by Martha Hix
A diabolic smile spreading on his swollen face, Ian ignored Maria Sara and smirked at Charity. “You didn’t know Maria Sara Montana—pardon me, Mrs. Keller, is the mother of my son?”
Shocked, Charity pressed the pads of four fingers against her suddenly throbbing forehead. Jaime was Ian’s child? Why had Maria Sara kept it a secret? What else had Maria Sara kept a secret?
The tiny mexicana clung to her towering husband. “Be gone with you, Herr Blyer, before I finish what I started in the hallway.”
Brushing his vest-coat, Ian replied, “I will be leaving. But before I go ... Charity, dearest, didn’t you know that the new Mrs. Keller has been my spy since last May?”
Charity’s eyes begged Maria Sara for a denial. But the beautifully coiffed blond head turned away from her. Betrayed, Charity wilted onto a chair. Why—oh, why!—hadn’t she seen through her?
I should have. I should have suspected her from the beginning. I should have been wary of her offer of friendship when it came so soon after I found Ian out.
His despicable deed done to perfection, Ian took himself from her presence. Charity wished Maria Sara would do the same. She did not. Her taffeta skirts swaying like a bell, she rushed forward to drop down beside Charity’s chair.
“You must hear me out, amiga.”
“Not interested.” By now both Kellers hovered closely, trying to placate her, but Charity bought none of it. She wanted facts, not lip service. Her gaze fastened to her cousin, she asked, “How much did you know about all this, Karl Keller?”
He blushed. “I am ashamed to admit how much.”
Traitors both! “What did you seek to accomplish, Maria Sara, by aligning yourself with Ian?”
On a drop of her chin, she replied, “He blackmailed me into being his pawn. But I have done nothing to help him in a long, long time! You must believe me.”
“You ask too much.”
Ground out in a guttural pitch so unlike the speaker’s usual quiet and melodious tone, a Spanish epithet was spat past clenched teeth. “Ianito. He is the one who is responsible for all our pain. He is the one who should pay for his sins!”
Karl calmed his wife. “Cousin, she means well. Please have pity.”
“I need time to think about all this.”
“I understand.” Karl exhaled. “I have rented a small house close to La Villita. We will be here when you need us.”
Hateful though she knew it sounded, Charity asked, “Is Ian’s son with you?”
“He is my son now.”
“Are you treating the munchkin well, Karl?” Eyeing first her traitorous cousin, then his devious wife, Charity felt a catch in her chest. “Are you both treating him well? Because if you are not, I will do everything in my power to see that he’s taken away from you.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
“Querido, Charity wasn’t pleased that we left Jaime at the Four Aces.”
Karl frowned at his wife as they quit Charity’s suite and began to descend the staircase. “She has many things to be unhappy about. And after Herr Blyer accused you of being his spy, I wonder why you worry about your son now. I would think—”
“I am not worried about Jaime.” Not missing a step, much less a beat, Maria tittered and waved fluttering fingers. “Your Aunt Lisette is taking good care of him.”
“You never worry about Jaime. You are a cruel mother, Maria Sara.”
“When we have children, it will be different, querido.”
Karl gulped down the bad feeling that rose in his gullet. Though he adored his bride, although each day and each night his adoration grew, and while he would do anything to keep her happy, it troubled him, her attitude toward the child of her flesh. No matter the father, she should love her baby.
And with her dearth of affection for Jaime, just how capable was she of loving a husband? Or of being a friend to Charity? Something about Maria Sara didn’t ring true.
Before Karl could further ponder the situation, a male voice boomed up the stairway. “Didn’t expect you this soon. Only sent the telegram this afternoon.” Hawk climbed toward them. “Did you literally fly from Fredericksburg?”
“We left home yesterday,” Maria Sara replied. “We know nothing of a telegram.”
It bothered Karl, seeing the attorney again. While he enjoyed sharing fantasies with his bride, he hadn’t been all that interested in going through with Maria Sara’s idea of a threesome. He supposed his traditional upbringing had prevailed.
“I supposed . . . we supposed Charity would need us,” Maria Sara said.
“My cousin needs you,” Karl amended, putting everything in the proper perspective. “She is in her suite. There has been some trouble tonight.”
Wordlessly and with fear widening his eyes, Hawk took the stairs two at a time.
“Too bad he was not interested in the threesome,” Maria Sara commented in a provocative tone that her husband had come to know well. “He is very energetic.”
Shut up about threesomes. At the bottom of the staircase, Karl extended his hand to help her along. Just then he heard a voice from over his shoulder. A familiar female voice calling his name. The familiar scent of lily of the valley drifted to him. A voice and a smell from his past.
He couldn’t help but smile.
It was wrong, his reaction.
Maria Sara was his cherished. She carried his name. His thoughts and fantasies and sex-making were for her. Yet . . . The toothsome blonde who peered at him so knowingly had been his first love. It had been she who had led him into the world of base desires. Did a man ever forget his first delve into the salacious?
“Mon chére, what are you doing in San Antonio? It has been months since I have seen you. And who is this woman?”
“I am his wife.” Maria Sara then insisted hotly, “And just who are you?”
“His amour.”
His lover! Karl’s lover! Maria Sara Keller could not stand the thought of her husband with this obvious whore. Maria Sara wanted to claw the puta’s eyes out! Right here in the Menger Hotel lobby.
And the worst part of it was, Karl was looking at the blonde as if she were a sight for sore eyes!
“I am Antoinette,” the woman explained dulcetly. “Antoinette Keller. Have you not heard of me?”
Why did she carry the Keller name? “My husband does not speak of the whores who kept him occupied before he fell in love with me.”
Ignoring Maria Sara, the French puta slithered to Karlito. “You have married, mon chére? How very regrettable. It was always my vision that you would return to me.”
“Liebling, uh, I mean, Antoinette, my wife and I must be going.”
Maria Sara stared at her husband. “What does it mean, this term Liebling?”
Antoinette smiled. “It is a German term of endearment.” Her lush mouth parted, and she moistened her lips with a little pink tongue. “Has Karl not called you such?”
Before Maria Sara could pounce on her antagonist, Karl grabbed her arm and fairly dragged her out to the porte cochere. As did the chance encounter, the bracing night air of December slapped Maria Sara in the face.
“What does that dama mean to you?” she demanded, angrily. “Why is she a Keller? And do not try to claim her as some long-lost cousin. Only an idiot would be fooled into thinking you are related. Why did she say she is your beloved? How long has it been since you fornicated with that whore?”
“Watch your language, meine Frau. Someone will hear you.”
He was right. In light of the upcoming trial, it would not do to draw attention. And a half dozen bystanders were staring at them. “Who was that woman?” Maria Sara whispered.
“My father’s wife.”
“What does she mean to you?”
“She was the first woman I lay with.”
If a stiletto had been in Maria Sara’s reticule–despite their need to keep up appearances!–she’d have rent her husband’s heart. “You still love her.”
“Nein. She was a passing fancy.”
>
“You are lying, Karl Keller.”
Her husband hailed a livery coach.
Despite the beating he had taken, Ian Blyer felt euphoric. He straightened himself up. A quick bath. A styptic pencil to the small cut on his jaw stopped his bleeding; the swelling wasn’t as bad as he feared. A fresh change of clothes did wonders. By nine-thirty he’d made himself presentable again.
Splashing a lavish amount of cologne on his stinging cheeks, he gave himself a mental pat on the back. All right, Karl Keller might have prevailed in fisticuffs, but Ian had made his point. He had undermined Maria Sara with Charity.
While Charity had scoffed at his idea to free her, he felt confident her mind would change . . . once the tide started turning in the courtroom.
Whistling, he left the Menger and rode Syllabub to Beethoven Hall. Already his father and a group of citizens, roughly a score of them, were there. He made a proper showing as a politician’s proud son, smiling and waving and speaking to the assemblage. Then his father took the podium.
“Friends, I am here with you tonight to announce my candidacy for the United States Senate.” Stunned silence met his revelation, and Campbell Blyer pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “Tell me, will you return a man to Washington who has brought shame on the State of Texas?”
A few spoke up to answer. “No!”
Campbell cocked his head. “One cannot help but wonder—with the daughter certain to be convicted of a felony, how effective can the father be? Now, I ask again. Will you return Gil McLoughlin to Washington?”
This time there was a resounding “No!”
“Good. Will you send me to Washington?”
“Yes!”
The crowd surged forward to speak with the candidate. He let it be known that he would return to Laredo by next light, “to study on how I can best serve our common interests.”
It was an hour before the Blyers were able to leave the assembly hall. Each second had increased Ian’s fury at his turncoat father. Both sat their horses, then rode toward the Menger, riding through a secluded and darkened section of town. It was bitter cold, as the fickle Texas climate could turn without a moment’s notice.
Campbell complained about the norther. “I don’t want to travel in this sort of cold.”
“Funny you should mention that.” Ian reined in. “What did you mean, you’re returning forthwith to Laredo? You will stay with me until this business with Charity has been settled.”
Campbell shook his head and braced his wrist on the pommel. “I will not. You must go it alone.”
They argued for minutes, perhaps a quarter hour, but Campbell wouldn’t budge from his stance. “I’m not waiting for dawn. I am leaving now,” Ian’s father decided. He kneed his mount, striking off in a westward direction.
Ian dug his heels into Syllabub’s flanks. Catching up to his father, he grabbed for the rider’s reins; Campbell tried to elbow him out of the way. Ian drew back his fist, driving it into his sire’s jaw. Campbell slipped in the saddle, and the stallion bucked. With an exclamation of alarm the rider fell to the ground.
His mount whirled, his front hooves rising again. And they came down hard. On Campbell’s head. Ian jumped to the ground and rushed to help his father. But it was too late. Blood and gore seeped over his shoes. His father was dead.
Ian cried out. Judas though he had been, Campbell Blyer was his father. But then a greater concern assaulted him.
“The authorities will hold me responsible for this,” he said to the mournful wind. “I’ll be arrested for murder!”
That wouldn’t do. He hadn’t finished his busness with Charity.
Suddenly pleased that his father had announced he would be leaving for Laredo, Ian decided that Senator Blyer’s disappearance would rouse no suspicions. “Anything could happen on the way to Laredo.” He made plans for evidence elimination. After quite an effort, he got the dead man atop the now calm stallion. Finding a bucket of slop water outside a doorway, Ian returned to wash down the red stains on the street.
“What can I do with the body? What about the horse?”
Well, he didn’t have Señor Grande hidden in town for nothing. He found Rufino Saldino at his rented hut; Grande was playing cards with a couple of Latin companions.
“Don’t discard that joker,” Ian instructed barely above a whisper. “You have rubbish to discard.”
By midnight, Ian was making his way back to the Menger.
The bells of the German cathedral struck mind-night. Margaret had not returned from the harp recital, and for this Charity was thankful. She had wanted nothing to interrupt her moments with Hawk.
Making love was not a part of their evening. Decorum forgotten, they sat on the lyre-shaped sofa in the sitting room, holding hands. Hawk’s words of comfort, as they had since his arrival hours ago, flowed through Charity like a healing tonic.
She said nothing of Ian’s ridiculous plan. It didn’t even bear repeating, so absurd was it. Instead, she made sense out of the evening’s insanity in relation to Maria Sara and Ian. “They are both crazed as bedbugs.”
Tenderly, Hawk squeezed her arm. “Angel, I could’ve told you that.”
“Oh, Hawk, I still find it hard to stomach that she duped me! She was the best friend I ever had, outside of my family and you. What is wrong with me, that I can’t tell friend from foe?”
“Don’t go overboard. It’s not as bad as you think. Disturbed as she is, she says she wants nothing but good for you, and we have to trust that she means well.”
“At this point we have no other option, do we?”
Hawk nodded. “Unless there is a breakthrough in your case, we depend on her.”
Charity stood and paced the rug. “I don’t feel comforted.” Her eyes turned to him. “A while back you said she accosted you at her wedding. I believe you spoke the truth.”
“If that’s an apology, I accept it.”
“It is.” Charity rushed to Hawk. “I was wrong. Very wrong. But, Hawk, my darling, I just couldn’t believe that she would . . .”
“Believe it.”
Charity took his big hand in hers. “What did she do?” When he told her she didn’t want to know, she pressed, “Hawk, you know vague answers don’t work with me.”
Hawk threw his head back and exhaled. “Wah’Kon-Tah! What she did isn’t an issue. Unless someone—perhaps the Eagle, perhaps not—can serve your case, you’re dependent upon her good graces. There’s no one else to vouch for your innocence.”
“Because Senor Grande is on Ian’s side.”
“Exactly.”
“Hawk, you promised to free me.”
“And I did so with all good intentions. But. . .” Everything about him speaking to his uncertainty, Hawk muttered, “I am worried.”
Ever since Hawk had demanded to be her lawyer, Charity had assumed he could free her. Her love didn’t lessen even confronted with a show of vulnerability in the man she thought invincible. Yet . . . What will happen if he can’t pull an ace from his sleeve!
“I may hang,” she whispered in dread.
“Never!”
The boom of his loving and protective voice flowed through her, allaying her fears. She fell into the protection of Hawk’s arms, trusting him with all her heart.
“I’m going to speak with Maria Sara. She’s the one who mentioned the Eagle,” Hawk explained. “First thing tomorrow, I’m going to see what she has to say about him.”
Chapter Forty
“Toni . . . Cawwwww, shoooo, cawwwww. Toni... Cawwwww, shoooo, cawwwww. ’Toinette.”
The rafters shook with Karl’s snores; he sounded like a chorus of braying burros, as far as his wife was concerned. In their rented house near La Villita, Maria Sara punched her husband’s shoulder in anger, to no avail.
Outside the wind howled, and shutters slapped against the windows. But neither the bluster from outdoors nor her husband’s nocturnal bellows held a candle to Maria Sara’s fury.
Karl had stor
med out earlier that night, after their argument had continued at home. Upon his return—with a spent pene, to be sure—he had reeked of rotgut whiskey and cheap perfume. The same scent worn by that French whore, Antoinette. He had denied being with the woman. His wife didn’t believe the bastardo.
“Cawwwww, shoooo, cawwwww. . .”
Maria Sara covered her ears with a pillow, then cast it aside. She would not rest until her foes were vanquished. Who first? Ianito or Antoinette?
“I will kill Ianito,” she vowed, her words drowned out by Karl’s snoring.
He had undermined Maria Sara; Charity’s trust in her had been destroyed. There could be no friendship between them. Again he had shown that she was no more than Latin trash in Anglo eyes. Not once in Charity’s suite had Ian Blyer taken more than a passing glance at her. And he had used the child of his loins as a pawn.
The mother had no use for the child, either, for obvious reasons, but she thirsted for the blood of vengeance.
Then she would scare Antoinette Keller away from Karlito.
Tossing back the covers, Maria Sara jumped out of bed. With all haste she dressed and slipped a knife in her skirt pocket. Her hand on the doorknob, she hesitated. Sister Estrella’s voice echoed through her mind, like the shutters that flapped against the windows in the December wind.
It could all go wrong. And you owe a debt to the only person who has ever been loyal to you. You must guarantee Charity is set free.
She turned hurriedly from the door and swept to the kitchen area, where paper and pen were within reach. She sat down at the table, dipping the stylus into ink. The quick but decisive note penned, she tapped it into an envelope, then sealed it and left it on the table, where Karl could see it, should fate deem that she not return.
Tears obscured her vision as she reached for her cloak and hurried out into the bracing night air. The wind blew the doorknob from her clutch; the door banged against the kitchen wall, sending a fierce gust of wind into the house. With determination she shut the door tightly.
In her haste, she had not looked back to see that the letter still rested in its place on the table.