by Diana Palmer
“She wants Eduardo,” he interrupted with a hard look. “Did you know?”
“It’s hard to miss. She pretends to be friendly, but it’s all a ruse, and I’m not sure that Eduardo knows it. They’re the only family he has left that he’s willing to claim, and I don’t want to have words with him about her. But if she’s allowed to order my wedding gown, I expect I’ll go to the altar in one that’s two sizes off and of a design to make me look ridiculous.”
“She won’t have any say about the gown.”
“But—”
He held up a hand. “I’ll say what’s to be done. You’ll go to New York to shop for it. I’ll have my secretary at my office in San Antonio book passage for you in our private train car. Maria can go with you. I’ll have one of the vaqueros’ wives take over her duties in the kitchen. There’s only me to cook for anyway, with all the visitors finally gone.”
Bernadette was uncomfortable at the thought of traveling so far alone. “I don’t want to go,” she said miserably.
“It’s that or let Lupe pick out the dress herself.”
She got up. “That’s no choice at all,” she said heavily. “Very well, I’ll go.”
“There’s a specialist there, a doctor who has had some great success dealing with asthmatics,” he added surprisingly. “You can see him, as well.”
She was astounded. He hadn’t taken any notice of her health for years, except to complain about it. “Do you mean it?”
He averted his eyes as if his comment embarrassed him. “’Course I do. Go on, then, start packing. You’ll leave tomorrow. I’ll telegraph now to get the arrangements underway.”
“But what about Eduardo?” she asked worriedly. She had visions of the women talking him out of marrying her while she was gone.
“He’ll still be here when you come back. You can stay at the Waldorf-Astoria. I’ll telegraph straight to them to get a reservation for you.”
“You’re being very kind, Father.”
“You’re the only daughter I have left,” he replied gruffly. “Can’t see you married in rags, can I? Not in the biggest cathedral in San Antonio.”
“Oh, I see.”
He glared at her. “No, you don’t. I want you to do me proud, sure I do, but I’m not having you made a laughingstock by that haughty Spanish miss!”
She wasn’t sure what to say. It was still like talking to a stranger. “I won’t be.”
“This whole affair is my fault.” He stared down at his boots. “I thought getting myself into his social circles would make me acceptable to the better families. I never realized until the ball how wrong I was about that.” He lifted pale eyes to her. “I haven’t a thing in common with them. We’re as different as night and day. I had to earn what I have. They inherited it, most of them. The Culhanes and I get along, of course, because the old man made his fortune the way I made mine. But, then, they’re not exactly overwhelmed with invitations from back East, either.”
“I think it was as hard for your guests that night,” she said. “It isn’t that they don’t think you’re good enough to be invited to social events, Father, it’s that you don’t share the same interests. They know nothing about cattle and you know nothing about golf.” She smiled. “Perhaps you might get some clubs and learn to play. Surely someone in San Antonio has a course of some sort to play. Isn’t there a man named Cumming Macdonough who brought the game over from Scotland a few years ago and built a golf course there with his sons?”
“Yes, by golly, there is! And he knows the game better than anybody hereabouts. Lass, you’re a constant wonder to me! I’ll go looking for him this very weekend!”
She grinned. “That’s the way to get into exalted circles—learn the games they play and beat them at it.”
He chuckled. “So I’m discovering.” He searched her eyes, so like her mother’s. “Bernadette, I’ve never given you much reason to think that I care what happens to you. But I do care. There’s time to back out of this marriage. I won’t say a word, and I’ll still give Eduardo his loan.”
“I made him the same offer. He refused. He says that he gave his word and he won’t go back on it.”
“But you don’t mind marrying him, then?”
She smiled sadly. “I love him with all my heart,” she confessed. “I have for years. Even if he can’t return my feelings, he’s fond of me. Maybe one day...” She hesitated. “Maybe there can be a child. At least one child, to inherit.”
He scowled. He didn’t say a word, but he was seeing his beautiful Eloise screaming in pain.
“I must go and plan what to take with me,” she said hurriedly, because she saw the look and misunderstood it entirely. “Thank you for letting me get my own gown, Father. I’m very grateful.”
“It’s little enough to do, girl. God knows, I’ve done almost nothing for you.” He turned back to the window. “Nothing cheap, mind. Get a gown to turn Lupe pea-green with envy.”
“Yes, sir, I shall!” She opened the door and paused. “If Eduardo comes, you’ll explain to him? I mean, without making Lupe sound like a devil?”
He chuckled. “I’ll do me best,” he murmured. “She is a devil, though.”
“I know it. But he mustn’t. His family is very important to him. I wouldn’t want to do anything to upset him.”
“From what I’ve seen of them, you may not be able to prevent it.” He glanced at her. “You’re my daughter, mind, and you have my temper. I can’t see you letting the old woman walk all over you.”
“Nor can I. Perhaps she’ll go home right after the wedding,” she said hopefully.
“Lass, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen.”
She sighed. “I know what you mean.”
* * *
THE TRAIN TRIP TOOK FOUR DAYS each way. Allowing for the time in transit and the visit to the dressmaker and the physician who specialized in treatment of lung diseases it was a two-week sojourn. What a wonderful luxury to ride in her father’s private railroad car, which was attached to a train bound for St. Louis, Missouri, and then transferred to a car headed east. It was fascinating to watch the porters her father employed working with such brisk efficiency to transform the car to serve all her needs. It was, Bernadette fancied, the way royalty would travel.
New York City amazed...intimidated...thrilled the two women from southwest Texas. Maria was delighted with the wedding dress Bernadette chose. It was exquisitely embroidered with white roses and covered with Belgian lace. There was a veil that fell to her hips in front and ran down to the scalloped edges of the satin train in back. The high neck was embroidered and covered with delicate lace, as were the mutton sleeves and flaring skirt. It was horribly expensive. But as her father had said, Bernadette reminded herself, she was only marrying once. And this was a gown to grace a princess.
It was fitted, altered, packed and sent to the railway station when Bernadette and Maria were ready to leave.
Meanwhile, Bernadette had seen Dr. Harold Metter, a young physician with some new ideas about the treatment of asthma that were attracting much attention in the medical community. He prescribed sedatives and had an order made up for Bernadette, along with a prescription to take home with her. The drug was an opiate, so it was imperative that she use it only when everything else failed, he instructed. He also prescribed moderate exercise and fresh air and a light diet.
Bernadette felt more confident about herself than she ever had before. She also worked up enough courage to ask the physician about the possibility of having a child. He said there was no reason she shouldn’t, even when told about her family medical history. He examined her and pronounced her quite fit enough to carry a child without endangering her life. Here, again, he had revolutionary theories, and one of them was that she must keep active right up until the birth of a child. If she would contact him by mail when she knew herself to be pregnant, he would prescribe a course of exercises to make the birth easier, as well as refer her to a prominent obstetrician in San Ant
onio.
Bernadette went back to Valladolid County feeling as if she were floating the whole way. She had her exquisite wedding gown and the hope of a normal life, babies and a happy marriage. All she had to do was get around the old condessa and the young Lupe, and win Eduardo’s heart. Buoyed by optimism, she felt she could accomplish anything. It was just a matter of planning, she told herself. And she was ready to start a campaign.
* * *
THE DRESS WAS ADMIRED BY HER father and pronounced perfect. He was also surprised by the physician’s recommendations, and delighted by the prognosis. He seemed genuinely touched by the positive turns in her life.
Eduardo rode over to see her the day following her return. He looked perfectly normal until he spoke to her. He was remote, formal, so correct that he seemed a stranger.
They sat together in the living room, sipping the coffee that Maria had brought from the kitchen, and neither spoke for several minutes.
“You found a gown, I understand?” he asked finally, his stiffness tinged with anger.
“Well, yes.” She wondered at his attitude. “Didn’t Father explain to you that I wanted to choose my own gown?”
“Certainly he explained. However, my cousin Lupe was deeply offended by this shopping trip. She helped to purchase the gown for the king’s niece, and I assure you, she found a gown befitting royalty.”
She folded her hands on the lap of her pale blue dress and stared at him without backing down an inch. “I daresay she was eager to please the king,” she said with emphasis.
His eyebrows lifted. “Are you insinuating that she wouldn’t be eager to please me?”
“I don’t doubt it. But I wanted to choose my own gown.”
He stared at her unblinking for several long seconds before he spoke again, with less belligerence. “She wept, you know,” he murmured. “My grandmother was very upset, as well. She said that your father most likely had a low opinion of Spanish people and distrusted our taste.”
“Bosh,” she said irritably.
“Bosh?”
She waved a hand. “I mean, he thought no such thing. It was my idea to go to New York,” she lied. “The dress was only a subterfuge I used to get my father to agree to the trip. I saw a specialist while I was there, Eduardo.” Her enthusiasm shone out of her green eyes like beacons. She leaned forward. “He gave me sedatives to take when I have an attack, and he told me how to build up my lungs so that the attacks lessen!” She wanted to tell him that she could even have a child without fear, but she was suddenly tongue-tied on the subject—especially as he wasn’t acting like the Eduardo she’d known for so many years.
“This is good news,” he said eventually. “But should you take sedatives when you can barely breathe?”
“He’s a very good doctor,” she replied. “One of the president’s relations is attended by him. He’s had many successes with his treatment.”
“Then I agree that the trip wasn’t wasted.” He put down his coffee cup. He looked tired, and not too happy.
“Aren’t things going well at the ranch?” she asked hesitantly.
His black eyes lifted to hers, then narrowed. “My grandmother is distressed that I decided to take a wife before I discussed it with her.” He leaned back. “She brought Lupe on the trip with her with the idea that we would become engaged.”
A cold chill went down Bernadette’s spine. She felt her body go numb from the impact of the words.
“Lupe is Spanish,” he continued. “She has poise and breeding and great wealth. And my grandmother believed that I would see now the error of my ways in rejecting Lupe and then marrying Consuela.”
Bernadette’s temper, never mild, exploded. She got to her feet in one swift movement and turned to march to the door.
“Where are you going?” Eduardo demanded, rising.
She opened the door and turned her furious eyes toward him. “Obviously your grandmother has more influence over you than I have. Marry Lupe, then. Perhaps she’ll turn out to be as wonderful a wife as Consuela. Your grandmother also chose her for you, I believe?”
She stomped down the hall, barely aware of hard footsteps behind her. When she was even with the pantry, a lean hand grasped her arm firmly and she was shoved gently into the pantry and Eduardo closed the door behind them.
“You uncivilized little tigress,” Eduardo muttered angrily, pressing her back against the shelves full of canned fruit and vegetables. The room was small and dimly lit, stifling with the heat. But neither of them noticed.
“Let me go!” she grumbled, struggling. “Lupe is everything you want. You said so. Why don’t you rush home and put a ring on her finger? Here, I’ll give it back!”
She tugged at the ring on her engagement finger, but as she lifted her hands to struggle with the tightly fitted piece of jewelry, Eduardo’s head bent. He found her soft mouth and opened it under the furious pressure of his lips.
She hit at him, but he caught her hands and drew them behind her, holding her helpless while his mouth fed on hers. Her knees felt as if they might collapse as the hard, ardent kiss went on and on. His strong hands went to her back and captured her, enveloping her against the power of his body.
“Oh, you rogue!” she ground out against his mouth.
He only kissed her harder. His hips pressed into hers, imprisoning her against the hard wood of the shelves. He moved even closer, one long leg going between hers so that she was in a new and startling intimacy with him. When his hips shifted, his arousal became quite noticeable.
She stiffened, despite the languor his kisses had invoked in her.
He felt her withdrawal and lifted his head. He was breathing as roughly as she was, and his eyes were glittering with desire as they searched hers.
“Now send me to Lupe,” he whispered, so close that his breath made tiny chills against her moist lips.
She could barely get words past her tongue. Her body felt swollen and trembly. She could feel how aroused he was, and she was embarrassed. “Please,” she whispered. “You must stop....”
“Must I?” He looked into her eyes and deliberately moved even closer, so that she felt him in a way he’d never permitted her to until now. “Do you feel it, Bernadette?” he taunted huskily. “Do you know what it wants?”
“Eduardo!” she gasped.
“All that magnificent passion, wasted in anger, when it could be so profitably employed in a quite different fashion,” he whispered, bending again. “Open your mouth, Bernadette. Put your hands against what you feel and touch me.”
“You...blackguard!” She struggled, but it only made matters worse. He groaned and his ardor was suddenly insistent.
She moaned piteously against the penetration of his tongue. Her body clenched at the sensations the suggestive kiss raised in her virginal body. It was like that night in the desert, when he’d held her and caressed her so hungrily. But now her body found his familiar, and she welcomed the caresses that would once have torn her from his arms in shame.
She trembled as his hands searched for buttons at her throat and began to unfasten them. The room was hot, so hot. She could barely breathe for the heat. And then his mouth found her throat and worked its way down the path of the buttons until he moved it right inside her dress, into her bodice, against her bare breast.
She shivered and moaned loudly. Her fingers caught in his thick hair and she pulled at his head, coaxing it, her body moving, shifting, to bring him where it wanted his mouth.
“Please,” she choked out. “Please, here...here...just a little farther...!”
Her hands guided him blindly until his mouth was on the hard, swollen nipple.
“Here?” he whispered huskily. “Here, Bernadette?” He began to suckle her, tasting her soft skin, and she arched up to him hungrily.
“Yes,” she sobbed. “Yes, yes, yes!”
His mouth was the center of the universe. It was wicked, what they were doing, but she wanted it. Oh, how she wanted it! She wanted her bodice down arou
nd her waist, and his mouth all over her breasts. She wanted his eyes, his hands, his mouth on every inch of her body....
He groaned at the fever they were kindling. He moved her into the light from the high window and his hands efficiently moved the blouse and the straps of her cotton slip and chemise aside. She hadn’t bothered with her usual corset because of the awful heat, and now that he knew it, he was glad. He pulled the straps down to her waist and caught his breath at the sight of those firm, pretty, red-tripped breasts.
“Dear God, Bernadette,” he whispered. He touched them reverently, caressing them with tenderness and awe.
She shivered, her hands clutching at his sleeves as the magic of his touch worked on her body and made her ache in her most feminine places.
She arched her back, her eyes half-closed, drowning in the delicious sensation of being seen intimately by him. “Please...Eduardo,” she whispered, pulling at his head.
He looked into her wide eyes. “What do you want, amada?” he whispered softly. “My mouth on your breasts, like this, with no clothing to dull the sensation?”
“Yes,” she said brokenly. “Oh, yes!”
“It is what I want as well, the taste of you, like warm petals on my tongue.” He bent and slowly opened his mouth against the silky skin, feeling her immediate response, hearing her soft cries, enjoying the taste and scent of her.
He was slow and thorough. She felt as if she’d died and gone right to heaven in his arms as he teased and touched and tasted and explored her with tenderness.
“Such exquisite skin,” he murmured against her body. “Soft and warm and scented like roses. I want all of you, Bernadette. I want to feel your body soft and naked under mine in my bed. I want to possess you absolutely.”
She should have been shocked by the passionate words. But she was only aroused more. Her arms slid around his neck and she met his ravishing mouth with all the clumsy ardor she could manage, loving the taste of him, the feel of him.