Midnight Rider

by Diana Palmer

  She grimaced. “I shouldn’t have done that, not even after what she said to me,” she murmured. “It was horrible to treat a helpless old woman in such a way.”

  “Helpless? Abuela?” He put a hand to her forehead. “You must have a fever if you believe that. Abuela will not be helpless on her deathbed. She, too, has regrets. Come back and let her apologize.” His white teeth glinted. “It will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I assure you. And even as she performs this interesting and profound new exercise, I am certain she will find a way to make herself sound guiltless.”

  Bernadette managed to laugh. She searched his face. “And Lupe?”

  He brought her hand to his knee and held it there. “Lupe is my cousin. Nothing more. She would never have been anything more. I know she feels a tenderness for me, but I am incapable of returning it,” he said simply. “I want you. Only you, Bernadette.”

  And she wanted him. But she was too insecure to say so. She lay breathing softly, her eyelids drooping as the sedative took full effect.

  “Will you?” he asked gently.

  “Will I stay in a room of my own?”

  He drew in a long breath. “Yes. Of course. You will have whatever you wish.”

  Whatever she wished. She glanced toward the window, where blue sky and fluffy white clouds were visible through the thin fabric. “I must think about it.”

  He hesitated. It was a tricky time. He had to be careful not to upset her any more than he already had. He looked down at her small hand with its neatly rounded fingernails. “It would please me more if you slept with me,” he added quietly. “But I understand how you must feel.”

  She was surprised. “You...still want me?”

  Her question, as much as her tone, surprised him. He lifted his gaze back to her face. She had more color now, and her green eyes were sparkling. “That never stops,” he said quietly.

  “But you just said I’d stay in a separate room...”

  “Only because it was what I thought you wanted,” he replied shortly. “Dear God, Bernadette, I took you like you were a woman of the streets! How could I expect you to want me again after that?”

  Her eyes widened. “You did?”

  Her innocence made him feel ancient. He laughed in spite of the gravity of the situation. “What a shameless question. Do you really expect me to answer it?”

  She glanced toward the doorway, but there was no one there, and no approaching footsteps, either. She leaned forward earnestly. “Is that how a man does it with a...with a bad woman?” she whispered.

  “Bernadette!” He laughed helplessly. “My God!”

  “Well, if it is,” she continued, unabashed, “how...how is it supposed to be with a girl who isn’t bad?”

  He took the question at face value and answered it the same way. “Tender,” he replied. “Without the urgent handling and insistent kisses. Without the violence of penetration and the hard rhythm.”

  She colored prettily. “But...”

  “But what?”

  “But that was why it was so...exciting.”

  He nodded. “For me, too,” he confessed. “It was the best lovemaking I ever had. But I should have been more careful with you. It was your first experience of a man.”

  “It was all I hoped it would be,” she told him. “And very embarrassing! In the light, I mean!”

  He sighed softly. “That was the only thing I did right,” he told her. “I loved you in the light, so that I saw your face at the moment you became my lover, my woman, my wife. I can hold that expression of awe and pleasure in my heart until I am a very old man. I would not have missed it for the world.”

  She was surprised. Embarrassed, certainly, but pleased, as well. “I couldn’t see you at all,” she whispered. “Your face blurred. I felt as if I might die from the pleasure, it was so strong.”

  He smiled. “You flatter me.”

  “I wouldn’t know how.”

  He chuckled. “You do now.” He leaned closer. “There are even more shocks in store for you, too, Señora Ramirez.”

  She smiled self-consciously. “Are there, really?”

  What he might have said then was a moot point, because her father and Maria came into the room each with a tray laden with coffee and cake.

  “So much better!” Maria exclaimed when she saw the color in Bernadette’s face. “Praise the Virgin, what a miracle el conde worked!”

  “A miracle, indeed,” Colston said with quiet gratitude. “You saved her life.”

  “Appropriate,” he replied, watching Bernadette sip black coffee. “I think she saved mine, once.”

  Bernadette frowned slightly. “I did?”

  “Soon after the death of my wife and son,” he reminded her. “I got drunk and was waving a pistol around, have you forgotten?”

  She shook her head. “I thought you might be thinking of shooting someone with it.”

  “I was,” he said with grim humor. “Myself.”

  “No!”

  His broad shoulders rose and fell. “It was a difficult time for me. I found the child, you see, dead of...” He glanced up and saw Colston Barron hesitating, as if he were about to leave the room.

  “Come and sit down, Colston,” Eduardo said heavily. “The two of you were the only champions I had during that terrible time. I never spoke of what happened. I think I should. I would like you both to know the truth.”

  Colston still hesitated. “My boy, I know the memory must be painful.”

  “It is. But I want to tell you.”

  Colston gave in and took the other chair near Bernadette’s bed. Eduardo clasped her soft hand in his as he spoke.

  “My wife’s mother was mad,” he said quietly. “I had no knowledge of it, nor did my grandmother, until the wedding was over. Consuela seemed to be perfectly normal, so I had no reason to suspect things were wrong with her mind. When I brought her here to the Rancho Escondido after our wedding in Madrid, the place was falling apart from my long absence during preparations for the ceremony in Spain. I had to work night and day to recoup my losses, to keep from losing the ranch entirely. She was alone too much and it worked on her, especially when she discovered she was pregnant, soon after our arrival.” His face tautened as the memories came back. “She hated the idea of the child almost as much as she came to hate me. When he was born, she ignored him totally. I had to find a wet nurse to tend him.” He stared down at Bernadette’s hand, felt its reassuring grasp. “I fell into debt quite heavily and had to go on a business trip to borrow more money. I tried to get Consuela to come with me, but she wouldn’t. She stayed behind with the baby, and I made certain that there would be plenty of servants to watch her and the child, because already I had misgivings about her sanity. When I came home, it was to find her alone in the house. She had dismissed the servants by telling them that she was going to take the baby and join me.”

  Bernadette’s fingers nestled closer against his hand, because she could feel the effort it was taking him to say these things to her father.

  He took a long breath. “She was doing needlepoint. She looked at me quite calmly and asked if my trip had been successful. I asked her about the baby, and she looked at me as if she didn’t understand what I meant. I went down the hall to the room where the child was kept. It was cold in the house, as it was winter, and a bad one. The fireplace had not been lit at all. The baby was lying in his bed, uncovered. He was emaciated and he had been dead for...several days, by the look of him,” he added between clenched teeth. “I buried him myself and told no one what had happened. Consuela seemed not to understand when I spoke to her gently about the baby. But that same afternoon, she loaded one of my pistols while I was giving instructions to my men about some things that urgently had to be done on the ranch. She walked up into the mountains behind here, in the freezing cold, without even a shawl.” He lowered his eyes to the white bedspread. “She was lying near some rocks when I finally found her, the pistol still clenched in her fingers, stone dead from a bulle
t to the brain.” He lifted his eyes to glance from Bernadette’s sympathetic face to her father’s. “The servants knew only what I told them, but people will gossip. It was said that she killed the baby and I killed her out of vengeance and tried to make it look like a suicide. That was not true. I knew she had a sickness of the mind. I loved my son, and I mourned him. But I would not have hurt her. She was too frail mentally for the responsibilities of marriage, and none of us knew it until it was too late.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Bernadette said gently. “No wonder you were so upset.”

  “We knew you didn’t hurt her, lad,” Colston added in a solemn tone. “I thank you for telling us the truth of it, but you were never the sort to hurt a woman and I knew it.” He smiled reassuringly. “The way you fought me over Bernadette only reinforced that attitude. I’ve been a pretty sorry father, you know. But this girl has a forgiving nature, and I’m learning to live in the present instead of the past.”

  “We all have to learn that eventually,” Eduardo replied. “I want to take Bernadette back home, if she’ll go.”

  “What about those women?” Colston asked warily.

  “Oh, I think Bernadette can cope,” he murmured drily.

  “I think I can, too,” she said. She loved Eduardo desperately, and he was feeling something for her, if only affection. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to build on. “Never let it be said that a good Irish girl ran from a fight!”

  Colston glowered. “You’re as good as anybody and don’t you forget it!”

  She grinned at him. “I won’t.”

  Eduardo was curious. “Was such a comment made?”

  It had been, and by him. Bernadette didn’t want to remember what she’d overheard in the hotel after the wedding. “Only an insinuation,” she said evasively. “I won’t have to pack again,” she said, changing the subject. “I didn’t have time to unpack.”

  “I’ll bring the carriage back to fetch you,” he told her. “And this time,” he added firmly, “you’ll wear something over your face during the trip to protect your lungs from the dust!”

  “Yes, Eduardo,” she murmured with a wicked glance.

  “Ah, how docile you sound,” he said mischievously, “and how well I know that you aren’t any such thing.”

  “You said you were going to be the master in your house,” she reminded him. “I was only trying to be suitably subservient.”

  “You’ve already shown how humble you are.” He glanced amusedly at Colston. “She poured a pitcher of cream over my grandmother.”

  Colston let out a delighted laugh. “So much for my fears,” he said, rising. “I’ll get back to work, then. You take care of yourself, lass,” he added firmly. “No more carelessness with those lungs. I’m not risking the only daughter I’ve got!”

  Bernadette’s face was radiant. She smiled up at her father with pure delight. “I’ll be good,” she promised.

  He winked at her and went out, leaving her with Eduardo.

  They smiled at each other.

  “So we begin again,” he said softly. “And this time, we won’t fall at the first fence.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The condessa and Lupe were in the parlor sewing when Eduardo escorted Bernadette back into the house. They looked up, and actually seemed embarrassed.

  “Bernadette is still not doing well,” he told them formally. “I’m taking her upstairs to lie down until the evening meal.”

  “Of course,” Lupe said, and forced a smile to her lips.

  The condessa looked at Bernadette with a subdued expression. “I trust you are feeling better,” she said stiffly.

  “I’m feeling much better,” she replied with deliberate brightness. “Thank you for asking.”

  Eduardo drew her along with him, nodding politely to his relatives.

  The room to which he took her was enormous, with windows that went almost to the ceiling and heavy mahogany furniture. The bed was huge, four-postered, and its cover was a patchwork quilt obviously done by an expert. The curtains were like the chairs, plain and functional rather than pretty. It was a man’s room, not a woman’s.

  “I’ve slept here since my return to the ranch,” he told Bernadette. “You can change the look of it, if you like.”

  “I won’t do anything right away,” she told him. She sat down on the edge of the bed, which was so high off the floor that her feet didn’t touch the polished wood. She glanced at her husband with a shy smile.

  He sighed, leaned against the broad dresser with his arms folded across his chest and studied her. “You look at home on my bed,” he said. “I hope you know that I don’t mean our marriage to be a platonic one.”

  “I know.”

  His black eyes narrowed. “Bernadette, we haven’t spoken of a child,” he said after a minute. “I know that you have a terror of childbirth. I also know that in the heat of our coming together, I did nothing to try to prevent one.”

  She was more curious than afraid. “Can you? Prevent a child, I mean? How?”

  He chuckled. “More questions!”

  “I don’t know anything about men and women. Who else can I ask?”

  He moved to the bed and sat down beside her. “I can use a sheath,” he told her, and explained where and how it was used.

  Her eyes widened. “But isn’t that uncomfortable for you?”

  “A little. And it might be as uncomfortable for you. But it’s a tried-and-true method of preventing pregnancy.”

  She stared down at the tips of her high-button shoes and grimaced.

  “Something disturbs you?”

  She shifted. “It would be like making love with gloves on,” she murmured.

  His heart skipped. “I see. And you don’t like the idea?”

  “I like...” She hesitated, not able to look at him. “I like...feeling you.”

  His breathing became audible. “Feeling me...inside you?” he whispered.

  She caught her own breath. Seconds later, she was on her back on the quilt and Eduardo was making a meal of her mouth. She felt his hands on her body, warm and welcome, and, feeling exquisite hunger, she dragged him down on her.

  He hesitated. “One moment.”

  He got up and locked and bolted the bedroom door. He turned back to her with his hands already working at the buttons of his shirt.

  She watched him undress without embarrassment, lying propped on her elbows with her eyes growing larger and larger when he stepped out of the last garment.

  He moved toward the bed. She sat up, her breath coming in gasps. She tore at buttons and fastenings, welcoming his hands when they took over the task.

  “Will you have enough breath for this?” he asked tautly as he eased her down on the bed and pulled away the lace-trimmed bloomers she wore.

  “Oh, yes,” she whispered unsteadily.

  He lay her back on the bed and sat beside her, enjoying her nudity. “Take your hair down.”

  She obliged him, tearing out pins in her haste, because he was obviously going to wait until she finished before he went any further.

  He spread her hair over the coverlet, enjoying its soft blond shimmer and its length. He glanced toward the window and noticed that one was open. He got up without a word and went to close it tightly.

  He came back to her, solemn and visibly aroused.

  “Why did you do that?” she asked as he lay down on the bed beside her.

  “You and I make love noisily,” he said gently. “I don’t want you to hold back your cries for fear of being overheard. I like it when you moan.”

  She gripped his bare shoulders hungrily as his head bent to her nipples. They peaked at once. He smiled as he suckled them and heard a soft cry break from her lips.

  His hands slid under her, around her. One hand slid smoothly down her soft belly and parted her legs so he could enjoy her femininity. She trembled and gasped when he probed and teased her body into eager submission. It arched, pleading for him not to stop.

  His mo
uth slid up to her lips and parted them under its slow, warm pressure.

  He took a very long time to arouse her, kindling fires in her body and banking them down. All the while, he smiled at her and kissed her tenderly, watching her helpless reactions and savoring them.

  She was so hungry for him that tears stung her eyes. He saw that he couldn’t prolong their pleasure unless he did something about her eagerness first. He put his mouth softly over hers and his hand moved on her expertly. She shuddered rhythmically and then stiffened and cried out as he satisfied her.

  “Yes,” he whispered, lifting his head so that he could see her face. “Is that better?”

  She caught her breath on a sob. “Is that...all?”

  He chuckled. He kissed her wet eyelids. “We’ve barely begun,” he whispered. “But you were far too impatient for what I have in mind. Touch me, Bernadette. I want you to enjoy my body as I intend to enjoy yours.” He brought her shy hands to him and taught her what to do with them.

  It was like a voyage of discovery. She learned him and he learned her in a breathless, exciting intimacy that made all her inhibitions vanish.

  Unlike their first time, he had all the patience in the world with her. He paused from time to time to calm both of them. Each time he did that, the pleasure escalated to an almost frightening degree. Bernadette had never dreamed that her body was capable of withstanding such a level of physical delight.

  She shivered helplessly as the hunger built on itself. Her body was open to him, to his eyes, his hands, his mouth. She lay under him like a creamy sacrifice, her eyes wide open, worshipping the blatant masculinity of him poised just above her.

  He was slowly losing his control. He felt himself throbbing and knew that he would have to take her soon if he hoped to satisfy her as well as himself.

  He slid his hand over her upper thigh and slowly drew her under him, positioning her with great care and tenderness.

  He watched her eyes dilate as he lowered himself on her and began to probe, delicately, that part of her that was eager to accept him. The ease of his passage brought a sharp sigh to his lips. She was so aroused that her body didn’t even hesitate as he began to enter her.