Bandit's Embrace (The Durango Family)

by Georgina Gentry

  Bandit choked on his cigar smoke. He now had an idea of what that little vixen was up to.

  “Son, are you all right?” Señor Falcon leaned forward anxiously.

  “Fine, Papa, fine.” Bandit motioned him back down.

  Señora Falcon’s fragile face furrowed in concern. “Tony, you shouldn’t smoke so much.”

  He felt genuinely touched by her interest in his well-being. His own mother had never cared what he did. “I’m tryin’ to quit, Mamá,” he said gently. “Now if you two don’t think this dinner party will be fun, we could just skip the whole thing—”

  “You can’t do that!” the señora chided. “This is in your honor, yours and Mademoiselle Monique’s. Of course we will attend.”

  Señor Falcon shook his head. “I wish I knew what was going on. The servants have picked up gossip from the Durango servants about the guest list. It seems Amethyst has invited almost twenty of the most arrogant and dislikable people in all Mexico.”

  The señora sipped her coffee. “But Amethyst is such a sweet girl. I don’t understand why she would invite people neither family ever socializes with.”

  Bandit had a sinking feeling. There was some scheme behind this party. What in blue blazes was the little vixen up to? Was she going to denounce him before a crowd? Humiliate him in some way? That little violet-eyed beauty might be capable of anything. But there seemed to be no graceful way to decline the invitation. He’d just have to wait until the party to see what she was up to.

  Señor Falcon stood up. “Mamá, I’ll escort you back to your room to rest.”

  Bandit scrambled to his feet. “Let me, Papa.”

  “No, no, son.” The old man waved Bandit back down as he helped the frail lady to her feet. “Finish your coffee. We’ll see you at lunch.”

  Bandit watched them go inside as he smoked. He had never expected to care so much for them. For a moment, his conscience hurt him and he hated himself and Romeros for what they’d both done to this fine old couple. And for what? So Bandit could lay claim to an uppity miss who’d done everything but spit in his face.

  He cringed inwardly. If he had a weak spot at all, it was his fear of humiliation. He’d never quite gotten over the pain of his childhood. Now memories came back after all these years, as fresh and as hurtful as if the incidents had happened only yesterday. . . .

  He was a child again, six or seven years old, sitting at the table in the kitchen of the Ace High with a glass of milk before him. Mama sat across from him, sipping gin. He didn’t realize at the time that other mothers didn’t drink gin for breakfast.

  She looked sad. Mama always looked sad, and he loved her so. “Guess what?” he said. “School starts today and I’ve decided to go. Then I’ll get a job, Mama, and you won’t have to work anymore.”

  “What?” She looked up as if her mind had been elsewhere. “What did you say? Wipe the milk off your mouth.”

  He did as she said, watching her hand shake as she drank. Mama was pretty with her dark hair and pale blue eyes. But she always looked so sad. “I said I’ve decided to go to school.”

  She threw back her head and laughed. “Are you loco? You can’t enroll in school in a town like Gun Powder, everyone will know you’re my kid and—”

  “But I want to learn to read and write so I can earn money for us both.”

  “Ashamed of me, are you? Ashamed of what I have to do to feed us?”

  “No, Mama, I love you,” he answered softly. He wasn’t sure what she was talking about. In fact, he wasn’t sure what she did at all. There were a lot of girls here at the Ace High. They sat around in their chemises and petticoats, laughed and drank with men who came in the evening. Often, the girls took the men upstairs. He didn’t know what they did up there. He sensed he’d better not ask.

  “Lovel” She laughed and drained her glass. “That’s what he said! You look just like him, you know that? Every time I look at you, I see his face!”

  The boy saw it coming, tried to dodge away, but her hand caught him across the cheek with a stinging blow.

  Mona came into the kitchen just then, yawning. “Ah, Lidah, stop beatin’ on the kid. You’re always hittin’ him.”

  Mama collapsed in sobs. “I—I don’t mean to. Sometimes I just can’t seem to stop myself! Forgive me, son.”

  The boy rubbed his stinging cheek. He’d already forgiven her. He loved her, but knew she hated him for some reason he couldn’t understand. It had something to do with her past. Once he’d asked and she’d slapped him again.

  Mona poured herself a cup of coffee, sat down at the table, smiled at him. “What’d you do to rile her, Handsome?”

  The boy grinned at her. He’d already discovered that his smile won him friends. He thought Mona Dulaney was the most beautiful woman in the world besides Mama. But Mona was old, maybe twenty-one or -two. Only she and the old professor who played the piano in the saloon were kind to him. “I’m going to school,” he announced stubbornly. “But Lidah doesn’t like it.”

  Mona sipped her coffee, fidgeted. “Maybe she’s right. This is a small town. Maybe you should let the old professor teach you like he’s been doin’. After all, he was a teacher at some fancy college before the bottle got him.”

  “He’s already taught me to play the piano,” the boy announced importantly. “The professor says in a couple of years, I’ll be playin’, well enough to take his place out front on Saturday night.”

  His mother grimaced, reached for the bottle, refilled her glass. “What an ambition!” she whispered. “I’m raisin’ a kid to play piano in a bordello.”

  The boy beamed at the compliment but felt troubled by the irony in her voice. He wasn’t sure what a bordello was unless it was a saloon like the Ace High with girls who lived over it. “And I play a good game of poker,” he offered, encouraged. “All the girls have taught me how to play draw, five-card stud.”

  “Your fancy daddy would be so proud!” His mother laughed, but there was no humor in her laughter.

  Mona frowned at him, gave him the slightest shake of her head. “Hush, Handsome.”

  When Lidah drained her glass, Mona turned to her. “You’re startin’ earlier and earlier.”

  “I have to to get through the evenings around here,” Lidah said, and tears came to her eyes.

  The boy looked at the big clock on the kitchen wall. In various stages of undress, the other female residents were coming into the kitchen, getting coffee.

  “I got to go.” The boy stood up. “School is about to start.”

  He saw the look that passed between his mother and Mona.

  “Handsome,” Mona began, “I don’t think—”

  “I’m going.” He stuck his chin out stubbornly. “The other kids go, why not me?”

  His mother sneered then, reached for the gin bottle. “Hell, Mona, let Mister Smarty Pants go! He’ll find out soon enough.”

  He washed his face, slicked back his hair, and ran through the swinging bat-wing doors of the Ace High. He was going to school. . . .

  A butterfly lit on his arm as Bandit sat under the bougainvillea, remembering that long-ago day, the child he had been. Tears came to his eyes. He’d thought he was past caring, but it still hurt. He watched the butterfly flutter away, listened to a bird singing out in the garden. He was fooling himself to think he could ever really fit into a respectable family, have security and people who cared. The little violet-eyed beauty represented everything he’d always hungered for: stability, security, the respect of a town. And something more.

  He loved her. If she’d come from the poorest peons in all Mexico, he’d give up everything to marry her—if she’d have him. Bandit smiled wryly, looked at the glowing tip of his cigar. A party. Somehow she meant to use it as a weapon against him, to shame and humiliate him. Well, it had happened before. Nothing could be any worse than what he had endured years ago.

  At school on the first day, the schoolmaster treated him coldly and even ignored his raised hand when he knew the a
nswer. During the lunch hour, even though he was big for his age, the older boys ganged up on him and blacked his eye although he fought valiantly.

  When he got home that afternoon, he sought out Mona. Mama was usually pretty drunk by late afternoon.

  “Mona,” he said, “what’s a ‘bastard’? What’s a ‘whore’?”

  The redhead winced and tears came to her eyes. She reached over and touched his face. “What happened to you, Handsome? Where’d you get that shiner?”

  “I—I fell down at recess.”

  “I see. The rotten little devils. Don’t let your mother see that eye.”

  “You didn’t answer my question, Mona.”

  She hugged him to her, kissed his cheek. “Aw, what difference does it make? You know, you sure are gettin’ tall.”

  “Tall as a man?”

  She laughed, rumpled his blond hair. “Almost. You’re gonna be a devil with the ladies someday. Come back in ten years or so and you can be my boyfriend.”

  He considered it seriously. “But you’ll be more than thirty then, Mona. That’s old. Will you still be here?”

  “I hope not. I don’t want to end up like your mama, at the bottom of a bottle.” She looked pensive. “I want to marry some rich old geezer who’ll still care about me when my face wrinkles. I want to be a real lady, the kind all the other women go to for advice about the latest styles, and invite to their garden parties and social teas. Now women step off the sidewalk when I pass by and pretend they don’t see me.”

  He considered the question very seriously as she reached for a deck of cards, shuffled them. “Mona, the only rich man around here is Clyde Bosner, the rancher, and he’s married already.”

  “Uh-huh. But he comes in here anyway.” She dealt him a hand.

  He picked up the cards, studied them as Mona had taught him. “I hear there’s lots of rich ranchers around San Antone, Mona.”

  She laughed. “There’s a real elegant place there, Miss Fancy’s. Maybe someday I’ll take up residence, maybe even pretend I’m French. I could do that, you know. I’m from New Orleans. Men always like French girls.”

  “You didn’t tell me what the words meant.”

  Mona paused, not meeting his eyes. “They ain’t good.”

  “I reckon not. I could tell by the way the kids was screamin’ them. Junior Bosner was the worst.”

  She chewed her lip. “That bully give you that shiner?”

  He nodded. “I gave as good as I got . . . or tried to.”

  “I’ll bet you did, you little scrapper! Maybe you ought to forget about school, Handsome, let the professor teach you again—”

  “I ain’t gonna let Junior Bosner make me holler ‘calf rope.’”

  Mona laughed. “Is that cowboy talk for ‘I give up’?”

  “Yep.” He thought about it a minute. “They may kill me, Mona, but I won’t quit.”

  “You got honor, you know that, Handsome? Real honor.” She looked at him a long moment over her cards. “Tell you what, I intend to have a little word with Junior’s old man the next time he comes in. I’ll just bet I can do a little something about that trouble at school.”

  “No. I don’t want the kids to know I tattled.” He threw the cards down, stood up.

  “This ain’t the same thing,” she said quickly. “It’s just that me having something on Junior’s papa is sort of like having a straight flush when the other player thinks you only got a pair, understand?”

  He nodded, not really understanding what it was that she could say to Junior’s papa.

  “And something else,” she leaned forward conspiratorially. “Those kids are raggin’ you because they know how much it hurts you. What you got to do is affect a don’t-give-a-damn attitude, sorta arrogant, like the gunfighters you see come in the Ace High.”

  The idea appealed to him. “You mean, grin and walk cocky like I’m the top dog in a dog fight?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Learn to swagger a little, act like nothin’ bothers you. Then the kids will leave you alone.”

  That helped. Plus the fact the boy got to where he could hold his own in a fist fight. But Junior Bosner had suddenly started avoiding him, and he never found out what Mona had said to Junior’s daddy. His mother paid less and less attention to him as the months passed, but she struck him a few times when she was drinking, which was often. He determined he would get an education, a good job, and take his mother away from Gun Powder. Why, he’d even earn enough to give Mona a ticket to San Antone so she could meet a rich rancher and turn into a real lady, whatever that was.

  The breeze picked up under the bougainvillea, making a noise as it rattled the invitation in his hand. Bandit snuffed out his cigarillo with his boot, stared at the fine paper, the fancy handwriting. A party. A party in his and Mona’s honor.

  He winced, looking at the invitation. It had been a humiliating party, a Christmas party, that had finally driven him from school and sent him back to the saloon to finish his education under the broken-down old college professor. He could stand almost anything but humiliation. That was his weak spot. Humiliation hurt more than a bully’s fists.

  It was the night of the dinner. Amethyst’s conscience bothered her as she stood inspecting her dress in front of a mirror. Surely there was nothing so lovely in all of Mexico. The French cambric overskirt polonaise, in the latest deep purple shade called prune, was pulled up like an apron to the bustle in back. The underskirt of pale lavender-pink pleats showed as she walked. Her maid had done her hair up in the elaborate chignon that was so popular now, with tiny white flowers and, of course, the palest lavender forget-me-nots entwined in it. The Durango gems, amethysts and diamonds, glistened on her dainty neck above the low-cut bodice.

  She had never looked so lovely, nor been so miserable in her whole life. After tonight, maybe Monique and Bandit would both be gone. Wasn’t that what she wanted?

  Still Amethyst had misgivings, regrets. What she was doing was cruel, unfair, and quite unlike her. Well, it was too late now for anything except to get through the evening somehow. Everyone who had been sent an invitation had accepted with pleasure, except the older Falcons. The frail señora was ill again and of course Enrique would not leave her side. But all the others were coming, delighted to be invited, no doubt, since the Durangos had never mixed much with them socially before.

  She pasted a smile on her lips, and went downstairs as she heard carriages pulling up before the hacienda.

  Monique looked ravishing. She wore rich brocade in the dark color known as dragon green, complete with braid and flounces. But the redhead appeared to be a little nervous, even though the loyal Mrs. Wentworth had been invited.

  When Amethyst passed her papa in the hall, he gave her an annoyed look. “Twenty of the most boring snobs in all of Mexico! Why, daughter, why?”

  To get rid of that fake Falcon who is after their money and my hand, she thought. And maybe he will take that redhead with him.

  But the guests were coming in and Amethyst rushed to greet them, glad there wasn’t time to face her upset father.

  Did she really want Texas to leave? She remembered the sounds of passion behind Monique’s door, remembered those two meeting in the library. Si. She shook her chignon of black curls vigorously. She wanted them both gone, out of this house and off this ranch! Getting the Texan out of her heart would be quite another matter.

  The Websters and their aggressive daughter, Clarissa, were the first to arrive. Clarissa looked like she was about to spill out of the top of her yellow organza dress. The Websters would be lucky to get her married before she got caught in the hay with some vaquero and brought shame to her family. It crossed Amethyst’s mind that what she disliked most about Clarissa was the way the girl had looked at Bandit at the Falcon fiesta.

  “Ah, the Websters!” she gushed as she extended her hand to Mrs. Webster. “So glad you could make it!”

  Clarissa craned her neck. “Have the Falcons arrived?”

  She felt a jealous
twinge and struggled to control it. “Not yet, but any time now.”

  Other carriages drew up to the front entry. Bandit arrived on horseback. He looked so virile and broad-shouldered in his Spanish-style suit that Amethyst gasped. She and Papa went to greet him.

  Señor Durango said, “Too bad your mother isn’t feeling well, Tony. We would have enjoyed having them.”

  “Nothing serious, I hope?” Amethyst asked.

  “No. I offered to stay with her but Papa wouldn’t hear of me missing the party.”

  She had forgotten how handsome he was as he bent low, kissed her hand.

  “Aimée.” He looked up at her but didn’t turn loose of her hand. “You are easily the most beautiful girl in all Mexico.”

  And you are certainly the most handsome man, she thought, but she only smiled and blushed. “Oh, you flatter me!” She pulled away from the disquieting warmth of his fingers to greet the couple just arriving.

  When she glanced back at Bandit, Clarissa Webster was hanging on his arm, looking up at him raptly while her mother seemed embarrassed.

  That little snip, Amethyst thought. Clarissa is just an overgrown, ripe child and Texas should realize that, and stop flirting with her. But why should I care? After all, I don’t want him. Do I?

  The butler moved through the crowd, serving sherry. Bandit sipped it, made a face. “I don’t suppose you’d have a beer now, would you?” he asked the butler in a loud voice. “Cerveza? Beer?”

  The butler looked at him, his surprise evident, and two elegant ladies standing nearby tittered with laughter and whispered behind their fans.

  It was starting already. Amethyst tried to feel satisfaction at his embarrassment, but somehow the moment was without joy. The Texan ran his finger around his collar as if it were choking him. He didn’t look so swaggering and self-confident now.

  She turned away, began a bright, brittle conversation with a plump dowager about the latest fads. Rosewood was very popular for furniture. Horsehair upholstery was on the decline, plush on the way up. Bustles were smaller this year, skirts not so full as last year’s. Had anyone seen that new americano magazine, the Delineator, with the paper dress patterns that everyone talked about?