“When people are desperate, they do many strange things,” Skye replied, “and I am desperate now. Your five minutes is up. Either you help me escape or I shoot you and risk getting away by myself.”

He was standing now against the table, while she had backed away from him until the big writing desk prevented her from going any further.

He had lit only the candles on either side of the fireplace and now that his back was towards them it was difficult for her to see the expression on his face, while the light was on hers.

“Are you sure that you want to leave me?” El Diablo asked.

The unexpectedness of the question made her suddenly angry.

“Have you not insulted me enough,” she asked, “without suggesting that I wish to stay here, forced against my will to become your wife – the wife of a murderer, a revolutionary – a-a devil?”

“Then if you are determined – ” El Diablo said with a sudden shrug of his shoulders.

As he spoke, he half-turned towards the door.

Skye drew a deep breath of relief and then gave a sudden cry, for with a movement so swift and unexpected that she was completely unprepared for it, El Diablo turned over the table and, as it crashed to the floor, leapt over it and flung her arm into the air.

The report of the pistol vibrated deafeningly around the cave.

El Diablo took the revolver from Skye’s hand and then she felt his arms go round her and his mouth was close to hers!

“You were made for love, my little one, not for hate,” he murmured.

With her ears ringing she tried to thrust him away, but he was too strong for her.

“I should have killed you! I should have killed you!” she wailed as his arms went round her.

He was smiling, but his eyes were afire as his mouth found hers and her voice was silenced beneath the fierce passionate demands of his kisses.

Chapter 9

The early dawn, brilliantly golden, came seeping through the curtained window before El Diablo said,

“I must let you go to bed.”

He looked down at her as she lay on the couch.

Her face was very pale, her lips like the crushed petals of a flower, while her hair against the cushions was even in the half-light as golden as the sun outside.

El Diablo put out his hand to touch the curls, smoothing them backwards from the oval of her white forehead.

Restlessly she turned her head away from him.

“I should have – killed you,” she said, speaking without violence in a low voice husky with tiredness.

“You need fire in your veins to hate, as well as to love,” El Diablo replied.

His hand slipped lower to the white roundness of her throat.