He looked up at her with a twist to his lips.

“So you are giving the orders now,” he said, “and getting your own back a little! Wait till I am well!”

She felt her heart leap at the teasing note in his voice, but she answered him in all seriousness,

“Only by being patient will you get well quickly and you know how important it is, not only to you but to the people waiting for you in the camp.”

“Do you suppose I am not worrying about them?” he asked.

“Go to sleep and forget them for the moment,” Skye insisted. “Evans says it is sleep that you want and, as he has very likely told you, there is nothing he doesn’t know about wounds and shock.”

“To hell with Evans!” El Diablo exclaimed. “Kiss me and then perhaps I won’t have a nightmare about Alejo.”

Trembling so much that she was afraid he might see and guess the reason for it, Skye bent forward and pressed her lips gently against his. It was a light kiss, the touch of a butterfly, and he laughed up at her.

“Is that still the best you can do?” he asked. “You are the worst pupil I ever had.”

She felt herself flush at the implication of the words and then his eyes were closed and she realised that he was drifting away into sleep.

“The worst pupil!”

Always he must compare her with other women, women who had held his interest until they loved him and until he no longer had to fight for their favours.

She went up on deck. A cushioned chair and foot-rest were arranged for her under the awning.

She sat looking out to sea. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined being aboard The Liberty with El Diablo.

Yet now she only wished that she had the courage to give the order for the yacht to sail away to the most distant horizon. Perhaps she would kidnap him, perhaps she would take him away with her to some new country where there was no other call on his time, where they could be alone – an ordinary prosaic married couple.

Then she laughed at the very idea.

How bored he would be, how quickly he would leave her at the first opportunity! And yet he desired her. But why, why, Skye asked herself for the thousandth time, had he asked no more of her than a few kisses?

Why had he spared her the final humiliation of being captured and married by force, when she knew his body burned for her? It was impossible not to remember the extreme passion of his kisses the night before they left for Jācara.

She had not fought against him, telling herself that it was useless, but now Skye admitted the truth, it was because she had wanted to be kissed, caressed and – yes, why not admit it? – possessed.