by Shirl Henke
Magdalena pressed his hand. “No, but I do know he will approve when you speak with him after you have read them. For all these years he has written faithfully to his father, the first Benjamin Torres.”
“My grandfather? But he died in 1492.”
“For us he still lives, Rigo. When you read these volumes, you will understand.”
“And grow wiser?” His black brows swept up, an odd mixture of cynicism and hope infusing his expression.
“Yes, Rigo, I believe you will.”
* * * *
When Rigo entered their private quarters he found Miriam with her maid assisting her in dressing for the evening meal. Her belly had grown heavy in the latter stages of pregnancy, but the rest of her tall, slender frame was thin to the point of emaciation. He feared for her health in spite of her insistence that all was well. Even swelled with child, she looked beautiful to him. Feeling a swift stab of desire, he quickly suppressed it. She was too frail and too near her time of delivery for him to risk touching her. The resolve was far easier made than kept.
Miriam felt her husband's eyes on her before she turned to see him standing in the doorway. “Aaron told me you had gone with Guacanagari to speak privately,” she said, dismissing the servant with a gentle smile. Her gaze quickly returned to Rigo. “I am so relieved you are safe from the battle.”
He studied her clear gray eyes, troubled now as she awaited his reply. “The battle opened my eyes to many things. My disdain of the Tainos was misguided. They possess great courage, none more than my uncle. He saved my life.”
She emitted a small gasp and quickly closed the distance between them. “Were you injured then?” She began to inspect him, searching his superficial cuts and bruises for something more serious.
“It would distress you if harm were to befall me,” he said. The remark was not quite a question, for he knew she felt something for him, even if it was but lust.
Miriam stiffened, part of her wanting to throw her arms about him and weep out her love, part of her wanting to slap him for the casual cruelty of his repeated rejections. “You are my husband, the father of my child. Yes, Rigo, it would distress me.”
He reached out and ran his fingertips along the silky skin of her collarbone, now tinted a pale gold by the island sun. “Such prim, dutiful words, lady. You are ever proper—as wife or healer, always doing your duty.”
“I scarce thought of duty to my father or Benjamin when I betrayed them.”
His hand fell away from her abruptly. He turned and stalked to the long mahogany table where he placed Aaron's diaries. With his back to her, he said, “I would bathe away the stink of death before we dine. Have water fetched for me.” Without waiting for her reply he began to peel off his weapons and clothes.
Miriam quit the room and leaned against the outer door to compose herself, then hastened to instruct Gordo about the bath water. Why did I again raise the specter of Benjamin? Have we not enough separating us? She waited as the servants carried large wooden buckets of water into Rigo's bath. He had accused her of being a prim, dutiful wife. Was it not a wife's duty to care for her husband? If she helped him bathe, she would be anything but prim...and her motives strayed far from the cold province of duty. Miriam gathered her medical supplies from the cabinet against the wall, checking to see she had enough clean linen and fresh herbs to treat his cuts and bruises.
Rigo stood naked in the center of the room, drying himself with a snowy white towel by the time Miriam entered, her medical bag in hand. “I am not in need of treatment for these small hurts.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” she said coolly, forcing her eyes away from his splendid nakedness. He was bronzed from head to foot, every inch of him touched by the coppery hue of the Taino. Yet the black hair so cunningly sprinkled over his chest, arms and legs betrayed his Spanish blood, for the Indians were smooth-skinned and beardless. Using her best professional demeanor, she placed her bag on their bed and began to examine the small cuts and bruises on his lean, muscular body. “You must remember where we are. In this damp, pestilent heat, small wounds will fester quickly if not cleansed.”
He chuckled mirthlessly. “Your Jewish disdain for unwashed Christians again, lady?”
“You are scarce possessed of an aversion to bathing in spite of all your other faults, Spaniard,” she said tartly. He let out a small, surprised oath when she daubed at a particularly raw slash across his forearm. Miriam could smell the freshly bathed male scent that was uniquely his. It filled her nostrils and turned her insides to jelly. Pray God, do not let my hands shake.
Rigo stood still, holding the toweling between them as she dusted his wounds with yarrow powder and spread an evil-smelling ointment over several darkening bruises. Her hair was loose, caught at her nape with a silk ribbon. The dying sunlight touched it with bronze fire. The towel was his only concealment for his rising desire. He fought the urge to drop it and bury his hands in her silky brown curls.
Miriam sensed his sexual arousal and it fueled an answering response in her. Even fat and misshapen with child, she was able to evoke desire. She applied wound-wort ointment to the purplish bruise on his shoulder, then daubed at it delicately with a piece of linen. When she raised her face, their eyes met and all breath seemed to leave her body. Nerveless fingers dropped the ointment vial. She flattened her palm against his chest, feeling the heat of him, the rapid pounding of his heart.
As Rigo pulled her to him, he let the towel fall, all thoughts of pride and restraint abandoned as he laced his fingers in the hair at her nape and held her head immobile. His lips descended to fuse with hers and she opened to his fierce kiss. She moaned and her hands slid up to cup his shoulders, clinging to him as he scooped her up into his arms.
When he sat her on the bed, she immediately began to unlace the front of her gown. He knelt and slid her slippers from her feet, then helped her to stand and lift the heavy outer garment over her head. His hands grazed her taut breasts through her sheer cotton shift and she gasped, arching toward his touch.
“I ache with wanting you, but I would not harm you,” he said hoarsely as she pressed her body against his.
In reply she pulled his head down so his lips again met hers, silencing his protests even as she drew them back to fall, locked in an embrace, onto the soft, wide bed.
His hands swept aside the filmy shift, caressing her sweetly swollen curves until she writhed in pleasure, forgetting reticence about the shape of her body. Rigo lowered his head to circle one darkened nipple with the tip of his tongue, then suckled the engorged flesh until she sobbed her pleasure and need of him. One hand continued exploring her silky skin, skimming and gliding up and down the slender column of her back, then across her arm to press intimately against her well-rounded belly. His palm flattened against her navel, waiting for the tiny life within to make itself known. Some elemental, unconscious part of him needed to affirm this link binding him to his woman and she to him. The baby kicked and they both felt it. When the restless little one made its presence known, Rigo regained some semblance of control and tried to pull away from her.
“I will harm you and our child.”
“No, no, you will not,” she answered thickly, entrapping his engorged phallus between her thighs.
Rigo felt the exquisite caress and all resolution departed. His hands continued searching out all the soft, secret places of her body. He rolled her over onto her back, and she lay pliant beneath his touch as his warm mouth trailed kisses, licks and bites from her tender breasts over the dome of her belly. Only when he moved lower, to the silky brown curls below, did she stiffen in shock.
“No, Rigo. You cannot—”
He grasped her slender wrists in his hands and held them fast to her sides as he lay between her thighs. “I will not harm you...but I will bring you release,” he murmured, nuzzling at her soft pink nether lips.
A bolt of raw pleasure shot through her, all the more surprising because of the indecent way he was bringing it to her. She
tried to form the words, to command, to beg that he stop. But she could not. The hot, sweet whirlpool of passion drew her deeper into its night dark vortex. She closed her eyes and arched her back as his tongue teased, ever so delicately, ever so deftly.
Rigo could feel her tense, then part in the desperate heat of her wanting, abandoning all the cool primness that she wore like a cloak for the outside world to see. But here in bed, she belonged to him and was completely beneath his spell—as he was beneath hers. The latter thought he brushed aside as she reached her release. He could feel the pulsing contractions and hear her cries of amazed, helpless ecstasy.
Miriam was certain she would explode as the rippling waves washed over her. His hot, seeking mouth had found her most aching secret place and plundered it until she writhed with the unbearable pleasure of fulfillment.
He sat up and watched as she recovered her senses, returning from her journey into the beautiful oblivion that sexual gratification offered. Then her eyes focused on his face and he read a strange new vulnerability in their depths.
“How? How did you do that without...”
The very childlike amazement of her voice touched him. “There are many ways to make love, Miriam. This way I do not risk hurting you or our child.”
Miriam sat up, once again aware of her ungainly appearance and the splendid, sinuous grace of his lean, elegant body. Her eyes swept from the proprietary male satisfaction written across his face, downward to where his sex stood, rock hard, straining for its own release. “You have satisfied me, but this way does not serve you.”
A slow, rueful scowl spread across his face. “No, it does not.”
Thinking that he would turn to some eager serving wench or perhaps even one of the beautiful Taino women, Miriam reached out and enclosed his staff in her hand. The velvety heat of it fair scorched her and she was rewarded with a ragged groan. “If you could do what you did for me...is it possible for me to ease you in the same manner?”
“Yes, quite possible,” he replied through clenched teeth.
“Pray, instruct me,” she whispered, pressing him to lie on his back while she lay beside him, never relinquishing her stroking hold. She lowered her head and let her lips taste of him. Then, at the silent urging of his hands in her hair, she enveloped the length of his staff in her mouth. He guided her with words, endearments and oaths, pleading commands, and then when he became speechless, his hands took over, showing her how to move. Miriam could feel his desperate need as she continued this wondrous new way of loving him.
In some measure she felt repaid for all the times he had seduced her and teased her body into frenzied passion. Never from that first night in the darkness of the summer kitchen had she been free of his sensual spell. He arched convulsively with a ragged cry. His seed, hot and sweet, pulsed inside her mouth, and she drank him greedily. What power this gives a woman over her man.
When she lifted her head to stare into his eyes, for a brief moment, Rigo was startled. His wife seemed like a triumphant lioness surveying her prey with indolent possessiveness.
* * * *
The candle flickered as Rigo bent lower, holding the fragile yellowed pages nearer its fading light. He had excused himself immediately after dinner with his large and boisterous family, to seek privacy in an unused bedroom at the rear of the large house. Dawn inched its way over the jagged mountains in the east. He had been reading all night, held spellbound by the tragedies and triumphs of Aaron Torres' life, revealed with such naked honesty in these brittle pages. He felt he knew not only Aaron, his father, but Benjamin, his grandfather, to whom all the entries were addressed. Magdalena Valdés had loved Benjamin as a surrogate father in place of the treacherous Bernardo Valdés. How strange, she, an Old Christian, and he, a Jewish convert, should form such a bond, as these volumes revealed.
Now, after reading his father's reaction to Navaro's birth, he knew he wanted with all his heart to belong to this family. Aaron's words floated before his eyes, the handwriting on the page revealing his pain.
I miss my firstborn son most intensely. I will never cease my search for him. If God favors me with his richest blessing, I shall find my son...
The entries continued over the years. Villages were searched whenever a rumor of a blue-eyed Taino youth reached him. No matter how distant the place or unlikely the tale, Aaron had ridden in search of Navaro, always to be disappointed...until now. Rigo rubbed his eyes and closed the last chapter of the final volume Magdalena had given him. It contained the entry on the day when Benjamin's letter about him reached the Torres hato from distant Marseilles. Rigo cringed in guilt as he read Aaron's unbounded, incredulous joy at the news:
How can this be? After thirty years, God does indeed answer prayers in His own good time. Benjamin has found Navaro and saved his life. I count the days until they sail home.
Rigo swallowed against the tightening in his throat and blinked back tears. There was more of his uncle Guacanagari's emotionalism in him than he had ever imagined. He gathered up the volumes and stood, stretching his cramped arms and legs. It was past dawn now, time to begin the work day on the hato. If his father adhered to his usual habits, he would be downstairs to break his fast, then soon off to the stables.
Aaron stood in the doorway of his library silently watching his son approach. There was something about Rigo's expression, the tentative way his arrogant son was walking, that set the hair at his nape standing on end. Then he saw the diaries in Rigo's hands. His heart slammed in his chest and he choked out, “Where did you get those?”
“May we speak in private?” Rigo indicated the door ajar to Aaron's work room and then proceeded to walk past his father.
Aaron followed, uncertain of what to do or say as he faced his firstborn son whose love he had tried so hard to win, the stranger who had rejected all overtures. He felt a premonition about their relationship, but held his peace, watching as Rigo carefully laid the musty volumes on the long table in the center of the room.
“Magdalena gave me these when I returned from my talk with Uncle Guacanagari yesterday evening.” He waited for some reaction, very uncertain about how to approach what he must say.
Aaron's face could be as shuttered and expressionless as his son's but this time he did not mask his feelings. His eyebrows arched in amazement. “And did you find the contents interesting?”
“I know there was much that was very private, meant for no one else to read,” Rigo began slowly.
“Even my wife has seen only parts of these letters. I shared them with her because of her special love for my father...I suppose, after reading what she did, that is why she felt you would be enlightened by them.”
“I have been a very great fool to require this means of convincing me about your feelings.”
“I will not debate that point,” Aaron replied drily.
“Do not blame my stepmother for giving them to me. I am sorry if I have offended you. I know now how much you both have suffered...even if I cannot comprehend the depth of it. Until now, I had no one, no family to lose but for a foster brother who left me when I was a small boy.”
“Until now?” Aaron's voice broke into a whisper. “Do you now feel that you belong? That your family loves you...that I love you?”
Rigo's eyes met his father's and locked with them across the space of the room. “Yes. Most of all, you,” he answered simply.
Neither man was certain who took the first step, but in an instant they were embracing, trembling silently, too filled with raw emotion to speak. Both were soldiers, hard survivors, unused to displays of affection. Yet the blood ties stretching across thirty years would not be denied.
They struggled to regain their composure and Aaron spoke first. “After all the searching, the false hopes raised, then dashed, then finally finding you only to learn what calamity had befallen you...I felt so helplessly guilty for it all, Rigo.”
“Twas no fault of yours. After Uncle Guacanagari spoke of Aliyah, I understood what had truly happened.
Then I read everything in your letters to Grandfather. I would wish to have known him and all his family.”
A small, wistful smile touched Aaron's lips. “Even though we are Jews?”
“Yes. I have learned to take great pride in my heritage. After a lifetime of cursing my Indian blood I have seen the mettle of the Taino and now I understand the remarkable men and women of the House of Torres. I am honored to call myself your son,” Rigo said humbly.
“No father could wish for a finer son. And soon there will be another generation of Torres children.” Aaron observed the way Rigo's expression again became shuttered after such an open display of emotion. “Things are not well between you and Miriam. Is there aught that you would speak of? Magdalena and I are veterans of many years in a less than placid marriage.”
“You have both been more than charitable in accepting our marriage. We have grievously wronged my brother.”
“Yet you love her and she you. I have seen this with my own eyes. Magdalena has commented on it, too. You cannot use Benjamin as an excuse for your own pride and stubbornness.” Aaron watched a stricken expression glance fleetingly across Rigo's face, then vanish.
“We are drawn together in passion and our lust has created a child. Tis not the stuff marriages are built upon.”
“Nonsense! If your passions were so strong as to allow you both to breech your sense of honor, it must signify far more than mere lust. And marriages are built upon far less substantial grounds in most cases.”
“Miriam is a lady, spoiled and headstrong, a woman who has worked at a man's profession and will not yield it. And I am a rough soldier, used to command and obedience. We do not deal well together.”
Aaron chuckled now. “Did you learn nothing from reading my letters? If ever there has been a woman headstrong, it is your stepmother! I was forced into wedding her by Cristobal Colon himself and bitterly resented it.”