finger prising open the buttons on his shirt and softly stroking the golden skin beneath. 'You can't send me away and still have your golden Madonna,' she said, and laughed softly, knowing that that point at least was unarguable.

'That is true,' he agreed straight-faced. 'But I am still not sure that it would not be more honourable for me to send you away, for your own sake.'

'Not for my own sake,' Sally told him. 'I should pine away, and then you'd regret it.'

For a long moment he said nothing, while Sally was prepared to plead, to beg, to do anything to stay with him. Then his arms tightened their hold suddenly, until the strength of them almost made her cry out."'I am not strong enough to do it, mi amada,' he told her. 'I love you too much.'

Sally's sigh of relief was smothered when his mouth covered hers, and she cared for nothing but the strength of his arms and the strong steady beat of his heart against her. When at last he looked down at her again, the glowing black eyes had a deep warmth that aroused every nerve in her body. 'Will your father allow you to marry a Spaniard, mi amada?' he asked, and Sally laughed, throwing back her head and looking at him from beneath her lashes in the provocative way he had once scolded her for.

'The way you two have been conniving behind my back,' she told him, 'I'm surprised you haven't arranged it already.'

'Impudencia!' He squeezed her again tightly. 'Will you marry me in the Church of the Golden Madonna, mi pequena}' he asked softly, and Sally nodded, her eyes shining.

'In our church,' she said. 'Perhaps with our Madonna looking on.'

Miguel smiled, shaking his head. 'Oh no, amada,' he said softly. 'I will not wait that long for you.'

'Miguel'

'Este quieta!' Miguel ordered sternly, and kissed her again.

It was some minutes later when Sally nodded agreement. 'Si, Miguel,' she said quietly.

Table of Contents

THE GOLDEN MADONNA

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE