Wild Sierra Rogue

by Martha Hix

  “I am more than weary of the charade myself. Today was awful in the extreme, thank you very much.” She sighed, her shoulders drooping. “But the ruse will serve purposes. No man will bother me, and—”

  “I think you’re making too much of that angle.” Tex picked an apple from the basket on the bedside table, then polished it on his trousers leg. “You’re too skinny and old for most fellers.”

  That hurt. Almost as deeply as it hurt when Rafe made fun. Rafe aside, it shouldn’t bother her, Tex’s remark. Getting her career off the ground mattered. Ever since she’d planned a future sans baby’s breath and certain refrains from “Lohengrin,” Margaret had wanted to be judged on abilities, not looks.

  Something good had resulted from her years of struggle for scholarly recognition—and from her fight for life. The curse of beauty plagued her no more. Yet she shot back, “There’s always the odd bird who might get ideas. If you’ll recall, I am identical to my two gorgeous triplet sisters.” You don’t resemble them, not anymore, and you’re glad for it. Remember? “I can’t be all bad.” She finished on a weak note, “Can I?”

  “You’ve got a nice face, Sis.” Tex cocked his head from one side to the other. “It’s sort of comely . . . when you’re not frowning. But you ought to eat more, put some weight on. Buy new clothes—none of them in brown. And do something with your hair.”

  “I am what I am.”

  “That ain’t no reason not to try something different. Try that Gibson girl look.”

  “Like Natalie?”

  “Now that you mention her . . .” He grinned.

  Margaret gritted her teeth, but the action turned to grinding when her brother surmised, “You might even get ole Rafe interested in you, if you was to gussy yourself up.”

  “He would be my last reason for making myself over.”

  Tex took a big, crunching bite of the apple. Studying the core closely, he said, “I think you’re wrong there, Maggie. I think ole Rafe is the reason you’ve been touchy as an old cook. I’d bet a dollar to a doughnut, it wouldn’t take much for you to get downright silly over that feller.”

  Margaret prayed this wasn’t true. But what about in the beginning?

  “Sis, I didn’t mean no offense. Sis? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Everything. I . . . I was thinking about the first time I laid eyes on Rafael Delgado.”

  “Was he wearing his matador getup?” Tex sniggered, not paying any attention to her negative answer. “I bet he looked plumb silly, decked out in sequins and a mouse-ear cap.”

  For the strangest reason, Margaret didn’t like her brother making fun of Rafe. “That’s enough.”

  “Now, now, don’t get testy. Testier.” Tex imparted one of his winning smiles. “I know the two of you don’t have no use for each other, but tell me about when y’all first met, Maggie. You know Papa had shuffled me off to school, ’cause Charity had got herself in another fix. So, I don’t know nothing, or very little, about what all went on.”

  Margaret had spent a good bit of her growing-up years reading to Tex, or spinning “once upon a time” and ghost tales. Though an adult, he still wanted her storytelling. Never in all these years had she agreed to tell him anything about Rafe Delgado. Now, though, she felt the need to talk.

  Why mention that the wild and impetuous Charity went on trial back in December of ’89 for smuggling Texas silver across the Rio Grande? It was a tense, anxious time for the McLoughlin clan; no one could back her claim of innocence. They weren’t without hope, though. If found, the Eagle might be able to save her from the gallows. Then, amazingly and on a technicality, Charity managed to get herself freed, but no one breathed easier, not with tarnish still on her halo.

  “Papa had traveled to Chihuahua to find Rafe,” Margaret told Tex. “But he came back empty-handed. Imagine our joy when Rafe showed up and swore our sister knew nothing—until it was too late—about the smuggling ring she’d gotten involved in.”

  “I know about that, Sis. Tell me what you thought when you first saw ole Rafe.”

  Emotions—good and bad, indifferent and spirited-surged through her. She closed her eyes. And smiled. “Confident . . . defiant . . . invincible, Rafe strode forward. I suppose it was somewhat like when he used to enter the arena.” Her legs going weak, she sat down. “But he wasn’t Rafael, el matador magnífico. He was every bit the Mexican rebel. Bandoliers strapped his chest. Head to toe, he was dressed in black. Dust coated his leather vest and britches. His sombrero—it was silver-studded, I seem to recall. His spurs were pinging. His step was as confident as the look on his incredible face.”

  “Did he say anything to you?”

  “Not right away. Not until we had gathered at the hotel to celebrate Charity’s vindication.” Margaret’s chin trembled, but she chuckled dryly to cover her blatant show of emotion. “He just sort of glided across the room and halted in front of me. He lifted his fingertips to my jaw, and said, ‘I would steal you away to Chihuahua. Will you like that, bella amorcito?’”

  Tex’s eyes turned speculative. “I wonder if some o’ that gliding and sweet-talking would work with Natalie?”

  Margaret couldn’t answer, so caught up in the past was she. Quite simply, Rafe took her breath away. She wasn’t alone in this. His blatant masculinity, his raw virility had drawn women from all directions. Three ladies had swooned in Judge Osgood Peterson’s courtroom. Maisie acted as if she were twenty instead of ninety. And Margaret—sensible, level-headed, studious Margaret—did her own swaying. Immediately, she started wondering about Chihuahua.

  He might not have the sophistication of a Frederick von Nimzhausen, nor was he as tall as her kinsmen, nor was he handsome in the classical sense; but Rafe Delgado, on that day in December, seemed to have no flaws.

  And now, during this Indian summer evening, Margaret laughed and rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t too discriminating at the time.” Since, she hadn’t given Chihuahua two thoughts.

  “I’d say you’re a majority of one, Maggie. ’Pears to me the ladies find him as pretty as a speckled pup.”

  She laughed once more, this time at the comparison. “I grant he has a fascinating edge. He exudes something. Like some sort of love potion. Rather disgusting, in my opinion.”

  Uninterested in Rafe’s appeal to women, Tex said, “I wonder why he never went back to Old Mexico.”

  Knowing the answer all too well—he wasn’t one to leave a bird’s nest on the ground!—she decided a change of subject was in order. “Tex, there is no such word as hisself.”

  She reached for the pitcher and poured a glass of water, but she couldn’t wash Rafe from her thoughts. All those years ago he’d shown no interest, not after his initial notice, even though she’d made herself available enough. What a ninny she’d been. She’d talked and acted like an idiot most of the time, saying and doing the wrong things over and over, only to start all over again.

  In those days, the awful truth according to Charity hadn’t overly bothered her. From gossip about his participation in sexual orgies, Charity and her then-lawyer Hawk linked him to the Gonzáles silver-smuggling ring. Well, Rafe knew about the operation, but he’d somehow kept his hand out of it.

  In the wash of Rafe’s appearance in Texas came more gossip, little of it complimentary. Outside of his public persona, he was a shadowy figure in Mexico, known for amorous excesses and accused of crimes against the wealthy, including his own family. And still Margaret didn’t find him loathsome. Her loathing came later. After . . . Olga.

  When the Countess of Granada arrived from Spain too late to lend moral support to Charity, she became dazzled by Rafe’s notoriety from his bullfighting days. And he fell for her. Obviously he liked his women prim, married, and on the simpleton side. Margaret McLoughlin, shame on you, decrying your poor afflicted sister.

  “Is that all you’ve got to say, Sis?”

  “I really have said enough.”

  She wouldn’t mention the evening—in the shadows of the Alamo—whe
n she’d allowed Rafe to think she was his adored. Nor did she mention what happened the next night, when Olga—her clothes torn, her lips bloodied—had run crying to Margaret with a horrible tale of assault.

  “Sis . . .” Tex abandoned the apple. “You okay?”

  “Yes! And you were right a while ago. Rafe is the reason I’m touchy as an old cook.”

  Margaret jumped up and marched across the room to tug pins from her hair. She set a brush to the mass, and as she yanked, she wanted to shout, I don’t want any part of Rafe Delgado! To be attracted to her sister’s attacker was just too offensive to consider.

  Five

  “Delicious. Simply delicious. Do help yourself to a bite, Señor Delgado. I think you’ll love it.”

  Her eyes the hue of milk chocolate, her voice as sweet as any Margaret McLoughlin had ever heard, Natalie Nash offered apple strudel, but the come-hither invitation meant something altogether more enticing. After all Tex’s fawning over the buxom Miss Nash, her breathy dinnertime attentions were reserved for Rafe and Rafe alone.

  “I do have a sweet tooth.” Wearing a finely cut suit of clothes, not to mention deceptive innocence in his eyes, Rafe continued to accept worship as if he were a veritable pasha of the East. And, surprisingly, that worship had come to him without so much as a mention to his fame of bygone days.

  They sat at a candle-lit table for six in the Edelweiss’s dining room, Margaret next to Tex, who had made a point to seat Natalie at his right. Rafe sat opposite Margaret. Rounding out the sextet . . . a middle-aged couple from the train, Mr. and Mrs. Elwood Ashkettle of Beaumont, Texas. The Ashkettles—or at least the distaff side of them—provided a rapt audience for The Great Casanova Come Alive In West Texas.

  “Such a handsome man as you, you ought to have some nice lady baking goodies for you.” Her old-fashioned sausage curls bobbed like mad loose springs as Sally Belle Ashkettle spoke, giving Natalie a chase for the blue ribbon when it came to cooing and oohing at every word Rafe had to utter, mutter, or blurt.

  Margaret jabbed a fork into her own piece of apple strudel, previously untouched, afterward uneaten. She took a dark look at the black lock of hair falling over his forehead. What’s the matter, Rafe? Lose your comb?

  All of a sudden, Margaret felt a hairpin shifting. Darn. She thought she’d mastered this back-combed style. Her mud-brown wavy hair, she supposed, was just too heavy or too long, or both, for the Gibson girl roll. Yes, she had tried a new hair fashion, had even added a bit of hair cream for artificial highlights. It didn’t have anything to do with Rafe, the reason Margaret experimented. She did it for Tex, didn’t she? Anyway, she could have been wearing a wimple for all Tex or Rafe noticed, so intent was their scrutiny of Natalie Sloe Eyes.

  As well, Mr. Ashkettle seemed to have trouble keeping his mind on finishing his meal; he was likewise engaged.

  A female diner—she appeared to be on the sweet side of twenty—sashayed by their table and just happened to brush against Rafe. “Oh, my goodness gracious, sir. Do pardon me.” Was it an accident that her handkerchief drifted to the floor, compelling the Great One himself to lend assistance?

  Other women paid court. If Margaret had eaten her dinner, it would be coming back up. Besides herself, was there a female in this room who wasn’t under his spell? Doubtful. Of course, they didn’t know him as she did. No one except for the principals and Margaret knew what Olga had suffered, that Rafe had nearly wrecked her marriage to one of Spain’s lesser ranked yet eminently influential royals, Leonardo of the Houses of Hapsburg and Borbón.

  Margaret took another look at the dining room. Natalie wouldn’t be shocked to know about Rafe. And that redhead two tables over, she didn’t look as if anything would shock her.

  What was it that called for all this adulation? Ordering herself to be unbiased and unprejudiced, Margaret set her fork down to take an assessing look at Rafael Delgado. His facial features were acceptable if not laudable, his scarred mouth giving him a rather sinister mien. Margaret, whose tastes used to run to pipes and tweeds, had never found rakish scars cause for collapse, not even during the madcap period of her infatuation with him.

  Watch it, Margaret—think unbiased.

  Except for not being bowlegged like a lot of cowboys, his physique was no better, or no worse than a hundred hands who had worked the Four Aces Ranch over the years.

  Rafe was no youth. Who’d want one?

  His curling black hair, clipped short and brushed back from his temples, didn’t contrast with the tanned, olive skin. Swarthy and somewhat Moorish-looking described this son of Mexico. The Delgados and their collateral lines must have hailed from Andalusia, if she was any judge of Spanish descent, which she was, given her years of study in the Iberian discipline. Yet those piercing eyes hinted at an ancestor from the north of Spain, Castile or Soria or maybe even the Basque region.

  Did Mesoamerican blood flow through Rafe? she wondered. Again she studied the subject, answering her question with a silent, “Don’t be preposterous.”

  According to Great-grandmother Maisie (she always looked for blue blood, even claimed a link to the fabled Scottish kings Duncan and Robert the Bruce), the Delgados had arrived in Mexico with Cortés, and owned land exceeding the size of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Connecticut put together. They rode in gold coaches and had their finger in all aspects of commerce, agriculture, and mining. To keep the line pure, their marriages were arranged with as much care as that given to royalty. The Delgados were as close to royalty as Mexico got.

  But Rafe’s middle name was Cuauhtémoc, the same as the last Aztec emperor. Interesting. Conceivably, it wouldn’t be so awful, being in Mexico, Margaret decided. It would provide the perfect opportunity to see how Spanish blood had spread in the aftermath of Cortés’s sixteenth-century conquest.

  “Margaret, you’re being uncommonly quiet this evening.” Rafe ignored his harem and sipped port. “Don’t you wish to say anything?”

  Candlelight, golden and soft, accentuated the dark shadowing of a jawline incapable of being close-shaved, but she’d drop her drawers to him as well as to the morning traffic at Grand Central Station before remarking on his appeal. “I’ve nothing to say.”

  “But you were staring, Margarita.” He leaned toward her, cocked his head slightly. “And from your expression . . . Are you dyspeptic?”

  More than a tad. “I’m fit as a fiddle.”

  “You won’t stay that way if you don’t eat. And you didn’t eat your dinner. Do you want something different? Waiter!”

  “No! Please no.” Her eyes going to and fixing on her own dessert, Margaret cut a piece and forced it into her mouth.

  “Pay her no never mind,” said Sally Belle Ashkettle. “She’s one of those shy types. Unsociable. They like to be left alone.”

  Margaret took no offense, since she didn’t care what the woman thought, but Tex growled. And Rafe chuckled, a deep sound. “Señora Ashkettle,” he said, “you are quite wrong. Señorita McLoughlin is not shy. I promise you.”

  “How gallant, sir. I myself have always admired gallantry.” Sally Belle smiled, then shoveled a heaping forkful of apple pastry into her thick-lipped mouth. Her lip rouge had smeared during the first course, some of it having ended up on her chins, both of which bobbed as she chewed. “What kind of woman are you partial to, sir? Did I mention that I made my debut in—”

  “Pum’kin, you made that debut thirty years ago,” her husband cut in. “Pass the butter.”

  “Elwood, you are ever so rude.” From the motions of her body as well as the lamentable Elwood’s, Sally Belle kicked her spouse beneath the table. Not missing a beat, she said in a shrill, affected voice, reeking of ambitions above her background and circumstance, “You speak English ever so nicely, Mr. Delgado. Have you lived in these United States a long time, if you please?”

  “Eight years this December.”

  “Do you have a family?”

  “No, señora. No wife, no children. I do have a poor little mother in
Chihuahua city. And my one brother—well, Xzobal is a man of God.”

  The grand inquisitor, Tomás de Torquemada in bouncing sausage curls, kept her beady eyes pinned on Rafe. “What made you leave Mexico, pray?”

  He picked up his wineglass, twirling the contents. A momentary, almost imperceptible shadow flicked in his eyes. No one seemed to notice that flicker, save for Margaret, though who couldn’t notice his pearly flash of teeth accompanied a smile that moored to Sally Belle’s simpering grin?

  “The ladies are more lovely in Texas,” claimed he.

  To Margaret’s way of thinking, Sally Belle had nothing on him when it came to an affected voice. Gone was the western inflection and verbiage, which he seemed to be able to turn on and off at whim. His enunciation took on a certain Don Juanish quality under circumstances such as these, not to mention that accent getting thicker and richer with each passing moment. Add “fake” to his list of failings, she decided even before he said, “It was for the lovelies such as you, Señora Ashkettle, that I left my country.”

  Sally Belle giggled like an imbecile.

  There ought to be a law against men like Rafe.

  Really?

  Actually, even knowing he spoke lies, many women would respond to such blather. Most men didn’t even bother to lie. Thus, it would be easy to fall prey to such a rascal. Poor Olga. No wonder the dimwit had been gullible enough to allow liberties that led to attack. Remember when you yourself stepped into his arms? You allowed him more than a few liberties. If you hadn’t been interrupted, he would have done more than stroke your private places with his fingers. She squirmed on the chair, recalling how it felt to learn the excitement of truly living.

  “. . . In Texas, pretty lady.”

  Margaret missed the first of his latest to Sally Belle, but her anger rose, most of it directed inwardly for being such a nincompoop back then. Besides, enough was enough of his twaddle.

  “Oh, please.” This was strung into several syllables that drew everyone at the table’s attention. “Why don’t you tell these nice people the real reason you stayed in Texas? The pickings were better here. Such as a certain benevolent gentleman providing stock for your ranch. Correct?”