The Wildest Heart

by Rosemary Rogers

  I felt as if I were watching a performance staged solely for my benefit, where everyone was aware of the plot except I.

  Lucas shrugged, his eyes not leaving her flushed, laughing face. “Hard to stay angry with someone as pretty as you are. But don’t pull no more tricks like you did the last time.”

  She pouted. “No, no—I promise! But you made such a magnificent gladiator! Such a fight!”

  Kingman’s laugh was almost complacent. “Monique should have been born in ancient Roman times. As Messalina! But she did promise me that she would try to behave.”

  So he knew her—he knew her! And from the looks they exchanged—hers a pouting moue meant to convey apology and his a half-smile that showed he forgave her—it was obvious they had known each other very well. I hated him; I hated her. I hated them all. And most of all, I was angry at myself for having shown all too clearly how shaken I was.

  “So—” Montoya said suddenly, his voice almost a purr, “now that we are all here, and we all know each other…”

  “Business after supper!” Monique said quickly, and John added: “And drinks before, while we all get reacquainted. What do you say, Mark?”

  I could not see Mark’s face, for he stood behind me; but I felt his fingers tighten on my shoulders. It was the only sign he gave of whatever emotion was contained within him, for his voice sounded perfectly amiable.

  “I think that’s an excellent idea, although I seem to be the only person here who is not formally acquainted with—señor Montoya’s friend.”

  Montoya said smoothly, “But there is no need to be formal among ourselves, is there? Lucas, amigo—you know Mr. Mark Shannon?”

  I thought that Lucas took his eyes from Monique with an effort. His voice was curt. “We’ve seen each other. A long time ago.”

  “In Socorro, I believe. But as you say, that was a long time ago.”

  I would ask myself the questions afterward. I watched Lucas as if I had been starved for the sight of him and had only just recognized my hunger. He had let his whisker stubble grow out into a beard that somehow made him look older—and harder. But his eyes, and the easy grace with which he moved, were the same. And he had not yet looked at me fully and directly. Was it because he could no longer bear the sight of me?

  It seemed as if everyone had started to speak at once. Monique was calling to one of the maids, patting the arm of the chair on which she sat invitingly. Jesus Montoya had already seated himself, and was talking to John Kingman.

  Suddenly I rose to my feet. A trifle unsteadily, for Mark’s hand caught my arm.

  “I think I’ll just go back to my room and freshen up before dinner. You’ll excuse me?”

  Every head was turned in my direction. If I wanted Lucas’s attention I had it now. His narrowed eyes touched me for a moment, long enough for me to see the greenness in their depths. And then he had turned back to Monique, who was saying with false concern in her voice: “Rowena hasn’t been feeling well since she’s been here. Pauvre petite! It was all that traveling.”

  “I’ll come with you, sweetheart,” Mark said, his voice overly solicitous. And I couldn’t wait to turn my back on all of them.

  “Rowena, until you have faced him, and discovered what he is, he would always remain a question in your mind. A raw spot. Don’t you understand why I had to do it? Montoya was one of the men we’d had in mind in any case—I merely asked that he bring Luke Cord with him.”

  “And what were you hoping for? That he would refuse? That Montoya would bring him as a prisoner?”

  Mark shrugged, but his blue eyes were very bright.

  “That might have been a better way. But since he’s obviously here of his own accord, it only means one thing. He’s interested in the plunder. Or perhaps it’s the thought of revenge. Rowena,” his voice sighed, “surely you can see for yourself? Since he learned you are now my wife he’s lost interest in you. Monique is more his type. He could hardly take his eyes off her.”

  “You said you hated him!” I couldn’t leave it alone. My voice accused Mark. “You know what happened. How can you stand to talk business with him? Why him?”

  “I’m a civilized man, Rowena, and he’s a savage, but perhaps he can be useful to us. And there’s another reason I wanted him here. You see, I love you. And I don’t want Luke Cord between us. I’m hoping that at last you’ll have the opportunity to see him for what he is. A mercenary. An uncivilized killer who would do anything for pay. And if I did not trust in your good judgment in the end,” Mark’s voice hardened almost unrecognizably, “I would have had him killed.”

  I turned away from him to the mirror, forcing myself to concentrate on pinning my hair up. As if I had been a cornered animal, with no other place to hide, my wits began to come to my rescue at last.

  “Well, it’s done now.” I lifted one bare shoulder as if I did not particularly care. “It’s just that I don’t like to feel tricked, Mark. And particularly by my husband.”

  I saw his blond head bend in the mirror, and felt the warm pressure of his lips on my neck. “My darling! Don’t you understand?”

  I pretended to consider this, and shrugged. “I suppose so. You’re jealous. But you should have remembered what I told you before. The only reason why Lucas Cord continues to—intrigue me, if you will, is because he seemed to tire of me first. But if it were the other way around…”

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  It was my turn to laugh teasingly. The laugh of a woman who is sure of herself and her charms.

  “Since you have appointed yourself my lady’s maid, Mark, why don’t you help me choose one of my prettiest, most seductive gowns? Perhaps Monique will have some competition tonight… if you can be as understanding as John, that is!”

  So now I found myself playing a dangerous game of pretense again. Like the spangle-costumed woman in a circus I had once watched, who walked a tightrope. It was almost a relief to find myself seated next to Montoya at supper that night, and listen to his flowery compliments.

  There were only five of us, though, who sat down at the flower-decked table. When Montoya, immaculate in his silver-embroidered charro suit, had entered to bow gallantly over the ladies’ hands he had said apologetically, “Lucas asked to be excused. He met an old friend, in the bunkhouse—one of your guests who is passing through. He said he would join us afterward.”

  Mark’s quizzical glance met mine, and I could almost read his thoughts. “Obviously he’s the kind of man who would be embarrassed at a formal meal such as this.” But I was determined to make up for my earlier breach of the control I normally had over my reactions, and merely observed laughingly that I could not possibly miss anyone else when I had such a gallant cavalier at my side.

  “No amount of gallantry could do justice to the beauty of the two ladies present. I find myself overwhelmed.”

  Monique and I exchanged glances, both faintly appraising. She had decided to dress for dinner too, in a low-cut green silk gown that showed her figure off and exposed her gleaming, milky-white arms and shoulders. The emerald eardrops she wore flashed each time she turned her head, or laughed, and her auburn hair shone with a rich fire of its own in the candlelight.

  I wore the midnight blue velvet I had not worn since the night of Todd Shannon’s grand party, and I couldn’t help wondering if Mark had chosen that particular gown on purpose, to remind me… of what? How mistaken I had been in my reading of his character that night?

  “You are the loveliest creature in the world,” he had whispered as he helped to pin the diamond stars in my hair. But I had wanted Lucas to see me—I had wanted him to realize what he had lost. Never mind, I told myself; he will be here later. And then we’ll see. I was in a strange mood, my nerves like fine-strung wires that might snap at any moment. I would not be anybody’s “poor Rowena” tonight! Mark could not deal me any worse surprises than he had already, and no—not even the coldness of Lucas’s eyes when he looked at me could shake my poise.

 
I was like a gambler who had nothing left to lose and could afford to laugh recklessly as the wheel spun for the last time. I was the same woman who had been her stepfather’s mistress and Todd Shannon’s betrothed. The marble goddess with no heart. As cold and as calculating as I had ever been accused of being. For sometime during the past two hours I had made up my mind.

  It was strange that I had thought of myself as a gambler. For after the dishes had been cleared away and Lucas had joined us, with a cursory apology for his lateness, that is exactly what we did.

  It was Monique’s idea. She had sat at the piano for a while, until Lucas made his appearance, and then she got up, clapping her hands together.

  “Oh, but we’re far too stiff! The night is young, and the brandy, thanks to Mark, is excellent. You men shall not leave us to smoke your cigars outside. We shall play cards. Poker, I think. It’s my favorite game, next to roulette. Rowena… do you know it?”

  I caught her mood and smiled. Lucas had paid no attention to me, but he would, he would! I would make sure of it.

  “It was one of my grandfather’s few vices, although he would only indulge in a game with his few close cronies. Even while he taught it to me he didn’t fail to remind me of one of our ancestors, a Regency rake, who lost the family fortune on the turn of a card.”

  “But how exciting! This ancestor—he sounds like a man after my heart. And you, Rowena, are you fond of gambling too?”

  I thought her words had a hidden meaning, which I pretended not to notice for the moment.

  “Occasionally. Isn’t everybody who is in the least bit adventurous?”

  “It seems as if these females have us outnumbered,” John Kingman grumbled as he rose to get the deck of cards. I saw Mark look at me thoughtfully, and Montoya’s eyes, hidden behind a thin veil of cigar smoke, looked opaque and shiny.

  For the first time that evening I spoke directly to Lucas, my voice challenging. “And you—you haven’t said anything. Perhaps you’re a poor loser?”

  “Everybody loses some time or other. But I’ve never been afraid of taking a chance.” His eyes, meeting mine for an instant, told me nothing. But his words—had they been meant to convey something to me?

  Before I had time to ponder, Monique was declaring delightedly that this was going to be such fun. And the men could talk business while we played.

  “But first we shall create an atmosphere that is deliciously sordid, just like the saloons you men like to frequent.” She flung a green baize cloth across the table, and lowered all the lamps in the room but the one directly above. “There! Is that not more like it?”

  “We’d hardly be sitting down in some gambling saloon with two grand ladies like Rowena and yourself, my love,” John Kingman said mildly. I thought his eyes asked a question of his wife, but she, smiling wickedly, shook her head so that the long eardrops danced above her shoulders.

  “Ah non! But do you forget so easily? In New Orleans, where you met me, there were always pretty women at the tables, to encourage the men to bet high. Remember the Silver Slipper?”

  I saw their eyes meet, and it was almost as if, for a moment, they were alone in the room.

  “It’s not something I can forget…” John Kingman said quietly. “You lost to me—everything, you remember? Down to your own silver slippers. And you left with me that night.”

  “I always pay my gambling debts!” She laughed, shuffling the cards expertly so that they seemed to flow through her long, be ringed fingers. “And I have never regretted losing that night. But tonight…” and her voice became light, teasing, “what shall be the stakes we play for tonight?”

  “Why not… ourselves?” Jesus Montoya’s voice was deceptively soft; he shrugged as our eyes turned to him. “Why not?” he repeated, and leaned forward across the table as he looked at Monique. “You want us to play a game, si? And this is why we are all here tonight, to make plans for another kind of game, just as much of a gamble. So I suggest to you that the only reason for taking risks is if the stakes are high enough to make it—shall we say—interesting?” He gave his short, almost soundless laugh. “It is not as if we were strangers to each other—but if we are to be partners in an enterprise where both the risks and the rewards are great, what better way to find out how much we are prepared to risk—who are the daring, and who are the cowards? I propose that we play this game, each against the other, and for whatever we have on our persons, including our services, of course.”

  I tried to keep all expression from my face as I looked around at the other faces in the short silence that followed.

  Monique’s eyes gleamed with a strangely lambent fire, and she breathed more quickly. Her husband looked thoughtful, but in no way dismayed. Mark, his face more than usually flushed, drained his glass at a gulp, as if it had been water and not brandy he was drinking.

  Lucas was frowning, and I thought for a moment that he was going to protest, but the next moment, catching Montoya’s slightly amused stare, his lips tightened and he kept silent.

  It was Monique to whom Montoya had directed his suggestion, and Monique who answered for us all, her voice strangely breathless.

  “Yes! I say yes! I may be a woman, but I have never been a coward. And if you lose, Jesus, you will work with us for nothing?”

  “That would depend on how heavily I lose—if I lose—wouldn’t it?” His lips smiled thinly under his dark moustache. “And if I win—more than you have to offer as you sit there—then, of course, my fee would be doubled.” His hooded eyes looked around the table. “It is agreed? In this game, there are no husbands and wives, or friends. We play for ourselves, each one of us, and the winner names his or her price.”

  Forty-Three

  Perhaps it was the brandy I had consumed so recklessly that evening, but I remember having the oddest feeling that this had all happened before. The French call it déjà vu. Everything seemed familiar, and in some way foreordained.

  The polished brass chandelier cast a bright glow over the green baize that covered the table, and the intent faces of the players seemed shadowed. I remembered that my father had killed a man over a game of poker, and that my reckless ancestor, the Black Earl, as they had called him, had shot himself later after realizing the extent of his losses. And did Lucas remember what had happened with Flo, or was his mind too occupied with Monique’s nearness?

  I was surprisingly clear-headed as I studied my cards, and the faces of the others. It was one of the things my grandfather had taught me. I could almost hear his voice.

  “Always watch their faces, granddaughter. Tell you everything. There isn’t a poker player in the world that doesn’t show some kind of sign, even a too-blank look.”

  But in this case, there was nothing that I could read in any of the varying expressions around the table. Not yet…

  With a little laugh that betrayed her barely suppressed excitement, Monique dropped one of her rings onto the table.

  “There—” she said. “That’s for openers.”

  The game that had seemed a kind of joke only a little while before had begun in earnest. Time passed, the atmosphere grew heavy with cigar smoke and tension. I was able, at last, to recognize a kind of pattern in the way each person played, although at first the cards seemed evenly divided.

  Lucas was overly cautious, while Monique played recklessly. John Kingman never bluffed. Montoya was completely unpredictable. It was Mark, sitting next to me, who seemed nervous. A few times, I saw his hands actually shake. But it was Lucas I watched most closely, from behind the convenient screen of my lashes.

  He had deliberately avoided glancing in my direction all evening, but now, as all talk of “business” had become more desultory and finally died away into the silence of concentration, I forced him to notice me at last.

  When I saw that the cards were running in my favor I began to play with luck quite ruthlessly. Montoya saw what I was doing and knew why—once or twice I caught his black eyes on me, bright with a half-hidden gleam of mo
ckery. As for the others, I saw them begin to look at me with expressions that mirrored varying degrees of surprise and respect. The diamond stars I wore in my hair gave me an advantage over them all, and I wasn’t afraid to use it. As I began to win consistently I forced the bidding up higher, and even Monique began to frown over her cards.

  “Your wife’s quite a poker player,” John Kingman said to Mark as he threw in his hand.

  “So I have discovered.” Mark’s voice was deliberately expressionless, making me wonder whether he suspected what I was about. I said lightly, “It’s only beginner’s luck. I feel that I cannot lose tonight!” and he followed Mr. Kingman’s example, tossing his cards onto the center of the table with a shrug.

  Monique was biting her lip, looking from my face to the cards she held. Her hand went up unconsciously to touch her one remaining eardrop. And then, saying petulantly, “You’re too lucky this evening!” she too threw in her hand. I looked at Montoya, who lifted his shoulder expressively. “As Monique says, you are too lucky. And me, I have always been a cautious man.” But I thought I saw a half-smile lift the corner of his mouth, as if he wished to convey to me silently that he knew very well what I planned.

  For now, only Lucas and I remained in the game, and because he had played carefully and conservatively his pile of winnings almost equaled mine. But I had lost only one diamond star, and that to him—and there were nine more pinned among the coils of my hair.

  “And you?”

  This time he met my eyes, and I saw the green lights flicker in his.

  “I think you’re bluffing.”

  I laughed, and pushed everything I had won into the center.

  “Then prove it—if you dare.”

  He saw how I had trapped him, and his face grew stony.

  “Don’t have anything more to bet.”

  They were all silent now, watching us. I thought I heard Mark’s indrawn breath beside me, but I did not take my eyes from Lucas’s face.