His head came up; his smile disappeared.
“Not in terms of cruelty or lack of responsibility,” she added. “In terms of your conviction that you’re right about everything. Uncle Rutherford never allowed anyone in his home to disagree with him. He squashed all the initiative out of his children. He tried to squash it out of me.”
“What has that to do with me?”
With a gentle tact she normally disdained, she laid one hand on his and stopped his determined drinking. “I am an American.” When he would speak, she squeezed his fingers. “There’s no room for discussion. I am an American. In your eyes, by your church, we’re not yet married. Until I’m satisfied that you can accept me as I am, we will not be.”
“What?” His roar shook the treetops, echoing down the mountain.
She bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to say that. She hadn’t meant to threaten him. She’d meant to approach him with the wile of a señorita, not charge him like a bull. But the damage was done, and she firmed her lips as she stared at him in challenge. “I said—”
“I heard you!” Rising to his feet, he dashed the contents of the cup against the rock beside him, splattering them both with wine. The crimson stain spread on his white shirt; she wiped the liquid off her face.
Staring at the raging hidalgo, she pulled the restraining scarf off her head and scrubbed absently at the wet spot on the sleeve of her riding costume. “It’s not so difficult to understand. I just want you to change—”
“Myself.” He tapped his chest with his forefinger. “You want me to change the man you married.”
“Just what do you want? Who do you want me to be? Not myself. You don’t want me to be Katherine Anne. You want me to be some mythical woman who transforms her heart into that of a Californian while retaining the outward appearance of an American. That is what you want, isn’t it?”
“No,” he denied, but he faltered just a little.
“Is Señora Roderiguez right? Is it my blond hair that makes me the wife of your choice?”
“Of course not.” He sounded more confident now.
“Then what is it about me that you want? You don’t want me to be an American. You don’t want me to think for myself. You don’t want me to criticize you. What is it you want? Why did you marry me?”
As if he saw her for the first time, he gazed at her with his heart in his eyes. Something about the way he stood, the way he stared, made her breath quicken. He wanted to say something, something that would change her, something that she’d never thought of before. Concentrating on her with all his might, he knelt in front of her, knees to knees. He wiped a drop of wine from her jacket. He caught at her hands; she awkwardly dropped the scarf into her lap. His intensity made her shy, and she looked down at the wadded material and wondered, in a distracted way, why she’d gripped it so tight.
“Catriona,” he began, and took a breath. “Katherine Anne—”
She looked up, and as if he couldn’t resist, he leaned toward her, his eyes melting her tension. Her own eyes fluttered closed; her lips parted in anticipation.
A rustle behind Damian, a hollow crack of a gun butt against his skull, and he pitched forward onto her chest. Confused, she scrambled to catch him, but his head struck her breastbone. She struggled against his dead weight, seeking the source of his unconsciousness and finding it as she looked up—up at Mr. Emerson Smith and the pistol he held in his hand.
Chapter 19
Damian wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead. He’d been alive when they left him. Katherine clenched her teeth against the shudder that racked her and urged her horse up the ever-rising trail behind Emerson Smith. Damian wasn’t dead, for he’d moaned and rolled beneath Smith’s kicks. The skin on the back of his skull had been split open by Smith’s gun butt. Dear God, Damian had been hurt so badly he never regained consciousness during Smith’s search for the map.
That horrible map.
“Hey, Kathy, what do you suppose your lovey-dove has done with that map?” Smith drawled.
“I don’t know,” she answered, her voice dull with worry.
“Sure you do,” he encouraged.
She raised her head and glared, jarred from her anxiety by his hearty indifference. “I don’t know!”
“Well,” he said, “we certainly searched for it. Remember?”
She didn’t answer.
“Remember?” he insisted. “First we looked in the saddlebags.”
“Looted them,” she muttered.
“Then we searched your lovey-dove. Searched all over his body and in his clothes, but that map wasn’t there. Remember what we did then?”
She hung her head, embarrassed by the mere memory. From the horse behind her, Lawrence called, “Leave her alone, Smith.”
“Naw,” Smith refused. “I was just getting to the best part of the memories. The part when we searched our little lawyer.” He smacked his lips, and the moist sound made Katherine’s stomach heave. “Too bad you were along, Larry. You’re like the skeleton at the feast. It would have been a lot of fun to strip her and check her all over for the map. All my vaqueros were ready to see that. You could tell by those kissy noises they made.”
“These vaqueros are scum,” Larry said with disdain.
“Yes, but they work cheap and don’t ask no questions.” Smith turned and grinned at Lawrence, then at Katherine sandwiched between them. “Which is more than I can say for you, Larry.”
“Is he paying you for this, Lawrence?” Katherine asked, feeling pain struggling to break her numb despair.
“No,” Lawrence denied. “He thinks I ask too many questions.”
“Only thing that ever shuts him up is a good snort of liquor.” Smith grinned at her again, showing the red gums around his teeth. He turned to face the front again. “I still say we ought to stop and search our Miz Kathy right now. Yes sirree, she could be concealing that map on her body.”
“You’re worrying that map like a dog would worry a meaty bone,” Lawrence accused. “You know that map went off with de la Sola’s horse. That horse ran off even before you hit de la Sola with your gun butt.”
“Yes. There’s a good chance that map’s on the horse,” Smith admitted with sullen acceptance. “I sure would’ve liked a peek at it.”
Katherine’s relief was so thick she could almost taste it. Lawrence had distracted Smith, and he’d done it on purpose, she knew. Lawrence might be a worm, but he didn’t want her to be used by Emerson Smith. She suspected Lawrence might turn into a reasonable human being, in thirty years or so.
Sickness washed over her again as she thought of Damian, his head bleeding into a little pool in her skirt. She hadn’t fainted at the sight. In a futile effort to help Damian, she’d held onto all her senses. She answered Smith’s questions, holding Damian’s head protectively in her lap. She hadn’t wanted to give him up. She hadn’t wanted to let go of him, but when Smith threatened to shoot him . . . She felt so ill.
Her horse, thankfully, had been tied. Katherine had mounted in a hurry when threatened with a dual ride behind Mr. Smith. Five scruffy vaqueros grinned and shoved at the flash of ankle she revealed, but that was better than having one of them boost her up.
Now she watched the afternoon sun light the back of Mr. Smith’s head. She stared at his long neck, at his ears that stuck out too far and the bald spot usually hidden with his height. A real hatred boiled up inside her. Thick and rich, she could taste it on her tongue. A year had passed since she’d felt this way, but she recognized it.
This hatred she’d felt for her Uncle Rutherford when he threatened her mother; this hatred she’d felt for Aunt Narcissa when she’d insinuated her father was a wastrel. It wasn’t the hatred Katherine felt when someone hurt her, but the hatred she felt when someone hurt the one she loved.
That frightened her. Frightened her more than almost anything that had happened. Almost more than the chance that she would die before she saw Damian again. Almost more than the thought of Damian, lolling unc
onscious in the dirt.
In front of her, Mr. Smith interrupted her thoughts, pulling back her futile remorse. “Larry? I never asked why you wanted this woman back so badly. She seems like a real nuisance to me.”
“Family duty,” Lawrence said.
Pulling a handkerchief out of his back pocket, Mr. Smith blew his nose with distressing thoroughness. “Ah, Larry, surely that ain’t a reason to come all this way when you could have stopped her at the boat in Boston.”
Lawrence cleared his throat in sympathetic reaction. “We didn’t realize how much we’d miss her.”
Katherine saw Mr. Smith’s shoulders heave. She guessed he was laughing. In a way, Smith reminded her of the Chamberlains, and she said, “They missed my labor. They missed the money I made for them.”
“You shut up, Miz Kathy,” Mr. Smith retorted. “Women should be seen and not heard.”
“That’ll be the day.” Lawrence lowered his voice, but not enough. Both Katherine and Mr. Smith heard him say, “If we could have got her to shut up, her life with Father would have been so much easier.”
Smith nodded. “That’s women. They cut off their noses to spite their faces. They never know what’s good for them.”
With a bitter inflection, Katherine quoted, “Men have many faults; women only two. Everything they say, and everything they do.”
“But I can cure you of that,” Mr. Smith said softly.
She didn’t know how to respond. She knew better than to respond. She hated to let him think that he’d cowed her—but he had. In a quick gesture for luck, she touched the cool metal of her watch in its pocket.
Satisfied, Mr. Smith called back to Lawrence, “This Miss Smart-Skirt said something about being a lawyer. Being a really good lawyer. Why, she bragged all over hell and California about it. A’ course no one believed her. They all laughed at her and called her names, but with you showing up and wanting her back so bad, I can’t help but wonder. . . .”
“She’s knowledgeable about the law,” Lawrence admitted. “She helped raise the family’s fortunes.”
“An’ you want me to help you get her on a boat?”
“A ship. Yes. She finds you the treasure. You deliver her aboard my ship bound for Boston. I get her, and she won’t be able to tell anyone about your sudden acquisition of wealth.”
“But I’m just a dang bit worried,” Smith confessed. “What if she can’t help find this treasure?”
“She says she saw the map,” Lawrence reminded him.
“Yes, but the only reason she said it was to stop me from kicking that husband of hers right off the mountain. That’s none too reliable a confession.”
The scene rose too vividly before Katherine’s eyes, and her own censure made her sway. She’d betrayed Damian’s trust by cooperating, and she’d ridden away from her unconscious husband. Surely all would come right, but if it didn’t—how could she live with the guilt? She clenched her hand around the pommel of the saddle. “It’s what you wanted to hear.”
“It had better be the truth, or these ghouls that guard the treasure will be the least of your problems.”
A shiver snaked down her back. He hadn’t turned, tried to look at her, or raised his voice. But there was something about Mr. Smith—the way he held his head, the flat toneless quality of his threat—that made her think of rape and murder. At the fiesta she’d wondered if he’d fled a warrant for his arrest. It seemed like years ago, so many things had happened, but surrounded by friends and laughter, it had been a distant worry. Today, in the wild, she marveled at her own naivete. “It’s the truth, but my sense of distance is poor. The map pointed to the treasure and said, ‘This ye will know by the signs.’”
“What signs?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” She heard the shrill note in her voice, and she gulped her panic back. “Nobody knows, but the vaqueros are uneasy. If you keep talking about ghouls, you’ll lose them.”
“Yes, they’re like everybody else in this godforsaken land. Scared of their shadow.” He blew his nose again, but this time he didn’t bother with the handkerchief.
“The de la Solas are a powerful family in California. Don Lucian is my father-in-law and fond of me. Don Damian is my husband. He’s resourceful and smart.”
“If he ain’t dead yet,” Mr. Smith offered.
Her heart felt like a stone in her breast. She said in a rush, “He’ll destroy you.”
Mr. Smith whistled in one long expiration. “Whew, you got it bad.”
“What?” she asked.
“What?” Lawrence asked.
“Can’t you tell, Larry? She’s in lu-ove.” Mr. Smith gave it all the sweet and sticky accent of a prepubescent boy. “Kathy’s in love with her greaser.”
She hurled her denial like a bird tosses a snake. “No, I’m not.”
Lawrence answered almost as quickly. “No, she’s not.”
“Oh, yes, Larry. That’s why she up an’ marries some guy who she’s got nothing in common with, who doesn’t even like her people.”
“I’m not in love with him.” She wished she could know what message he’d tried to give her before he was hit, but defiantly, she concluded, “But I think perhaps he has an affection for me. If you harm me in any way, he’ll kill you.”
“My golly, he’s got you bamboozled,” he marveled.
“You’re a fool to have challenged Don Damian de la Sola.” Her hands tightened on the reins.
He laughed rudely. “You’re the fool. You’re the fool if you think he’ll have any interest in you after you’ve stayed overnight with me.”
“He trusts me.”
“I’m sure he does—a cold fish like you. But he can’t trust me.”
Her breath caught.
“Now, see here.” Lawrence interrupted with his father’s best bombast. “Now, see here, I agreed to this on the understanding Katherine wouldn’t be harmed.”
“Oh, I won’t harm her.” Mr. Smith sounded as innocent as a boy with a fishing pole hidden behind his back.
“Well,” Lawrence said, “good.”
“Impressive, Lawrence,” Katherine murmured under her breath.
Mr. Smith added, “Anyway, your lovey-pie won’t care if we’re pure as two nuns. It still won’t look good.”
“Don Damian is my husband.”
Now he twisted in his saddle, laughing out loud in short donkey brays. “You really are a fool. Haven’t you noticed how he hates us Americans?”
She stiffened.
“Look at that expression on your face, like you bit into one of those sour, puny lemons they grow around here. So don’t you know that greaser would do anything to protect his lands?”
“He wouldn’t marry me to protect his lands.”
“Didn’t your cousin just say how conniving you are? And an American to boot. Marrying someone like that is a winning combination. He couldn’t find that in a man.”
She almost laughed at such twisted reasoning. Almost laughed, but it did make sense.
“Your wonderful Don Damian would do anything to keep his lands, even marry one of the hated Americans in hopes that such a marriage will legalize his good-for-nothing land grant. Not that that will help,” he sneered. “Being married to an American woman won’t save Damian’s lands. If an American man wants to claim the property, the officials will look only at the name on the title.”
“Yes.” Lawrence Cyril Chamberlain sounded like a boy in a snit.
“He’s just using you,” Mr. Smith finished with a flourish.
“That’s not true,” she protested.
“You’ll get the chance to find out. That General Castro is drafting a proclamation ordering all noncitizens out of California. If your Don Damian jumps at the chance to get rid of you, you’ll know how he really feels.”
“According to your theory, if he doesn’t jump at the chance, I’ll think he’s using me to save his land.”
“Yes.” Mr. Smith sounded immeasurably cheered. “You can’t win no mat
ter what he does.”
Damian woke, his fists rotating in useless combat. “Where am I?”
“With me.”
Her voice sounded like mission bells, like the most soothing ministration of the angels. “Vietta!” He jerked his head toward her and groaned with the pain. Specks of red and yellow swam in front of his eyes.
“Lie back down,” she urged. “Lie back in my lap.”
“Where’s Katherine? My God, where’s Katherine?”
“I don’t know. Lie down.”
He found he had no choice. The pain in his head throbbed to the rhythm of his heartbeat; he had to swallow to keep down the contents of his stomach. He slipped backwards and clenched his teeth when the swelling on his skull met her lap. With tender fingers, he pressed the goose egg above his neck, wrapped in a clumsy bandage. “Madre de Dios, what happened?”
“Someone hit you. He kicked your ribs, too,” she said helpfully. “You’ve got bruises all over your chest.”
He plucked at his shirt, ragged and without buttons. “Smith.”
“What?”
“Emerson Smith.”
“Did you see him?”
“No, but it must have been Smith.” His hands shook as he tucked the shirttails into his pants. “It must have been Smith. I’ve always had a gut feeling about him.”
“You had an intuition?” The leg beneath him jumped a little. He narrowed his eyes against the light. “An intuition. Yes, an intuition about Smith. Just as I had an intuition about Julio de Casillas.”
“You thought Julio hit you?”
“No, no. Not Julio. It couldn’t have been Julio. Not Julio.”
“Julio . . . I never thought about Julio.” She patted Damian’s shoulder to console him. “I’m sorry.”
Not understanding the sympathy in her voice, he tensed in instinctive rejection of her words. “What do you mean?”
“I went by their hacienda on the way up here, and Julio had disappeared. Nacia was crying, of course. What does she ever do?”
“Damn!” he exclaimed. “After the time we had there, I had hoped she was done with that.”
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