Midnight Rider

by Diana Palmer

  She explained in rapid-fire Spanish that her sister was ill and she couldn’t leave the little boy and girl, ages three and four, alone with her.

  Bernadette chuckled and told Claudia to get on with her chores while she read the children a story.

  She proceeded to do that, in flawless Spanish, and was oblivious to the appearance of her husband and his grandmother in the archway that separated the kitchen from the dining room.

  Eduardo listened to her as she read and paused to explain some of the harder words, still in Spanish, to the little boy and girl on her lap.

  His breath caught. He’d never imagined this...and remembered things he’d said in front of her with faint embarrassment, which grew to mammoth proportions when he recalled his uninhibited whispers in bed. And she’d pretended to understand nothing!

  His intake of breath was audible. Bernadette’s head turned suddenly and she saw in his face that her secret was a secret no longer.

  She smiled sheepishly. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning.”

  His grandmother chuckled. “So, finally you permit him to share the secret,” she said with amusement in her dark eyes. “About time, too! Let the children come into the parlor with me and I will finish the story for them. I believe you two have something to discuss!”

  * * *

  “SOMETHING TO DISCUSS, indeed!” Eduardo muttered as he closed the bedroom door behind them. He folded his arms and stared at her impatiently.

  She went close to him and smiled wickedly as she wreathed her arms around his neck. “A woman has to have some way to find out what her husband really thinks of her,” she said. “You never would have told me.”

  “You think not?” With a long sigh he searched her twinkling eyes. “I wanted you from the first. You must have known.”

  “I knew that you wanted me,” she agreed. “But you could have wanted me without loving me.” She hesitated. “I heard everything you said to Lupe and your grandmother about me, Eduardo, just after the wedding....”

  “Querida.” He groaned, holding her closer. “I would have cut off an arm to spare you that! I wanted you to the point of madness, and then to have them tell me that you’d started scandalous gossip about us...” He lifted his head, and his black eyes were apologetic. “Bernadette, my emotions were in such turmoil and I felt at the center of a storm I never thought to weather.” He traced her face with tender fingers. “I believe I fell in love with you years ago, but I was afraid of marriage. I had been through so much with Consuela, and the memories of my father’s marriage were equally bad....” He bent and kissed her softly. “Can you forgive me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I can forgive you.”

  “From this moment on, I swear to listen to no one except you...and my own heart.”

  She grinned, enjoying his rare apology. “Good! Because I have some very sound advice for you on several matters to do with the bookkeeping around here!”

  He chuckled. “Very well. I promise to listen.” He sighed softly. “I love you, Bernadette. I don’t know when it began, really, but I can’t imagine life without you now.”

  “Nor can I imagine life without you.” She turned her head and kissed his warm throat.

  “The condessa knew that you spoke Spanish.”

  She chuckled. “Yes, she did, the wicked old darling, and never said a word to you.”

  “She has been enjoying her situation lately. She adores you. As I do.”

  “And I adore her. She was only afraid that you were going to be hurt as your father was. Because she didn’t know me, she thought I might be like your mother.”

  “You could never be like her,” he murmured. He drew her closer. “Bernadette, when things are better here financially would you like to travel to Maine and visit your brother?”

  “Oh, I’d love to!”

  He lifted his head and smiled down at her. “Then it’s a bargain.” His eyes narrowed. “Our lives aren’t going to be easy for a time. I have done all I can do to pull us back from the edge of bankruptcy, even with the loan your father made me. It may be very difficult.”

  She reached up her hand and touched his lips. “I don’t mind,” she said honestly. “We’ll do it together.”

  He nodded. “Together.”

  * * *

  IT WAS A LONG AND HARD CLIMB back to prosperity. Bernadette proved an amazing asset because of her natural aptitude for bookkeeping and budgeting. She took over the accounts that had been left idle when the stock manager had resigned weeks ago to go back East, and only then did Eduardo begin to see that his latest losses were directly attributable to the man’s lack of financial expertise.

  “But I had no idea!” he exploded when Bernadette sat him down in the office and began to show him the enormous outlay of cash for supplies, some of which were nothing more than luxuries. “I assumed that he knew what he was doing here.” He slapped his forehead and broke into outraged Spanish.

  “Now, now,” she comforted. “It’s not so bad. He wasn’t stealing from you, at least, and some of these things are actually in good enough condition to be returned for credit.” She bent over the books, rattling off items like saddles and duplicate parts for the new mechanized plow he’d added to his meager store of equipment. “Mr. Jakes at the hardware will take these back and probably be glad to get them, because old man Harrod just bought a mechanized plow himself.” She grinned at Eduardo. “He’ll be happy to have spare parts.”

  He shook his head as he looked over her shoulder at the accounts. “You have a natural ability,” he marveled. “Amazing!”

  “And you thought I was just irresistible physically,” she teased with a demure smile.

  He touched her hair lightly and then kissed it, just at the temple. “You surprise me constantly. How did I ever manage without you?”

  “I have no idea.”

  He sobered then, as he scanned her penciled figuring on the account book. “We must find other ways to conserve our funds, so that this doesn’t happen again.” He shook his head. “I could kick myself for trusting the man so completely. I assumed that because he’d managed a ranch before, he knew precisely how to manage the bookkeeping.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. It would escape most people who weren’t familiar with the small details of everyday ranch operation.” She glanced up at him. “A livestock manager only deals with one aspect, the beasts themselves. Because I had to do all the ordering for our ranch when I was at home, this is something I know very well.” She smiled. “My father can scarcely read or write,” she confessed. “He’s very touchy about having people know it, but it’s made life difficult for him in a lot of ways. My mother, I understand, was quite the genius at managing money, and helped him grow rich in their early years together.”

  Eduardo hugged her. “I can see that my own fortune is assured with her daughter taking care of my ranch for me!”

  She chuckled. “It’s early yet. But I don’t see any reason why we can’t pare down these expenses and start making money on cattle, instead of losing it.”

  After that day, Eduardo came to depend on Bernadette’s uncanny financial sense. Her father had to do without it, of course, but Bernadette had found him a good substitute, a former bank clerk who had a way with accounts.

  Meanwhile, Eduardo shared his plans and his dreams with her, and when it was time to buy and sell cattle, he made sure that she went with him to the various meetings with other cattlemen. The ranchers were surprised at first when Eduardo insisted that his wife join the discussions. They weren’t accustomed to a woman who knew how to evaluate the rise and fall of cattle prices in the market, or the factors involved in successful marketing. But Bernadette made an immediate impression on them when she pointed out some recent news about cattle price fluctuations and the reasons for them. She advised selling off certain stocks and buying others and related her theories for doing it. The ranchers only half listened, convinced that Eduardo was off his head for letting a woman make such decision
s.

  But when he doubled the price he received for his culled stock, and bought more at a steal, they started listening. Thereafter, when Bernadette advised a strategy for Eduardo, there was an interested audience.

  Eduardo found their acceptance of her amusing. “Most of them have wives who sit and sew all day and want to talk about fashion,” he confided. “They don’t quite know how to deal with a woman who can understand cattle prices.”

  “I’m enjoying myself.”

  “Indeed you are,” he said solemnly. “Do you realize that we’ve already doubled our investment in the new strain of Santa Gertrudis cattle we purchased from the King Ranch? They’re a hardy breed. Because of their Brahman ancestry, they stand extremes of heat and cold very well, and they have the beef conformation of their Hereford forebears.”

  “I like their pretty red coats,” she told him.

  He made a face at her. “I like the prices they bring at auction,” he returned. “They gain weight very satisfactorily on the sparse vegetation the land can provide, so we have less need to supplement their feed with expensive grain.” He sighed. “Bernadette, for the first time, I have high hopes for our prosperity.”

  “So do I,” she replied. “My father seems to have the same sense of optimism, too. He’s glad he made you the loan. And even gladder to have you in the family, I think,” she added. “He’s always thought highly of you.”

  “And I of him,” he replied. “He may be rough around the edges, but he’s a gentleman for all that.”

  She curled her fingers around the hand resting beside hers on the account book. “We’re doing nicely,” she said. “But I miss your grandmother.”

  He kissed her hair. “So do I. She went home only reluctantly, but there were business matters that required her attention.”

  “She said she’d come back for the first christening,” she said, deliberately bringing up a subject that had been taboo between them for most of the fours months of their marriage. Despite her fear of childbirth, Bernadette now found herself frustrated and sad that she wasn’t pregnant. She was facing the possibility that she might be barren. She knew that the fault couldn’t lie with Eduardo, because he and Consuela had produced a son. She felt lacking, somehow. She noticed that Eduardo never talked about their situation, or referred to the fact that four months of marriage had failed to bring about the promise of a child.

  He didn’t speak for a full minute. His hand absently caressed her pale hair, which was piled into a huge roll around the top of her head. “Perhaps there will be that promise, one day,” he murmured.

  She looked up at him sadly. “I’m sorry,” she said gently. “I know how much you want a son.”

  He shrugged and forced a smile. “I love you, Bernadette,” he said, his voice tender and low. “If a child comes of that love, it will be wonderful, but I can grow old happily even if we live alone together until we die.”

  “I know,” she replied, “but I want a child, too.”

  He drew her up into his arms and kissed her tenderly. “Don’t brood about it,” he whispered. “Time will take care of most problems.”

  “I hope so!”

  They went back to the books and delighted in the way the livestock was thriving.

  * * *

  BUT AS WITH ANY SUCCESSFUL enterprise, trouble was brewing. Eduardo’s growing herds were noticed by unscrupulous men home from the Spanish-American War and without means. Several of them banded together and began raiding ranches for beef cattle with which to start their own operation across the border in Mexico.

  One night they raided the outlying areas of Eduardo’s ranch and made off with over a hundred head of fattened cattle ready to send to market.

  Eduardo, when informed of the raid by one of his vaqueros, immediately strapped on his sidearm and loaded his Winchester.

  Bernadette almost choked on her fear as he went striding out the door, deaf to her pleas for restraint.

  “Take care of her,” he said to Claudia as he slammed on his hat. “I’ll be back when I can. ¡Muchachos, vámonos!” he called to his men as he swung into the saddle and rode ahead of the well-armed assembly.

  He stopped by the Barron ranch and Colston, who had also lost cattle to the rustlers, mounted his own men and fell in with his son-in-law.

  Together, they rode down the long trail toward Mexico.

  * * *

  FILLED WITH ANXIETY, Bernadette sat at the window and drank endless cups of black coffee so that she could stay awake. Claudia brought her some scrambled eggs and bacon in the early hours of the morning, insisting that she must eat something to keep up her strength.

  The strangest thing happened when she lifted a forkful of eggs to her mouth. She stared at them with growing nausea and suddenly jerked up from the table and ran out to the back porch. The endless cups of black coffee made a return appearance. Claudia, rather than being concerned, stood by and clapped her hands and laughed with pure delight.

  “I’m sick as a dog, and you can stand there giggling at me?” Bernadette muttered through the spasms that shook her.

  “Oh, no, señora, not at the sickness, but at the cause for it. This particular sickness will end in just a few months, and you will have one fine little baby to show for it!”

  Bernadette caught her breath. She gaped at Claudia. “Do you think so?”

  Claudia nodded, grinning as Bernadette again threw herself over the railing. “Oh, yes,” Claudia said. “I think so!”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  BERNADETTE WAS OVERJOYED AND overwhelmed at the prospect of being pregnant, but she was also terrified at the prospect of being a widow even before she could share her hopes with Eduardo.

  When the nausea passed, she went back to her vigil at the window and forced herself to pick up her yarn and crochet hook to keep her cold, unsteady hands busy. She thought of the baby and, smiling, began to work on a tiny pair of booties. She could make socks, so these posed no difficulty. The time passed much more rapidly when she was forced to concentrate on what her hands were dong.

  She thought about how Eduardo would receive the news about her condition, and she beamed. He would make a wonderful father, and this child might help make up for the loss of his son. She thought of the look he’d have on his face when she told him and her fears died down just a little. But the fear that he might not return was undeniable.

  It was well after daylight when she heard the sound of horses’ hooves. She tossed down her crocheting and rushed out to the porch with Claudia at her heels. Her eyes searched wildly for her husband’s tall, commanding presence in the saddle. When she didn’t see him immediately, it seemed that her worst fears were being realized, and tears stung her eyes.

  “Eduardo!” she cried pitifully, her fingers pressing hard against the adobe surface of the house. “He’s not there! Claudia, he’s been killed...!”

  “No, no, señora, no!” Claudia exclaimed, rushing to support her mistress’s crumpling form. “He is very well, indeed! Look, señora!”

  Bernadette followed the smaller woman’s pointing finger to Eduardo, well behind the others, riding alongside her father as vaqueros from both ranches herded cattle off toward the nearby fenced enclosures.

  “He’s all right?” Bernadette’s voice sounded hollow to her own ears, and all at once, she went down, despite Claudia’s efforts to support her.

  Claudia’s wildly waving arms caught the attention of Eduardo and Colston, who spurred their mounts and rushed to the porch.

  Eduardo was out of the saddle at once. He lifted his unconscious wife, while listening to Claudia’s confused explanation of what had happened and carried her into the parlor. He laid her down on the couch, his eyes going with shocked delight to the cast-down crocheting she’d left behind.

  “Bernadette!” he called softly, rubbing her hands worriedly. “¡Querida, dígame!”

  She heard him as if through a mist. Her green eyes slid open lazily and met his brilliant black ones. She smiled, lifting a hand t
oward his face, which he grasped and kissed fervently.

  “Is she all right? Lass, whatever happened?” Colston Barron exclaimed at his daughter’s side.

  “It was just relief at seeing Eduardo alive,” she whispered. “A child needs both a father and a mother,” she added, feeling overwhelming delight.

  “A child,” Eduardo said, savoring the word. He bent and kissed his wife’s pale face with something akin to reverence. “All those worries, for nothing. God is good.”

  “Oh, yes, He is,” she agreed fervently.

  “A child,” Colston was murmuring. He appeared to be very worried.

  Bernadette looked past her husband’s exultant face to her father’s worried one. “I spoke to a physician in New York,” she told her father gently. “He said that I had nothing to fear about childbirth, despite the tragedies in our family. He said that I would be fine!”

  Colston still looked perturbed. “You’ll take excellent care of yourself, do you hear me? If you need nurses, doctors, I’ll make sure you have them, lass.”

  She smiled happily. “Thank you, Father.”

  He cleared his throat and looked self-conscious. “Having a grandchild is an important event,” he said. His face began to lighten. “Why, I can teach him all about the railroads, can’t I? And about leprechauns and fairies...”

  Bernadette laughed. “And Eduardo can teach him about his Spanish ancestors,” she agreed.

  “What a heritage he’ll have,” Eduardo murmured contentedly, gazing at his wife’s waistline with obvious pleasure. “And what a lovely mother.”

  “Aye, she’ll be a perfect one,” Colston agreed. “Always around the vaqueros’ children at home, she was. She’s a natural-born parent.”

  “I can hardly wait,” Bernadette said softly, and meant it.

  “Nor can I,” Eduardo seconded. But there was faint worry in his face that he was careful to conceal from her.

  * * *

  THE RANCH WENT FROM improvement to improvement over the months that followed. Despite Eduardo’s protests, Bernadette continued taking care of the books and accounts, and prosperity followed. There were no more raids on the livestock. The contracted beef cattle were sold, along with a new crop of purebred calves. To Bernadette’s amazement, a whole consignment was loaded onto a ship at the coast, bound for Australia.