He paced the length of the sofa and back and swung to face Leo. “How do you know this? On whose say so? It could all be venomous gossip.”
Leo couldn’t keep the triumphant edge from his voice. “I have it on my mother’s best authority. She was there. She saw it all happen. And she confirms it. Dougal Mackinnon was Santiago’s father.”
He locked eyes with Josefa. “I am so very, very sorry Josefa. But doesn’t this cast your betrothal to Rory Mackinnon in a whole new light? Isn’t it likely his older brother put him up to it, just so they could get their hands on your land?”
Josefa threw an anguished look to her brother. She put her hands over her ears and pitched forward, dropping her head to her stomach, head low, staring at the floor.
“I don’t want to hear any more of this, Caleb.” She was half-crying, half-shouting. “Tell him to stop. Tell him to stop right now!”
16
“Is something wrong?”
It had taken him a few days in San Francisco to find what he wanted, but Santiago had returned to Del Oro overflowing with certainty that Caleb would be pleased — maybe even impressed — by how much information he’d been able to assemble on Leo in such a short time.
He’d imagined them having a good long chat about all that he’d discovered, then Caleb clapping him on the back and sending him merrily on his way. He had very little to pack and for days now he had been preparing his heart for leaving these people who were the closest thing he’d known to family. He wanted to do it with a buoyant spirit. He had a lot to be thankful for, and the General’s bequest was the final cherry on top.
Well, so much for the day-dreaming. What he hadn’t expected was to be greeted by the cool poker face Caleb always wore when he was faced with something unpleasant.
His head jerked up from examining the papers in front of him at Santiago’s question, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he gave an ominous sigh and gestured to the seat across the table from him.
“Sit down, Santiago. I suppose the sooner we get this over with, the better.”
Santiago felt his brow crumple. He hadn’t told Caleb anything of his findings yet, so why was his mood so down?
He took his hat off and hung it on a wall hook before sitting down. “I’ve got some worrying stuff to report, no doubt about that, but I’m not sure why you already seem down to it before I’ve even said a word. What’s up, Caleb?”
Caleb pitched his hands in a steeple in front of his mouth, his elbows resting on the tabletop in front of him. “Well, just one thing, I suppose.”
He contemplated Santiago over the apex of his fingers. Eyes that were usually twinkling and mischievous were flat and somber. “When were you going to tell us you’re Rory’s brother?”
Santiago’s hands turned to ice. He gaped, looking around, as if trying to reassure himself he was in the right place. “When was I what?”
The hallway door was thrust open as if blasted by a gale force wind, and Josefa stood in the entry, her dark eyes stormy and accusing.
Caleb gave a quick glance her way and then picked up where he’d left off. “You heard me the first time. When were you going to admit that Dougal Mackinnon was your father? And how much inside information have you been feeding him over the years?”
A galvanizing force like a red-hot lava flow rose from within Santiago, replacing the ice in his veins. He was aware of his jaw dropping wide open, but he couldn’t seem to close it. He jolted forward, bent over, his hands gripping the table edge for support. He stayed like that, bringing himself under control, testing the strength of his knees, before he pushed himself upright. Slowly, calmly, judging the distances in the room as he might the threat of an angry bull. His eyes lifted to the hallway, where Josefa remained deathly still, as if a pillar of salt.
He stared from brother to sister for one very long breath. Then he reached for the hook on the wall and wrested free the hat he’d deposited there a minute ago. His eyes bored into Caleb.
“I have spent the last few days gathering information that I imagined would be of very great interest to the patrón of a house like this. Information you begged me for. Information that I believe could help guide some very grave decisions.” He cast a furious look in Josefa’s direction, not caring now if she guessed he’d been spying on Leo. “I suspect, however, you’re not ready to receive it. Indeed, you appear to no longer require it. You’ve already made your minds up about what you think you know. Well, far be it from me to shatter your illusions.” He smashed his hat onto his head and bowed. “I’ll collect my things and be gone.”
He turned towards the front door, that heavy, leather-paneled oak door that had been like a welcome home sign to him for a long time now. This may be the last time I’ll ever walk through it.
Another thought came to him in the red mist that still filled his head, although his words were flowing crystal sharp. “One other thing. Thanks for not bothering to check with me first.”
He started for the door and whirled back once more, as yet another thought struck.
“Caleb, good luck with your brother-in-law-to be, Señor Carver. I’d watch he doesn’t cut you up into little . . .” He drawled out the word into a caricature of itself. “Lee-t-le.” He brought his right hand up, his thumb and forefinger measuring out a very small distance. Then he closed the gap between his thumb and forefinger more tightly. “Very lee-t-le pieces.”
17
Santiago strode out to his accommodation hut feeling as though he had a fire at his back, but once he’d shut and locked the door his arms drooped to his sides and his knees turned to liquid. Collapsing onto his bed, he lay on his back and soaked up the calmness of the tiny space. The only sounds were the occasional whistle that drifted on the breeze from one of the boys on the open range, and the isolated cry of prairie birds hunting for food.
Eyelids half closed, his energy depleted from the surge of emotion he’d just expended, he slid his view around his room which had been home since he’d been promoted from the bunkhouse several years ago. It was spartan, the wall decorated with nothing but a calendar pinned with his own notations scrawled on it. “Calving starts.” “Spring round-up.” “Put out the bulls.”
He let out a long sigh. This world was no longer his world. He moved his hands from his sides to behind his head and took stock.
He was Santiago Valaquez Mackinnon. Santiago: the old Spanish form of “Saint James,” and he knew he was no saint. Valaquez: from his mother. Despite her fall from grace, Lucia came from noble blood and he could be proud of her. Mackinnon. He wasn’t sure he’d ever want to use that name, but it completed him somehow. At least now he could choose to apply it if he wished. Dougal Mackinnon was no saint either, but not so bad until he fell under Consuela’s thrall, an old man with a voracious young wife, too weak to stand up to her manipulations.
He suddenly thought of his schooling with the Brothers, and stories of Herod the King, shamed into ordering the execution of John the Baptist to satisfy his stepdaughter Salome after he was carried away by her erotic dance.
Dougal Mackinnon was a faint version of Herod Antipas. For much the same reasons — wanting to please his wife, and playing up to a pretty young thing, he’d acquiesced to pursuing Fergus Stewart with vexatious legal claims he knew weren’t valid. It was probably the same fatal weakness that got him in trouble with the Valaquez sisters, Santiago mused.
The man who fathered him was no great role model, but it was such a relief to simply be able to name a father! It completed him in ways he’d never have imagined. It was like the pieces of one of the jigsaw puzzles Benecio loved finally coming together.
He’d resisted the temptation to search. All these years he’d told himself it didn’t matter if he didn’t know his father — but now, he saw, it did. I feel more like myself than I can ever remember. Does that even make sense? He stretched out on the hard, narrow bed with the horse-hair mattress that fitted every crick and crack of his body and slipped off into an irresistible dream.<
br />
Santiago Valaquez Mackinnon. Master of his own destiny. A husband and father. A loving, responsible husband and father. A man capable of doing a good day’s work and being paid well for his labors. He felt the mantle descend, swirl around him; he could almost swear he could feel its whisper on his skin.
A man who could stand on a mountain top and own it.
He grinned.
Santiago, you are talking a lot of nonsense. Good job you’re the only one who can hear it.
But somewhere deep down inside he knew it was more than a fantasy. He could stand on a mountain top now, and he’d never felt he had the right to do that before.
He felt a flash of anger at that scene with Caleb and Josefa. They hadn’t even given him a chance to give his side of the story. Well, that was going to be their loss.
He’d always stood in someone else’s shadow, found guilty before he’d drawn his first breath, always been self-effacing, unassuming. Those days were over. He’d left that world behind, and he was never going back.
18
He woke to see the sun slanting through a window high in the outside wall. For a moment he wasn’t even sure where he was, and then it came flooding back. He was still at Del Oro, in his hut out the back. Must be about 4.30 in the afternoon, he guessed.
Too late to leave for Orleans Hill today, but he was glad to have a chance to stay longer and hopefully thank Doña Valentina for everything she’d done for him before he left. Maybe try and explain it all to her if, unlike her children, she was willing to listen. He’d like to do that.
There was a heavy knock at his door, and he realized that had been what had roused him.
A thin voice came through from outside. “Señor, it’s Mariano. You’re wanted, Señor.”
Mariano. What on earth did he want?
He slid off the bed and crossed to unlock and open the door.
Mariano stood outside, his face screwed up in an apology. “I’m sorry, Mr. Santiago. I really am. But Miss Josefa, the señorita, she wishes to speak to you. She asked me if I could come and get you.”
Santiago scowled. “What’s so urgent that I’m needed, Mariano? I know you’ve got everything running smoothly. So what’s the problem?”
Mariano shrugged. “She’s over by the calf enclosure. She asked me to stay nearby.”
“She did? Ah well, let’s go and see what she wants.”
As he stepped across the yard, his sleep-fogged mind was clearing. Now that Josefa was being officially wooed — maybe by now she was even betrothed to that fellow — she had to be a lot more careful about being seen with other men, especially in an unchaperoned situation. The carefree friendship they’d had, when they could go riding or inspect animals in the yards, a vaquero and one of the mistresses of the house together in a safe working relationship, was gone.
Why couldn’t she just leave it to Mariano? He knew as much if not more than anyone about the calves. Santiago hadn’t even been here for the last few days. He strode across the yard, bristling with irritation.
Josefa stood by the enclosure holding the nurse cow and her mothered-up twins. Even from a distance he picked up her uncertainty. She was turned toward him, chewing on her bottom lip and frowning. As they drew near, she darted a quick smile in Mariano’s direction.
“Thank you, Mariano. I won’t be long. I know you’re busy.”
Mariano slouched under the shade of a nearby tree, leaning against the trunk and lighting a cigarette.
Santiago rubbed his face distractedly, still annoyed at having his sleep interrupted. “What is it, Josefa? Surely it’s nothing so urgent that Mariano or one of the others can’t handle it?”
His voice sounded scratchy, even to his own ears. He sensed rather than saw her recoil at the tone. She turned quickly back to the calf pen, but before she hid herself from view, he could see her eyes were wet with sudden tears.
His heart vaulted in his chest. He stepped closer, maintaining a safe distance but shooting a quick look her way. Her forehead was dotted with tiny drops of perspiration, and she swiped at her face with the back of her hand, as if she was feeling uncomfortable in his company. She was wearing a scarlet and green dress which fell in soft folds to mid-calf and showed off her sultry romantic beauty perfectly. She is still slim and sensuous, baby or no baby.
Her dark eyes gazed off into the middle distance, as if she’d found something fascinating on the horizon. Her beautiful mobile mouth was turned down at the corners. She began talking without looking at him.
“Santiago this is very difficult for me to say, given the circumstances.” She shot him a look of appeal, her eyebrows raised as if in desperate need.
“I’m very sorry about what happened earlier, and you were right to be angry. I don’t know what we were thinking. I don’t know . . . Everything has just got so confusing.” She wrung her hands. “Even more confusing than when Rory was alive.”
Santiago glared at her. “I suppose it is confusing when you’re not willing to listen to people. Like earlier today. You didn’t give me any chance to say it, but I want you to know. I only learned of my father’s identity a few days ago, from Benecio. A few days, Josefa. Before I went to San Francisco for Caleb. There have been no ‘years of betrayal,’ as you so nicely put it. I didn’t even know Rory was my half-brother when he died, for God’s sake. I don’t know why that matters, but it does.”
A painful tightness constricted his throat. Josefa was white-faced, clutching her arms to her chest.
“My guess is Leo eavesdropped when I was talking to Benecio — he was there the day we talked — and then came racing back here to cause trouble.” His eyes bored into her. “I repeat, I did not know anything about this until a few days ago. And I’m as shocked as you are.”
She dropped her hands to her sides and nervously flicked out her fingers, as if to release her anxiety. “I’m so sorry, Santiago. Thanks for clearing that up. I’ll make sure to tell Caleb.”
“Well, when you do, tell him this too. The thing that shocked me even more than learning who my father was, is that you both believed the worst of me without even checking first. You never even asked.”
He gazed into her confused eyes, which were once again filling with tears.
“Oh, Santiago. You’re right. You’re so right.” Her voice cracked. She suppressed a sob and with what he sensed was some iron control of her will pulled herself erect. “I should have known Leo would want to cause trouble. And I’m so sorry I fell for it.” She gazed up at him, a look of appeal in her eyes. “In the circumstances, what I’m about to ask you — well, I wouldn’t blame you if you never want to see me again.”
She dropped her eyes, unable to meet his. “I came here to ask one last favor of you, which might seem very strange coming from someone in my position, especially after what you’ve just told me.”
She dodged away almost as soon as their eyes met, back to staring at the far horizon. “Santiago, I need your help. I do. I want you to make that report you’ve been working on available to Caleb before you leave.” Her voice broke again, and she drew in a deep breath. “Please. Whatever it says. It would be stupid to ignore it. He needs to know.”
Watching her obvious discomfort, his annoyance melted, replaced by a tenderness which left his insides quivering. “Are you quite sure? You realize what — who — it’s about?”
She nodded, looking once again back over the field. “Caleb has told me.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “And I don’t want to be disloyal, I truly don’t. But if there are things I — we — should know. It’s better to know them now, rather than later.”
She spun suddenly so she was facing him, her eyes bright and earnest. “Please, Santiago. Don’t hold that awful scene against us. None of us seem to be our usual selves at present.”
Nor ever will be again, thought Santiago.
In that uncanny way she had of seeming to know what he was thinking the instant he thought it, she turned her gaze full on his face. “Maybe those old selve
s are gone for good. I’m scared they’re never coming back.”
He shrugged, reluctant to respond, to be drawn back under her spell. “They’re never coming back, Josefa. You’re going to be Mrs. Leo Carver and I’m not yet sure what I’m going to be. I just know it’s not Santiago the vaquero who doesn’t know who his father is. That man has gone forever.” He stepped away from her, resolute to finish the business. “I’m leaving for Orleans Hill first thing. But yes, I’m happy to brief Caleb, if he wishes. Get him to send someone over for me when he’s ready.”
He turned and signaled to Mariano with a wave of his hand. “Thanks, Mariano. You’re a good man, and those calves look in prime condition. Well done.”
Without looking at Josefa again, he stalked away, his shoulders high.
19
“It’s not an attractive picture, Josefa. It makes me feel even more concerned that your inheritance should be covered in a separate contract, rather than be included as communal conjugal property which Leo can use however he wants. It would give you and your baby maximum protection.”
Caleb’s eyes were tender, a hatch of worry lines shadowing their corners. He was older, and graver, than the brother Josefa was used to provoking to exasperation. Her heart spiked in alarm. Everything, everyone, seemed to be changing so fast.
“Just go over it again, so I’ve got the complete picture.”
They were sitting on the sunny side of the hacienda, soaking up the late-morning sun, backs against the warm adobe wall. Josefa had sought Caleb out in the stables, keen to hear all the details of Santiago’s report, and they’d settled here to talk.
“He’s deeply in debt. Santiago suspects far beyond what he can meet out of the resources he has at his disposal. And he’s angling for a partnership in the firm he works at.” He cracked his knuckles, as if steeling himself for opposition.
“Those top firms usually expect partners to buy in. They don’t just hand a share to them on a silver platter.” His eyes flicked to the fields beyond the house, his expression distant.
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