The Caged Tiger

Now she could understand why the family were so anxious for Jamie to be brought up in the full knowledge of what his role would one day be, although previously she had always expected, when Ruy had their marriage set aside so that he could marry Carmelita, that Jamie would be disinherited in favour of the sons she would bear him. She was not au fait with the Spanish inheritance laws, nor had she made any attempt to be. She had left Ruy swearing that never would she ask him for a single penny towards his son’s upbringing, and she had stuck rigorously to that vow, and at the first suggestion that she had come to Spain with any thought of material gain, she would leave at once. They were the ones who wanted Jamie. AH she wanted for her son was his restored health, and had there been any other means of achieving it she would have gladly taken them. She had no wish to be indebted to her husband or his family, but as the solicitor she had gone to see in England had gently pointed, out, there was a possibility that Ruy might appeal to the Spanish courts to have custody of Jamie given to him, and as the child was his heir they might very well grant it.

With that threat hanging over her Davina had had no choice but to comply with the terms of the letter. That way at least she would still be able to be with her child.

They were starting to climb, driving towards the Sierra de los Santos. High up in those mountains was a monastery which had once belonged to the monks of the Inquisition, and she shivered as she remembered Ruy telling her about the ancestor of his who had been to England with Philip of Spain and fallen in love there with one of Queen Elizabeth’s ladies in waiting. He had married his English Rose, as he had named his bride, and carried her back to Spain with him, but despite the fact that Jane Carfax was of the same religion as himself, the priests of the Inquisition had insisted that in reality she was an English spy. They had demanded that Cristo hand over his wife so that she could be questioned, but the Spaniard knew too much about their torture chambers to relinquish his wife. Instead he had made secret plans to leave his country with his bride and start a new life far beyond the reach of the burning fires to which the priests wished to sacrifice his love.

On the very night they were to leave for the coast the house had been surrounded and they had been taken to the monastery. Their secret had been betrayed by Cristo’s brother, and the two young lovers had perished together in the flames. The brother himself had died shortly after, after an agonising illness—punishment from God, the villagers had called it. The story had haunted Davina. And now, as she raised her eyes to the black bulk of the mountains she shivered, holding Jamie tightly.

‘Soon be there,’ Sebastian told her over his shoulder. ‘Everything is in readiness for you. Madre has given you your own suite of rooms. She has engaged a nurse for the little one. She will help him to learn Spanish, although he is not yet old enough for formal lessons, but he must learn his father’s tongue…’

How much they took for granted, these arrogant Spaniards! Davina thought resentfully. Already her mother-in-law seemed to be usurping her place. Well, she would soon learn that Davina was no shy, awkward girl now, eager to please and terrified. Jamie was her child, and she would be the one to say what he would and would not learn.

And yet half an hour later when the Mercedes stopped in the courtyard of the beautiful Moorish house which had been the home of her husband’s family for centuries, and Sebastian took the sleeping child in his arms, she had to admit that when it came to loving children, Englishmen could learn a good deal from their Spanish counterparts. As they walked towards the house Jamie stirred, and half frightened that he would think she had left him, Davina darted forward to take his hand. Two dimples appeared in his chubby cheeks as he smiled, his arms extended towards her. As she took him from Sebastian, she buried her face in the small baby neck, suddenly overwhelmed by dread, by the fear that she had done the wrong thing.

Too many memories that were best left dead had been stirred already. She might be able to close her heart against her husband, but she could not close her mind to her memories… Memories of the very first time she had seen this house; of how she had been entranced by Ruy’s casual explanation that it had once been the home of a Moorish prince and that much of the original architecture remained. Even now she could hear the music of the fountains playing in the courtyard which had once been the sole property of the ladies of the harem, and even before the massive wooden doors opened, already in her mind’s eye she could see the gracious hallway with its mosaic-tiled floor and elegant Moorish architecture. Everything was the same—but different. Then she had arrived with a husband she had thought loved her as totally as she loved him. This time she arrived with her son—the product of that union.

The doors opened, and in the light from the chandeliers Davina saw her mother-in-law waiting to greet them, regal and feminine in one of the long hostess gowns she always wore in the evening—always black, always elegant. How intimidated she had been on the first occasion! But not this time. Oh, definitely not this time.

Her head held high, she stepped past Sebastian and into the house. Her mother-in-law’s eyes flickered once as Davina greeted her and then went straight to Jamie with a hunger no amount of sophistication could hide. She held out her arms, but Davina did not place Jamie into them. He was busily staring around his new surroundings.

‘So this is Ruy’s child.’

Davina ignored the other woman’s emotion, her eyes hard as they probed the shadows of the room, as she forced herself to damp down the feeling nothing would make her admit was disappointment.

Sebastian had walked into the salón, plainly expecting that they would follow him. Her mother-in-law indicated that Davina should precede her into the room, and with her legs trembling a little Davina did so.

The room was much as she remembered. Rich Persian carpets glowed on the floor, the antique furniture was still as highly polished as it had always been, the room looking more like a film set than someone’s home, and her heart sank at the thought of condemning Jamie to a house where his inquisitive little fingers would be forbidden to touch and explore.

A small, slight girl in a demure cotton dress stood up as they walked in. Davina guessed at once that she was Sebastian’s wife, Rosita, and this was confirmed when Sebastian introduced her. Like her mother-in-law, Rosita’s eyes went immediately to the child in Davina’s arms, and she turned to her husband whispering something huskily in Spanish.

‘She says that the child very much resembles Ruy,’ Sebastian explained to Davina.

‘I know.’

Davina could see that the dry words had surprised them. She had not been able to speak Spanish when she married Ruy, and as he spoke excellent English she had only made a halfhearted attempt to learn. But during the lonely weeks after her return to England she had bought herself some foreign language tapes, partially to pass the time, and partially because then she still hoped that it had all been a mistake and that Ruy loved her and would come to take her home. To her own surprise she had shown quite a facility for the language, and could now speak it reasonably well. She could tell by her mother-in-law’s expression that the older woman thought her knowledge of her language had been gained purely to impress them, and to show her exactly how little she cared what they thought about her she lifted her chin proudly and said coolly:

‘I was given to understand that Ruy was anxious to see his son. Where is he? Out somewhere with Carmelita?’

Rosita paled and started to tremble. Sebastian gripped her hand, his mouth white, and only the Condesa appeared unmoved by her question. What was she supposed to do? Pretend ignorance? Pretend that she didn’t know that her husband loved someone else?

Before anyone could speak Davina heard an unfamiliar sound in the hall. For a moment it reminded her of her own days spent pushing Jamie’s pram, which was quite ridiculous, for who would push a pram through the immaculate rooms of this house?

The salón had double doors, both of which stood open. All three members of the Silvadores family were staring towards them with varying degrees of tension evident in their faces. Only Davina’s expression was openly puzzled. Sebastian walked towards her, his hand touching her arm, as though he wanted to say something, but before he could do so Davina knew the reason why her husband had not met her at the airport but had sent his brother instead. For the sound she had heard was made by a wheelchair and in it, his face drawn in tight lines of pain, was Ruy.

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

‘RUY!’

His name burst past her lips of its own volition in a shocked gasp, his expression going from sheer incredulity to bitter anger as he stared from her slender body, half hidden by the child in her arms, to the faces of his relatives.

‘Madre de Dios!’ he swore angrily, his nostrils pinched and white with the force of his rage. ‘What kind of conspiracy is this? What is going on?’ he demanded harshly. ‘What is she doing here?’

If she had felt shocked before, it was nothing to what she was feeling now, Davina admitted, her face going as white as his, but before she could say anything, Ruy’s mother was speaking.

‘She has come because I requested her to,’ she told her son, holding his eyes coolly.

Davina wasn’t paying much attention to them. She was still too stunned by the fact that this was actually Ruy, the proud and strong, in a wheelchair, to appreciate the full enormity of what her mother-in-law had done.

‘You requested it?’ The thin nostrils dilated further. ‘By whose authority?’ he demanded softly. ‘I am still master in my own house, Madre. I can still say who may and may not rest under its roof, even if I can no longer walk as other men, but must needs propel myself about like a babe in arms.’

With his rage directed at his mother, Davina was able to study him properly for the first time. What she saw shocked her. The Ruy whom she had known had walked tall—a veritable god among men, and if she was honest she would have to admit that she had thrilled to the arrogant grace; the hint of ruthless mastery cloaked by modern civilisation like velvet covering tempered steel. Now there were deep lines of pain scored from nose to mouth which were new to her, and a bitterness in the dark eyes that made Jamie cry out protestingly as her arms tightened round him unthinkingly.

His cry brought Ruy’s eyes to them in scorching denunciation; a look that stripped her of everything and left her aching with a need to escape from it.

He turned his chair abruptly so that she was faced with the sight of his dark head.

‘Get her out of here,’ he told his mother emotionlessly. ‘I never want to set eyes on her again.’

‘And your son?’

His mother said the words so quietly that Davina couldn’t believe that he had heard them, never mind stopped. But he had, and he turned his chair again, his eyes going slowly over the small form held protectively against Davina’s breast.

‘My son, or your grandson, Madre?’ he asked sardonically. ‘Tell me. If I were still man enough to father children, if Sebastian could provide you with grandsons, would you still want that?’

The use of the derisive word, the look he gave them, all combined to arouse within Davina the anger the sight of him, stricken, had tempered. Quivering with the pent-up force of it, she advanced on the wheelchair, her eyes blazing almost as darkly as his, unaware of the arresting picture her erect carriage and pale face made.

‘That, as you call him, just happens to be your son,’ she told him, barely able to form the words coherently. ‘The son you’ve denied from the moment of his birth, but he is your son, Ruy, and he will live here as is his birthright…’

‘How you have changed your tune,’ he sneered bitterly. ‘When I married you, you told me that you wished I were a poor man; that we could live an “ordinary” life. What went wrong, Davina? Or is it just that with age has come the realisation that you will not be young for ever, that there will come a time when men cease to desire your body; when you will have nothing but the dead ashes of too many burnt out love affairs… My son! How can I be sure of that?’

The sharp crack of her palm against his lean cheek split the silence. Behind her Davina heard someone gasp, and she felt faintly sick herself as she stared at the dull red patch against the tanned skin. What had prompted her to behave so outrageously? In her arms Jamie stirred again and whispered, opening his eyes properly for the first time to stare at the man who had fathered him. How could Ruy so coldly deny his own flesh and blood? she asked herself. It was obvious that Jamie was his child…

‘I apologise for striking you,’ she said shakily, ‘but you did provoke me. Did you think I would have come here for one moment had Jamie not been your child?’

‘I know only that you disappeared out of my life, only to reappear now, at the command of my mother. I am not a fool, Davina, no matter what I-might have appeared in the past. It must have been a tempting prospect; a useless cripple of a husband whose presence need not disturb you, and the rest of your life spent in luxury waiting for your child to step into his shoes.’

‘Stop! That is enough, Ruy,’ his mother commanded. ‘If you must have the truth, I allowed Davina to think that you had written to her.’ She shrugged when he stared frowningly at her. ‘Enough of this foolish pride. Jamie is the only son you are likely to have, the only son this house is likely to have. It is only right and fitting that he is brought up here where his place will one day be…’

It was at that moment that Jamie decided it was time he took a hand in the proceedings himself. Struggling against Davina’s guarding arms, he demanded to be put down on the floor. When she did as he requested he toddled solemnly over to the wheelchair, while Davina, her heart in her mouth, darted forward to hold him back. It was only the pressure of her mother-in-law’s fingers biting into her wrist that prevented her from wrenching Jamie away, her grasp restricting her for long enough for Jamie to reach his goal. Once there he stared up at his father, his eyes, so like Davina’s, staring perplexedly at this man who looked back at him with such cool haughtiness.

‘Is he my daddy?’.

The question was addressed to Davina, over his shoulder, the shrill, piping treble baby voice filling the tense silence.

Davina tried to speak and could not. She had a photograph of Ruy at home which she had shown to Jamie, and although she doubted that he could have recognised the man pictured there, she was not going to lie to her son merely to spare the feelings of the father who denied him.

She cleared her throat, but her voice was still husky as she answered his question, going down on her knees to draw him back from Ruy, as though she feared that he might harm the child.

‘Then why doesn’t he talk to me?’ Jamie demanded, turning towards her. ‘Doesn’t he like me?’