She knitted her brows together. That could not be right. She must have read it wrongly. But one thing was sure – Guy Tremayne had become Guido Tremayna, a subject and citizen of Mariposa.

She folded the document together again. With it was an envelope. She opened it to find a photograph.

It was of a woman. Taken by a famous Mayfair photographer, it showed a very pretty young woman with fair hair and smiling provocative eyes. She was unmistakably English, unquestionably what is called ‘a lady’ and yet at the same time she gave the impression of having an awareness of sex and of her own allure.

Skye stared at the pictured face. Was this the cause of El Diablo’s dislike of England and the reason he despised all English women?

She felt a strange repugnance of this unknown woman. Impatiently she looked to see what else was in the drawer. At the back was a small box, thin and narrow. Skye pulled it out and as she did so a little piece of paper fluttered to the floor.

She picked it up. It was a cutting from a foreign newspaper.

She read it almost automatically, but with a sense of growing incredulity.

“The London Gazette has announced the award of the Distinguished Flying Cross for conspicuous gallantry in action to Squadron Leader Guido Tremayna, a Mariposan serving with the R.A.F. in the Middle East.”

There was no need to open the box to know what she would find there – the black and white striped ribbon and the cross that was coveted by all those who flew.

El Diablo might rail against England, but he had been ready to fight for the country of his birth when she was in danger.

Mariposa had remained neutral in the war. As a Mariposan there had been no reason for him to join the R.A.F. Why had he done so?

Skye fed almost stilled at the impossibility of finding an answer to her questions.

Slowly she put the box and the newspaper cutting back behind the passport and laid the photograph and the big document with its red seal on top and then she closed the drawer tightly and replaced the piece of broken wood.

She pressed it into position, hoping that it would hold until El Diablo opened the drawer himself and then she ran from the cave back to her own bedroom.

She threw herself on the bed, pressing her fingers to her eyes, striving to think, conscious only of the chaos of her feelings.

British!

A man who had fought with gallantry in the war and received the Distinguished Flying Cross, a man who had kidnapped her, married her and ill-treated her with a barbarism that could only have been explained by the fact that he knew no better.