by Nan Ryan
“So you know about the old maps of Spanish California?”
“A little,” said Sabella, noncommittal. “Were your ancestors Spanish?”
“No.”
“I thought most of the acreage in Southern California was deeded to Spanish families through land grants from the throne of Spain.”
“That’s true. You’re absolutely right. Most of Lindo Vista—twenty-two square leagues—was originally owned by an aristocratic Spanish family.”
“Oh, really?” Sabella commented, purposely keeping her tone casual. “What was their name? Do you recall?”
“Sure. Carrillo,” Burt was forthcoming. “The land was granted to Don Pascal Antonio Carrillo many years ago and he in turn passed it on to his descendants. We bought the rancho from Carrillo’s heirs and paid off the outstanding taxes back in ’48—just after the war. The same year Dad married my mother.”
Burt didn’t notice the narrowing of Sabella’s dark eyes as he spoke, was unaware that her teeth were firmly clenched, her jaw set.
“As soon as they married, Dad brought his new bride to Lindo Vista to live in the rancho’s hacienda. The house dates back to 1830; the elder Carrillo built it. I was born there a year after the wedding. We still live there.”
Sabella sounded calm, but silently seethed when, already knowing the answer, she asked sweetly, “So the old ranch house is still livable?”
“Honey, it’s a mansion. Built to last forever. A large, handsome old house filled with the finest of furnishings.”
Burt continued to tell her things, to talk openly, as if he had nothing whatever to hide. He told her about the terrible droughts of the sixties when many of the California cattle ranchers lost everything. Said it was during that period that they bought additional acreage at rock-bottom prices, adding to the vast empire that was Lindo Vista.
As he spoke of the ranch, a look of pride came into his gray eyes. It was obvious he loved the land, that his roots were deep, that he meant to live out the rest of his days on Lindo Vista.
“Lindo Vista boasts every kind of terrain under the sun,” he mused thoughtfully. “The western boundary is several miles of rugged, untouched coastline. Then south down to the banks of the Santa Margarita River. North up to Trabuto canyon. And east across the wide rolling valley, up into the Coastal Ranges and the Santa Anas, and down into flat, hot deserts beyond.”
The look of pride and satisfaction on his handsome face as he spoke of the ranch both angered and sickened Sabella. He was so smug, so totally comfortable in his envied role as the rich young lord of Lindo Vista.
She supposed she should be grateful. It was this supreme arrogance which made her plan possible. Burton J. Burnett was accustomed to taking anything he wanted as though it were his due. He was used to having beautiful women throw themselves at him. He supposed that she was just another of the multitude hoping for a few magical nights in his arms.
How wrong he was.
Constantly coddled and catered to, he had likely never had a bad day in his entire life. Well he would have several before she was through with him!
Carefully maintaining an air of nonchalance, Sabella gently prodded Burt to tell her more, to talk about his parents.
He told her that his father was an old man, seventy-four, and very frail and sickly. Said he really knew very little about his mother, that she had left them when he was just a boy.
“Your mother left you?” Sabella was honestly taken aback. She had never read anything about a Mrs. Raleigh Burnett in the newspapers, but she had assumed that the woman was dead.
“My mother was more than twenty years younger than Dad,” Burt said in low, level tones. “When they met she was barely twenty, he was forty-two.” With the setting sun turning his smooth brown shoulders the color of brick, Burt stared unblinking toward the west, and said, “Mother was a young, beautiful San Francisco aristocrat. She had the reddest hair, the greenest eyes, and the whitest skin you’ve ever seen. Naturally, Dad worshipped her. Couldn’t rest until she agreed to marry him.”
“Did it take him long to persuade her?”
“Not long. They married a few weeks after meeting. He brought her down to Lindo Vista and gave her anything she wanted; did everything he could think of to make her happy.”
Burt reached for his discarded shirt, took a cigar and a tiny box of matches from the breast pocket. He stuck the cheroot in his mouth, bit down on it with sharp white teeth. Before he could light it, Sabella took the matches, struck one, and held the tiny flame to the tip of his cigar.
Looking directly into his gray eyes, she said, “But she wasn’t happy?”
Burt puffed the smoke to life as she shook out the match. “Apparently not. The summer I was six years old, Mother—Dana was her name and it fit her perfectly—went to San Francisco for a month-long holiday. Dad and I stayed behind at the ranch. While there, she met a handsome Mexican grandee at a Nob Hill soiree.” Burt puffed on the cigar, leaned back on a stiffened arm. “It must have been love at first sight. She divorced Dad immediately, married the Mexican, and went with him to his home in Mexico City.”
“No!”
“Yep. Broke Dad’s heart. He was never quite the same after that.” Burt chuckled suddenly and shook his dark head. “He banished anyone with a Mexican or Spanish surname from Lindo Vista. Old compadres who had worked for him for years. Whole families that lived in adobes on the ranch; children who were born there. Dozens of vaqueros, the best horsemen in the Southwest. The entire staff of the house. The cooks, the maids, the housekeeper. Everybody.”
“That seems a bit unjust,” Sabella said. Not that she was surprised to hear that the old man would do such a hurtful thing. She knew exactly how unjust both father and son could be.
“It was. Sure, it was,” said Burt. “Unfair. Illogical. Foolish. Sometimes when people are badly hurt they do senseless things. Who knows how we might behave in similar circumstances.” Sabella remained silent. “And, I suppose, the same could be said for Mother. People thought she acted unfairly. But maybe she couldn’t help herself.”
“Maybe,” agreed Sabella. Then, thinking aloud. “But how could a mother leave her six-year-old son?”
“For love, I guess.” Burt shrugged bare shoulders. “Didn’t the poet say, ‘It is impossible to love and be wise.’”
Nodding, Sabella replied, “The poet also said, ‘Pleasure of love lasts but a moment/Pain of love lasts a lifetime.’”
“I’ll try and keep that in mind,” Burt said, staring to grin. He flicked his cigar away. “And speaking of love … ” He put his arms around Sabella, deftly laid her back on the grass, and followed her down, “Let’s make some.”
He kissed her before she got the chance to object.
And kept on kissing her as a dexterous hand slipped between them and went about the pleasant task of again unbuttoning her white blouse.
As they lay there kissing in the dying sunlight, a spare, black-clad, stony-faced Mexican sat on the shaded rim of a rocky rampart high above them, out of sight. The powerful field glasses raised to his dark eyes were trained on the embracing couple stretched out below on the velvety mesa.
The man’s thin lips, beneath his sleek black mustache, slowly turned up into a pleased smile. The whiplash scar on his dark right cheek puckered and pulled. His hands began to shake with building anticipation.
“Ah, sí, sí,” Cisco silently encouraged. “Go ahead, Burnett. Make love to the beautiful señorita. I won’t tell Gena.” His smile became lewd and evil. “Mi palabra de honor. You have my word.”
Fourteen
GENA DE TEMPLE WAS aware, with a kind of nagging clairvoyance, that she was in real danger of losing Burt.
Forever.
She was worried as she had never been before. Through the years she had, more than once, laughed and looked the other way when tales of Burt’s dalliances reached her ears. She had told herself repeatedly that his sexual escapades had nothing to do with his devotion and commitment to her. She
had reasoned that what there was between the two of them could not be threatened by a nameless parade of morally loose blondes, brunettes, and redheads.
All his brief, meaningless affairs had been conducted in a clandestine, gentlemanly fashion. Out of respect for her, he had spared her hurt and embarrassment by misbehaving only on those occasions when he was out of town. To the best of her knowledge, Burt had never had an affair with a woman she knew, a woman who lived in or around Capistrano.
Not that he hadn’t been offered many an opportunity from the local ladies. She had seen the blatant invitations flashing from the eyes of females from fifteen to fifty whenever they looked at the irresistible Burt.
It had never bothered her. It had, in fact, pleased her very much. She was envied and she gloried in it. She enjoyed being the object of their jealousy, delighted that they coveted her handsome lover, wishing he belonged to them.
And she had him!
Or did she?
Gena’s exalted position had always been secure until now. Something was very wrong. Someone was luring her lover away. Somehow she had to put an end to it.
These distressing thoughts plagued Gena as she waited impatiently for Cisco. It was evening. Sunday evening.
Again.
A week had passed since she had summoned Cisco to her suite and ordered him to trail Burt, to find out what Burt was up to, if anything, and then to come straight back and report only to her. Say nothing to anyone else.
Gena was alone in the mansion on this warm Sunday evening except for the servants. Her father, Senator de Temple, was in Los Angeles. He, Don Miguel Andres Amaro, and a host of important dignitaries were to participate in a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a newly constructed state building. Don Miguel and the senator had left on the noon train. Gena had spent the long, miserable afternoon worrying and waiting for Cisco.
When was he going to bring her some news?
Gena glanced at the delicate white porcelain clock on the marble mantel. Nine p.m. She sighed wearily. What was keeping Cisco? Had he again failed to find Burt? Was he searching still, unwilling to give up? Had he found out something so disturbing he was reluctant to tell her?
Gena’s heart lurched in her chest when finally she heard the distinctive sound of booted feet on the wide balcony outside her upstairs suite. She instinctively started toward the tall double doors which stood wide open to the balmy night. Halfway across the spacious salon, she caught herself. She mustn’t let even Cisco know how upset, how frightened she was.
Gena drew a steadying breath, hastily sat down on the peach brocade sofa, smoothed the skirts of her yellow silk gown, and picked up a book from the nearby table. Hurriedly flipping it open, she was pretending to read when the tall, spare Cisco stepped into the open doorway and softly said her name.
Gena looked up and smiled easily at Cisco. She noted, with a quick appraising glance, that he had, before coming here, taken the time to bathe, shave, and change clothes. His inky black shirt and trousers were freshly laundered and neatly pressed. He was hatless; his longish black hair, brushed straight back, was still damp from his bath.
Her searching gaze went to his dark, narrow face. His black eyes held a somber look and a muscle twitched spasmodically in his scarred cheek. He knew something.
Something bad.
Purposely making herself remain cool and collected, Gena said, “Do come in, Cisco.” She laid the unread book aside, rose to her feet. “Let me pour you a drink.”
Cisco slipped into the room like a dark specter, looking, as usual, strangely evil and forbidding. Gena felt the wispy hair on her nape rise. She appeared totally composed as she crossed to an inlaid satin commode, atop which several carved decanters were lined up in a neat row. Not bothering to ask what Cisco wanted to drink, she poured two glasses of madeira.
She smiled warmly at the black-clad man sprawling on her peach brocade sofa, and bent from the waist to hand him his wine. She caught the quick flash of fire in the depths of his black eyes as he stared hungrily at her décolletage. Her fashionable yellow silk gown was so severely cut that her full, high bosom was barely concealed when she stood completely erect. Bending in such a daring dress courted disaster.
Gena didn’t care.
She was far too preoccupied with worry over Burt to concern herself with Cisco seeing too much naked flesh. Besides, she derived a bit of perverse pleasure in allowing this scar-faced, mustachioed Mexican to steal glimpses of her breasts, although she would have hotly denied it had anyone suggested such a despicable thing. It was, she knew, a rather dangerous, depraved kind of game she played with Cisco. She wasn’t sure why she did it. Certainly it wasn’t that she was attracted to such a man; a common laborer, a Mexican vaquero, a lowly, uneducated hired hand without fortune or future.
A fixture on the de Temple rancho, Cisco lived with his brother, Santo, in a small adobe out back of the stables. Gena had heard whispered tales from the house servants about Cisco’s sadistic treatment of the many women in his life.
He was, it was said, mean and brutal when drunk on tequila, and many a night, a sobbing female had fled his adobe in fear and shame. But, oddly enough, they always returned, as if something he did to them made them want more.
The scar on his cheek, so it was said, had been carved there by a jealous Mexican sweetheart who came to his adobe unannounced late one night and found him with a rich railroader’s beautiful red-headed daughter.
As Cisco sat there now on her peach brocade sofa, his dark, long-fingered hand trembled so badly he spilled a few drops of the madeira on his clean black trousers. Pretending she hadn’t noticed, Gena inwardly gloated.
She started to sit down beside Cisco, but changed her mind. Instead she tugged a French empire chair up directly before him and sat down facing him. Anxious to hear what he had learned about Burt, she never realized that her yellow-gowned knees were touching his.
Gena made herself leisurely sip her wine as if she were in no particular hurry to hear what Cisco had to say. In a way she wasn’t. Instinctively she knew he had brought her bad news. She was almost tempted to shout at him, “Don’t tell me! Please don’t. Forget that I ever asked you to follow Burt. Drink your wine and go!” She said nothing. She heard nothing but the ticking of the clock and the pounding of her heart.
He said, “Señorita Gena, I had rather have my tongue torn from my head than to have to tell you all the shocking, disgusting things I have seen today.”
In truth, Cisco had a hard time suppressing a smile of satisfaction when he saw the lovely Gena flinch as if he had struck her. It was exactly the reaction he had counted on. He knew enough about women—especially this spoiled, beautiful, unattainable one—to realize that just such a statement would make her beg him to tell her everything.
Every little dirty detail.
Gena took another quick sip of her wine, swallowed convulsively, put a hand on her rapidly falling and rising bosom and said, “Please, Cisco, you must. You must tell me everything. Everything. I must know the truth.”
Sadly shaking his head, Cisco’s hollow-cheeked face looked tortured. He laid a spread hand on his shirtfront and said, “It is like a knife thrust deep into my heart to hurt you, my gentle dove.”
Touched by his compassion, Gena leaned close, held out her hand to him. He took hold of the pale, fragile fingers, held them firmly, tightly in his. He leaned up from the sofa so that their faces were only inches apart. And the sight of her exposed breasts was his to enjoy anytime he lowered his eyes.
“Just as you suspected, cara,” he said softly. “Burnett has been with another woman. He is with her this very minute.”
“Oh, God, no,” Gena half sobbed, expecting to hear those very words, yet hoping against hope it wasn’t true. “How could he do this to me? We are engaged. We’re planning a Christmas wedding.” Her green eyes closed in genuine agony.
Cisco was pleased. “I cannot understand,” he bit out the words, “how a man could want another woman when he has you.”
Gena’s eyes slowly opened. Heartsick, she said, “Thank you, Cisco. You’re very kind. But you must not spare my feelings. I want to know everything that you know.”
“Sí. I will start at the beginning. The woman is a young, beautiful Spaniard named—”
“A Latin?” Gena interrupted, shocked, horrified. “Burt’s sleeping with a dirty peasant girl? Someone’s paid servant?”
Pride mixed with anger flared in Cisco’s black eyes, but Gena didn’t notice. “No, señorita, the woman is neither peasant nor servant. Her name is Sabella Rios and she came here from Tucson in the Arizona Territory several weeks ago. She is with her duenna and they are staying at the Inn of the Swallows.” He paused, waiting.
“What is she doing in Capistrano? Where did Burt meet her? How long has this been going on?”
“I do not know what she is doing here. I have dispatched Santo to Tucson to learn what he can of Señorita Rios. It is unclear where or when Burnett met the young lady, but from what I saw this afternoon—” here he paused, bit his lip, closed his eyes, slowly opened them “—they have apparently known each other well for some time.”
“You mean she knew Burt before coming here? Was he expecting her then? Have they been … they were together today?” Cisco nodded. “You saw them together? Where? What were they doing?”
Cisco wore a pained expression when he said, “You sure you want to hear this?”
“I command you to tell me!” Gena snapped irritably. “Leave nothing out.”
He sighed, rose to his feet, crossed the room, and poured himself another glass of madeira. His back to her, he began, “Burnett again spent last night alone at the Mission Inn. He went home to Lindo Vista around noon today and left again shortly before two p.m.” Cisco turned and walked back to the sofa. He glanced at the twin mounds of creamy flesh exposed by the low-cut yellow dress. He licked his lips and sat back down. He scooted forward on the peach sofa, trapping her crossed legs inside his spread knees. “The young lady in question—Señorita Rios—left the Inn of the Swallows at approximately three o’clock. She took a saddled chestnut stallion from Paxton Dean’s livery stable and took the coast road south out of town.”