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.
‘Well, if I can’t talk to Earl Bancroft perhaps you will be able to help me. I believe your father has some information about the Montes Claros diamond mine. Before my father died, the earl showed Vitor a map of an abandoned section of the mine. The map is the legal property of the mine owner. You might be aware that I bought the mine six years ago, which means that the map belongs to me.’
Sabrina shrugged. ‘I don’t know anything about a map. I told you my father rarely confides in me about his business dealings.’
A vague memory pushed into her mind. At the time she hadn’t paid much attention to the incident, but Cruz’s words made her wonder about her father’s curious behaviour when she had walked into his study and found him looking at a document spread out on his desk. Earl Bancroft had snatched up the piece of paper before Sabrina had got a clear glimpse of it and thrust it into an envelope.
‘This is my pension fund for when I retire,’ he’d said, laughing. ‘It’s much safer to keep it hidden here at Eversleigh than in a bank.’
‘Why is the map important?’ she asked Cruz curiously.
‘I believe it shows a section of the mine that was dug many years ago.’ He shrugged. ‘There may be nothing down there, but the Estrela Vermelha was found in the deepest section of where we currently operate and it’s possible that there are other diamonds in the abandoned mine.’ Cruz’s eyes raked Sabrina’s face and she quickly dropped her gaze.
‘Did your father ever show you a map?’
‘No,’ she said truthfully.
‘Do you know where he might have put a map? Does he have a safe where he keeps important documents?’
She shook her head. ‘He wouldn’t need to lock things in a safe. Eversleigh Hall had dozens of secret places to hide valuables—and people, come to that. Many old English houses have secret chambers and priest holes, which were built hundreds of years ago when Catholic priests were persecuted,’ she explained. ‘For instance, one of the wooden panels in this room conceals a secret cupboard. My father knows the location of all the hiding places at the hall.’
‘And do you also know where the secret chambers are?’
‘I know where some are, but not all of them. Even if I knew every hiding place I wouldn’t show you their location without my father’s permission.’
Sabrina felt a sense of loyalty towards Earl Bancroft despite the fact that they had never shared a close emotional bond. Since her father’s mysterious disappearance she had realised that she loved him. She looked at Cruz steadily. ‘If you are really the rightful owner of the map then I’m sure my father would have given it to you when you took over the mine.’
‘Don’t pretend to be naïve,’ Cruz growled. ‘I won’t go so far as to say that Earl Bancroft is a crook, but some of his business dealings are decidedly shady.’
‘How dare you—?’
‘I worked for him,’ Cruz cut her off impatiently. ‘I saw how your father ignored safety regulations in the mine to save money.’
Sabrina’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘My father isn’t here to defend himself and I only have your word on what happened.’
‘And of course you, with your aristocratic title and privileged lifestyle, would not believe the word of someone who grew up in dire poverty in a slum,’ Cruz said sardonically. ‘You always thought I was beneath you, didn’t you, princesa?’
‘That’s not true.’ During their affair she’d hated it when he had mockingly called her princess to emphasise that they came from different ends of the social spectrum. ‘I never cared about where you came from, or that you didn’t have much money.’
He gave a harsh laugh. ‘You made it obvious that you were desperate to return to Eversleigh Hall.’ He glanced around the comfortable library with its shelves of books from floor to ceiling and plush velvet curtains hanging at the windows.
