‘Catalina!’ Maggie said, half-amused, half-horrified. ‘You make me out a terrible chaperone.’
Impulsively the girl hugged her. ‘I like you so much, Maggie. You have an understanding heart, I think.’
‘Well, you take my advice. Stand up to this ogre and tell him to get lost. This is the twenty-first century. You can’t be forced into marriage against your will-certainly not with an old man. One day you’ll meet a nice boy of your own age.’
Catalina chuckled. ‘I thought you believed a woman was crazy to marry a Spaniard of any age.
‘I meant any English woman. I dare say if you’re Spanish they might be just about tolerable.’
‘How kind of you,’ said an ironic voice from the shadows
They whirled and saw a man rise from the armchair by the window, and switch on a tall standard lamp. Maggie felt a frisson of alarm, and not only because of his sudden appearance, the way he seemed to loom up from nowhere. It was to do with the man himself. There was something inherently dangerous about him. She knew that by instinct, even in that brief moment.
Before she could demand to know who he was and how he came to be there, she heard Catalina whisper, ‘Sebastian!’
Oh, heavens! Maggie thought. Now the fat’s in the fire.
Obviously he’d heard every word she’d said. But that might even be a good thing. A little plain speaking was long overdue.
She surveyed him, realising that she had been seriously misled. Catalina’s notion of elderly was coloured by her own youth. This man bore no relation to the grey-beard they had been discussing. Don Sebastian de Santiago was in his thirties, perhaps his late thirties but certainly no older. He stood a good six foot two inches tall, with a lean, hard body that he carried like an athlete.
Only on his face did Maggie see what she had expected, a look of pride and arrogance that she guessed had been imprinted there at the hour of his birth. And right now, to pride and arrogance was added anger. If she’d cherished a hope that he hadn’t heard all her frank words, a look at his black, snapping eyes would have dispelled it.