by Martha Hix
What she couldn’t remember, she’d simply have to invent as best she could, and try not to stumble.
She followed those voices, walking down the aisle past empty pews. An odd-looking wooden box sat off to the side, the voices coming from there. Jon Marc was in that box with the preacher? Did Miss Buchanan teach you nothing? They aren’t called preachers, and you know it. Why was he talking with a priest in a box?
“We confess our sins in a confessional,” she recalled the serene brunette saying.
Was that a confessional?
What sins did Jon Marc have to confess, beyond Terecita?
Whatever they were, they couldn’t be as bad as Bethany’s.
If she were to confess her schemes and sins, would Jon Marc have it in his heart to understand her reasons? He might accept her “as is.” Might even give her a chance to become his wife, somewhere down the line.
Never happen, the voice of reason screamed.
Chapter Three
Bethany, having retreated to the buckboard already, breathed in relief when Jon Marc stepped out of Santa Maria and approached with a smile. The wedding wasn’t off. Of course, it also wasn’t on.
They drove down the trail gauges that led to his ranch headquarters, Bethany on the seat next to him. Neither spoke, until she said, “I met a little girl. Sabrina.”
“She’s a sweet child. Padre Miguel took her in, with the orphan boys, when her mother left a house of ill repute in Laredo to be with the child’s father.”
“I thought Terecita worked at the cantina.”
“She dances there. Hoot Todd never saw fit to shelter the mother of his child, or the child.”
Hoot Todd, Sabrina’s father? That made her Bethany’s niece. Didn’t relations carry responsibilities? What did she owe that child? At least an occasional orange, if not more.
“I so like children.” Beth hoped for a dozen of her own, be they from her body, or small children who simply needed a loving mother. She would never forget Mrs. Persat’s many kindnesses, before her charge proved a disappointment. “I hope you don’t mind if I invite Sabrina to drop in from time to time.”
“Fine by me.”
“Shall I ask Terecita to come along?” Bethany goaded, unable to stop herself. “Sabrina did mention that her mother had designs on you.”
Jon Marc gave a snort of laughter, one that carried his trademark click of tongue and arresting blink. “Designs on me?” he echoed. “That’s rich. She’d cut my throat, given the chance. In the words of Congreve, she’s ’a woman scorned.’ ”
“Broken many hearts, sir?”
“I never encouraged Terecita. Never even shared a drink with her. She looked for a rock to sun on, better than what she’s got with Todd. She thought my rocks were better than his.”
Bethany bit her tongue to keep from howling. Do not, under any circumstances, make something of that rocks remark.
She concentrated on the countryside.
Cactus, cactus, everywhere cactus. Cactus and chaparral. Mesquite. Oaks, along the river. And cattle—cows with wide, wide horns sprouting above powerful spotted bodies of several colors such as white, rust, and black. Lots of cattle to drive to market . . . with no clear path to it.
The entirety of unremarkable little hills and cattle-cluttered dales had turned summer green, as everything had a tendency to do all over Texas in late April. But this was not the Texas Bethany knew. This was a scary place.
But she’d made up her mind to love Rancho Caliente. Love it, she would. From this land, from this man, she would gain respectability, husband, children.
Yet, having come from the windswept prairie, Bethany couldn’t imagine cowpokes wrangling cattle in thickets of brambles, terrain cut by fingers of the Nueces River. But water ran in abundance, a luxury in Texas. It could be worse.
“Sir, why don’t you burn off some of this scrub?”
He shook his head. “Start a fire on dry land? Never. No way could livestock get to safety, not with the river branching this way and that. They’d be trapped. Or would drown. Disaster, that’s fire.”
Put in her place, Bethany tried different conversation. “Pardon me, sir. Didn’t I read you employ but twenty cowboys?”
“You did.”
“How can you manage thirty thousand acres with so few cowboys?”
He flashed good strong teeth. “Skill.”
“So many cows . . .” No one had that much skill.
“More cows than a rancher oughta even wish for.”
The Buchanan miss, Bethany had learned, checked into the O’Brien family, finding they were richlings from the Mississippi River delta. If he’s rich, why doesn’t he employ more than twenty cowpokes?
Jon Marc changed the mare’s reins to one hand, placing his other palm on a knee. “Remember, I told you how the herd increased during the War, when there weren’t any roundups? ’Course, they were partnership cows at the time. But now the Caliente belongs to me alone. To us. It’s ours.”
Ours. She loved the sound of that, even if this place wasn’t a princedom with excellent amenities. As she eyed his land a second time, she saw challenge. Bethany liked challenge.
“You did mention how you’d bought out a partner.” Between her departed friend’s death and today, Bethany had read those passages several times. “I’d like to hear about your life here in Texas, from your voice. You left holes here and there.”
Her interest pleased him. “I came to brush country in ’60, to work for Drake Wilson. We made a deal. If the Caliente turned a profit that year, he’d sign over half the title. We turned a profit.”
“You never said why Mr. Wilson sold his half to you.”
It took a moment for Jon Marc to reply. “His, uh, his wife never thought too much of this area. When their house burned down last fall, she insisted they move to Laredo. He brokers cattle there, like your father did in Wichita.”
Bethany knew how Jon Marc had come to know Aaron Buchanan. Three years ago he trailed cattle to Wichita, sold them to Buchanan. The men struck a fast friendship. When the cattle broker was in his last decline, his daughter, newly returned to Kansas after leaving a convent, had written to tell Jon Marc of her father’s illness. Thus had begun a courtship.
“It bothers you, doesn’t it, Beth honey? Don’t let it.”
What would Miss Buchanan say now? The dear girl had been plain-spoken, to the point, although kind and nice. “I think Mrs. Wilson should have asked her husband to build another house.”
“You’ll do fine, just fine in brush country.”
“I long to become part of it. I can’t wait to meet your men.” Gracious! The last sounded rather come-hither, much like general conversation in the Long Lick drinkery.
“My men are away, except for Luis de la Garza and Diego Novio, and a few other vaqueros,” Jon Marc answered. “Driving cattle to market.”
Good. A cattle drive to Kansas was underway. Kansas, where cattle brought up to forty dollars a head. Forty dollars times thousands—lots of money for a secure future.
“I intend to carry my weight at Rancho Caliente,” she said truthfully. “I won’t be layabout. I can cook, clean, and sew.”
She’d learned homemaking talents through the guidance of painted ladies gone West to seek fortunes, but had stalled at the Long Lick. Those same ladies shied from taking up for her, when her conduct was exposed as loose. But that was the past.
This was the present.
Thankfully, Miss Buchanan—her charm having radiated from gentility, grace, and a pioneer spirit as it related to her upcoming role as a rancher’s wife—hadn’t been the sort to sit around studying her fingernails and barking at servants. Bethany would have found those even more difficult shoes to fill.
“I’m eager to learn ranching, too,” she tacked on, filled with her own pioneering fortitude.
“No need to work your fingers to the bone.”
To someone who’d rubbed lanolin into calluses three times a day, and had shaved the worst, le
st her hands not match those of a refined young lady from Kansas, those were lovely words.
Bethany, nevertheless, wouldn’t accept such coddling. “I should imagine you can use all the help you can get, sir.”
“I’m capable of taking care of a wife.”
Bethany knew she’d bruised his pride.
Catching sight of a dilapidated, obviously vacant cluster of adobe buildings, she tried to steer conversation from a touchy subject. “Good gracious, what’s that over there?”
“The ruins of Hacienda del Sol.”
As she knew caliente meant hot to the touch, she translated this ranch’s name to Estate of the Sun. “It was once a grand place. Does it belong to you?”
“Yep. The hacendado abandoned the property, years ago.”
Bethany found herself unable to keep her tongue in her mouth, as good sense cautioned, since she couldn’t ascertain just how strong had been Miss Buchanan’s opinions. “I should imagine the owner found it difficult to manage, far from civilization.”
“He was forced out, once this stretch of Mexico became Texas. López gave food and supplies to Santa Ana, when the Mexican Army was on its march to the Alamo, in ’36. Texans don’t forgive folks who sided with that old rascal—remember the Alamo. Don Tomás López left in ’48. The roof caved in after that.”
Bethany’s gaze settled on Jon Marc anew, catching a tightness in the jaw of his exceptional profile.
His voice as tight as his jaw, he then said, “I’ll grant it’s solitary and isolated out here, but I’ve loved this place since I first saw it, at eighteen.”
Had she insulted Jon Marc by association? Don’t do it again. “Meant no rudeness, sir. Honestly.”
“Beth honey, I want you to think kindly toward the Caliente. Guess I’m kinda touchy.”
“You needn’t be. Although I must admit I feel daunted by the sheer size of your spread.”
Wickedly, her gaze dropped to his lap. Yes, there was sheer size to his spread! Bethany, behave. “I was thinking how favorably you compare to that lapsed owner. You, sir, aren’t the type to pull up stakes. Or to fraternize with enemies of the state.”
A quick glance at his face told her she’d made him smile.
He said, “You got that right, honey.”
She didn’t smile, having been tripped by her own tongue. Enemies of the state. Enemies of the state. “Your letters never mentioned local Indians. I’ve heard they’re about.”
“Comanches camp by the Rio Grande. I give ’em free range. And trade supplies, when they ask. They don’t give headaches.”
“Aren’t you fortunate?” An awful chill went through Bethany. At four, she’d watched Kiowas in the Indian Territory give her mother more than a headache. They scalped her. Bethany would never forget the horror of it.
“Tell me they don’t come around often,” she pleaded.
“Haven’t seen one in years.”
The buckboard topped a rise; Jon Marc set the brake. He hitched a bootheel to the front rail and leaned into a relaxed pose, a forearm resting on his knee, as he gazed at his property. “I call this Harmony Hill. It’s my favorite spot on the Caliente. Here, I see beauty.”
The ranch’s beauty lay in the flora that livestock grazed upon and the river they drank from, to Bethany’s way of thinking. Fat cows and healthy horses brought in cash. No cow would go hungry on the Caliente.
He said, “Wish I were a ‘painter of the soul,’ to quote Mr. Disraeli. I’d love to put my own words to what’s in my heart. Alas, I’m just a plain ole brush popper.”
Bethany Todd hated poetry. The traditional sort, anyway. Lengthy versification on sunsets and birds and the sort of romance that surely no one west of the Mississippi had ever experienced didn’t hold her attention.
Jon Marc’s written quotes from the bards had given her a taste of the fruits of boredom, her sole reservation about spending the remainder of her life with him.
Bethany took a gander downward at the panorama. To the left ran the river. Ahead, civilization. Pecan and oak trees grew around an outcropping of buildings, all adobe. A small home built in an L shape, a red roof, probably of clay, above it; three chimneys bespoke three rooms. As well, there was an outhouse, a cistern, a smokehouse, and what looked to be stables, but . . . “What is that?”
Jon Marc frowned as he followed the direction of her pointed finger, to half-collapsed fireplaces and blackened rubble. “It’s what’s left of the Wilson house.”
What a shame, that fire. Bethany’s attention turned to a mockingbird perched on a mesquite branch. “Don’t you have a bunkhouse for your cowboys?” she asked for conversation’s sake.
“My men live in their own houses, scattered around the ranch. The nearest is the Marins’. Isabel Marin cooks and cleans for me. Her husband, Guillermo, is one of my vaqueros.”
Bethany took note, not wanting to mistake anyone’s name.
She studied the area between the burnt-out house and Jon Marc’s home. “Could that be a flower garden?”
“It’s Trudy Wilson’s rose garden. It thrives despite neglect. All I know is raising cattle.”
“I love roses, especially red ones.” Bethany now knew where he got blooms for the wagon. How could she couch appreciation without speaking lavishly, too much herself? She couldn’t.
“I see you like red,” he commented, “from your shoes.”
Instinctively, she tucked the toes of these dratted shoes beneath her hems. “Yes, it’s my favorite color. When I saw these shoes, I simply had to have them,” she lied. Then held her breath after asking, “Do you think me terribly brazen?”
He slanted a grin at her. “I’d say you’re unique.”
She puffed out pent-up air.
“Beth honey . . .”
She sensed Jon Marc had something to say that didn’t much appeal to him; she sensed correctly, for he wouldn’t look her in the eye, and say, “It wasn’t just a fire that destroyed the Wilson home. It was set. By Hoot Todd and his bandidos. But don’t worry. They won’t burn another Caliente building.”
Jon Marc had bragged about his word being law. Few ranch hands about, no law nearby, how could he protect his home and run a ranch at the same time?
Goose pimples tightened Bethany’s arms, but not in fear. If not for being forewarned, if not for changing places with dear Miss Buchanan, she’d have arrived at Fort Ewell, expecting a home with a criminal.
If she were to be honest, which she could not, she would admit something. She’d formed a dislike for the half brother not seen in seventeen years.
Since Fort Worth, where she’d first heard of Hoot’s crimes, she’d transferred a lot of her anger at their handsome father to his only son. They were much alike, the Todd men.
No-goods.
Bethany didn’t know what to think of Jon Marc’s house, once she stepped up to it. While her feelings soared at its decent condition—not a shutter hung loose from hinges, and each had coats of real paint—the design was somewhat peculiar.
Passageways—Jon Marc called them dog-runs—separated each room; the parlor from the bedroom, the kitchen from the parlor. It didn’t sport a courtyard, as many Spanish-style homes did. But this one was serviceable, livable.
Then she entered the parlor.
Good gracious!
Isabel Marin kept the place clean, but it bore the mark of a bachelor without much taste for decoration.
Bethany had seen the inside of but two homes with store-bought furnishings, the Frye residence and Agatha Persat’s home. The only one Bethany cared to remember was Mrs. Persat’s, although the schoolteacher undoubtedly didn’t wish to be remembered.
“Make yourself at home,” Jon Marc said and backed away. “I’ll unload your stuff.”
And where would they put those belongings? This parlor had so much furniture that it was difficult to maneuver in.
A round table, much like Agatha Persat’s, stood in the center of the room, although this one lacked doilies.
A huge p
iano hogged one corner. Bethany had never seen such a piano. The one at the Long Lick went upright. This one spread like a calm, shining sea of black.
In another corner were a table and six chairs. Between the door to the kitchen’s dog-run and that hog of a piano was a fireplace. The opposite wall held the clutter of a horsehair settee, a brocade sofa, a rocking chair, and more upholstered chairs than most house parties would require.
Every wall bore shelves, each shelf lined with books.
Many times Bethany had imagined being the chatelaine of a home with elegant furnishings. She’d never fancied it quite this cluttered.
She heard Jon Marc set down a box, and whirled around as he asked, “What do you think, Beth honey?”
“Uh, um, you are indeed blessed, having such valuable property.” She stifled a groan at her avaricious reply. Miss Buchanan, while practical, wouldn’t have put a mercenary slant on replies. Being nice and being Bethany just didn’t mix.
“Beth, do you truly like our little home in the West?”
“You’ve a grand spread.” Behave, girl. Too timidly, she tried to make amends. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
He looked disappointed. “I’ll leave you be awhile. Go check the mustangs. Why don’t you take a nap?”
“I’m not weary in the least,” she said, thinking about how she might rearrange furniture to spare stubbed toes.
“If you’re interested in reading, I bought several new poetry works, special for you. Wish I had some poems of my own composition for you to read.”
Yawn. She owed him more than that. Being decent and hardworking, therefore susceptible to attack by the nature of his goodness, Jon Marc merited a traditional Mrs. The answer? Bethany would learn to admire tedious stanzas. Could she?
Steering her thoughts to his remarks made during their drive here, she wouldn’t allow him to belittle his many strides. “Perhaps your poetry is what you’ve made much of yourself, during your twelve years in Texas.” Twelve years, minus the three he’d spent in Confederate service. “Or should I say nine years?”