Devil's Darling Read online

  ‘If you had ever known a man, then I would know.’ The Don spoke with that absolute assurance which she found so infuriating.

  ‘Are you never wrong, about anything?’ she asked stormily. ‘Do you think you’re the only man who has ever wanted this face all smiles for him, this body all weak with desire? When I was fifteen Marcus told me all about men and what it was they wanted if they thought a girl was pretty. He said they didn’t want intelligence from an attractive girl, they wanted compliance and a weak will. Each holiday from my boarding-school we travelled in Europe and he taught me to like good paintings and works of art; music and the architecture of lovely old buildings. He gave me a mind to think with, and so every time a young man started lying his head off about loving me, I knew that all he really wanted was to paw me and make me feel cheap.’

  Persepha smiled, bitter-sweetly. ‘No, you have a bargain, Don Diablo, if all you want is a pristine body. What heart I had is buried with Marcus. What love I had to give, I gave to him. You, Senor Conquistadore, have but the shape of me, a thing of marble with hardly any feelings at all. Impeccable, cold, and heartless. A statue if you like, but not a woman.’

  ‘So you think it beyond my powers to make you feel like a woman?’ His eyes glinted and a certain diablerie seemed to drift into them, so that the eyelids drooped and the black lashes cast shadows on the chiselled bronze of his face. ‘You are twenty and totally inexperienced, and I have been a man since before you were born. You make a challenge, chica, and I am too much a Latin not to accept it. En verdad, we will see whether or not I can bring alive a pale marble statue.’

  ‘And if you don’t?’ she challenged. Will you let me go?’

  ‘I never let go, querida, of what is mine.’ And as if to set the seal on his words he ground out the stub of his cheroot with a decisive movement of his hand, and in a shaft of sunlight his gold ring glittered like his eyes.

  ‘Then I hope,’ Persepha said deliberately, ‘that I catch some foreign germ and die before I have to spend the rest of my life with you!’

  A lingering silence followed her words, which she had flung at him across the table with all the despair of a girl who in a matter of days had lost all that she had lived for. Words that she meant with all the heart that she denied.

  Then, making every nerve in her body cry out with protest, the Don brought his hand down hard on the table and the things of porcelain and silver shook as if thunder cracked. ‘You will not speak in such a way, do you hear me? This land is Mexican and here the old gods lurk in the shadows and listen to what we say, and I have an old vecina in my house, Carmenteira, who will tell you that the gods grant more readily our sinful wishes than our saintly ones. You little fool! One would think that you had married the Devil himself!’

  ‘I have,’ she rejoined, and it seemed to her that his dark, black-browed, fearsomely boned face could only belong to that satanic deity. ‘I see no angel when I look at you - only the dark angel!’

  And this time, it seemed, she had gone beyond his tolerance of what he would take from a bride, and what he would punish. In an instant he was on his feet and striding round the table. He reached with long arms for her inwardly quaking figure and swung her with cruel strength out of her chair and up against his hard, powerful body. The warmth of his skin struck through the silk of her shirt, and his fingers bit into her flesh. She shuddered with pain and fright, and like a wild thing she began to struggle, even going so far as to kick at him with her sandalled feet. But as if he felt nothing but anger he dragged her closer to him and doubling his fist in her fine hair jerked back her head and made her cry out again. He bent to her and even as she fought with him, he took her lips with a fierceness that brooked no refusal. The strength in his arms could have cracked her body as he forced her to yield to his kiss, the entire length of her slim body pressed to his in the sort of embrace she had always before eluded with a lighthearted laugh, aware that if a man pursued her, there was always Marcus to protect her.

  Now she had no protection from the frightening male strength of this man, who was no hopeful, ardent boy, but the man who had every right to hold her so, and kiss her until she felt her breath would stop.

  When her feet left the ground and she realized that he was carrying her towards the hacienda, an incredible fury shook her and like a young vixen she sank her teeth into his shoulder and saw through the veil of her hair the drops of blood against the white material. Oh God, she had bitten him like some animal! At once she was torn between the delight of having hurt him, and fear of his retaliation.

  ‘What are you doing?’ She struggled in vain for her release from his arms whose muscles were like cords around her. ‘Where are you going?’

  He looked swiftly down in her eyes as he mounted a flight of iron-wrought stairs, taking them two at a time, and there was a look in his eyes that made Persepha want to scream. Never in her life before had she seen a look such as the one that burned in the Don’s eyes, while across his hot forehead lay a thick strand of black hair.

  ‘Aren’t you woman enough to know?’ he taunted her, and beside his mouth a pulse was beating, holding her mesmerized as he strode along the gallery, making for the bedroom which she had occupied last night ... on her own. Though she had known that it adjoined his room, he had not come near her, or touched her ...

  Now was different and she knew it with her every nerve and instinct. The door of her room was thrust open and she was carried across to the great bed with its silk sheets and heavy lace coverlet. She was dropped without ceremony on to the lace and silk, and then he returned to the door and very deliberately turned the key in the lock.

  Persepha pushed the hair from her eyes and watched him with terrified comprehension, with limbs that just wouldn’t move as he came back to her, tall and powerful in the beautiful bedroom hung with flounced curtains and a huge vicuna rug spread over the floor.

  The Latin eyes seemed to smoulder with points of fire in that dark, strong face, and she watched numbly as he unbuttoned his shirt and wrenched it with a single move ment from his broad shoulders. She saw the marks of her teeth against the tawny skin, and the way the black pants fitted close to his lean hips and long legs.

  He stood there studying her, and he looked every inch a man without mercy, in whom a rage of passion was building up... and then he reached for her and his touch brought her alive ... desperately alive, so that she fought with a frightened fury that actually made him smile, his teeth glinting white and devilish as he pinned her to the bed with his hard body.

  ‘Come, mi mujer,’ he mocked. ‘This is no way for a bride to treat her bridegroom.’

  ‘Go - go to the devil!’ she panted, swiftly turning her head aside so that his lips crushed the side of her neck. Her senses swam and for just a moment she seemed to see again that little church in the English hills, where the smoke of candles had mingled with the scent of roses. If she had thought not to awake from the dream, or the nightmare, then her hope was shattered. Marriage wasn’t just words and a pair of rings on a prayer book ... it was this, a man with a woman...

  ‘Vida mia, I thought I was the devil,’ and with a strength that mocked her, he turned her to him, and she closed her eyes as his lips breathed ‘devil’ against her lips.

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT was several hours later when Persepha stirred awake to find her bedroom in velvety darkness.

  She lay quiet under the silk sheets, and as awareness seeped back into her body and her mind, the quietness became torment, and with a sudden sob she turned and buried her face in the silk pillow.

  The silk was smoky, tangy, and she tensed as suddenly as if a whip had stolen across her skin. The masculine aroma brought memory, and a wave of sweeping hot colour that seemed to envelop her from head to heels, and then it slowly receded and she felt shivery, forlorn, with an ache in her heart as well as her limbs.

  Nothing had moved him, not pleas or raking fingernails. With a strength whose recollection was enough to awake fear in her
heart, he had made the spoken vows a living reality. He had wiped out the world she had always known and made a woman of the girl whom Marcus had always guarded so well. There had been no shield, no armour against Don Diablo, and as she lay clenching the sheet that covered her, her fingertips still seemed to feel the smooth warm skin of a masculine back that had rippled with firm muscle ... even a kind of beauty ... a terrible beauty she just didn’t want to remember.

  She closed her eyes and wished fiercely that she could kill him ... if there had been a knife handy she would have plunged it into him, and wouldn’t now be a shivering, hot-cold piece of womanhood, far from all she had cared for and with no one ... not a soul to whom she could turn for sympathy in her plight.

  Oh God, she hated self-pity, and sitting up she wrapped her slim arms about her updrawn knees and stared into the duskiness that had given way to all that hot sunlight ... she had married him, knowing from the start that he meant to be a husband, not a guardian. She had stood in church with him and heard him speak of worship and obedience ... again she shivered, and then gritted her teeth like a young animal in distress. ‘I hate you!’ She spoke into the darkness, fiercely. ‘I hate your black eyes and your black heart!’

  Then because the darkness of her room made the details of her bridal all that more vivid, she leaned over to where a lamp stood on a night table and switched on the light. She stared at the pillow beside her, at the impression left by his dark head ... it was unbearable to remember that he had lain there, holding her.

  Oh God, she just had to think of something else, and she let her gaze travel around the room and directed her hate at the unique beauty of it all. The lower half of the walls panelled in a dark wood that gleamed like silk, a sort of jungle wood, no doubt, that couldn’t be attacked by termites. The upper half of the walls had a golden tinge to them, a most attractive foil for the beautifully carved wardrobe and vanity table, and the cascades of flounced netting at the long windows, also tied back from the high carved bed. The huge vicuna rug was thick and curly, and in front of the vanity mirror stood an array of crystal containers, round-bodied, long-necked, silver-topped, with a little carved golden box to one side, and a brush and comb set in gleaming ivory.

  A sensuous room, deliberately designed for a woman, to set off those feminine attractions that would arouse a man each time he stepped from his own formal room into this soft, scented boudoir ... this gilded cage ... this passionate prison.

  Her nostrils quivered at the subtle scent, in which mingled that tang of a strong cheroot and the hard, clean sweat of a male body still clinging to the silk sheet which Persepha held around her. There on the rug lay her torn shirt, her trousers with the legs pulled inside out, her scraps of lingerie. One half of her wanted to rise and dress, but the other half was indolent, still faintly drowsy, still in a state of shocked sensibilities that shrank from contact with another human being. The very thought of having to face Don Diablo ever again was enough to bring a look of terror into her eyes.

  No! Oh no, she couldn’t bear it! She’d die if she had to see him ... that predator ... that inhuman devil who called himself her husband.

  That was what he had whispered, his fist doubled in her hair. ‘Now I’m your husband, querida. Now you are my wife.’

  Even as she was shuddering, and trying to reject with her mind and her body that which could not be rejected, the door of her room suddenly opened. Persepha tensed, and then relaxed just a fraction as the old servant Car-menteira came into the room. She carried a small tray on which stood a tall slim glass of something that looked cool and inviting.

  ‘I bring a little refreshment for the señora,’ she said, and as she came to the side of the bed her black, deep-set eyes were flickering over Persepha, and in their depths was a wickedly amused awareness of what had taken place in this bedroom. She glanced from the girl crouching in a silk sheet to the garments on the floor, and a sly cackle broke from the old woman.

  ‘So the proud little mistress has been taught her first lesson, eh?’ Carmenteira held out the tray to Persepha. ‘Passion-fruit juice, señora. Sweet and cool at the same time, as men sometimes like their women.’

  Persepha took the glass of juice because she was feeling abominably dry, but she wasn’t going to take insolence from this old creature, just because she had lived in this house for years and was no doubt feared as a bit of an old witch.

  ‘Thank you for bringing me a drink,’ she said coldly. ‘I shan’t want anything more, so you can go now.’

  ‘I have come to wait on the señora. To ensure that she is all right, then I will go.’ Carmenteira bent to pick up the ripped blue shirt and the tangled trousers. ‘A pity about the upper garment, which is the colour of flowers, but a woman was not meant to wear the trousers, not in the house of a real man. You have learned, have you not, that Don Diablo is every inch a real man, and that with him a woman is a woman or she is nothing?’ Again that knowing cackle, that glance of mockery from eyes which had seen many things in their many years. She came close to the bedside and reached out a wrinkled hand to Per-sepha’s bare arm. There against the soft white skin lay the mark of a dark bruise, and the old woman touched the bruise, almost as if it were a medal that Persepha had been given.

  ‘I wondered why he should want a white young thing like you, but now I see the reason.’

  ‘Do you?’ Persepha ran her tongue round her lips, moist and sweetened now by the passion juice. ‘To hurt and torment me, I suppose, for he certainly doesn’t love me.’

  ‘Love?’ Old Carmenteira looked scornful. ‘What is love? One can feel that for a kitten, a plant, a book! Between a man and woman it has to be passion ... a battle ... a winning and a losing. You were a virgin, that is a certainty if he married you. The fruit juice is good, eh? It makes you feel refreshed, for after a woman has been loved, she is always eager for three things. A glass of something cool, the feel of water on her skin, and a veil behind which to hide for a while. I am right, am I not, señora? I am not so ancient that I forget all about youth and its fires - the way they smoulder and leap and have to be quenched.’

  ‘I - I don’t want to talk about it, if you don’t mind.’ Persepha placed the empty glass on the tray, and there was a flush of mortification in her cheeks. If this old creature knew what had taken place, then so did the entire household. Fury rose up in Persepha and she just had to give way to it.

  ‘What are you waiting about for?’ she demanded. ‘Do the Don’s people want to hang the bed sheet on the hacienda gate so that everyone will be assured that he has bought himself a proper sort of bride?’

  At this outburst Carmenteira stared at Persepha, then her expression altered slightly and a faintly sympathetic look came into her eyes in their deep bed of wrinkles.

  ‘The English don’t like to speak of these things, eh? You are shy of an old woman like me coming into the privacy of your bedroom - be easy, señora, and don’t agitate yourself. Don Diablo sent me to you, for don’t you know that I was the personal servant of his lady mother? I cared for her, the dark Madonna, until the day she died. Now I shall take care of his golden Madonna—’

  ‘No - I can take care of myself and don’t need your assistance.’ Persepha dragged the silk sheet closer around her. ‘Go and tell him! Tell him I don’t want him, or you, or anyone else in this God-forsaken house. Tell him I hate him and everything he stands for - pride, arrogance, cruelty. You name it, he personifies it! I - I’d like to see him cold on the ground with his eyes out!’

  This time Carmenteira backed away from the bed and swiftly crossed herself. She gazed at Persepha with a sort of horror in her eyes. ‘A wife should not talk like that,’ she reproved. ‘The evil one might hear you—’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned the Don is the devil himself -and now get out and leave me alone! For heaven’s sake go to your witch brews and your valedictions and put a curse on me. I’d like to get out of his clutches, one way or the other.’

  ‘It isn’t right the way that you s
peak, señora,’ the old woman repeated. ‘There are women all over Mexico who would be proud and eager to be the bride of Don Diablo, who is considered el magnifco of all this region, with much land, much power, and the ability to give pleasure to a dozen women, let alone one. You should feel honoured—’

  ‘Honoured?’ Persepha gave a scornful laugh. ‘I feel insulted and degraded, for he doesn’t even pretend to have a spark of affection for me. I merely arouse the animal in him - is that what Mexican women feel proud of, being mere objects of their master’s—’ Persepha broke off, for she couldn’t endure to think of the word, let alone to say it. To be used and not loved was hell itself, and she flung away from old Carmenteira, hiding herself in her own loosened hair, which was long because Marcus had liked it that way.

  Marcus! Oh - hell, if Marcus could see her now would he be so proud of having found her a rich husband? Oh God, had he been so blinded by the Don’s wealth that he hadn’t seen what sort of a man he was? Arrogant, self-willed, concerned only to please himself and his lean, wickedly graceful body?

  It was as if a flame of hellfire itself licked through Persepha as she remembered the feel of that hard body, brown and warm as a saddle in the sun, with arms of steel that had wrapped themselves around her so there was no escape ... no avoidance of the lips that crushed her cries to tiny moans.

  ‘Go away,’ she said again. ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘You will not be foolish, señora?’