Tin-Stars and Troublemakers Box Set (Four Complete Historical Western Romance Novels in One)

by Rice, Patricia

  She didn't want to feel more than anger. Anger could be dealt with. She could slam doors, scream at the children, scrub down her room, uproot a garden and start over. But none of these activities could relieve the gnawing emptiness and fear that filled her nights and spilled over into her days.

  Lily couldn't believe she feared for the savage who had walked into her life and turned it upside down. He was a monster, just as Juanita had warned. She ought to be glad he was gone. Except that she mourned his absence as much as or more so than she did her father's.

  She blamed her melancholy on her father's death and the loss of her home. She blamed it on her lack of anything constructive to do in this household where women knew their places and didn't venture out to the barns and stable unescorted. She blamed it on loneliness for familiar neighbors in this sea of strangers. But when she went to bed, it wasn't Jim's quiescent presence that she missed. It was Cade's passionate caresses.

  Lily shoved the flute into a drawer with her few articles of clothing and ignored it. She was entering her sixth month of pregnancy and certainly didn't need thoughts of lust. She needed something to occupy her mind and hands while she awaited the child's arrival.

  Cade had been gone well over a week and the sun had begun to dot the prairie with the first April wildflowers when the horrifying news of Goliad arrived.

  Lily had discovered the hard way that her Spanish host and his hired help believed women should be seen and not heard. So she had learned to work in the courtyard garden while Antonio entertained visitors in the salon, often leaving the doors and windows open to spring breezes. Her Spanish was increasing daily with her concentration on these male conversations, and she gained more knowledge than the men ever suspected.

  She had heard of the capture of Fannin's army in Goliad days after Cade had left. She didn't know how old the news was or if it had been the reason for Cade's departure. She only knew that Cade had said he meant to join Houston, and therefore he couldn't have been in on the disaster that befell Goliad.

  Still, Lily cringed as she heard the whispered words of horror describing how Santa Anna had ordered his hundreds of Texan prisoners released only to deliberately slaughter them while they thought they were on the way home. The man was mad, as Cade had said. Even Antonio's visitors agreed. Santa Anna meant to destroy all that the settlers had done in these last ten years. With the American settlers gone, the Indians would return. What hope was there for the Tejanos in that?

  Lily suspected it was no coincidence that Antonio de Suela had returned from Mexico to his lands in Texas after a twenty-five-year absence at a time when his presence here could lend a steadying influence to a country at war. He made no secret of his distaste for Santa Anna, and the men who came and went from the newly repaired fortress-like walls of the hacienda often spoke of their desire for democracy. Even Lily could translate that word.

  Cade's grandfather was a wily old mand, and she gave him the respect he deserved, but she couldn't deny her frustration at being treated like a china doll. She could almost sympathize with Cade's mother for staying with the Apache warrior who had stolen her. Knowing what she did of Cade's Indian family, Lily suspected his mother had enjoyed being mentally and physically challenged by the Indian way of life more than being suffocated in the hacienda.

  But with the world outside these walls collapsing in blood and chaos, and the child inside her womb making its demands known, Lily could do nothing but wait for freedom. She taught Roy and Serena their lessons. She worked in the courtyard garden. She sewed new baby clothes to replace the ones lost in the fire. And she waited for word from Cade.

  None came.

  It was the day that Ricardo arrived that Lily realized she could wait no longer.

  She heard the noise of a stranger's arrival, the tramping of dozens of horses as the gates opened, the shouts and yells of men as they brought their beasts under control. She knew at once that the new arrivals weren't the furtive men from Bexar with their news of the war. With hope in her heart, Lily hurried through the house to a darkened salon overlooking the front entrance.

  She could make out nothing from the scene other than that they were a mixture of Tejanos and Americans. She saw no one resembling Cade or Travis, recognized none of the horses. Her hopes plummeting, she returned to her room to freshen herself before the guests entered.

  She was even beginning to think like a cosseted female with no other concerns but her appearance.

  Scowling at that thought, Lily tucked a straying hair into her chignon and adjusted the black mantilla Cade's grandfather had given her. The flowing lace had a multitude of uses, the best of which was to hide her recalcitrant hair. Checking her image in the cheval mirror, Lily smoothed the wide row of ruffles over her abdomen and examined the extent of the bulge. There was no disguising Cade's child any longer. She looked more like she was in her ninth month than her sixth.

  Finding that thought comforting, Lily went to greet their guests. So far, Antonio had not been able to persuade Lily to keep to her room until she was summoned. If their guests had news of the war, she would hear of it.

  When she entered the salon and found Ricardo insolently smoking a large cigar and sitting in Antonio's favorite chair, Lily regretted her impulsiveness. At sight of the other booted and spurred strangers sprawling across the heavy old furniture, she considered walking out.

  Only Antonio's gaunt figure prevented her from fleeing as he gestured with his hand in welcome and introduced her.

  "Senora, my stepson, Ricardo. Ricardo, this is my grandson's bride, Lily."

  Looking up, Ricardo gave a malevolent grin. "Buenos dias, Mrs. Brown." His eyes dropped to her protruding stomach. "Another Apache bastard. How interesting."

  Even without the epithet, she could see the danger in his eyes and knew the threat this man represented to Cade, to her child, to them all. He would see them all dead, if he could.

  Lily knew in that moment what Cade and Juanita meant when they said evil walked on two legs.

  With a shiver of fear, she turned her back on Ricardo and left, but her mouth tasted of ashes as she sought the safety of her room.

  A man who could hate an unborn child was more than evil; he was without a soul.

  Cade wanted her to reside with his grandfather, and Lily struggled to reconcile her instincts with his wishes, but the two were irreconcilable. The threat of Ricardo's presence hung over the hacienda like a thick pall. Lily watched as Juanita retreated to her locked room and refused to come out. She held her tongue when the children clung to her skirts whenever Ricardo appeared. But when Antonio de Suela no longer left his chamber or entertained his friends, Lily let her instincts be her guide.

  Placed between the devil and the deep blue sea, she chose the vagaries of the sea.

  Chapter 31

  "How can we do this? It is mad," Juanita whispered as they slipped into the paddock where only the rustling, nickering noises of the animals could be heard.

  "What choice do we have?" Resolutely, Lily searched for the placid animals that had brought them here among the restless, half-wild beasts that Ricardo had brought with him.

  Juanita had no answer to that. Joining in the search, she helped locate the mules and ponies they needed, leading them out of the paddock with muttered imprecations. Roy waited there, holding hastily packed saddlebags and stolen harness. Wrapped in a blanket near his feet, Serena slept quietly.

  At least the weather had improved. The night was clear and mild as they loaded the animals. Lily had feared the horses would be guarded, but Ricardo was too sure of himself to waste manpower inside the hacienda walls. The guarded gate would be their difficulty.

  Juanita resolved the problem easily. Slipping into the shadows along the wall, she located the man responsible for manning the gate, and holding out one of the silver bracelets Travis had bought for her, she bribed him into complacency. The gates opened, and they rode out without hindrance.

  It was too easy. They had surprise on their sid
e, Lily knew. The men never expected a handful of women and children to boldly ride away from the hacienda's protection. Lily was quite certain that Ricardo considered them prisoners as surely as he did his grandfather. The guards posted on the walls could mean no less, and he would not have made his contempt and hatred so plain elsewise. That he was so confident of his power that he did not lock them in their rooms was the only reason Lily could find for the ease of their escape.

  As they rode into the dangers of the night, two women and two children, with no guide but the moon and stars, Lily couldn't help but wonder if they had not fallen into Ricardo's trap after all.

  * * *

  April 21, 1836

  The noon sun heated the thick magnolia leaves overhead, and the fetid odors of decaying foliage from the rain-swollen bayous stifled the senses as the army buzzed angrily in its hiding place among the trees.

  "Santa Anna's whole damned army is moving in, and Houston lies there sleeping! What are we waiting for?"

  "We should've gone at dawn and caught them all napping. I'm tired of runnin'. It's time to fight!"

  Cade sat silently on his horse and listened to the ceaseless complaints murmuring around him. His gaze, like everyone else's, was fixed on the enemy encampment waiting across the grassy plain, less than a mile away. At dawn the Mexican army had been waiting for them behind hastily erected barricades. By mid-morning, reinforcements had begun to arrive. Now, at noon, the Mexican camp was settling down for siestas in the lazy afternoon sun. A few figures were still stirring, but the men who had marched all night would be sound asleep.

  Cade was tired of running, too. He wanted this battle over with. He had never lifted a gun to harm another man before. Something in his nature found it repellent to take life needlessly. Ricardo had that reticence to thank for his life now. But Cade knew, for the future of Lily and his child, that he had to make a stand. The line had been drawn and sometime, somehow, someone had to cross it. He wasn't a coward. He knew how to fight. He just didn't know if he could kill.

  Cade's thoughts drifted back to that day with Ricardo and the rattlesnake. It would have been better for everyone if he had ended Ricardo's life that day. But even then, even before the priests had taken him in and taught him the wisdom of turning the other cheek, Cade had been reluctant to make what was in reality God's decision. Had Ricardo kicked the box with the snake, it would have been of his own volition. He would have been responsible for his own death.

  What had happened at the Alamo and Goliad had been horrendous and inhuman, and Santa Anna deserved to die for that. Houston's army would be slaughtered in the same manner if they did not fight to win. Cade understood that. But he wished he was home with Lily.

  He had spent thirty-two years surviving. He wanted to live for a change. Lily was the first person to offer him that opportunity, and instead of building a life with her, he was here, prepared to destroy the lives of others. It didn't make sense, but Cade knew he had to do it.

  He glanced at Travis, who was nervously smoking a crudely rolled cigarillo. Travis barely knew how to shoot a gun. This wasn't even his war. He didn't have land here. But he was prepared to fight for a cause he thought just. They were all mad.

  And getting madder. The arguments behind them were growing more vociferous. Houston hadn't slept in weeks. Why he had chosen this morning to sleep was beyond anyone's comprehension. Travis had whispered "opium" at one point, but exhaustion was as good an explanation as any.

  A wave of relief passed through the ragged troops in the woods when Houston woke, but the angry murmurs grew louder when he did nothing. Guns were cleaned and polished. The twin cannon were readied. The men practically had their targets picked out, but no call to arms came.

  When the enemy camp settled completely to a lazy siesta, the flat plain glistened in the spring sun, with only the call of birds to intrude upon the silence. Cade felt it coming. He had wondered if Houston wasn't waiting for reinforcements from the American army across the river, but his men weren't prepared to wait much longer. A rustle of elation passed under the magnolia leaves and through the pine forest as Houston's decision reached the front lines. The word came to march.

  Cade rode out in the first vanguard, pulling one of the cannon through the open field, an enviable target for anyone watching. No one watched. Amazed at the incredible stupidity of an army without pickets or scouts, Cade released the cannon when ordered within two hundred yards of the breastworks and prepared to ride. The main part of Houston’s army was more than halfway across the plain before the first shots were fired.

  Later, after he heard of the atrocities committed by Houston's army in the name of revenge, Cade was glad that he had been one of the first to fall. Even an enemy scared out of its pants and with weapons too crude to aim straight couldn't miss a target as large as himself. But as he was falling, Cade didn't feel grateful. He knew only sorrow that he would never know the cries of his newborn child or the warmth of Lily's arms again. He hoped Lily would find the kind of man she deserved. He didn't want her to suffer any more than she already had.

  The initial blossoming of pain exploded as the army poured around him. Screams split the air, but they weren't his. Cade had learned silence at an early age, and he practiced it now, while the world erupted in violence around him. Blood poured from the wound in his shoulder, and he knew he would soon lose consciousness. He tried to pull himself up, but the fall had done something to his leg. He fell down again, and the bright day faded to an odd twilight, as if the sun had gone behind a cloud.

  Curses filled his ears, closer than the screams and shouts and gunfire. Fighting the pain prevented Cade from concentrating on anything else. Someone was unburying him from the stack of corpses, but it was almost too late. A body could hold only so much blood. If he could fully believe in the pearly gates of the priests or the spirits of his father, he might welcome death, but all Cade could think of was Lily.

  It was odd that he had spent twenty years of his life simply surviving, only to spend his dying minutes dreaming of a woman who hated him. Closing his eyes, Cade felt the warmth of her body close to his. She didn't hate him completely. Her body was too warm and alive to his touch to hate him entirely. Had there been time...

  "Damn you, you Indian bastard! You're not leaving me to tell Lily of your death. You're going to get up and walk out of here if it's the last thing I do."

  But it wasn't likely to be. The battle had surged onward, into the Mexican camp and beyond, driving the enemy backward into the swamps and rivers amid screams of desperation and the bellows of alligators. The grassy field was empty except for the fallen.

  Travis reached for his saddlebag and his spare shirt. He knew how to stop the bleeding. He didn't know how to bring back the dead.

  * * *

  Weeks later, Cade sat in a dark, one-room cabin, his mending shoulder aching like hell as he glared at his savior with ferocity. "What do you mean, she isn't there? Why wouldn't she be there? The damfool messenger just got lost and is too stupid to admit it." But in the back of his mind, Cade knew why Lily wouldn't be at the hacienda: because it was his home and not hers.

  Undaunted, Travis took a sip of water from the dipper he had carried in for his patient. If Cade wouldn’t drink it, he wasn't too proud to drink it himself. Feeling the liquid slide down his parched throat, he gave a gasp of pleasure before answering Cade's cross accusations.

  The implacable Indian had turned out to be one hell of a cantankerous patient.

  Besides, the moment gave him time to organize his words. Travis knew that as soon as Cade had the whole truth, the obstinate Indian would be out of bed and heading for his horse. Travis couldn't think of any way of preventing it short of lying, and he couldn't lie about something as serious as this. His own inclination was to run for his horse, but his chances would be better with a little planning and an experienced guide.

  If the guide was too ill to move, he would have to wait. "The fool messenger found the hacienda, no mistake." Travis
laid down the dipper and waited for Cade to shut up and pay attention.

  Cade glared at him and waited.

  "Ricardo is there."

  Cade began shoving off the quilt covering his legs. He wore nothing under it, but that didn't deter him.

  Travis watched idly as Cade tried to stand and stumbled against the wall. The fall from the horse had damaged something in his knee. The swelling was going down, but he hadn't walked on it in weeks. It wouldn’t support all that weight easily.

  "The 'damfool messenger' didn't trust Ricardo, so he hung around and asked questions."

  Disregarding Travis's sarcasm, Cade straightened and reached for the saddlebags on the table. He had to lean on the table to open them, but he succeeded in tugging out his denims. When Travis didn't continue, Cade threw him a killing look.

  Travis shrugged. "There are no women or children there. No one knows where they went. Your grandfather is supposedly ill and confined to his room."

  Cade finally spoke. "Supposedly?"

  "Ricardo has had a lawyer camped at his door, not a priest or a doctor." Travis turned around and walked back outside to the well.

  He didn't want to hear Cade's fury. He wasn't ready yet for whatever Cade would decide. Travis had been on his own since he was fifteen. Lily and their son and Juanita were as close as he had ever come to family since then. Even the little brat, Serena, had carved a place in his heart.

  He wasn't made like Cade. He longed for the warmth of human emotion. He even missed that old rascal Ephraim. He didn't care about the damned land or the cattle or whatever else it was that drove men to fight. Travis required Juanita's shy adoration, Roy's admiring phrases, Lily's rare laughter. Ricardo could have the damned hacienda. Travis wanted the women and children.

  He was afraid Cade wouldn't think the same. These past weeks had made it obvious that Cade had a single-minded fascination with the Spanish family and the hacienda he had been denied all these years. When he was coherent, he had spoken of the changes he would make, the plans he had for that mesquite-studded acreage. When he was fevered, he had cursed Ricardo, cursed every obstacle that had ever stood in his way, and sworn oaths that made Travis shiver. Behind that stoic facade lay a lifetime of hate and longing. He didn't want to think about the decision that Cade had to make now. Lily and her small farm had only been an afterthought in that lifetime.