He put his left arm round her and held her close against him. It was the way he had carried her when she had tried before to escape from him before and by a brilliant feat of horsemanship he had lifted her from her horse at full gallop.

She remembered how she had loathed the close proximity of him and the arm that kept her captive, but now she welcomed it.

She turned her face against his shoulder and closed her eyes.

His tweed coat smelt of cigar smoke and the faint fragrance of heather and peat that seems to cling to a Scottish tweed all the world over.

It reminded Skye of her father, when he had carried her to bed as a little child and when, as she grew older, she had run into his arms on her arrival back from school or from America. It seemed to her now that she missed that masculine smell since he died, but here it was again.

The horses were moving quickly and yet she was not unduly uncomfortable. All that mattered for the moment was that El Diablo’s arm spelt safety, why or how she was not prepared to argue with herself.

She was too tired, too low in body and spirit, to think anything out save that for the moment she was safe from Pedro and his clutching hands.

She must have fallen asleep, for hours later she was conscious of being lifted from the horse’s back and feeling the sudden agony of cramp in her right leg, which had rested against the saddle.

She gave an involuntary cry and then realised that El Diablo was carrying her up the stone steps that led to the terrace.

She wanted to say, “we’re home”, but her lips would not speak the words.

Her eyelids felt as if great weights hung upon them and it was impossible to force them open.

Dimly, as if she lay at the end of a long, dark tunnel, she was aware of being carried across the cave and laid upon her bed.

Later she was aroused by feeling herself being undressed. Her boots were drawn from her feet, gentle hands took off her shirt and riding breeches.

She murmured against the interruption and then felt herself being covered with the light bedclothes. Like a child she turned her face against the pillow.

She thought that someone kissed her lips, but she could not be sure.

The tunnel was so long and dark and everything else was far away –

*

She woke with a sense of terror and started up in bed to find herself alone and knew that it was only the first faint sounds of dawn that had awakened her.