Though tempted to torment her a little more, he soothed, ‘Do not worry.’ She looked ready to leap out of bed there and then, which would probably result in her collapsing. She looked, he decided, as weak as a day-old chick. ‘Harriet is being taken care of. A man is seeing to the animals and a girl from the village is helping out in the house.’
‘You did that?’
‘Harriet is my tenant. It is my responsibility … Had I known of her accident I would have arranged for help until she was on her feet.’
‘And I wouldn’t have come. We would never have met.’
Santiago contemplated the afternoon sun that was pooling on the dark wood beneath his feet and grunted. ‘In a perfect world,’ he agreed, thinking how much simpler his life had been a few short days ago.
He had said many worse things to her but strangely this hurt more than any of the others. It was not even a rebuke, it was just a rather obvious statement of fact—she had caused him nothing but trouble, had gone out of her way to do so.
‘You’re crying?’ Santiago had always had a cynical attitude to female tears. At best they were irritating, at worst manipulative. His usual response was to walk away or ignore them.
For some reason he found himself able to do neither.
‘No!’ she said, sounding insulted by the suggestion. ‘I’m fine.’ She sniffed, sticking out her chin and looking anything but. ‘And I’m sorry to have been a nuisance and put everyone to so much trouble.’
He shrugged. ‘I think that as my brother poisoned you it was the least we could do.’
Lucy’s eyes went wide as she blurted the question that she couldn’t get out of her head. ‘She wasn’t riding Santana, was she?’
Santiago tensed, his body stiffening before he vented a hard laugh. ‘Magdalena was afraid of horses.’ It turned out that she was more afraid of his bad opinion. ‘All horses. She would not have gone into the same stable as Santana. The mare she was on broke a leg in the fall and had to be put down.’
‘But if she was afraid—?’ She broke off, colouring. ‘Sorry, it’s none of my—’
‘You want to know why my wife was riding if she hated horses?’ His voice was harsh. ‘It is a fair question,’ he conceded with a tight nod of his dark head. ‘She went out riding because I said she should conquer her fears. I told her she should suck it up and stop being pathetic.’
His thoughts flew back to the incident that had preceded the tragedy; over the years he had replayed it innumerable times.
It had been Gabby’s birthday. The previous day he had cleared his calendar to be part of the celebrations, cancelled a series of important meetings and had been feeling pretty smug about taking his paternal responsibilities seriously. Apparently he took his husbandly ones, in light of the subsequent events, much less so.
Magdalena was a great organiser and the party had been a big hit for everyone except his daughter, who had spent the day watching wistfully as her friends clambered on the bouncy castle and sat on the back of the placid Shetland pony while it was led around the garden.
When he had asked her if she wanted a turn she had shook her head. ‘It’s very dangerous. Mamá says I might get hurt.’
When he had carried her onto the bouncy castle her terrified sobs had been so pathetic that he’d had to remove her. He had known then that situation could no longer be ignored.
That evening he had confronted Magdalena, too angry to be tactful or gentle, accusing her of infecting their once-fearless daughter with her own insecurities and fears … He had shouted her down when she had protested that it was her duty to protect her child from danger.
‘Danger! You think a lollipop represents danger,’ he had mocked angrily. ‘I will not have our daughter grow up to be a woman who is afraid of her own shadow.’
‘A woman like me?’
The silence had stretched—they had had this conversation before, or a version of it, many times, and it was at this point where he rushed in to comfort her, but this time he had held back. He had previously told her everything would be all right and the situation had not improved; if anything it had deteriorated.
So Santiago, still angry with himself as much as her for allowing the situation to continue, had hardened his heart to the appeal in her eyes, ignored her quivering lip and said angrily, ‘Yes.’
When they had married Santiago had been convinced that with his support and freed from her parents’ oppressive influence his timid wife would blossom. He had seen himself as the noble hero Magdalena had thought him.
His lip curled into a contemptuous smile. He had thought it would be easy but in those days he had imagined that love could conquer all, that he could mould Magdalena into the woman he had known she could be.
In reality the gentle timidity that had originally drawn him to her and aroused his strongly developed protective instincts had begun to irritate him.
In retrospect he could see that his disenchantment had begun after Gabby had been born. He had always believed that a mother should be a strong role model for a daughter, but it had seemed to him that the only things Magdalena was passing on to their child were a lack of confidence and a whole host of phobias.
‘She was doing what she thought I wanted,’ he told Lucy now. And you are having this conversation why, Santiago? And with the woman your brother is sleeping with, of all people. ‘Magdalena wanted to please me and it killed her—I killed her.’
And you, she thought, have been punishing yourself ever since … This was a side of Santiago Silva that she had never seen. Part of her way of coping with this man was listing him under the heading of inhuman—the suggestion he had normal vulnerabilities made her feel uneasy.
‘If that were true you would be in prison,’ she offered in a level voice. ‘It was a terrible tragic accident,’ she added, refusing to offer him the condemnation he appeared to be inviting.
‘Accidents cannot be predicted.’ And neither, it seemed, could her response—he’d thought he could have relied on her to take advantage of the chink in his armour.
The self-loathing in his voice made her wince. ‘What do you want me to say—that it was your fault?’
‘I do not wish you to say anything.’ She could have legitimately asked why he had introduced the subject, but she didn’t. After a quick glance at his face she reached for the crystal water jug, not anticipating the weight of it. Her wrist trembled, sending an ice cube skidding across the polished surface of the bedside table.
With a grunt Santiago took it from her hand, his fingers brushing hers. The contact was light but the response of her nerve endings was anything but … It zigzagged through her body like an internal lightning bolt.
‘Let me—you’ll have the place drenched.’
She watched from under her lashes, nursing her still-tingling fingers against her chest as he filled her glass with a steady hand.
‘You have a lovely daughter,’ she said, turning the conversation into a less painful topic. ‘She is back home?’
‘An extended summer break. My lovely daughter has been excluded from school … again. However I’m sure my daughter’s schooling is of no interest to you.’ Women who were ruled by self-interest were rarely interested in any subject that did not directly affect them.
Self-interest has her living in a primitive farmhouse, acting as unpaid labour and nursemaid?