When he could endure it no longer he went out into the corridor. There was no sound from behind her door, and at last he pushed it open and closed it quietly behind him. She was standing in the middle of the floor. She turned when she heard the click of the door.

‘Can’t you sleep?’ he asked.

‘I don’t want to sleep. Not after this afternoon. Every time I close my eyes I see him.’

‘Felipe?’

‘No-him!’

There was no further need to ask who he was.

‘I can’t bear my nightmares,’ Maggie said desolately. ‘He’s always there.’

He came close to her. ‘He mustn’t be there,’ he said. ‘Nobody must be there but me.’

‘Then drive him away,’ she said desperately. ‘Can’t you make him go?’

‘Yes,’ he said, taking her into his arms. ‘I will make him go away, so that there is only me. Tell me that is what you want.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered, slipping her arms about his neck. ‘It’s what I want.’

Still he couldn’t be sure, and his uncertainty was reflected in his kiss, gentle and loving, passion held in abeyance. There was something new in her response, a desperation, almost a plea, that hurt him. He kissed her repeatedly, trying to bring her back to him.

‘Margarita,’ he murmured, ‘Margarita-where are you?’

‘With you-where I want to be. Hold me.’

‘What do you want?’ he asked her urgently.

‘I want you-you.’

He longed to ask her what she really meant by that, but the need was rising in him, making his caresses more urgent, his kisses deeper. As always her beauty entranced him, but tonight it had a special quality. He tossed her night dress away, then his own robe, and held her naked body against his.

‘Sebastian-I do want you.’

It was all he needed. He reached the bed first and sat, drawing her against him so that he could lay his head between her breasts, revelling in their sweetness and warmth. They were already proudly peaked, testament to her desire. When he caressed them with his lips, she let out a long sigh of pleasure and satisfaction, clasping her hands behind his head, inviting him.

He leaned back so that she slid down onto the bed beside him and began to bestow subtle, lingering kisses on her face, her neck, silently calling her to return to him.

Maggie could feel the change in him through her skin, her sensations, the beating of her heart. Their other lovings had been wild encounters, each seeking and giving pleasure, almost like rivals. Now Sebastian was using desire to give her something else, something she needed far more than pleasure. With every touch he spoke of tenderness, protection, reassurance, and her terrors began to fade. In her need she reached out to him, and he was there.

His arms had always been strong to excite her, but now they were strong to keep her safe. Nobody had ever offered her safety before, and she reached for it, eagerly, blindly, startling him with the emotional depth of her response.

‘Margarita,’ he murmured.

‘Hold me,’ she begged. ‘Don’t let me go.’

‘Never,’ he said swiftly. ‘I’m here-always-’ His face was close to hers, his eyes holding hers. ‘Now,’ he whispered. ‘Now!’

She drew a long breath and suddenly she was a whirlwind in his arms, calling his name, drawing him closer, seeking something only he could give. For a blinding moment everything was well between them, just as it had been when passion was uncomplicated and all they asked. Then suddenly it was over and his heart was beating as never before. Something had happened, beautiful, alarming and beyond his experience. He wasn’t sure of anything, except that passion alone would never be enough again.

He lay on his back, his arm beneath Maggie’s neck, while she turned towards him, flinging an arm confidingly across his chest, snuggling against him as though seeking refuge.

He thought she murmured something. It might have been, ‘My darling,’ or it might not. He listened, hoping she would speak again, but she had settled against him, sleeping as contentedly as a child. After a while he, too, slept.

He awoke in the small hours to find her asleep on his chest, still in the circle of his arm.

‘Margarita,’ he said softly, ‘are you awake?’

There was no answer, only her soft rhythmic breathing. When he was sure she was still asleep, he kissed the top of her head.

‘Where are we now?’ he murmured. ‘You came to me, but why? Was it only to drive him away? If so, how can I complain? Who should defend you from him but I, who brought him back to torment you?

‘I knew in Sol y Nieve that you’d returned to that place you spoke of, the place without feeling that you entered when your baby died. There was no hate there, but no love either, no warmth, no joy. Nothing for Roderigo-and nothing for me.

‘But now the feelings have returned, haven’t they? Why am I afraid to look into your heart? What would I find there? Love for me? Love for him? Despite everything, is some part of you still his? Is that why he haunts you?

‘What would you say if I spoke to you of love? Would that bring you closer to me, or drive you further off? Why haven’t I the courage to take the risk?’

He made a sudden convulsive movement, sitting up so sharply that he was afraid she would awaken. But she only rolled over and buried herself more deeply in the bed. He rose, pulled on his robe and went to the window overlooking the garden, opening it quietly and slipping out into the cool night air.

Down below he could see the Patio de los Pájaros, where he’d sat on the first evening and she had come wandering out amidst the stone birds, talking of truth and paradise, and they had mysteriously understood each other. But it had ended in a quarrel, as it always did, because this woman was born to torment him. And now that he’d discovered something of her heart and mind, she tormented him more than ever, posing questions that couldn’t be answered in bed, and that undermined everything he’d thought was certain in his life.

‘Margarita Alva,’ he murmured desperately to the night sky, ‘how I wish I had never met you!’

Maggie’s tour of the de Santiago estates was a triumphant success. Those she met knew only that she was English and had prepared themselves for the worst. But her fluency in their language disarmed them, and the discovery that she was a Cortez, born in the region and knowledgeable about it, completed her conquest. They even began to use her as a channel to Sebastian.

‘Of course, I realise that you find it incredibly boring to discuss these things with a woman,’ she teased him one evening.

‘No, no, that horse won’t run,’ he defended himself, grinning. ‘Not after things I heard you say to Alfonso in Sol y Nieve. Besides, I only said it in the first place to annoy you.’ He glanced at the papers she’d put before him. ‘Why didn’t Señora Herez bring this problem to me ages ago? She’s left it almost too late to do anything.’

‘She finds you rather alarming.’

He was perturbed. ‘I never knew.’

‘Is it really too late?’

‘We’ll be in Seville next week for the opening of the regional parliament. I’ll talk to some people.’

In Seville she found herself at the centre of a new world. Now it was Sebastian’s fellow politicians who crowded around, eager to know her. Over a series of tiring but triumphant dinner parties she completed what her husband called, ‘the conquest of Seville’. His pride in her was enormous. Their closeness seemed to grow every day. By the time they returned home three weeks later they both felt they could dare to hope that the problems were behind them.

Sebastian reached the Casa Mayorez in the middle of the afternoon. Carlos was waiting for him.

‘I don’t know if I did the right thing in calling you, Señor,’ he said nervously.

‘You were very vague and mysterious on the telephone. Why don’t you simply tell me what had happened?’

Carlos picked up a newspaper, bearing the picture of a ruffianly, unshaven man, whose face Sebastian found unpleasantly familiar.

‘It’s him,’ Carlos said, indicating the picture. ‘His name is Miguel Vargas, and he’s just been arrested for murder. It was on television too, and when my master saw this man’s face on the screen he became very agitated.’

Sebastian studied the picture and went cold. Now he knew where he’d seen Miguel Vargas before-at the trial of Roderigo Alva. He was an associate of Alva’s and had given evidence against him. According to him, Alva had boasted of having robbed the Casa Mayorez once already-something which Alva had been eager to admit, since his defence had been that the previous burglary accounted for his fingerprints on the scene.

‘He said the place was stacked with riches, and he was going back,’ Vargas had claimed. But this Alva had frantically denied. The two men had had a screaming match across the court. Vargas was an unpleasant character, but nobody had doubted he was telling the truth about this.

‘How-agitated?’ Sebastian asked Carlos now.

‘He kept saying, “Him”, “Him”,’ Carlos said. ‘I asked him what he meant, and he said, “He killed me.” And then he began to weep. He kept repeating over and over, “He killed me.”’

Sebastian tried not to listen to the thoughts that were shouting at him. It was monstrous, impossible. For if it was true-

If it was true, then Roderigo Alva was innocent of the crime for which he had been convicted. And that meant…

He pulled himself together and read the rest of the newspaper story. Miguel Vargas had been arrested for shooting down a policeman in cold blood in the presence of witnesses. There was no doubt of his guilt, or the fact that he would spend the rest of his life behind bars for this crime alone. Nothing Sebastian did or didn’t do would make any difference to that.