Midnight Rider

by Diana Palmer

  The condessa put her face in her wrinkled old hands and wept.

  Eduardo touched her shoulder lightly, his mind still locked into the pain of the past. “I drank to excess afterward, more for grief of the child than her. I would have died on one binge, I think, except that Bernadette braved the pistol in my hand and came and took it away from me. She brought me back to life again, made me see that I could not die with the child and Consuela. She saved me, in her ever so careful, subtle way. I never knew why.”

  The condessa did, and it made her guilt all the more damning. She’d known none of these details. She looked up at her grandson through layers of guilt and regret and knew that nothing she did would make up for what she’d cost him.

  Lupe, who’d been silent all this time, went forward to take the old woman’s hands and draw her up out of the chair. “You should rest, Tía,” she said gently. She glanced up at Eduardo’s hard face. Regret was in her eyes, too, along with a helpless attraction that all the long years hadn’t erased. She shrugged. “Perhaps we are both at fault for Bernadette’s flight,” she said. She stiffened her spine a little. “If you ask her to come back, she will not have cause for further complaint,” she added. “From me, or from Tía. I give you my word.”

  Eduardo sighed. “I fear that it will take more than that to entice her here again,” he replied, thinking not of their behavior, but of his own. Bernadette would not easily forget how he had humbled her. And, too, there were possible consequences of that action that would terrify her. He grimaced as he remembered the death of her mother and her sister in childbirth. She would be frightened and her father would do nothing to comfort her. She would be alone, as she always had been, except when she’d been with him. He would give anything at that moment to go back to the days when she trusted him, when she cared for him. How she must hate him now!

  He watched the condessa go along to the staircase with Lupe, and he thought how old she looked, how alone. She had no life of her own left. Her only pleasure was in manipulating the lives of the people around her. This arrogance had led to the greatest tragedy in his life, and she’d never known. Now that she did, perhaps her arrogance would fade away and she would become the kind and gentle woman of his childhood....

  * * *

  DESPITE THE EARLY HOUR, Eduardo saddled a horse and rode to the Barron ranch. He didn’t expect Bernadette to want to see him, but he had to make the attempt for the sake of his honor. He’d caused enough problems for this child-woman in his fashion. Now he had to try and make amends.

  He rode up to the house, dismounted and tied the reins to the hitching post. Maria met him at the front door with a worried frown.

  “Qué pasa?” he asked at once, because he knew from her expression that something was terribly wrong here.

  “It is the señorita...the señora,” she corrected at once, then grimaced. “Perhaps it was the ride home in the wind and dust yesterday, who knows? She awoke the household last night, it was such a vicious attack of the lungs. She is very bad. The medicine has not worked. Señor Barron has sent for the doctor.” She shook her head and looked at him through tears. “We think...she may die, señor!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  EDUARDO ENTERED BERNADETTE’S room with terror in his heart. He couldn’t remember feeling so afraid and miserable—except when he had found his young son dead.

  Colston Barron was sitting beside the bed where a white, still Bernadette lay trying to get a breath. She was propped up, pale and sweating. Her breathing was audible, raspy...horrible.

  Eduardo went close to the bed and looked down at her over the head of her father. “The medicine,” he said urgently. “Have you used the medicine?”

  Colston looked at him blankly. “Coffee, sure,” he said dully, “and some of that herbal tea that Dr. Blakely gave her—”

  “No!” he interrupted quickly. “The medicine she brought home from New York!”

  Colston still didn’t quite grasp what the younger man was saying. “Oh, that. We couldn’t find it. It’s not in the bag she brought home.”

  “Mother of God,” Eduardo said, shaken. “I’ll be back as soon as I possibly can!”

  He rushed to the front of the house, untied his mount’s reins, leaped into the saddle and all but killed the horse getting back to Rancho Escondido. He vaulted out of the saddle at the front door, yelling for a stable boy to bring him a fresh horse.

  Taking the steps two at a time, he refused to remember what he’d seen, lest the terror delay him even longer from his purpose. He went to the room Bernadette had occupied and began rummaging through her trunk until he found the precious vial of medicine.

  “Eduardo,” Lupe exclaimed when he rushed past her in the hall. “What is wrong?”

  “Bernadette is dying,” he said through his teeth, and kept going.

  Lupe, startled, barely heard the exclamation from the tiny old woman standing just inside her own doorway.

  “Dying, did he say?” the condessa exclaimed.

  “Her medicine,” Lupe murmured. “He must have come home for it. She left it behind.” She turned back to the condessa. “She must not have been thinking clearly,” she said, unsettled.

  The condessa crossed herself. “God forgive me,” she whispered and turned away.

  Eduardo rode back the way he’d come, the medicine tight in one hand the entire ride. Dear God, please, he prayed, let me be in time!

  The trip seemed to take forever. He was aware of every cloud in the sky, the sound of dogs baying somewhere nearby. He felt the threat of rain in the air, but none of these things really made any impression on his tortured mind. All he could see, think, breathe was Bernadette. He had to be in time.

  He took the last lap up to the house apologizing to the poor horse, so exhausted that it could barely breathe. He left it at the front porch and ran inside, down the hall to Bernadette’s room. The raspy sound of her breathing filled the space. Her face was white and cold, but sweating just the same. He could see her breaths at the base of her throat, could see her ribs expanding as she tried to get oxygen into her lungs, past the stale air she couldn’t force out of them.

  Colston stood up when he saw what Eduardo had in his hand. “That medicine,” he said absently, and his eyes were red. He wiped at one eye with his sleeve. “I never even thought of it.”

  “She left it behind.” Eduardo moved forward, measured the dose and lifted Bernadette’s head gently to administer it. “Here,” he whispered. “Here, Bernadette, you must take it. This is your medicine. It will ease the spasm so that you can breathe. Come, open your mouth, querida.”

  She remembered very little since her arrival home. Eduardo was here, she could barely make him out through her tortured eyes. He was trying to give her something. What was it? She obeyed his deep voice mechanically and took the medicine.

  Eduardo took Colston’s place by the bed then and waited, cradling Bernadette’s small hand closely in his. He was holding her right hand, but he noticed the left, lying on her chest. There was no ring on it. He winced, because he knew to his cost why the ring was missing. She’d taken it ff. She’d taken him out of her life. He deserved it, but it hurt.

  “That medicine,” Colston said, “it worked before. Do you think it will work this time? She’s so bad, Eduardo, so bad!”

  “It will work,” he said doggedly. “It must work!” He wouldn’t let himself believe otherwise. Bernadette couldn’t die. He couldn’t lose her. Life would be worthless without her.

  His fingers tightened around hers. Was he imagining it, or was her breathing a little less labored now? He stood up and moved closer to her, so that he could see her face more clearly. Yes, she was relaxing. Her eyes opened as she breathed. Her whole chest heaved violently with the struggle to catch each breath. The hollow at the base of her throat sucked in with each pull of air. He could see the paleness of her face, the cold sweat that covered it. She was in agony, and he wanted to bear the pain for her.

  Her mouth opened, but she
couldn’t get words out. She sat up a little more, bending forward. The medicine was making her head spin. But her chest was relaxing. Her lungs were relaxing.

  She slowly inhaled...and the air came out again! She laughed softly at the sudden ease of breathing. She did it again. Then again.

  “She’s breathing easier, do you see, lad?” Colston exclaimed. “Praise God!”

  “Praise Him, indeed,” Eduardo said heavily. “Bernadette, is it easing now?”

  “Yes,” she managed huskily. “It’s...better.”

  He drew her forehead to his chest and held it there, bending over it with eyes that stung from sudden moisture. “You little fool!” he exploded against her soft hair, holding her head even closer as the anguish he’d kept at bay for the past horrifying hour washed over him and made him shake inside. “You little fool, you could have died, coming away without your medicine!”

  “What...do you care?” she retorted. “You...never even bothered...to come after me!”

  His hands loosened a bit. He lifted his head from her hair and moved back a little. “Bernadette, I didn’t know that you weren’t in your room until this morning,” he said miserably. But he could tell she didn’t believe him. She looked at him with cold green eyes. He winced. Her feelings did not stem alone from him not coming after her but from what he’d done to her on their wedding night.

  She lay back down against the high pillows and sucked in fresh air. Her eyes closed at the effort and then opened again. It was easier to breathe, but still uncomfortable.

  “Thank you for fetching the medicine,” Colston said with heartfelt emotion as he clapped the younger man on the back. “I was so afraid for her. She said to get her the medicine, and I thought she meant that herbal tea, curse me slow brain!”

  Bernadette had been surprised by her father’s care of her, a new and unusual occupation for him. She’d been even more surprised by Eduardo’s arrival and his rush to obtain her medicine from her trunk. She hadn’t remembered that it was in the trunk and not her suitcase. It was almost a fatal error.

  “Would you like some fresh coffee, girl?” her father asked gently.

  She nodded slowly.

  “I’ll fetch it from Maria. Be right back!”

  He went out and Eduardo sat down in the chair he’d occupied, close by Bernadette’s side.

  “Why are you...here?” she asked, averting her embarrassed face. “Haven’t you done enough?”

  He felt his face heat with the remark. He stared at his hands while he searched for something to say that would alleviate the hurt he’d dealt her. “I lost myself the night of our wedding,” he said quietly. “Absolutely. I have no excuse to offer except that I was angry and had no control over my temper and my passions. I realize that what...happened...was difficult for you. I apologize most humbly for my treatment of you. I apologize for believing you lied to me.”

  She flushed at the memory. She couldn’t bear to meet his searching gaze with the incident between them. He knew her body as no one knew it, how it looked and felt and reacted to his practiced caresses. She had begged him...

  Her faint moan of embarrassment went right through his body like a hot arrow. “Forgive me,” he said heavily. “You were a virgin. I had no right to treat you that way, so crudely. I have no real excuse,” he added quietly, lifting his dark eyes back to her face, “except that I wanted you so desperately that it was impossible for me to draw back.”

  She colored even more. Her hands gripped the bedspread and she averted her face.

  “Ah, I can see the shame,” he remarked gently. “You remember not so much what I did as how you behaved with me, is that not the real problem?”

  “Please,” she choked. “I can’t...speak of it!”

  “We must,” he replied. He reached for her hand and clasped it gently in his. “Bernadette, you are my wife,” he added softly. “What I did with you happens between men and women. It is part of marriage.”

  She bit her lower lip to stop its trembling, but tears washed her eyes. “I behaved like a woman from a brothel.”

  His hands tightened on hers. “You behaved like a woman who very badly wanted to belong to the man she married,” he said in a voice that reached only her ears, that wouldn’t have carried to the doorway. “How exquisite was our loving, Bernadette. How passionate.” He lifted her hand to his mouth, turned it and kissed the damp palm hungrily. “I could not face you afterward for the shame and self-contempt I felt. I meant to force you. You knew this, of course?”

  She nodded jerkily. “But you didn’t...force me.”

  “No. You were generous. More generous than I deserved.” He drew in a long breath. “Everything has gone wrong with us. I had such high hopes for our marriage, and I have done nothing but kill them. I want you to come back with me.”

  She shook her head.

  His fingers caressed hers. “My grandmother has promised that she will cause no more trouble between us,” he coaxed. “So has Lupe.”

  “I should rather leap into a pit of vipers.”

  He smiled ruefully. “An apt description, I fear, but they are my family, however unpleasant.” He moved closer, searching her green eyes. “Come home,” he whispered. “I will love you again, but more slowly, more tenderly, so that I create an addiction you can never satisfy.”

  Her body tingled. She glowered at him, blushing scarlet. “Don’t you talk to me that way!”

  He smiled wickedly and kissed her knuckles warmly. “I want to do much more than talk,” he whispered, letting his eyes drop to her breasts and caress them. “Dios mio, what it cost me to leave you after our lovemaking! I looked at you and ached to my very toes.”

  “You didn’t even speak to me!”

  He shrugged in a very Spanish way and smiled. “I left you out of shame.”

  She stared at his lean, beautiful hands and remembered their tenderness, their mastery on her body. She drew in a longer, slower breath. “I was ashamed, too,” she said quietly. “Of the things I said to you.” Her voice broke.

  His mouth burned against her fingers. “Wicked, wonderful things,” he whispered. “They brought my blood up, made me reckless and wild with you, excited me! I enjoyed the things you said to me, querida, so much that I said them back to you. Have you forgotten?”

  No, she hadn’t, and her whole body tingled at the thought. She lifted her face and searched his black eyes. They were tender and full of affection. It had been so long since he’d smiled at her in that particular way.

  His teeth nipped the skin on the back of her hand affectionately. His face tautened. “You looked at me as I poised just above you. When you saw me for the first time like that, you gasped.”

  She’d gasped even more at what came next, at the tender parting of her long legs, at the slow, measured thrust of his body down into hers and the shock of intimacy, real intimacy, that had accompanied it.

  “I hurt you a little,” he whispered, staring right into her eyes, “and you gasped again. But you were too hungry for me to ask me to stop. You lifted, so that I could enter you more easily...”

  “Eduardo!”

  “And you watched as I did it,” he continued sensually. He smiled at her embarrassment. “That intensified our pleasure, the watching. It was wicked, was it not? Wicked and satisfying all at once.”

  She swallowed. “You...you said that you’d never let a woman see you.”

  “Nor had I.” His fingers traced the lines in her palm. “Such intimacy was a thing I could do only in darkness, because I felt a sort of shame with the women I...mastered.” He glanced down at the small fingers held in his. “With Consuela—well, I told you how that was.” He met her soft eyes. “I never knew that sex could be such a poignant thing, such a reverent thing, as we shared together in the light. You gave me true ecstasy, fulfillment far beyond anything I had ever experienced before, and I was shaken. I was unsettled by the experience and I felt guilty that I had all but forced you to submit to me. For that, too, I am sorry. My lack
of perception almost cost you your life.”

  She studied him with new insight. He was a complex man. He kept his deeper feelings carefully hidden, but they were there. He had to care something for her to have made such a fuss over her medicine.

  “And you,” he continued softly, “achieved satisfaction, too, did you not, Señora Ramirez?”

  She dropped her gaze like a hot rock and her breathing became ragged again.

  “Here, now, none of that,” he chided, lifting her chin so that he could see her eyes. “In this most intimate of married affairs, we must never hide the truth from each other. I satisfied you completely?”

  She swallowed hard. “Yes,” she whispered.

  He nodded. “But there was pain.”

  “A...a little.”

  “Yes. You bled.”

  She colored and averted her eyes.

  “That, too, is natural,” he told her. “I did not damage you. The wound will heal and it will never be uncomfortable for you again.”

  She let out the breath caught in her throat. “It embarrasses me to speak of these things.”

  “You are my wife. Come home and live with me.”

  She looked at him warily. “Why?”

  He smiled. “Because a woman who feels sufficiently confident to pour cream over the head of the condessa is the sort of wife I require to help me save Rancho Escondido.”