He desired her, she knew that. There was no pretence about the fire in his eyes or the demanding passion of his kisses.

She excited him and yet he had kissed her goodnight at the door of her bedchamber and let her enter it alone. What did it mean? Why was he so forbearing? Skye asked the question and could find no answer.

She did not understand, she could not pretend to do so.

He was an enigma. A man so different, so utterly the opposite in every way to the men she had met before in her life, that she could only feel completely at a loss to account for anything she said or did.

“I hate him! I hate him!”

She said the words over and over again to herself and now there was a kind of sick helplessness in the very repetition of them.

She might hate him, but there was nothing she could do about it.

When he took her in his arms she might as well struggle against the walls of the cave or the vastness of the mountains beyond.

“When will you cease to fight me?” he asked once, as his hand caressed the softness of her white shoulder and she twisted fruitlessly to evade his touch.

“When I am dead,” she flashed, “and at times I wish that could be soon.”

He laughed at her.

“Like the flowers of the field you were made for the delight of man. Why else should you be so beautiful?”

“I wish I was hideous, deformed and mutilated and – then perhaps you would leave me alone.”

“But because you are none of those things I want to touch you, to kiss you,” he said. “My beautiful wife! All men who see you will envy me.”

She knew by the tone of his voice that he was trying to provoke her and yet she could not forbear to cry wildly,

“Give me a knife or a gun and I will show those other men how much you are to be envied.”

But now that Neengai had told her that she could go riding she was ready to rush to El Diablo’s side rather than spend the day alone.

More than anything else she had dreaded the long day ahead, when there would be nothing for her to do but to sit thinking and waiting for the evening to come and for El Diablo to return.

Now she was reprieved and, without wasting any time in talking, she started to wash in cold water.

“Wait, wait, señora,” Neengai cried. “I will bring you hot water while you eat breakfast.”

“I can manage with cold,” Skye replied.