She stared off at nothing, jaw slack, eyes wide. And so, so pale. As if she’d bled out.
“My grandfather was—”
She stopped him with a jerk of her hand. “I know who he is,” she whispered. She drew her knees up to her chest.
Of course she’d know of his grandfather. Of course she’d heard the stories. She was an Alvarado.
But she was also his. Given time, she’d realize that the stories about his grandfather were nothing more than that now—just stories.
“I know… I know that your mother is an Alvarado—”
She wrapped her arms around her knees, all of her curling into herself. “She is.” Her voice broke.
He held his hand out to her, but she wouldn’t look up at him. “Catarina, I swear, I had nothing to do with any of it. I wasn’t even born.” He took a hard breath, tried again to make her see. “Let the Rancho Alvarado be our parents’ fight, not ours.”
She shuddered at that. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, to drive those shudders away. She was muttering something—something like “Tan cruel” over and over again.
He didn’t understand. “How are you related to the Black Widow Alvarado? A distant cousin? An aunt of your mother’s?” Perhaps she’d known the woman, which was why she was reacting so badly. But no, she couldn’t have. She wouldn’t have been born when the woman killed his uncle.
Perhaps he shouldn’t have told her. But it was too late—however much damage he’d caused with this revelation, it was done.
He prayed the damage wasn’t as extensive as he feared.
She raised her head, the warm brown of her eyes ghastly in the white of her face. “There is no Black Widow Alvarado.”
Relief made him sag. She was only surprised—in a few moments she’d regain her equilibrium. Would come close to him again. “You—you won’t tell your family, will you?” He set a hand on her knee. “I know it’s a shock, but… I haven’t seen my father in thirteen years. It’s only a name from the past.”
She continued to stare off at nothing, but didn’t shake off his hand. The muttering had stopped, but she was much too pale. He squeezed her knee to call her back to him.
Choose me. Not Merrill, not Bannister. Just me.
“Kitty Cat?”
She blinked hard and shook herself. “We have to go home.” Her throat bobbed. “Chores.” She snapped to her feet, his hand falling away.
He left his arm where it had fallen, watching numbly as she scrambled away. She pulled her clothes on quickly, jerkily, wadding up his clothes to hit him with right in the chest.
Right at the hole through which his heart had been removed. He’d thought… he’d thought these old grudges would mean as little to her as they did him. That the way he felt for her—that those feelings would mean more.
He’d wanted more. He’d reached across the distance between them, thinking that her fingers would find and meet his.
Only to clasp blindly at nothing.
Chapter Eighteen
Mother of God, what was she meant to do now?
Catarina looked out over her kitchen—her kitchen; those words didn’t taste so fine now—and thought on her duties. The tangible ones—the breakfast dishes to wash up, the baking to do, the mending to finish.
And the intangible ones. Ensuring that her mother never learned who her husband truly was. Ensuring that her husband never learned who her mother truly was.
An entire lifetime of keeping those twin secrets. She raised shaky hands to her cheeks and made slow circles, trying to erase her imaginings of such a lifetime. It didn’t work.
She’d been so stupidly arrogant on the eve of her wedding, telling her mother that she knew he wasn’t a Bannister! It hadn’t been only the entire town laughing behind their hands at her then—Fate was laughing right along.
He’d known all this time. Before he’d wed her, he’d known what he was, what she was—and why they should have never been. Hindsight cast his earlier actions in a chilling light. His pursuit of her at the dance, his catching her by the water trough…
She’d thought him merely overcome with desire for her. Her vanity had blinded her to his true intention—which was revenge on the Alvarados.
But no matter how she tallied it up, the math of that wouldn’t come right. If all he were after was vengeance, he’d no need to plow a garden plot for her, toss snakes off the porch, or teach her to fish. He’d only needed to ensure her father caught them as he had.
Why tell her before the cattle had come? He’d been hesitant, almost fearful when he’d admitted his true name.
And when she’d turned from him after, her bluff, brash husband had sunk into himself. He’d remained silent the rest of the day and this morning—not the silence of a man with little conversation, but that of a man who thought his words would not be welcomed by his wife.
It tore at her, that hurt of his, even as she searched through her memories for proof of his baser motives.
Searched without finding.
Perhaps it had all been some accident of the cosmos that led the two of them into each other’s arms.
But what hurt would come to her mother if his father should ever find her? Her mother had said that she’d changed her name to hide from him. Was he still hunting for her after all these years?
What if Judge Bannister were still searching for Jace? Or William. Or whatever his name was.
If his father found him here, Jace might lead him to her mother. And then…
“He was cruel. So cruel.”
Jace had been very careful not to touch her, even casually, since his confession—the distance he kept between them razor sharp. She’d been cowardly grateful for that distance, which allowed her to continue on in indecision, choosing neither her loyalty to him nor her fear for her mother.
But in the dark of midnight, the two of them side by side in their bed—his hand had come across the gap and settled feather-light against her belly. A question more than a touch.
She found she had no answer for the question in his fingers. She’d mumbled something about her courses instead, and his hand had withdrawn. The sobs took her then, great wrenching things that shook her from head to toe. She’d wanted so badly to turn to him, to wriggle into the circle of his arms and confess all. Confess her mother’s secret to the very man who must never know. She’d curled around her belly instead, because she could only take comfort from herself in this.
His breathing had changed, going deep and ragged, as if he too might be holding back sorrow. But he never reached for her.
Her body ached at the memory of those long hours in the bed, with him, yet still utterly alone. Catarina let her hands fall from her face to hang limply in her apron, then reached unthinkingly for her worry spot on the countertop.
But of course it wasn’t there. The spot her fingers had unerringly found for years was in her mother’s kitchen; she was in her own kitchen with its unblemished counters.
As she twisted her dilemma in her thoughts, she knew there was no one she could share it with, no one she could unburden herself to. There was nothing to do about this tangle except to keep her mouth shut.
And she had dishes to do. She rubbed slow circles with the dishrag, the sloshing of her movements and the drip of the water loud in the emptiness.
She had a view of her garden from the window, the earth darkly rolling out from the furrows Jace had shaped. He’d put a fence around it a few days ago, protecting the tiny shoots from rabbits and deer. His bootprints were still there in the damp earth, Perro’s paw prints trotting alongside. Would he come in today for his dinner or supper—or would those bootprints be the only thing she saw of him?
As agitated as she was, she wasn’t certain she’d go searching for him if he did stay away. She might be grateful that she could avoid facing a man whose family had done such terrible things to hers.
What of his family? His story of running from them thirteen years ago might simply be a clever ruse. She might give in to the urge to tel
l him of her mother’s marriage to his uncle—and he might summon his father to… Well, she wasn’t certain what, and she didn’t wish to discover it.
But if his story was a ruse, what explained the yearning she occasionally glimpsed in him? There was such loneliness in his eyes sometimes, an appetite when he gazed at her that must have been years building—
“Catarina.”
She jumped at his low voice so close to her ear. Ever since he’d confessed, she’d felt like a horse spooked one too many times that now shied at its own shadow. He held up a hand and stepped back, the same as he might with the horse.
Ducking her head, she wiped her hands in her apron. “Yes?” Jittery, a little too bright, but the best she could do.
“Tell me where you want that washtub and I’ll move it for you.” His voice had always been low, but now it held a new quietness. As if he were loath to disturb her with the sound of it.
She kept her head down as she turned to him, pretending to be occupied with her apron. “Just—just by the pump handle at the back door. I’ll show you.”
He followed her out the back door, past the rain barrel he’d repaired without her asking, to the pump and trough where he washed up before dinner. She’d hung a towel, mirror, and comb there for him—she knew he used them from the droplets clinging to the ends of his sable hair when he came in at night.
“Here.” She pointed to the spot. “If that’s all right.”
His gaze met hers for a moment, the emotion there igniting the very air in her lungs. “Anywhere that you want. You only have to say the word.”
But that was exactly the trouble. She couldn’t breathe a word of her mother’s secrets to him.
He hefted the washtub to its new place with ease—his arms taut, his face set. Lord, but he was strong.
“Here?” he asked once it was settled, staring into the tub, his hands clamped on the edge.
“Yes.” Her own fingers clenched in her apron. “Thank you.”
His knuckles went white with the force of his grip. “Catarina, I… I apologize for lying to you.” He swung himself back and forth on the lip of the tub as if trying to shake loose the words. “I didn’t know how much it mattered to you. If I had known, I’d have never spoken to you that first day, by the common trough.”
He should have sent his fist into her breastbone; that would have hurt less than his admission that he wished he’d never spoken with her. She gasped for air, all of her trembling.
She’d thought the terrible events entwining their families were no more than dust now, in the bright light of this new California. But the past wasn’t dust at all. It was a set trap, waiting to sink metal teeth into an unwary blunderer like herself. Jace might insist that the Rancho Alvarado was nothing to them, but it wasn’t nothing to her mother.
And he’d called her mother the “Black Widow Alvarado”—unwittingly, yes, but for all his words about leaving the Rancho Alvarado in the past, such a choice proved his true feelings on the matter.
If she confessed that her own mother was the “Black Widow Alvarado,” would he still insist the tragedy of the Rancho Alvarado was nothing to the two of them?
“No,” she said clearly. “You never should have spoken to me.”
He left without another word.
Jace didn’t know what to do.
He’d known she’d be upset when he told her, but this… this was more than upset.
This was an exile.
He’d asked her to choose him, and she’d chosen her family and that ancient grudge. Chose to see him as a Bannister, rather than as the man he’d forged himself into. He ought not to have been surprised by that. Ought not to have been so hurt.
Yesterday, he’d asked with words for her understanding, her forgiveness. She’d run for home instead, mumbling nonsense about chores.
He rubbed his fingertips along the fence rail he’d repaired last week, the raw lumber rough against them. Last night, his mind had been filled with questions for her—why was she so angry, why had she turned from him, what he might do to repair things between them? But his mouth wouldn’t form the words, his fear at yet another rejection from her paralyzing his tongue.
Instead, he’d let his fingertips do the asking with a gentle pressure against her belly. Thinking that perhaps she’d had the time needed to come back to herself.
She’d turned away instead, and he’d discerned her continuing rejection of his touch—of him—under the pitiful excuse she’d murmured.
When she’d started to sob, he’d known she was more than overset at his admission, more than shocked.
She was horrified.
He couldn’t have felt lower than if he’d magically transformed into a centipede in front of her.
A plop at his feet signaled Perro’s arrival. Jace looked over the corral waiting for his hundred head. Their hundred head.
His heart twisted. She wished he’d never spoken to her that first day by the common trough. She wasn’t likely to refer to it as their herd any longer.
“Are you going to run off?” he asked the dog. “Once Juan comes back, just rejoin your master?”
The dog’s tail thumped the ground. Not a yes or a no.
Jace crouched beside him, rubbing at the silk of his ears. “You’ll take off on me, won’t you? Stay for a time, then when your family calls, run to them.”
The dog had come when she had. Perhaps if she left—when she left—the dog might follow. Perro wasn’t really his.
Perro licked at his wrist, the thumps of his tail going excited. He lifted to a sitting position to lick at Jace’s face.
“Stupid dog,” he muttered, rubbing harder, his throat tightening with each caress from the dog’s tongue. “Worthless creature.”
All of Perro was one sustained wriggle now. How easy it was, to win the love of a dog.
Much harder that of a wife.
He had no notion how to fix this. He’d given her a home of her own, helped with as many of her chores as he could, loved her fervently with his body…
His only idea at this point was to go back in time and never say anything.
He rubbed a hand across his mouth, his mustache scraping his palm. How long could he have lived like that, pantingly desperate for all of her to be open and unveiled to him, while he held back a vital truth about himself?
He’d gambled and he’d lost.
Lost her.
He closed his eyes as the import of that washed over him. He’d be alone again, only it would be worse than before, because he knew what it was to share himself with her…
No. No, he’d only lost this hand. He shook his head. A man didn’t get up from the table after one bad hand. He rode it out.
Time. She only needed time.
He could tell she wasn’t simply angry. If she’d only been angry, she’d have lit into him like she did her siblings, giving him a rap on the knuckles, then forgetting all about it later.
No, it was melancholy clinging to her. Anger, he could understand. Sadness…
Perhaps he should have guessed from the first how she’d react. After all, at that party, he’d practically begged her to stay with him—and she’d gone to her family instead. Back into that house where they were cursing the Bannister name.
But he’d never heard her curse that name. Or mention the Rancho Alvarado.
Yes, time. They both needed time.
Him, to learn how to read her, to discern the pattern of her and rekindle her affection.
For her, time to think on what he’d said, why he’d done what he did. Time to think on the past and realize it had no hold on them.
He’d let her be in the meantime, to ponder all that. When she came to her realizations, she’d come back to him. When he came to his realizations, he’d pull her back to him.
He’d waited thirteen years for this ranch. Surely the wait for her return to his side wouldn’t be so long.
Chapter Nineteen
Catarina set the mug of water against her b
row. The cool press of it chased away some of the heat, but did nothing for the ache settled there.
Summer was finally starting to break, the hint of the cooler fall weather showing in the nip of chill once the sun was gone. The signs were all there in her front yard. The mustard weed had begun to die off, turning into a tangle of brittle twigs, ugly even in death. The buckwheat was going from the more delicate summer shades of green and ivory to the burnt red it wore before disappearing beneath the winter snows.
All throughout the mountains summer was slowly slipping away, autumn gently coming on to send it to bed before winter would awake and cover everything in snow. Then spring would come, and it would all begin again.
It was as if the seasons had no notion she was married to a Bannister.
She peered down the road, ears straining to hear. No dust cloud, no stampeding hooves. The cattle still weren’t on their way.
Her husband had broken the terrible silence between them at breakfast with the news that her one hundred head were coming.
Not his, not theirs. Hers.
She didn’t know what to make of that, so she’d only nodded.
Ah, there. A dust cloud rising, just around the bend. She frowned. It was too small to be an entire herd, and wasn’t getting larger.
Franny came around the bend at a lope—her hat flapping against her back, her hair trying to escape its braid, and all of her a dusty mess.
Catarina had never been so glad to see her.
“Howdy!” she called as she slid off her mare, waving dementedly as her toes hit the ground. “You want me to tie Bella up here, or put her in the barn?”
Catarina cleared her throat hard, dissolving the lump there. She wanted to sob into Franny’s shoulder, to confess the entire horrid story of their mother and Jace’s uncle, to finally share her distress with someone.
But she couldn’t beg her youngest sister for comfort. She had to play the omniscient eldest sister as always. “Did the eggs survive the journey, since you ride like a Comanche?” she asked.
“Of course they did,” Franny reassured her with an airy wave. She peered into the bag. “At least, most of them did.”
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