“Next time don’t ride so fast, and they’ll all survive. You can just tie Bella to the front porch here. Are the cattle right behind you?”
“I think so. Papa told Jacinto which ones to pull out for you before he left for the high country with Felipe. I haven’t seen them yet, but I imagine he picked some prime breeding stock.”
“Yes, well, come in and see the house,” she said quickly, before her sister could go on. If she got started on breeding stock, they’d be out there all day.
“What do you think?” she prompted, once they were inside.
Franny glanced around, then shrugged. “It’s a house. It’s nice enough.” Her sister’s gaze sharpened as it landed on her. “Are you all right? You look… dyspeptic.”
If Jace was the last person she ought to confess her mother’s secret to, Franny was the next-to-last person. Her sister hadn’t the faintest notion of discretion.
“It’s only that…” She waved weakly. “Being married is different than I’d imagined.”
“Thank God I’ll never have to find out,” Franny muttered.
Catarina allowed that comment to pass unchallenged.
The sound of hundreds of stamping hooves rode in on a cloud of dust through the open door.
Franny cocked her head like a little bird, listening intently. “They’re here,” she said, mostly to herself. She made her way to the door, yelling over her shoulder, “I hear Jace calling for you right now. Probably wants to show off the cattle.”
She heard it too, her name a faint cry threaded in the afternoon breeze, growing louder as Jace neared the house. Growing into a bellow, actually.
A furious bellow.
“Catarina! Catarina! You get your ass out here right now and explain this!” he roared.
There had to have been some kind of mistake.
Catarina looked out over the corral. Her eyes must be not working. This must be some product of her fevered brain. But no, Franny’s shocked expression convinced her it was real. They couldn’t both have the exact same hallucination at the same time, could they?
Instead of one hundred head of prime breeding stock, she was looking at a hundred of the sorriest looking cattle ever. They’d be lucky to sell these animals for hides, they were so sickly.
Ice trickled through her veins, settled heavily in her bones. Her father wouldn’t have betrayed her like this. This couldn’t have been what he meant to send.
“You want to tell me what the hell is going on here?” Jace’s voice and body were vibrating with the force of his fury. He stabbed both sisters with his searing blue gaze.
“I don’t understand,” she said. The shakiness in her voice spread to her limbs. “These can’t be what my father meant to send.” Her breakfast threatened to come up at the thought that this was exactly what her father had intended.
“Oh, I don’t think there’s any mistake,” he said, his voice menacingly smooth. “I think this is what he meant all along.”
“No.” Franny shook her head. “My father wouldn’t do this.” She blinked hard, as if expecting the sorry herd to transform into something better if she cleared her eyes. “He wouldn’t do this.”
“Oh, he did. I’m not surprised about him. I just want to know if you, Felipe, and your treacherous sister—my wife—were in on this all along.”
Treacherous? After what he’d concealed, the family he’d come from—and he called her treacherous?
The ice within her melted, flowing into the rage of a spring creek released from winter’s hold. After all she’d done for him, all she’d done with him…
What did you expect?
Franny answered him, before Catarina could with her fists. “No, Felipe would never do a thing like this. Not to anyone, but especially not to you. He’s too honorable. My father told Jacinto which cattle to bring, but I never thought these would be the ones he’d send.” Her sister stared him right in the face, unafraid of his anger. “I swear, I knew nothing about this.”
In spite of the red spilling across her vision, she had to admire Franny’s bravery.
He took a deep breath. “I believe you.” He swung to Catarina, his eyes narrowing and his stance tensing. “What about you, my dear wife? Was this all a plot between you and your pa?”
“A plot? You think all this was a plot on my part?” He was one to speak of plots, the lying wretch. The fury within her was a dark, scaly thing, scrambling up her ribs with its sharp claws. “There’s no plot,” she hissed. “He must have found out who you really are.”
“How? Did you tell him?”
She threw her hands at him in exasperation. “You only just told me! When would I have done such a thing? Why would I have done such a thing, admitted that I’d fallen into your hands?”
His expression was stricken before it twisted with anger once more. “Someone must have told him—why else would he do this?”
“Wait,” Franny said, holding up a hand between them. “Told Papa what?”
“He’s a Bannister.” Catarina threw the words at her sister, but aimed the hurt of them at her husband.
Franny’s mouth made a perfect O. “A Bannister?” She looked him up and down, as if trying to find where he’d hidden his tail.
“The only treachery here is yours, you liar.” The fury was spilling from her mouth like tar, bubbling hot. “How do I know this wasn’t all a plot on your part? A plot to seize my one hundred cattle? It certainly was convenient that you attacked me by the water trough just after you found out I had those animals coming to me when I married. That’s exactly the kind of thing a Bannister would do to get what he wanted.”
“Attacked you?” The shock in his voice had spiteful triumph flaring in her. “I kissed you. And you kissed me back. Pretty fiercely, I might remind you!”
“Well, I—” She fumbled for a new accusation to hurl at him.
“And that wasn’t the only time you kissed me,” he continued. “You seemed pretty eager at the barn dance too.”
“Wait, what about the barn dance?” Franny put in.
Catarina planted her fists on her hips to keep from planting them into his nose, satisfying herself with a glare instead. “Now you’re trying to corrupt my little sister.”
He snorted. “I’ve spent quite a bit of time around this girl, and let me tell you, she knows some cuss words that made me blush.”
Catarina closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, her breath shuddering, completely out of harsh words to spill on him. He’d only deflect them anyway. How could he do this to her, make her cold and furious and weepy, all at the same time? “You’re distracting me again. Stop distracting me,” she yelled in his face.
“Don’t think crying will get you out of this. Your pa’s not going to pawn these rejects off on me, and you’re going to tell me how you plan to fix this.”
“I am not a child, so stop speaking to me like one. As far as I’m concerned, you got what you deserved with these cattle. You’re a thief, just like your grandfather, and I’m not fixing this. Not for you.” She motioned to the ragged cattle in the corral. “You want my hundred head? Well, now you’ve got them. Enjoy.” She threw each word like a stone from a sling, hoping to land them right between those blue eyes of his.
His jaw shook before he clenched it tight. “When I told you the truth, you turned your back on me. I didn’t come here to steal from anyone—I’m not like them. I came here for my own ranch, and now I’m stuck with these good-for-nothing cattle! I’m the loser in this deal.”
Her vanity snapped and snarled like a wet cat. “You’re the loser?” The tears started then, great fat drops rolling down her cheeks to hang for a moment from her chin before landing in the dirt. “My father should have shot you when he caught us.”
His eyes narrowed. “Your father?” He shook his head. “My grandpa always told me you could never trust a greaser. And it seems he was right.”
He’d used that word. He’d called her father a greaser.
He’d ca
lled her mother the Black Widow Alvarado.
The sick tension within her blew away, leaving her as hollow and sagged as an old log. And then she finally saw him: the spoiled, petulant boy of fifteen, the boy still lurking within her husband, the one who’d left his family behind without a backward glance, without a word for over a decade, and all because they wouldn’t let him play cowboy. She felt something inside her snap, as if she had gathered up everything about her marriage and broken it over her knee like a twig.
“How dare you call me that.” But the heat that had been behind her earlier words was entirely gone, her admonition sagging pathetically between them.
His expression sagged along with her words. “I didn’t mean you.” He scrubbed at his face.
“No? Only my father? If he’s a greaser, then that makes me one as well. Franny, too. And my mother, and my brother—”
“Damn it, Catarina, you know what I meant!”
He meant now to deflect her anger, to brush aside her verbal blows as he’d done before.
He’d meant what he’d said when he’d used that word.
“Yes, you meant to grievously insult me, and my whole family. I know exactly what you meant.” The hollows within began to fill with something leaden and sticky, weighting her limbs with exhausted melancholy.
He was a Bannister.
She was a greaser.
At long last, their masks were fully cast aside. And what she saw behind his made her ill.
She was dimly aware of Franny tugging at her arm, but her limbs were too heavy to obey her sister’s summons. “You know,” Franny said, in placating tones Catarina hadn’t heard from her before, “we’ll just head into the house. Have some tea and let tempers cool a bit.”
Catarina stumbled along as her sister dragged her back to the house, her world reduced to nothing more than blurring tears and a dark emptiness. Franny shoved her into a chair once they’d reached the little table.
“He knows.” Catarina buried her face in her hands, her tears hot against her palms, her cheeks burning.
“Who knows what?” Franny demanded.
“Papa. He knows who Jace really is. There’s no other explanation.”
“And who is Jace, really?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? “He’s Judge Bannister’s son.”
“And you knew that before you married him?”
“No, of course not!” How could Franny think such a thing? Her lungs began to seize. “Oh Lord, what am I going to do?” She set a fist against her brow, trying to knead away the ache rising there.
“Talk to Papa?” Franny ventured.
She let her fist fall in exasperation. Of course that would be Franny’s first suggestion. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Well, something has to be done.” Franny put on her mulish face. “That was a rotten trick to pull.”
Franny had no idea of what had happened to their mother—she thought Jace the only victim in this. Sweet, spoiled Franny considered the past to be even more of a myth than Catarina had.
It wasn’t a myth—it was right there, in the form of her husband and that foul word he’d used.
“What trick?” she asked coldly. “He was promised one hundred head—he has them. You ought to show a little more loyalty to our father.”
Franny blinked at her, looking like a scolded puppy. “But… but what am I to tell our parents?”
“Nothing more than that the cattle have been delivered,” she ground out, “and they’re exactly what Mr. Merrill deserves.”
“And what will you do?” Finally, some concern from Franny for Catarina. It was about time. “You… you could come back with me,” Franny offered.
Catarina remembered her mother’s words before the wedding: Come home, for any reason.
This would certainly be reason enough.
“He was cruel, so cruel.”
“A man who’d break your jaw for speaking Spanish.”
Jace’s cruelty wasn’t of that variety—a foul name was nothing compared to a broken jaw. If her mother could stand that, then she could tolerate Jace’s more pedestrian insults.
For the rest of her life if need be.
She’d wanted to be married so badly, to have a home of her own—she had everything she’d so foolishly hungered for, without thought for the reality of a marriage.
But no one would hear a word of complaint from her.
She lifted her chin. “No, I’m staying here. I promised to be his wife. And we Alvarados keep our promises.”
Chapter Twenty
Long ago, in another lifetime, Jace had been forced to read Dante’s Inferno. He’d never understood why the lowest circles were frozen—everyone knew Hell was hot.
He understood now.
Hell was icy silence, frigid aloneness. It was his wife’s brittle demeanor, as stiff and cold as an icicle. It was the imagined crunch of frost beneath his feet as he mounted the stairs of the house to face yet another night indoors with her.
His marriage was hell.
He awoke alone each morning, his breakfast already set out for him. His dinner pail appeared at noon with no sign of his wife. He ate supper alone at the table, while she sewed in the main room.
His clothes were always clean and ironed, his socks hole-free, his sheets sweet smelling, and the house in pristine order.
He’d never been so well cared for in all his life. He’d never been so miserable.
Once, and only once, he’d broached the subject of going together to see her father to resolve things. The rage burning in her eyes convinced him to never bring it up again.
The immensity of her frigid rage, the pitch she sustained it at, convinced him she’d had nothing to do with her father’s trick. There wasn’t the barest sliver of triumph in her attitude.
They’d come back to Sunday, having spent almost a week together since his confession stuck in this icy prison.
His wife was preparing for church. He lay in bed and watched her fix her hair.
It was a painful pleasure, observing her. She gave not the slightest indication she noticed his gaze—her fingers flying, the hairpins flashing silver as they disappeared into the knot she’d coiled atop her head. He wanted to find every one of those hidden pins, release that curtain of hair to fall all about her, have her peep at him over her shoulder as he ran his hands through it—
Her hairbrush hit the vanity with a snap, and she turned to pick up her stockings. One stocking rolled up, then the other, covering the lengths he’d once kissed his way up. The last time those legs had wrapped around him had been in the pond.
She shook her petticoats into place, the scent of peaches floating up from them. She’d given him a peach once. She might never give him one again—not freely, not without resentment.
She was already strapped into her corset, although her back would be just as stiff without it. Then came her dress—the sage green one she’d worn that night of the barn dance.
He remembered the feel of the silk under his fingers as he’d led her to the rose arbor, her hands slipping through his hair, her lips against his.
“Want me to help with the buttons?” he asked softly.
She paused, gazed at herself in the mirror. “No, thank you.” As if he were a stranger asking to hold the door for her.
“Suppose I ought to get ready.” He swung his legs over the side and held onto the mattress for a moment, gathering his courage to face another day of iciness.
“There’s no need.” Crisp as a winter’s dawn. “I wouldn’t want your tender nose to be irritated by the smell of grease coming from my family.”
He shut his eyes for a brief moment. “I never should have used that word. I was… overwrought.”
She set her hat upon her topknot, gently tweaking until she was satisfied with the angle of it. “That was exactly the word you should have used.” She slid in a hatpin, and he felt the stab of it deep in his heart. “Now I know how you feel about me and mine.”
Yo
u were mine.
Or at least she’d been close to it, in those early days.
“Catarina… I haven’t raised a fuss over those cattle. What more can I do to convince you?” Begging again—but the desperation and hurt within him forced him to his knees. Even when he knew pleading wouldn’t convince her.
She snorted. “You didn’t raise a fuss because you didn’t want to be publicly exposed as a liar.”
No. He hadn’t raised a fuss because he’d wanted her to fight her father for those cattle. To recognize the wrong done to the both of them and fight for him.
To choose him, for once.
He’d wanted her to choose him so badly, it still hurt. But he ought to have known better.
“I’m already late.” She tugged her glove into place. “Your dinner is in the oven.”
And she was gone.
He dressed slowly, his joints aching as if he had a fever coming on. Perro was waiting on the porch, the thump of his tail the most welcome sound Jace had heard today. He mucked the stalls, looked over his worthless cattle, checked the stock’s feed and water, then trudged back to the house.
As always, it sparkled with care. He felt as if the entire place was draped with barbed wire.
He picked up the china shepherdess so suggestively wrapped around her crook. She smiled fatuously up at him, light racing across her gleaming pink skirts. What on earth was the point of this? It did nothing except sit on the table and gather dust.
He carefully set it back.
The point was that it made Catarina happy. All of this made Catarina happy, while it made him… edgy.
Foolishness. It was his house, too. He could touch what he liked, sit where he pleased. He gingerly lowered himself into an upholstered chair. Soft. Inviting. And it smelled nice. He turned his cheek into the bit of lace sitting across the headrest and breathed deep. Lavender. Somehow she’d put the scent of lavender into it. The padding of the chair, the scent rising from it—it made him feel easy, a feeling he hadn’t fallen into in days.
“Perro!” he called. “Come here!”
Summer Chaparral Page 24