The Caged Tiger

When her mutely imploring glance at her mother-in-law went unheeded Davina followed the manservant reluctantly down the long passage leading off the hall, to a suite of rooms she dimly remembered as being what Ruy had once described as a ‘bachelor suite’. It had been the custom for young male members of the family to live apart from their sisters and mothers after a certain age, he had told her. The custom had originated from the days when his Moorish ancestors had been jealous of their wives, and any male eyes which might look upon them.

From what she could remember the suite was quite large, built around its own patio, and as Rodriguez opened the double panelled doors leading into the sala Davina heard the sound of fountains playing outside and knew that she had not been mistaken.

In contrast to the rest of the house the room was furnished almost simply, with clean, uncluttered furniture that combined the best of antique and modern. The dark blue azulejo tiles were covered with a Persian carpet—a rich mingling of blues and scarlets, touched here and there with gold and pricelessly expensive. On a marble coffee table placed strategically next to a cream hide chesterfield were some magazines, and again Davina felt her heart twist with pity that Ruy was reduced to finding his pleasure in such a passive way.

‘You remember this part of the house?’

She refused to look at him. He had brought her to this sala after that dreadful scene with his mother, when the older woman had accused her of trapping him into marriage, of forcing him to make an honest woman of her. It was in here that he had dried her tears before leading her out on to the patio, where she had flung herself despairingly into his arms and they had walked into the orange grove and…

‘I’m hungry!’ Jamie eyed her crossly. ‘Mummy, I’m hungry!’

‘You hear that, Rodriguez?’ Ruy demanded with an upward lift of his eyebrows. ‘My son is hungry. He is not yet used to our way of life.’

A smile glimmered across the other man’s sombre features.

‘Maria shall make you a paella, and you shall have oranges picked fresh from the trees,’ Ruy promised him. ‘Only be patient for a little while.’

Davina was a little surprised at Jamie’s immediate response to the authority in his father’s voice. Perhaps it was true that all boys needed the firmness of a father’s hand. But would Ruy let his obvious bitterness against her spill out to sour his relationship with his son? Had she known that the invitation to come to Spain was not from him she knew she would never have ventured here to the Palacio, and yet having done so, she was strangely reluctant to return again to England.

The courtyard outside was all in darkness, but the patio doors had been left open to allow the scents of the night to drift in—the spicy, sharp smell of the oranges, a constant reminder of that night when Jamie had been conceived; the sweetness of night-scented stocks, those timid, almost insipid flowers that only revealed their true beauty during the hours of darkness when their perfume filled the night air.

If she remembered rightly, beyond the patio was a swimming pool. She had swum in it once with Ruy. She pushed the thought aside, unwilling to remember the warmth of Ruy’s arms around her as he pulled her down beneath the silken water, only releasing her when her lips had been subjected to a masterful, demanding kiss. Then she had thought that he loved her. She had not known about Carmelita.

The sala connected with a smaller room which had been turned into a tiny kitchen, presumably so that Ruy could be completely independent of the rest of the household if he wished, and Davina sensed intuitively that there must be many times when his pride could no longer bear the lash of enduring the silent pity of the rest of his family; when he must prefer to be hidden from the world to suffer alone. And yet he had insisted that she and Jamie were to share his suite, to share his torment…

Beyond the kitchen was a room which had been converted into a bedroom, opulently rich in its furnishings, but it was the huge double bed which drew Davina’s eyes, fear hidden in their amethyst depths as she stared at it.

‘Where’s my bed?’ Jamie demanded suddenly, breaking the silence. ‘And where’s my mummy’s bed?’

‘Your mummy’s bed is here,’ Ruy said silkily, turning aside to murmur something to Rodriguez, who disappeared in soft-footed silence through a door at the far end of the room.

‘Through that door is the bathroom,’ Ruy told Davina when he had gone, ‘and beyond that a dressing room. Jamie shall sleep there for the time being.’

‘And I shall sleep with him,’ Davina said bravely. At home she had only a very small flat, and Jamie’s small bed was in the same room as hers. It would frighten the small boy to find himself sleeping alone, but when she attempted to explain this to Ruy he cut across her explanation, his voice harsh as he said cruelly, ‘You will sleep here in this room in my bed, Davina, otherwise Jamie will be banished to another part of the house. Do you understand me?’

‘Why?’

His eyes searched her face, and for the first time she saw the true extent of his bitterness.

‘Why? Because you are my wife,’ he said softly. ‘Because I will not endure the pitying glances of my servants and my family when it becomes known that my wife has returned to me only because she knows she will no longer be expected to undergo the degradation of sharing my bed. That was what you once called it, wasn’t it?’ he continued unmercifully. ‘Degradation of the very worst sort? You don’t even begin to know what it means, but you will learn, sharing this room with me, being forced to witness all the thousand and one indignities that my… my disability forces upon me. In fact…’ his eyes roamed her set white face, ‘I think you should take the place of Rodriguez.’

His fingers snaked out, grasping her wrist and making her gasp with pain, unable to believe that their hard, vibrant warmth belonged to a man who was no longer fully in control of his own body. ‘It hurts? You should be grateful that you can feel pain,’ he concluded grimly. ‘Madre de Dios, I wish I could!’

Davina swallowed a lump in her throat. Despite his desire to hurt and wound her, she could not prevent pity welling up inside her. Dear God, what torment he must be in, this man who had always taken for granted his male power. To find it cut off like this must surely be the worst blow fate could have dealt him. She knew she ought to feel some sense of satisfaction, some pleasure in knowing that he was now suffering as he had once caused her to suffer, but all she could feel was an overwhelming desire to reach out and brush the silky black hair off his forehead, to hold and comfort him as she might have done Jamie… The thought stunned her, rooting her to the spot as she stared blindly around her, not seeing the elegant room with its rich furnishings, the carved bed, the Persian carpets, the antique furniture, the elegant graciousness of a house that had been inhabited by Ruy’s family for generation after generation; children brought up in a tradition, children of whom her son was the latest.

The door opened suddenly, and Rodriguez appeared with her luggage. Without looking at Ruy Davina followed him through the bathroom with its sunken bath in jade green malachite, the taps in the same material, azulejo tiles adorning the floor.

Beyond it was a small plainly furnished room overlooking the courtyard, with a single bed and a carved chest of drawers. When they were alone Davina undressed Jamie, before taking him back to the bathroom to wash his hands and face before she put him to bed. He chattered continuously, and she answered his questions almost mechanically, her mind still in that other bedroom with the man whose child Jamie was.

As though on cue, the moment Jamie was installed in bed the door opened again, and this time a woman came in carrying a tray, steaming fragrantly.

Jamie was not a fussy eater, and he tucked into the paella with such obvious relish that Davina had to repress a small smile. Contrary to her expectations Jamie seemed to be adapting very well to his new surroundings—far better than she was likely to do herself.

Only when she was quite sure that he was asleep did she return to the other room, unable to repress her feeling of relief when she saw Sebastian in the room, talking to Ruy.

‘Ruy, will you not reconsider?’ Davina heard him saying in a low voice as she re-entered the room. ‘Surely you wish to spare Davina the…’

‘The sight of my crippled limbs?’ Ruy said harshly. ‘Why? Am I spared them? Am I spared anything? No, it will do no good to plead for compassion for my wife, Sebastian,’ he added cruelly. ‘Or is it guilt that brings you to this room, little brother? After all, had you provided Madre with her grandson, there would be no need for Davina to be here, would there?’

A small sound must have betrayed Davina’s presence, for both men turned at the same time.

‘Ah, there you are,’ Ruy drawled in a false parody of tenderness. ‘Just in time to help me change for dinner.’

‘I don’t want any dinner,’ Davina began, but her protest was overruled by Sebastian’s angry protest.

‘You cannot do this!’ he told Ruy. ‘You cannot mean to subject your wife to such indignity… Have you no compassion, Ruy? How is Jamie?’ he asked Davina, turning to her. ‘Has he settled down all right?’

‘Better than I expected,’ Davina told him. There was guilt and embarrassment in his eyes, and she thought she knew now why he had been so offhand with her at the airport. It was obvious that his mother had told him to say nothing of Ruy’s condition, to her, and now he felt guilty about the way his brother was treating her.

‘Rosita had better be careful,’ Ruy commented sardonically when Sebastian had gone. ‘My little brother’s concern for you is most touching. I trust you have something better than that to wear for dinner,’ he added, giving her slender figure a disparaging glance: ‘You will not have forgotten that we observe the formalities here at the Palacio.’

She hadn’t. Since Jamie’s birth and her flight to England there hadn’t been any money for luxuries like evening dresses, but she still had the clothes Ruy had insisted on buying for her after their marriage—when he had realised that he was irrevocably tied to her, and had tried to make the best of their mesalliance. Her mouth twisted a little bitterly and for the first time she realised that she had been handed a weapon which she could use to gain reparation in full for all the hurt Ruy had caused her, if she chose to use it. She was to take the place of his manservant, or so he had commanded, and if she chose, she could make the performance of those small intimate tasks which would be required of her as humiliatingly agonising for Ruy as he had once made her life for her!

‘You will go and prepare yourself for dinner,’ Ruy commanded her curtly, frowning when she made no attempt to move.

‘Don’t you want me to help you first?’

Something in the soft tone of her voice must have made him suspicious, because he frowned darkly, manoeuvring his chair past her. ‘Not tonight,’ he said abruptly. ‘I am hungry, and I don’t propose to wait all evening for you to perform the tasks Rodriguez can perform in half the time.’ He glanced at his watch, pushing back the cuff of his shirt, and Davina felt her stomach constrict painfully at the sight of his lean, sinewy wrist, and the dark hairs curling against the gold mesh of his watch-strap. All too vividly she could remember how that hand had so arrogantly caressed her yielding flesh, had turned her from girl to woman and taught her pleasure…

CHAPTER THREE (#uf6e02b02-bada-5155-b32c-f00ec5cd74e5)

SHE had endured many formal dinners during her days at the Palacio, but none which had tautened her muscles to breaking point as this one was doing, Davina reflected, as the long meal seemed to drag on interminably.

On the table her glass of sherry still stood barely touched. It was Silvadores sherry, matured in their own bodega near Cadiz; the very best fino, dry and clean to the palate. The first time she had tasted it Davina had found it too dry, but habit had accustomed her taste-buds; all those long, lazy afternoons whose end had been signalled by the serving of sherry and tapas on the patio. She clamped down on the thought. On too many thoughts.

‘You are not hungry?’

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

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

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

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

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

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