The only reason she had worn it tonight was because she had wanted to impress the party guests. People booked parties at Eversleigh Hall because they liked the grandeur and history of the stately home, and they had no idea that, short of a miracle, the hall might soon have to be sold and would no longer be the ancestral home of the Bancroft family.
The dark red diamond was the colour of blood, but Cruz’s words did not make any sense to Sabrina. ‘What do you mean? What does your father have to do with the Red Star?’
‘He found it, and it was his right to claim part of the value of the diamond. But he died before he received his percentage share. My father was killed doing your father’s dirty work,’ Cruz said harshly. ‘Earl Bancroft sent him into the mine to search for more red diamonds. Your father has Vitor’s blood on his hands and I have come to Eversleigh to demand compensation for my father’s life.’
‘I WANT YOU to leave.’
Sabrina whirled away from Cruz and faced him across the desk, breathing hard as she struggled to control her temper. ‘How dare you turn up at Eversleigh uninvited and make a ridiculous accusation against my father, who isn’t even here to defend himself?’
‘He couldn’t defend himself against the truth.’ Cruz welcomed his anger as a distraction from the infuriating knowledge that when Sabrina had squeezed past him, her breasts had brushed against his chest and his body had reacted with humiliating predictability. His eyes were drawn to the low-cut neckline of her dress and the jerky rise and fall of her breasts. He pictured her naked beneath him, the erotic contrast of her milky pale body against his dark bronze skin, and he remembered her soft, kitten-like cries in the throes of orgasm.
Inferno! It was two months since he had dumped his last mistress and clearly he had gone too long without sex, he thought with savage self-derision. The purpose of his visit was to persuade Earl Bancroft to hand over the map of the abandoned mine, but all he could think of was how much he wanted to bend Sabrina over the desk and push her dress up to her waist, baring her silken thighs so that he could...
Ruthlessly he controlled his imagination but he could not control the painful throb of desire in his groin as he tried to focus on what she was saying.
‘I didn’t know your father had died.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m sorry... I know how close you were to him. But I don’t believe my father was responsible. How could he have had anything to do with Vitor’s death?’
‘When my father found the Estrela Vermelha, the earl sent him back to an area of the mine that he knew was unsafe to look for more diamonds.’ Cruz’s jaw hardened. ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t know. Bancroft must have told you about the accident at the mine even if he failed to admit his culpability for what happened.’
‘My father didn’t confide in me,’ Sabrina admitted. ‘We’ve never been close. I grew up at Eversleigh, but my father had inherited land and the diamond mine in Brazil from an uncle and he spent months at a time abroad. I visited him when I was eighteen, which is when I met you, but when I came back to England I had little contact with him.’
She fell silent, remembering the bleakest period of her life when she had hidden away at Eversleigh like a wounded animal. There had been no one she could talk to about the miscarriage. Four years earlier, when she had been fourteen, her mother had walked out of her marriage to Earl Bancroft and abandoned her children for her lover, and Sabrina had learned a valuable lesson—that she could not trust anyone and she had to rely on herself.
When she’d fallen pregnant by Cruz in Brazil she had told her father about her pregnancy. Typically he had said little then, or later, when she’d informed him that she had lost the baby. His only comment had been that he thought she had made the right decision to return to England and take up the university place she had deferred.
The earl had paid an unexpected visit to Eversleigh Hall during the summer ten years ago, Sabrina suddenly recalled. Her father had been in a strange mood and even more uncommunicative than usual, but he had made the surprising announcement that he intended to sell his diamond mine. He’d made no mention of Vitor Delgado’s fatal accident, or of Cruz, and Sabrina’s pride had refused to allow her to ask about him.
She had spent her first weeks back at Eversleigh hoping that Cruz would come after her, but as time went by she had been forced to accept that he wasn’t coming and he did not care about her. Now she’d learned that he had suffered a terrible tragedy soon after she had returned home. Following his father’s death his focus would understandably have been on taking care of his mother and much younger twin sisters.
She studied his face and noticed the fine lines around his eyes and deep grooves on either side of his mouth that had not been there ten years ago. He had idolised his father and would have felt Vitor’s loss deeply. She felt a faint tug on her heart. ‘When did the accident at the mine happen?’
‘Three weeks after you had left me and returned to England. It was the worst time of my life. First you lost our baby and then I lost my father.’
Sabrina stiffened. ‘An estimated one in seven pregnancies ends in miscarriage,’ she said huskily, repeating what numerous medical experts had told her when she had sought an answer as to why she had lost her baby. ‘We were unlucky.’
‘Perhaps it was simply bad luck.’ Cruz’s tone was devoid of any emotion, but Sabrina was convinced she had heard criticism in his voice. She curled her hands into tight balls until her fingernails cut into her palms.
‘Riding my horse did not cause me to miscarry,’ she said in a low tone. ‘I was seventeen weeks into my pregnancy and beyond the risk period of the first three months. The doctor said I was not to blame.’ But she had always blamed herself, she acknowledged bleakly, and she had suspected that Cruz thought she’d been irresponsible to have gone riding.
‘If you’d had your way, you would have wrapped me in cotton wool for nine months,’ she burst out.
His over-the-top concern had been for the baby, not for her. Every day, when Cruz had gone to work at the mine he had left her under the watchful and disapproving eyes of his mother. Sabrina had felt lonely and bored in Brazil. She’d been delighted at her three-month scan when the doctor had said that her pregnancy was progressing well and there was no reason why she should not do the things she normally did. She had thought it would be safe to take her horse for a gentle ride, aware that her mother had ridden during both of her pregnancies.
Cruz’s chiselled features were impassive. ‘There is no point in dragging up the past.’
His harsh voice jerked Sabrina from her painful memories. Her long lashes swept down, but not before Cruz glimpsed raw emotion in her grey eyes that shocked him. Ten years ago her lack of emotion after the miscarriage had made him realise that she had not wanted their child, and her hurried departure from Brazil had proved that she did not have any feelings for him.
His jaw hardened and he told himself he must have imagined the pained expression in her eyes. ‘You said that the earl is away, but I need to speak to him urgently. I assume you keep in contact with him by phone or email?’
She shook her head. ‘All I know is that he is probably in Africa. He has investments in a couple of mines there, and he often takes trips into remote areas to investigate new mining opportunities.’
Everything she had said was true, Sabrina assured herself. Her father often went abroad on what he called his adventures. But he had never stayed out of contact for this long. She had last spoken to Earl Bancroft when he had called her from a town somewhere in Guinea, but, after eighteen months when nothing had been seen or heard of him, Sabrina was seriously concerned for her father’s safety.
‘I’m afraid my father is incommunicado at the moment,’ she murmured.
There was something odd about the situation, Cruz mused. Something Sabrina wasn’t telling him. With difficulty he restrained his impatience.