The Wildest Heart (57 page)

But instead, it was I, tugging angrily at the drawer which was stuck, who found the folded piece of paper that my father must have carelessly pushed into it—perhaps when he felt himself becoming sleepy.

I have read it over and over again. How much agony and heartbreak would have been saved if only I had discovered it earlier! My father had indeed learned from the shaman that Lucas was Todd Shannon's son—but he had been sworn to secrecy. I could easily guess who had spilled ink all over the vital parts of his journals, even tearing out some pages—leaving only those entries which sounded particularly damning where Lucas was concerned.

Of course he must be stopped from killing his own father! And there was Elena, whom my father still loved, in spite of all the disillusionment of learning what she had done.

He spent some time explaining his motives in changing his will—for my benefit, of course. He begged my understanding. For I was not to inherit half of the SD after all; but this share would go to my husband if I married either Lucas or Ramon—with a large bequest of money to the one I did not choose. If I decided to marry neither one, then my father's half of the ranch was to have been divided equally between Ramon and Lucas—his way of righting old wrongs, I supposed!

And Elena—yes, my father knew Elena! Perhaps he had tried to end what he saw happening between her and Lucas.

“To Elena Kordes, with my undying love and devotion—fifty thousand dollars and a reasonable income for life (I leave this to my daughter's discretion) on condition that she leave New Mexico Territory forever…” He had added—for her I think—“A jewel needs a setting worthy of it. I think you will take Europe by storm…”

There were other, smaller bequests. A deed to some fertile land in the mountains, for Julio—money to buy horses and cattle. Legacies to Jules and Marta, and one to his old friend Elmer Bragg.

So this—and I felt I had rediscovered him—was the man who had been my father! The man I was cheated of seeing, but who I have come to know through his writings as my children some day might want to know me.

I fold the codicil away and wait. It's time. Marta, standing by me, follows the direction of my eyes to the clock, and puts my half-frightened thoughts into words.

“The trial, it must be over now. Have faith, patrona. You will have your husband back soon.” And the silver medal of St. Christopher that Todd once gave to Alma and Lucas gave to me hangs coldly between my breasts—as cold as the hours that must still pass before I will know.

They might have been any prosperous rancher and his wife—their blond-headed son sitting between them in the buckboard, hardly able to keep still for excitement. And yet the sight of them together, and in town, was always enough to set the gossips' tongues wagging.

Madame Fleur, standing talking with a customer in the doorway of her small establishment, gave a gasp as she saw them pass on their way to the State Depot.

“Oh my! Did you see them? And he, the other one, is already at the Depot!”

“You mean Mr. Shannon? Mr. Todd Shannon?” Mrs. Vickery, whose husband owned the local dry-goods store, echoed the plump milliner's gasp. “My goodness—” her voice dropped. “Is it true…?”

“All true, all of it! Ah, such a scandal it was! I remember her—she has not changed much. There was always an air of—such haughtiness in her. And she has it still.”

“But—”

Madame Fleur was determined not to have her story spoiled by interruptions.

“All you have heard is the truth,” she repeated. “One of my customers went all the way to Santa Fe for the trial, and she told me everything. They acquitted him in the end, and everyone expected him to come back and live on that ranch—but instead he went off into the mountains, and his wife, she followed him. I've heard they own a small ranch there, but just where nobody knows for sure. Of course…” and Madame's voice became a whisper, “he was brought up by the Indians, you know. And it is true that he has been in prison, and was an outlaw.”

It still felt strange to be riding into a town quite openly like this. And towns, especially bustling, brawling ones like this, always had given him a closed-in feeling.

Lucas met his wife's raised eyebrow and grimaced.

“I still ain't sure how in hell you talked me into this. I don't even know these friends of yours.”

“Corinne and Jack are nice people,” Rowena said evenly. And then, smiling faintly: “Besides I'm proud of you. What's wrong with a woman wanting to show her husband off to her friends?”

He looked into violet blue eyes, shadowed by the longest, blackest lashes he had ever seen, and suddenly he was remembering her at other times—sitting up in bed, staring at him—brown-faced, with braided hair, eyes spitting hate at him. And still later, her warm, sweet lips; her voice calling his name…

It was the last thing he could remember before the pain, and the terrible choking as the breath was slowly, very slowly strangled in his throat. And after that there had been more, worse pain, making him clamp his jaws together so that he wouldn't cry out—and crying out anyway and finding his voice only a whisper. And Rowena's tears falling on his face, her voice saying his name again, over and over.

He couldn't talk above a whisper for weeks afterward. Lucas thought later, wryly, that it was just as well, maybe. Else he would have done a lot more arguing, and a lot more swearing. And there had been times when he didn't want to talk to anyone at all, not even to Rowena, until the day she came storming into his room, calling him a selfish bastard, reaching out to claw at him before he grabbed her wrists.

The colonel had married them two days later, and two weeks after that they took him to Santa Fe to be tried for murdering Mark Shannon.

It was strange, Lucas thought, how suddenly some little thing could bring back a whole flood of memories, flashing across the mind in just the short time it took to maneuver the buckboard around a wagon that almost blocked off the street.

A hat in a window, and two women, turning to stare. The hat reminded him of Elena—and that thought was still pain, although it was fading. Elena, the dream every man has and clings to. Smiling, beckoning, giving just enough to make him keep wanting her, and in the strangest way, hating her at the same time. But Elena was over and gone forever, and in her place Ro, who was flesh rather than substance: strength and sweetness and giving. Following him into loneliness in the mountains and facing the ghosts in the house in the valley. Having her child there, with only him and an old midwife to help her—and in the end he'd sent the old woman out of the room and done everything that needed to be done himself, remembering everything she had told him before. Hot water, clean sheets, everything boiled that would touch her or the baby, even the knife.

He had been truly horrified. “My God, Ro! I didn't know what women have to go through, havin' a child.” And she, smiling, eyes like purple bruises in the whiteness of her face, saying: “I didn't either. But I'd go through it again, if you will.” And as a matter of fact he had felt almost faint himself, when it was all over, although he'd never have admitted it to her. But it had made his son all the more his—had brought Rowena closer, and sent the memory of Elena even further away.

Elena—strange that he should think of her today. Perhaps it was seeing the jail across the street that had brought her back as she had stood there in the dark, windowless cell under the courthouse in Sante Fe, filling it with her particular fragrance; the hat he bought her in El Paso worn forward over her forehead.

“So you couldn't do it after all! You let him almost kill you instead—and all because of that white-faced bitch you married. Married!” Her laughter had been sharp as thrown knives, making him wince. “Was it to give that brat she's carrying a name? Were you being noble, Lucas
mio
? Or has she really made you as weak as her own father was? I had to see for myself, you see.”

“And now you have seen.”

Her high heels clicked on the stone floor as she walked impatiently up and down before the barred door.

“Is that really your voice, sounding so cold? What are you trying to hide behind it?” And then, her voice dropping, becoming low and slightly husky: “Do you really think you will ever forget me? You'll get over her, just as you got over all the others—she'll begin to bore you.”

“Elena—why are you really here?” Lucas's voice sounded tired.

“Why isn't she here? No—I came to see for myself. And I wanted to see his face. It will be the first time, you know, since…” For the first time he heard some agitation under the smooth, cutting voice, and meeting her eyes, wide and shining with a liquid brilliance, he could almost see her as she had been then. Young, and uncertain of herself. Lovely, even then.

“So he's decided to accept you as his son, has he? I am almost surprised…”

“Am I his son?”

Brows arching, she shrugged. “I suppose so. Alejandro said so. But it was only for Alma's sake, and because of his guilt, that he saved you. He could never love you, for all his talk of duty—but you knew that, didn't you? My poor Lucas, you were starved for love, until we found each other, you and I. And now—” again her laugh, “even now I think that you long to take me in your arms, isn't that right? There is that between us,
mio,
that no other woman can change or take away. Remember that.”

Elena's exotic, perfumed presence in the courtroom had only added another touch of drama into an event that had already been magnified out of proportion. Lucas had not been able to decide if he felt more like an audience of one or a freak on exhibition. Certainly, he had seemed to be the only person who had not come out of curiosity, or to play some role to the hilt. There had been times when, either lying in his cell or sitting in that overcrowded room beside his attorney, he had begun to wonder who he was. All his life before there had been two things. His love for Elena and his hate for Todd Shannon. And then, suddenly, he was adrift. Not even knowing himself.

When he came back from Santa Fe to tell Ro what he planned to do he had half-expected that she would stay where she was and wait for him to come back to her later. This was what Elena would have done.

“I just don't know where I'm goin' yet. Or what I'm going to do or even who the hell I am an' what I want. Do you understand that, Ro? I've got to find my own answers—mine.”

“All right, Lucas. When do you want to leave? I can be ready whenever you are.”

He had argued with her, tried threatening, even tried picking a quarrel with her. But she had followed, gently rounding belly and all. And stayed.

“There they are.”

Back in the present Lucas's sun-squinted eyes went from the laughing young man and woman who stood in front of the Depot, to the older man, towering above them both. He swore softly.

“I should have guessed.”

“Well? Did you expect to keep avoiding him for the rest of our lives? What are you afraid of, Lucas?”

He looked at her angrily, fingers going up involuntarily to tug at the black neckerchief that concealed a thin, red scar, circling his neck.

“Sometimes, woman, you push me a mite too far!”

He was annoyed at her, and more annoyed at himself. Did Shannon really think he'd been avoiding him for some damnfool reason like that? Strange, that he could never think about the man as his father. Just Shannon. Hated name he refused to bear.

The boy was standing up, eyes big with excitement.

“Mama…?”

Rowena looked over his head at Lucas, and after a second in which his mouth stayed taut and hard she saw one corner lift in a sheepish grin.

He hitched the buggy to the rail, ducking under it, and came around to lift her down. First her, and then the child. The usual knot of hangers-on had been enlarged, although all kept their distance, trying to keep their stares unobtrusive.

“Damned if that isn't Todd Shannon and his son—they say they ain't spoken a word to each other since the trial some years back.”

“His wife—wasn't she engaged to the old man hisself once?”

It was bubbly Corinne, who hadn't changed at all since Rowena had seen her last, except to become slightly plump, who first broke the awkward silence that followed introductions.

“My goodness, Rowena, it's still hard for me to imagine that you're a mother. Uncle Todd, little Guy Ramon looks exactly like you. He has your eyes, except they're not so flinty-hard… oh!”

Jack Davidson reddened as Corinne clapped a hand before her mouth, eyes wide.

“Oh! Oh I'm sorry! I did promise I wouldn't let my tongue run away with me, didn't I? But it just seems so strange, somehow. Like something in a storybook, except that it couldn't have been very pleasant for all of you, could it? I mean…”

“Corinne!”

“Let her be, Jack. At least she speaks her feeling, which is more than most of us have learned to do.”

Shannon's voice was gruff—he was looking from under his beetling brows at his grandson, who stared back curiously, apparently unafraid.

“You understand English, boy?”

“And Spanish and Apache,” Rowena put in quickly. “Would you care to be introduced, Todd?”

She probably planned all this, Lucas was thinking, from behind his frowning expression. She, and that friend of hers. Damn all scheming women anyhow! He caught Corinne's half-laughing, half-apologetic glance at that moment, and smiled back at her unwillingly. She was honest, at any rate. Shannon had been right about that much.

“Well! Now that we've been introduced I may as well tell you that you don't look at all as I used to imagine.” Corinne tilted her head consideringly. “You remind me of—yes, of Heathcliff, in Miss Bronte's book,
Wuthering Heights.
Although, of course, Rowena has far too much character to be a meek and mild Cathy, don't you think so?”

“I have never met a woman who talked as much and from whom I actually felt I needed rescuing!” Lucas said wrathfully later.

“Did you really think so? I thought you liked Corinne. The way you kept staring at her with that look on your face…!”

He looked down rather grimly at Rowena, who merely smiled back at him demurely.

“She fascinated me, all right! And you—suppose you tell me what the look on your face means, ma'am? Are you satisfied with your trickery? My God, I never thought I'd actually feel relieved to have him suggest we go someplace more private to get acquainted. And I'm warning you right now, I don't aim to sit by her all through dinner either! How in hell did I let you talk me into this?”

“Are you really ready to listen? I think it's because, like me, you suddenly saw Todd today as—a lonely old man. And because he is Guy's grandfather, and you and I don't have the right to deprive him of that very special relationship. Oh, Lucas!” Rowena turned suddenly, putting her arms around him, and the movement of her body against his was supple, and still exciting. “Think of all the years that were wasted in feuds and misunderstandings! And think of what your adopted grandfather, the shaman, said once, about seeing both sides of a coin. Is there any reason why, now that time has passed, you and Todd cannot greet each other in a civilized fashion?” Sensing his indecision, she added slyly: “When Montoya brought Luz and their children to visit us this spring you were perfectly willing to forget everything he'd done to try and keep us apart!”

“Didn't notice that you acted too mad, either.”

“Well?”

“If you don't want to get seduced before dinner and keep everyone waiting, I guess we'd better go on downstairs.” A bar of crimson light, like a sullen parting shot from the setting sun, pushed its way through the partially drawn drapes of the hotel window, making the lamplight seem suddenly insignificant.

They looked into each other's faces; searching, renewing, re-evaluating. It was as if, without words, Rowena was saying: “I love you, and I have chosen you. There is room in our lives for other people too, now that we are sure of each other.”

In the corridor outside a child laughed, and Lucas lifted her chin up with his finger, brushing his lips gently against hers.

“There, ma'am. That's to hold you until later. Let's go rescue that boy of ours and get him to bed before he's spoiled rotten with all the attention he's been getting.”