She had given up lying tense and wakeful for fear El Diablo should come to her room. He always said goodnight to her in the doorway and she knew that once the curtain fell between them he would not disturb her again.

Why he should behave in such a manner she still had not the slightest idea.

Every evening he would sit next to her on the couch – kissing her, fondling her, whispering words of passion in her ear.

Doing everything, it seemed, to gratify his own desires save that of making her his wife in the full sense of the word.

She had given up fighting against his kisses because she knew how utterly useless it was, wasting her strength and energy, leaving her only angry and exhausted while she ignited in him a sense of elation and triumph, which she was well aware only increased his desire for her.

What made everything harder to bear was the realisation that her feelings meant nothing to him. She was just a woman, one who attracted him, it was true, but he had no interest in her apart from the beauty of her body and the loveliness of her face.

“Women are for love, what else?” he said to her once and she knew he meant it in all seriousness.

When he took her with him on his rides, Skye suspected it was not for any real desire for her company, for when he was with his men he had companionship enough, but simply because he felt it safer to keep her under his eye, his interest entirely selfish and supremely self-centred.

Skye would close her eyes and wonder if this could really be happening.

She remembered the fuss that had been made about her in New York, the men who had danced attendance on her in London, appearing to find a delight in just being with her, in listening to her conversation and in deferring to her views.

All day and most of the night she thought of how to escape, her ideas going round and round as if they were in a squirrel’s cage.

She had been thankful when she found how much money she had with her. Fortunately on the day on which she had been captured she had decided to pay daily for the horses she hired and also to tip the guides who rode with her.

She had determined to be generous about this, for she had learned long ago that the English habit of tipping when one left a place or when one had finished what one was doing was not conducive to receiving the best services.

“Always tip generously when you arrive,” her grandfather had said to her once, when she was quite young and Skye had never forgotten.