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She slipped her fingers into the open side drawer.

“There’s a secret compartment and I hid them here before I left.

At dinner I got such a fright realizing Ramón had sold furniture—that he would do that never occurred to me.

Thank God he didn’t sell this.” She grimaced, trying to move the hidden lever.

“I didn’t know I’d be gone for eight years, and Papa had said not to risk them on the journey.

Besides, I would have had no use for them in a convent. ”

“Use for what?”

“Mama’s pearls—oh!” The secret drawer sprang open and she stared into it, dismayed. “It’s empty. Mama’s pearls are gone.”

L uke made as quick an exit as he decently could from the bedchamber, leaving Isabella to dress by herself and speculate some more on what had happened to her pearls.

Luke wasn’t surprised they’d disappeared. It was naive of her to imagine they’d be where she’d left them, secret drawer or not. Ramón would have gone through this place with a fine-tooth comb, stripping it of anything worth selling. The pearls were long gone, he imagined. Pity, but there it was.

He’d buy her more pearls when they got to London.

In the meantime, he needed to get away. He was starting to feel… he wasn’t sure exactly what. A bit out of control, perhaps. Usually he liked the feeling that anything might happen, but this was different.

He walked out onto the terrace. It was lined with scraggly weeds. Ramón didn’t waste a penny on anything that was not productive.

Luke breathed in the cool air sliding down from the mountains. Times like this he almost wished he’d taken to cigarillos, as so many men had during the war. He imagined it would be a soothing thing to be able to step outside and blow a cloud. A kind of declaration of privacy.

But he hadn’t picked up the habit. And his privacy… well, the less said of that the better. It was very much under threat.

Luke strolled along a pathway that led around the back of the house. Stupid idea to come to Spain on his own. He should have brought a companion, or at least a manservant, someone to keep them from being alone together all the time. He should have hired her a maid.

He could do that now, hire someone from Valle Verde, someone she could talk to, someone from home. Brilliant idea. He strode along, feeling better.

It would help if he could keep his hands off her, he thought.

But he couldn’t. Her slender, lissome body, all silken skin and warm, responsive eagerness.

He recalled the feeling of her limbs twining around him, the blind rapture of her face lifted to his as he entered her, the feeling as her body closed around him and clenched tight…

He groaned. He was ready, right now, to turn, march back to the bedchamber, and bed her all over again.

Control. He needed more control.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it was only her body that obsessed him, but she had an… allure about her that he couldn’t resist; an honesty, a zest for life that entranced him.

And she was very good company. He enjoyed talking to her almost as much as bedding her. Almost.

God, he couldn’t recall the last time he’d lost control so completely with a woman. Lost all awareness of who and where he was. Never before…

He shoved the thought aside.

Luke walked past the stables. He would have liked to go in, see what was happening there. Ramón had an eye for good horseflesh, he could see, but a man’s stables were private. One needed an invitation.

He walked on. There was a spring in his step that hadn’t been there for… he didn’t know how long. And the bouts of restlessness and gloom that had plagued him ever since…

His headstrong little wife kept him busy, that was all. Careering all over the country.

His nightmares, too, were less severe. Isabella woke him almost as soon as they started. She seemed to know, even in her sleep, that he was dreaming again.

All this time he’d never realized the solution was not to sleep alone. Simple, really.

In many ways marriage suited him surprisingly well. It was just a little too… intimate.

He could still almost feel her fingers touching that damned scar. Blast it. She’d see it eventually. And then the questions would start. Stripping him bare.

Behind the stables half a dozen women sat around by a trestle table laughing and chatting as they stripped the husks from cobs of maize. They smiled at Luke and bobbed their heads. Luke greeted them and walked on, his thoughts miles away.

He’d had a wound once that had been treated and bandaged and left to heal. The bandage had become glued to his wound. It had been quite all right; there was no pain, just some throbbing, which was quite bearable, and a faint smell, but only if you sniffed it up close.

Finally Rafe and Gabe insisted he remove it. It was crusted on, part of his flesh. He’d tried soaking it, but it wouldn’t come off. Luke was all for leaving it as it was; no harm, it would eventually fall off of its own accord.

But Rafe had fetched a physician, and the fellow had taken one look and ripped the bandage off, painful, tearing the old wound open again and releasing a flood of pus.

The healing had to start all over again, and yes, exposed to the air it healed quickly, but to this day Luke was sure if left alone it would have healed by itself. And far less painfully.

He wasn’t going to let anyone rip off his protective covering again. Not even his wife.

Especially not his wife. She still had… illusions.

Vanity, thy name is Luke, he thought ruefully. But he’ddeprived her of her home, her country, and any choice in marriage, and he didn’t want to rid her of her last illusions about her husband.

Vanity? No, he decided. Cowardice.

So be it. A man was entitled to his privacy.

He would get her a maidservant to talk to. That would put an end to this… galloping intimacy.

B ella sought out her sister and broached the matter of the pearls.

“And so is revealed the real reason you decided to ‘drop in’ to Valle Verde,” Perlita said in a hard voice. “Those pearls.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Bella protested. “It was just… while I was here, I thought—”

“You would get what you could. Well, you won’t. Whatever was left in this house eight years ago now belongs to Ramón and is his to do with what he chooses.”

“I did not come here to get what I could. Besides, those pearls belonged to me, not the estate.”

Perlita shrugged. “What do you care? You are married to a rich man; he can buy you more pearls.”

“It’s not the same. They were a wedding present to my mother from her mother and father. My grandfather collected the pearls himself from the South Seas.”

“Too bad. You should have taken them with you when youleft.”

“I suppose Ramón sold them. He’s sold everything else ofvalue.”

“Ramón does what he must to make the estate flourish.”

“Including marrying the first heiress who comes along? And what of you, Perlita? Where will you and your loyalty be then?”

“Do not look down your nose at Ramón,” Perlita flashed. “He is no different from your father—our father.”

Bella was outraged. “Papa was nothing like Ramón! He—”

Perlita made a sharp gesture. “Hah! Papa married your mother for her fortune, did he not? For the sake of Valle Verde, no? It is exactly the same.”

“It is not the same!”

“No, because Papa’s sacrifice was in vain. Your grandfather cheated himby making sure he could not use most of the money, by ensuring most of the money went to the children of the marriage. To you.”

“My grandfather did?”Bella knew nothing of this. She’d always known Mama’s fortune would come to her and not toPapa’s heir, but not that Papa felt he’d been cheated. He never discussed such matters with her, and she’d been too intimidated—and probably too young—to ask.

“It’s why he would never let your grandparents visit.”

“They didn’t visit because they died shortly after Mama died.”

“Did they?” Perlita said incuriously. “It’s not what my mother said.”

“Anyway, I would have given Papa whatever he needed—”

Perlita snorted. “He tried to get his hands on some of it during the war. I heard him and Mama talking about it. Neither you nor he could touch it. It’s in some kind of trust until you turn one-and-twenty, or were married.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I suppose, being rich and spoiled all your life, you never think about where the money comes from.”

Bella gave her half sister an incredulous look.

Rich and spoiled all her life? She’d been rich only in theory, and as for spoiled, Papa had been a harder taskmaster than the most severe of the nuns at the convent.

And for a good part of the last eight years she’d lived on the verge of starvation. That’s why she was all skin and bones.

She wasn’t the one with the lush figure.Or the beautiful dresses. Perlita had changed into another dress after the siesta. This one was shimmering gold. It brought out the gold in her hair.

Ramón might have to sell paintings and other people’s pearls to raise money for the estate, but he didn’t stint on Perlita’s clothing.

She opened her mouth to explain to Perlita just how rich and spoiled she hadn’t been, when Perlita turned and walked onto the terrace. Bella hurried to catch up with her. “I didn’t know anything about it,” she repeated. She felt so foolish, discovering all this from a younger half sister.

Perlita glanced at Bella over her shoulder and asked, “Did you never wonder why Papa hated your grandfather?”

“Not really. Most of the time he never even spoke of him. One time I heard him say Mama’s father was a pirate and a thief, like all the English.”

Perlita curled her lip. “Because he tricked him in the marriage settlements and robbed him of his pride. Papa should have had all the money. It’s why he married your mother, after all. God knows he never loved her, plain little dab of a thing that she was.”

“Do not dare to insult my mother!” Bella flashed, her fists clenched.