Summer Chaparral

by Genevieve Turner

  “I wanted it to be legal. For no one to challenge the marriage.”

  “So you could have her cattle. Perhaps even our rancho.”

  He’s your father-in-law. Just swallow it all down. For her.

  “If you’ll remember,” he said tightly, “I tried to talk you out of the marriage.”

  The other man sniffed at that. “You had only to say your true name to stop the engagement. And if you didn’t want to marry her, you never should have touched her.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want to marry her.” Christ, but the old man was determined to fuss at him. “And no, I shouldn’t have touched her. But I don’t regret it.”

  He could never regret something so sweet. And his marriage would turn sweet again, once he found this fugitive…

  “Hmpf.” A little less certain, that noise of scorn.

  “I committed the sin of marrying your daughter under false pretenses; you repaid me with those worthless cattle. We’re even now.” He studied a mesquite tree—green and gold and orange, there in the middle of the sagebrush—intending that his apology and averted gaze would bring an end to this conversation.

  “If you’d seen my wife’s reaction when she learned your name…” Moreno’s voice was almost too stretched to squeak past his throat. “If you had known what your family did to her… ” His father-in-law shook his head, his brow furrowing. “Her nightmares started again.”

  Jace swallowed hard. If Catarina had been the one screaming into the dark… Perhaps the Señor’s prickliness wasn’t so unreasonable. “I can imagine. And I would never hurt your wife if I could help it.”

  “Well.” Catarina’s father stared at the far-off hulk of Mount Portola, his jaw twitching. “You really don’t want new cattle?” the older man asked after a time.

  “What I want to do is find this bastard so that your daughter will be safe.” All your daughters. And your wife.

  “Hmph. Finding him might get rid of one cholo in this world, but there are more like him. All ready to scorn us, to harm us, because they believe we have no right to exist in our own home.”

  What could he say to that? His own father and grandfather had once said much the same.

  He’d find this outlaw. That would say everything that needed to be said. But there was one last thing he had to voice.

  He cleared his throat, went for the fence. “How you feel for your wife—that’s how I feel for your daughter.”

  Silence fell again. Not so jagged now—contemplative, considering.

  “You rode the Circle T for many years,” the Señor said after a time.

  Jace nodded. “Ran away at fifteen. Worked there for thirteen years.”

  “I worked there myself, many years ago. I, too, ran away at fifteen.”

  “I thought proper children never questioned their father?” he asked dryly.

  “Hmph. My father was a ship’s captain. He liked to spend his shore leave drunk, and I had no desire to follow in his footsteps. So I took ten dollars from his billfold and escaped to that ranch.”

  “You were smarter than me,” Jace allowed. “I only took five.” The high country was close, the sagebrush dissolving as the ground went rocky. He took a deep breath. “I had no desire to be like my father, either. Or my grandfather, for that matter.”

  Quiet again. Maybe he’d finally quelled all the man’s concerns.

  He wouldn’t mention the cattle—as long as he had Catarina, he’d be content.

  And as for getting his wife back…

  He went back to hunting for any sign the outlaw might have left, the two of them climbing the trail in easy wordlessness. Perro panted at his heels, Spot went forward eagerly at his command… Had it not been for the grim task driving him, he might have enjoyed the ride.

  It was about noon when the Señor spoke again. “No trail, no sign.” A weary shake of his head. “He could be halfway to Mexico by now.”

  “I have to find him.” Although Jace hoped not to have to go to Mexico to do it. “Don’t tell me you’re giving up?”

  That had the other man bristling. “Of course not.” Silence again as they rode on, south toward the Santa Rosas. “Once we find this outlaw, I’ll see to it that you get the cattle Catarina deserved. And you can help cut hay for the winter.”

  Was that an apology? His father-in-law’s tone was hardly conciliatory. “Oh, can I?”

  The Señor raised his eyebrows in challenge. “You’ll get your fair share of the hay. Don’t you want to feed your stock this winter?”

  He forced his hand to stay on his thigh rather than rub at his temples. If this was how his relationship with his father-in-law was going to proceed, it wasn’t going to be an easy one. But it was better than open hostilities.

  Him sniping back at the man would only upset Catarina.

  “Of course I’ll help cut hay.” He sighed. “Now let’s find this bastard once and for all.”

  But they didn’t find him that day.

  It wasn’t quite midnight when Jace finally arrived back at the Rancho Moreno, but it was close. He’d gone to the homestead to care for his own stock beforehand, and briefly contemplated sleeping in his own bed for the night.

  But she wasn’t there.

  So here he was, slipping into a darkened kitchen in the dead of night, thinking to find his wife in her old bedroom.

  But she was there, in the kitchen. Waiting for him?

  “You’re here.” She sounded so relieved. He hoped she hadn’t been fretting over him—she’d enough to worry her. “I’ve a plate for you.”

  Lord, but it gladdened his heart to see her. “You shouldn’t have waited up. You must be tired.”

  She only held the fork up to his mouth. Carnitas. Cooked so beautifully it melted right on his tongue. The ambrosia of the gods couldn’t be finer than this.

  “Did you eat?” he asked, after he’d swallowed.

  She shook her head, took a bite from his plate. The only plate. “I wanted to wait for you.”

  A bite for him, then one for her—they cleaned the plate that way. After, she led him by the hand up to her bedroom, where they settled into the bed together, the sheets smelling so deliciously clean, the quilt comfortably heavy on his limbs.

  She curled up against him, settled her hand in its spot on his belly, and sighed deeply. He stroked her hair, his fingers tapping along the familiar bumps of her plait.

  “Why do you never wear it loose?” he asked. He’d never once seen her hair unbound, which struck him as a terrible tragedy.

  “My hair? It would be a mess by morning.”

  He found the end of her braid, spearing his fingers through it, the ends ticklish along his skin.

  “Tell me about the Circle T,” she said.

  “Undo your hair,” he replied.

  She pushed herself to one elbow, the bed sagging as she did. The quilt lifted with her motions, the cool air brushing along his overheated skin. With a tug, she pulled free the ribbon holding her hair, then unloosed it all from the plait, spreading it all about her.

  When she returned to lie next to him, her hair was a weight on him almost as heavy as the quilt. It smelled of sunshine and peaches—the scent of summer, woven into her very hair.

  “First,” he said, “tell me more of your childhood. Your life before you found me.”

  A pause while she pondered that. “I spent most of that time wishing for something I didn’t have.” Another pause. “My mother… Well, you’ve seen her. She has this presence; everyone bows to her command, all with no visible effort on her part.”

  “Yes. She used it on me just yesterday.” And he couldn’t say he’d enjoyed it.

  “I wanted that for myself, to sit at the head of my own table and rule completely. Isabel has it, you know.” Steady enough, but his ears found the sliver of hurt deep within.

  He twirled a lock of her hair around his finger. “Hmm. You said ‘wanted.’”

  She didn’t answer that directly. “You might have noticed that I
am prone to excessive vanity.”

  “No. Never noticed at all,” he said dryly.

  “Well,” she sniffed, “if I couldn’t command as my mother did, couldn’t have a home of my own—I still had this face. And I could make men do things with it.” A pause the space of two heartbeats. “So I did. And now you see what a fool I was.”

  He pressed his lips to her forehead. “I like your foolishness. And your vanity. Without those, we might never have spoken by that common trough.”

  She’d said once that he never should have approached her that day.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “They did lead me to you.”

  His lungs released a breath he hadn’t even known they were holding.

  “But enough now of my faults,” she went on. “Tell me about running away to the Circle T.”

  “When I arrived there,” he began, running his hands through her locks as they tangled round him, “I was the greenest boy that place had ever seen. I could ride, but not very well. Couldn’t work a cow, couldn’t rope, had no horse of my own—I had no idea why they kept me on. Felt sorry for me, I suppose.”

  Her fingers trailed down his arm. “But you learned.”

  “Yes, I learned.” He swallowed hard, gathering himself before admitting this next. “I was so lonely as well. I wanted to write, to at least let my sisters know I was alive—but I’d made that foolish promise to myself, that I wouldn’t send word until I’d made it all on my own…” Still her fingers traced on his arm, curls and whorls and indescribable things, never releasing him as he unburdened himself. “I thought a man kept his promises, and I’d promised myself.”

  “It’s not too late,” she whispered.

  “But it is. Your mother… My father can’t know she’s here. The man he was before would never harm her, but who knows how the years have changed him? I won’t risk your mother like that.”

  All of her squeezed him then, her entire body embracing him hard. He pulled her just as tightly to him, and he promised her anew:

  Tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’ll find that man.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The days of searching for the outlaw turned into a week. And Catarina began to give up hope.

  She kept her mother’s house as she had before, spoke with the seemingly endless stream of visitors come to wish them well—and to gawk, discreetly of course—and sat with her silent sister when her mother needed a rest.

  The men continued to hunt for him, Jace hunting hardest of all. He returned later than anyone, his jaw tight and his eyes bleary. There were no more talks late into the night between them. As soon as his head touched the pillow, he was insensible. He caught snatches of only a few hours’ sleep—curled around her in her childhood bed—then rose to do it all again. It hurt her, how much this wore on him. How much it wore on all of them.

  The whistle of the teakettle snapped her out of her reverie. Three carefully leveled scoops of leaves into the pot—Isabel was particular about her tea—then to the brim with steaming water. Her mother’s second-best cups on the tray, check the color of the tea—just right—and up the stairs she went.

  A gust of wind came smashing at the house as she climbed, the windows rattling in their frames as if something were trying to get inside. The light outdoors was gray and shivery—a storm was blowing in.

  “I’m here with the tea,” she announced cheerily when she reached Isabel’s room. She puttered with the tray and went to hand her sister her cup—

  “You’re wearing your spectacles again!”

  Isabel’s lip curled. “Of course. How else am I to see?” Her voice sounded as if it had been dragged across sandpaper, the ring of bruises around her throat a ghastly green-yellow.

  “Well, you haven’t worn them since…” She compressed her lips. “And you’re talking again.”

  “You have a man crush your throat and see how much talking you accomplish.” The sneer in the words had Catarina’s teeth sinking into her cheek.

  She’s been hurt—she’s still hurting. Patience.

  “I’m happy to hear your voice again,” she said with more gentleness than she was feeling.

  A snort from Isabel. She turned her face away, the bandage above her ear starkly white against the dark of her hair.

  “Here’s your tea.” Catarina pressed Isabel’s thin, cold fingers around the cup.

  “Thank you,” her sister murmured.

  Catarina sat in the chair across from the bed, shivering as the chilled wood met her frame. She sipped her own tea, the silence between them crackling against her skin. It seemed that Isabel had decided to stop talking again—

  “I know you know what happened.” Strange, to hear a voice so rough disguising itself as Isabel’s.

  Catarina took a slow sip, avoiding her sister’s gaze—the rage she feared to find there would cut Catarina to the bone. “I do.” The wind slapped at the house again.

  “Who else knows?” Angry, demanding.

  “Franny.”

  She thought of all the townspeople parading through the house the past week. Catarina hadn’t told them anything more than the barest details, but she’d caught Mrs. Larsen whispering to her eldest daughter as they’d left yesterday: Well, of course that man violated her, what else could have happened?

  She’d given them one of her mother’s keen looks, and they’d hushed up quick enough. But they certainly wouldn’t be the only ones whispering.

  “He didn’t knock my wits out with that pistol,” Isabel snapped. “I’ve seen everyone coming and going out my window. So who else knows?”

  Not all of those visitors had been here to leer—most had been concerned. And their menfolk leaving at the rise of dawn and returning well after dark—had Isabel seen all that from her window?

  Catarina reached again for her patience. “By now? Everyone in town.”

  Isabel’s eyes cut away. “So now they’re all talking about me instead of you.”

  Patience.

  “How was your visit with Joaquin? I hear he’s doing much better.” Isabel had always loved to speak of him.

  Her sister’s lip curled again. “Why are you here?” It was more accusation than question.

  Catarina’s fingers almost dashed her cap into the saucer. “To help nurse you,” she said, as levelly as she could.

  “Oh yes, you’ve been such a help.”

  The wind was a wolf at the door, howling for blood.

  She carefully set her cup down, hand shaking and jaw tight. Isabel didn’t want her here? Very well, she’d leave and her sister could stew alone, as she obviously preferred.

  Catarina rose—and saw that Isabel’s hands were twisting within each other, the skin blanching with the force of her grip.

  “Isabel,” she said slowly, “what happened when you visited Joaquin?”

  “Nothing.”

  She sat back down and picked her cup back up. Isabel wasn’t the only one who knew how to be implacable. “I’m not leaving until you tell me what happened.” She took a sip and made a face. Lukewarm tea was nasty stuff. “Isabel?” she prompted, after a few more moments of silence.

  “Joaquin is recovering as well as can be expected.” Her hands kept at their work, as if rubbing at something that could not be removed.

  “I see.” Catarina studied her own tea. Thin whorls of scum spun on the surface, going nowhere. Much like her thoughts. She set the cup aside. “Actually, I don’t see. I haven’t seen Teresa or Ines since you were found, and you haven’t been speaking, so I only know that Joaquin is lucky to be alive.”

  “He doesn’t see it that way.” Isabel’s tone gave no hint if she agreed with his assessment. “His family doesn’t see it that way.”

  Not even the Obregons would be so cruel. Isabel must have misunderstood. “They’ll come around, once he’s healed.”

  “No, they won’t. They’re sending him to the sanatorium in Pine Ridge.”

  Catarina frowned. “But why? When he could heal as well, if not better, at home?�
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  Her sister’s look was pure exasperated schoolmarm. “They claim the doctors there are better able to treat him.”

  Perhaps the Obregons truly meant that. She searched for some bright spot. “Well, he’s alive, he has his family, he has you. Anything else can be overcome.”

  Rain began to pebble against the windows, followed by a bright flash lasting only the barest moment. The storm was here.

  “Me?” Isabel’s gaze was clear and sharp, more like itself than Catarina had seen in days. “Oh, but he doesn’t want me.” She wielded the words like a blade. “He knows he’ll be an invalid all his life, unable to earn a living or support a family. If he were to ask a woman to be his wife and share in that, he would have to be in love with her. And she would need to be in love with him.”

  “But… you told him that. That you love him. Didn’t you?”

  Isabel shook her head. “He was right. I’m not in love with him. And he’s not in love with me.”

  “You were going to marry him.” She felt slow and stupid, trying to sort out exactly what her sister was about.

  Isabel spoke as if explaining sums to a child. “I am not in love with Joaquin Obregon. He is not in love with me. We are fond of each other; we care for each other. We have the same aspirations and desires—to leave Cabrillo and live in Los Angeles. To have a comfortable income and associate with people with sensibilities like ours. But, no, we were not in love.” Her hands unclasped and she carefully set them on her lap, her fingers bare and still and calm. “And so, we are no longer engaged.”

  Catarina knew her mouth was hanging open, knew she should say something, but… there was nothing. “I… Isabel…”

  The ache under Isabel’s words was so deep, it robbed Catarina of her own words. And Isabel’s fingers, restlessly smoothing the quilt, as if she might smooth away her loss by doing so.

  “Today, I was supposed to be leaving to go to my teaching position.” Isabel addressed that to the quilt.

  “There’s always next term.” Weak, but it was all she had. She was failing at being an elder sister.

  “Before this I had my school, I had a fiancé”—Isabel’s voice rose, cracking as she forced it past the bruises at her throat—“and then that man, he—”