Rain Shadow (Dutch Country Brides)

by Cheryl St. John

  “Keeps out rain and snow.”

  She nodded.

  “Ready.”

  What now? She picked up the bucket and shovel and followed him to the wagon.

  “Four more to go.”

  She knocked her boots against the wheel before leaping onto the seat. “Daylight’s burning.”

  He’d thought she would balk at the unpleasant task. He and his brothers had always drawn straws to assign the chore. He’d expected her to tire easily and chafe under his words, but the woman had a fearful ability to stand her ground. And, he admitted, shooting her a sideways glance as the wagon pulled them toward the next pasture, she also had a fearful ability to arouse strong feelings in him.

  Working on the third tank, Anton admitted to himself she wasn’t a wilting violet, and as the hours passed they talked about winter on the farm. He warmed to her companionship and discussed his watch repair trade. “Watched my granddad as a boy. I was fascinated by all those tiny gears and springs, and I pestered him constantly while he worked. He never seemed to mind, though.”

  “He was a watchmaker?”

  “In the old country. He and my grandmother were bond servants working off their passage from Germany. He took up his watchmaking till he staked the farm with a loan.”

  “That’s a proud heritage. You and your son are fortunate to be part of it.”

  He looked at her. “I guess so. Sometimes it’s hard to see it that way.”

  “You take your family for granted.”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “No.”

  He slid his hat off, and the midday sun lit his gilded hair. His impossibly blue eyes held an unspoken question.

  Though he hadn’t asked aloud, she answered. “Two Feathers found me wandering near a massacred wagon train when I was about three. He raised me as his own child. I don’t remember my family.”

  Discomfort flickered across his intense features. “I’m sorry.”

  Rain Shadow accepted his condolence with a tilt of her head. “Since Slade’s birth I’ve tried to find my relatives, but I haven’t been successful. In April I will compete with Annie Oakley for the sharpshooter championship. I figure when I become famous and my story is told, someone will recognize me.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Remember, after the battle of Gettysburg, when a burial detail found an ambrotype in the hand of a dead Union soldier?”

  Anton nodded. “He didn’t have any other identification. That picture was on the front pages of all the newspapers. What did they call them?” He tilted his head before answering his own question. “‘Children of the battlefield.’”

  She nodded. “A woman recognized the picture as one she sent her husband before the battle.”

  “But how would anyone recognize you after all these years?”

  “They wouldn’t.” She dropped, wiped her palms on her trousers and stepped in front of him. His eyes followed her fingers, dipping inside the front of her shirt. “But my parents’ family would recognize these.”

  She opened the gold locket and displayed the tiny likenesses of her parents. He studied the man and woman. Slowly, he raised his gaze, hesitated a second too long at her mouth and met her eyes. “I wish you luck.”

  “Thank you.”

  He bent and hefted a bucket of manure. “We’ll go eat when this is done.”

  She tucked the locket safely inside her shirt.

  “Rain Shadow,” he said later as they worked side by side.

  She liked the sound of her name on his lips. “Yes?”

  “Would you mind me asking where Slade’s father is?”

  She straightened and watched him shovel.

  “You don’t have to answer if it’s none of my business.”

  Uncertain of his reaction, she took her time. “I met him on board the Nebraska when I was sixteen. He’s a vaquero.

  “I’m not sure what that is.”

  “A caballero, a South American cowboy. He was in the show that season.”

  Sixteen? “Oh.”

  “I thought I loved him.” Rain Shadow placed her shovel in the back of the wagon. “I thought he loved me. I thought he was going to marry me.”

  Anton stacked a few remaining boards beside the shovels. “He didn’t.”

  “He married a French heiress.” She didn’t bother to add the humiliation and hurt she must have suffered. “She had a heritage and money.”

  “And you have his son.”

  She snapped up her head and faced him. “My son.”

  An undefined emotion churned inside him. She hadn’t been married. Slade’s father had used her. She tilted her pert chin and stared him defiantly in the eye. Something compelled him to reassure her. He spoke the truth. “Your son is a fine lad. You’ve done a good job with him.”

  Surprise flickered across her eloquent face. Her stormy gaze filled with quick tears, and she glanced away. Things were easier when he wasn’t tender. “Let’s go eat.”

  * * *

  Jakob and Lydia joined them for dinner, Lydia having prepared a hot meal of beans and bacon. She cut generous chunks of corn bread and poured thick honey over them. The meal was delicious, the conversation light.

  Johann and Two Feathers had spent the morning repairing the chicken coops and outbuildings. After the meal, they lit their pipes. “Tomorrow we butcher.” Johann directed his comment to Lydia. “Will you be up to cooking dinner again?”

  Lydia smiled and seated herself across from him. “I’ll be up to it. I’m fit as a horse and you know it.”

  The faint irregular cadence of her speech reminded Rain Shadow of Nathan. She was a lovely ivory-skinned woman with a fine-boned face and dark, amber-flecked eyes. She wore her sable-colored hair in a fashionable twist on the back of her head, with delicate ringlets at her temples and cheeks. Rain Shadow studied Lydia’s soft hand, fingers resting on the edge of her teacup, then took stock of her own. Four blisters dotted the base of her fingers. Her knuckles were chafed red from the scrubbing she’d given them at the pump.

  “How about you, Rain Shadow?” Anton’s voice held a teasing challenge. “Will you be up to butchering?”

  Little russet-haired Titus sat on Anton’s lap, attempting to open his pocket watch with tiny fingers. Anton’s enormous fingers absentmindedly smoothed the child’s hair. The sight caught at Rain Shadow’s heart. She could picture him sitting just that way with his own son when he was small.

  She met his bold stare. “I’ll be up to it.”

  Anton suppressed a grin. Yep, he bet she would. She’d carried bucket after bucket of reeking manure without so much as a wrinkle of her fine nose or a complaint. She’d proven herself a hard worker and a passable companion. The morning hadn’t been so bad after all.

  Jakob rose and helped his oldest son button his coat, and Anton’s thoughts turned to the man who’d fathered her child. He remembered the fire in her kiss, the response of her supple body in his arms, and imagined her at the vulnerable age of sixteen. Beautiful. Ripe. Innocent.

  He regretted how she’d been taken advantage of—and how she’d been hurt.

  She rose and helped Lydia clear dishes. Rain Shadow’s trousers smoothed over her hips and thighs like a glove. She wore her shirt tucked in at her narrow waist. Two long, black braids draped across her full breasts, inviting attention. She was still beautiful. She was still ripe.

  Her stormy-sky-at-sunset eyes met his, and heat pooled in his loins. But she wasn’t innocent.

  * * *

  Miguel de Ruiz stared out the carriage window. He patted the engraved invitation in the breast pocket of his fine Irish linen suit, drew his fingertip over the wing of his stingy black mustache and surveyed the Boston Common with shrewd contemplation. There were few carriages out this particular evening. He considered it a pure stroke of luck that he’d been introduced to Madelena Avarato and her father so close upon the heels of his arrival in the city. He’d been informed she was one of the brightest debu
tantes of the season. Young. Attractive. Wealthy beyond imagination. Heir to the Avarato fortune, although she’d never done a thing to deserve it.

  Rain-wet bricks rumbled beneath the carriage wheels, and he scrutinized the Back Bay’s distinctive buildings. Beacon Street. As he’d imagined, this section of town smelled like money, breeding and arrogance. The first commodity Miguel lacked and was of a mind to acquire, the other two he possessed, or so his former wife had said.

  Comtesse Remmington. His narrow lips twisted in bitter self-derision. A title with no money is what she’d turned out to be, and she’d had the audacity to divorce him when she’d discovered he was without resources.

  The carriage pulled to a stop in front of a two-story brownstone, and Ruiz paid the driver. With slim fingers, he checked the impeccable crease of his trousers, straightened his ruby-studded cuffs and raised the knocker. It fell with a resounding clack on the brass plate.

  A butler ushered Miguel into a sitting room where several other guests were conversing.

  “Mr. Ruiz!” Madelena rose from the brocade settee and greeted him. “I’m so glad you could come.”

  “Encantado.” Adroitly sliding into the too-familiar role of suave charmer, he kissed the back of the hand she offered.

  She blushed, the rosy glow complementing her dark features. Her black hair, shiny and straight, was coiled in an elaborate coronet around her head, a gold comb jauntily winking from her crown. She was of average height, her waist small, and her body slender. No generous display of bosom swelled over the top of her bodice, but the diamond and emerald teardrop necklace drew his appreciative gaze to her breast regardless.

  “Father hired musicians to play for us after dinner.”

  He forced himself to look into her zinc-colored eyes. “You must promise me a dance, querida.”

  “Of course. Come meet my mother.”

  An exquisite turquoise gown did nothing for the shorter, plain-faced woman with dull brown hair and eyes. Ruiz took her hand and flattered her with a lazy smile. Madelena had obviously inherited her father’s looks.

  “Mr. Avarato.” Miguel spoke to the man he’d met the week before at the same function where he’d been introduced to Madelena.

  “After we met, I remembered I knew your father, Mr. Ruiz.” Philippe Avarato’s elegant black mustache turned up in a smile. “We had business dealings before the war.” Unblinking, Miguel smiled through the tempestuous feelings the mention of his father roused and offered a polite reply. Avarato couldn’t know Miguel’s father had disowned him years ago, or he wouldn’t approve of this liaison with his daughter. Perhaps the Ruiz name and his father’s wealth would prove to be Miguel’s trump in this game.

  Miguel’s hungry eyes devoured the opulence of the dining room to his left. Sparkling fine crystal lined the twenty-foot table, and gold-rimmed plates glittered beneath the prismatic chandelier. He stood on an imported Persian carpet, inhaling the elegance that tinged the room. He’d been born and bred to this way of life. Raised among the wealthiest and most affluent people in South America. Schooled for success in the world of the privileged, and someday, he vowed, it would all be his again.

  Someday soon.

  A servant announced dinner, and Miguel took his seat across from Madelena and next to her grandfather, a silver- haired gentleman with a hearty laugh.

  “Where are you from, young man?”

  “Buenos Aires, sir.”

  Fredrico Avarato quirked a white brow. “Our family originated near Rosario.”

  “We are neighbors.” Miguel saluted his host with his wineglass, and then raised it to his lips.

  “You were there during the republican revolution?”

  “I had business in Europe during that time,” Miguel evaded.

  “What is your family’s business?” Madelena’s grandfather asked.

  “Textiles. Leather goods.”

  One white eyebrow rose again in recognition. “Your father owns the largest manufacturing plant in Argentina.”

  “Our family’s business is shipping,” Madelena stated needlessly. “I wonder if our ships have carried any of your goods, Mr. Ruiz.”

  Relieved of the old man’s questions, Miguel disarmingly turned his attention to Madelena. “Miss Avarato, you are not only beautiful, but intelligent.”

  Madelena’s lashes swept her cheeks in an artless imitation of beguiling femininity. Conversation hummed around them, but Miguel offered her his undivided interest. “Father’s aide instructs me each week,” she said. “Father says I must be informed so that I can oversee the shipyards should anything happen to him or—”

  Miguel leaned forward as though hanging on her every word, inwardly weary of the offensive game.

  She blushed. “Or my future husband.”

  Disgust seized his insides. He nodded sagely. “Ah.” Miguel pressed a napkin against his lips, careful of his mustache. “Do I know your future husband?”

  Madelena laughed and covered her mouth with her napkin. “I’m not yet promised to anyone.”

  This was the last time. The last time he would prostitute himself for what he deserved in the first place. “No hurry, querida. Your father looks in perfect health.”

  She flashed him an enamored smile. “You’re right. There is no hurry. The controlling stock doesn’t become mine until I’m thirty.”

  The wine Miguel sipped turned to vinegar in his mouth. Thirty! She could not be—he slid a critical eye over her features—nineteen. If he married her now, he would have to wait ten years to see his investment pay off. Could he wait that long? He knew from past ventures, a woman’s appeal dimmed in a matter of months.

  The servants cleared the dessert plates, and he glanced about for an escape.

  “Join us for a smoke, Mr. Ruiz?” Fredrico invited. Relieved, Miguel excused himself and followed Philippe and the elderly gentleman into a wood-paneled office. The room smelled of leather-bound books and expensive tobacco. Folding himself into an Italian leather sofa, he studied the gold inlay pendulum clock on the desk. The timepiece was worth more than his entire marriage to the comtesse.

  And Madelena only nineteen. Stupid little harridan. All this at his fingertips, and the heiress was nineteen.

  Philippe seated himself across from Miguel.

  “So you’ve been traveling.” Fredrico flipped open a brass humidor.

  “Si.” Miguel accepted the cigar and sniffed the finest Colombian tobacco money could buy. He observed the expanse of the room, noticing the marble fireplace, the portrait over the mantel... It would take ten years to obtain all this. Ten long years.

  “I spent some time in Europe, too,” Fredrico broke into his thoughts, speaking as he seated himself behind his enormous desk. “Tediously stuffy, isn’t it?”

  Miguel listened with one ear. His wandering gaze noted the beautiful woman painted in the portrait, jet hair and somber eyes like Philippe’s, revealing a family resemblance. He lit his cigar and enjoyed the rich tobacco flavor. A soft-looking aqua gown bared the woman’s slender shoulders, and against her pale chest a necklace, exquisitely captured by the artist’s adept brush strokes, caught shards of light.

  The necklace riveted Miguel. Not diamond and emerald like the one Madelena wore tonight, but gold... a unique filigree clasp and a briolette-cut amethyst stone mined only in Bolivia.

  A remote flash of recognition sparked his consciousness. Gold filigree, a winking lavender stone...

  “—a family I met in Paris,” Fredrico said loudly, breaking Miguel’s concentration, irritating him beyond measure.

  He nodded politely and drew on the cigar. Frowning at the portrait, he peered with vague interest across the woman’s face and hair, the elegant gown, and was drawn once again to the locket. The elusive memory wavered. Dark hair. Si. Dark hair. Trencilla. A braid?

  Miguel choked on the smoke, and his eyes watered. He stood and gaped at the painting. It could not be.

  Ignoring Fredrico’s monologue, Miguel strode to the fireplace and ga
ped.

  Recognition flared. It could not be. The locket loomed vivid in his memory. There could not be two such lockets. Its design was unique. The face in the portrait wavered. The Indian girl had worn it. The appealing young girl he’d met just before the comtesse. The girl he had seduced on the ocean voyage.

  Chapter Six

  What was Rain Shadow doing with the Avarato family’s locket? Miguel studied the woman’s face, noting no resemblance to the Indian girl. “Pardon my inquisitiveness, but who is the stunning woman in the portrait?”

  A flicker of pain passed over the old man’s face.

  “That is Juanita, my sister,” Phillipe supplied.

  Miguel returned to his seat. “All the women in your family are lovely.”

  A black-clad male tapped at the partially open door. “Would you like a fire, Mr. Avarato?”

  “Thank you, Esteban,” the elderly Fredrico said. “You know I take a chill in the evening.”

  Miguel watched the servant light a stack of prepared firewood and exit. The blaze crackled pleasantly, and he imagined stretching his legs toward the fire and enjoying a bottle of port with his cigar.

  “Juanita is no longer with us.”

  Miguel slanted Fredrico a glance. Had she left or died? “I hear pain in your voice.”

  “It was many years ago,” Fredrico said simply.

  Miguel puffed on his cigar and pondered his next words. “I have seen that necklace before.”

  Phillipe straightened. “You must be mistaken. There are no two lockets like that one.”

  Exactly. “I am certain. A piece of jewelry like that is hard to forget.”

  “I had it made for her sixteenth birthday,” Fredrico explained. “Tell me, Mr. Ruiz, where did you see this locket?”

  His eager expression played right into Miguel’s hand. “I could find it again.”

  “I will hire an agency immediately.” The eagerness in the old man’s voice told Miguel he had struck pay dirt.