Dancing in the Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page B

wasn’t a charity garment provided by the hospital, but an exquisite thing, lavishly embroidered, with its own matching bed jacket. She had been given a private room, the staff couldn’t be more attentive had she been royalty, and every day gifts of fruit and flowers arrived.
    Enrique Ruiz told her that Carlos would be collecting her to bring her home the day after tomorrow. She felt like a cat on a ledge. Trapped.
    * * *
    She was roused and given the clothes she would need for the journey. Her own suitcase had still not come to light in the wreckage. Her conversation with the señor had been heeded because, sensitive to her needs, instead of the leg-revealing dress she anticipated, here was a trouser suit in a clear bright orange. Lovely uplifting colour! Someone had a pretty good eye for size, she thought, pleased with the fit. But best of all, the trousers hid the hideous bandage on her leg.
    She walked out to meet Carlos with a pronounced limp and averted eyes. He took both her hands and said how wonderful she looked. The matron, Dorcas’s special doctor and favourite nurse came to the car to wave them off.
    They drove in silence for a while. Dorcas was too shy to do anything but look straight ahead. She pretended total absorption in the scenery, which was indeed compelling. The blue mountains stretched to sombre and lonely heights; in the distance she could see the sea.
    â€˜I warned you not to cross fate,’ Carlos told her.
    â€˜So you did.’
    â€˜I hope you have learnt your lesson?’
    â€˜I’m not sure that I have. I accept only that I am to be a temporary guest in your house,’ Dorcas replied in as cool a tone as her runaway heartbeat would allow. ‘It will be a pleasant diversion to idle in luxury for a while.’
    Her words were chosen as a form of self-protection and not to annoy him. Nevertheless, he looked intensely annoyed.
    â€˜Is that all it means to you?’
    Rounding a bend at a speed conducive to heightening temper, but faster than caution permitted, Carlos had to swerve violently to avoid an old man, a
campesino
, sitting on top of a cart drawn by a slow, fat donkey. Gathering speed again, mercifully he seemed to have forgotten asking that difficult question.
    â€˜Did you eat any breakfast?’
    â€˜No.’ She had been too tense to eat.
    â€˜In that case, we’ll stop for something. The drive might prove tiring for you. We mustn’t forget this is your first full day out of bed. A breakfast stop will split the journey.’
    â€˜Lovely. I’m hungry now.’
    Dorcas assumed that Carlos meant to stop at some roadside eating place that happened to be on their way. He proved her assumption wrong by twisting sharply off the main highway. The powerful car began to climb a hazardous mountain road. She felt no qualms, but admired Carlos’s prowess behind the wheel. She was content to put her life in his strong, competent hands. Memory overwhelmed her and she was back in hospital again as she remembered reaching out her fingers and having her tentative search met with an answering and reassuring grip.
    â€˜That is our quarry,’ said Carlos, pointing to a house perched like an eyrie on the edge of a gigantic cliff rising sheer from the sea.
    â€˜Who on earth chooses to live there?’ she said, pulling out of her reverie to gasp in astonishment.
    â€˜My grandmother,’ he said. And then with laughing indulgence: ‘That isn’t the signal to fuss your fingers through your hair. You look charmingly wind blown.’
    â€˜Charming!’
    Hurriedly she reached into her handbag for her comb. Her handbag had been looped over her arm and had escaped with a scruffed strap and minor scratches. Providence had been on her side in that it was large enough to contain, besides her money and travellers’ cheques, make-up and such, her grandmother’s bible. Sliding her comb back, her fingers brushed against the bible in