His eyes flickered over her, resting for a moment on her white throat.

Then he picked up his riding whip and turned towards the door.

“Adios,” he said as he reached it.

“Adios,” she replied and with a strange sense of loneliness she heard the door close behind him.

Chapter 11

Skye walked across to the window to watch El Diablo.

The sunshine made the camp a pattern of light and shade and his shadow was like a purple question mark behind him as he walked down the stone steps to where his horse was waiting for him.

As he reached it, Skye saw him stop and hesitate, then speak to one of the men who were waiting for him. He evidently gave an order, for the man turned and cupped his mouth with his hands and shouted out a name,

“Josné! Josné!”

The roar of his voice echoed and re-echoed throughout the caves and in answer to the summons a little man appeared at the mouth of one of them and came hurrying helter-skelter down the terraces to where El Diablo stood waiting.

He was a hunchback and Skye wondered what business El Diablo could have with him. They stood for a moment side by side, Josné deformed and misshapen and in contrast El Diablo’s height, broad shoulders and good looks were all the more noticeable.

Then he mounted his horse and joined by his escort of gauchos cantered from the camp leaving behind a cloud of red dust iridescent on the sunlit air.

With a little sigh Skye turned back towards the couch.

She was uncertain whether she would not have preferred to be with the riders, knowing the joy of a horse moving beneath her, experiencing that sense of freedom and exhilaration that always came to her when she was out on the flower-strewn pampas.

Even in her most bitter moments of hating El Diablo and loathing the circumstances under which he kept her prisoner, her senses never failed to respond to the wonder of those wide rolling plains.

She stretched her arms above her head. Perhaps today it was best that she should rest and keep quiet as there would be excitement enough tomorrow.

Then, as she went to sit on the couch, there came a knock on the outer door and Neengai came in.

“Will you see the tailor now, señora?” she asked.

“The tailor?” Skye questioned, thinking that she must have misunderstood the Indian girl or had translated the Spanish word wrongly.

“Si, si, señora, the tailor. He wish to measure you.”

“What is this?” Skye asked and then, knowing Neengai’s linguistic limitations, she added, “Let him come in, I will speak to him myself.”

Neengai opened the door to admit Josné, the hunchback.

He bowed politely and Skye saw that he was a middle-aged man, his face etched with sharp lines of suffering, his eyes gentle and humble.

“What is it you want?” Skye asked him.