Treasure of the Sun (52 page)

"You had lost her, or she'd lost you?"

"Ah." He poked the fire with a stick and ignored her. "Nacia lent a bag of food. Are you hungry?"

Katherine snatched her hands away from Damian and put them in fists at her waist. "You waited this long to ask?"

He fetched a leather bag. "I thought you'd say if you were hungry."

Katherine ripped it away from him, painfully aware of the need that clawed at her belly. "Is there anything we could feed Don Damian, do you think? He feels so limp." Her hands went back to Damian, kneading his shoulder.

"Some beef broth." He recovered the bag and pulled something out. "Eat this while I heat it." He handed her a rolled tortilla.

“I ate once today, a meager meal. Look at this. Nacia sent her cheese-filled tortillas. I'm in heaven. Mmm." She chewed and closed her eyes in ecstasy. ''It's marvelous, but it must have gotten gritty in the bag."

"More likely from your hands."

Katherine looked down at her filthy fingers.

"The creek is just across the path." He pointed the way.

"Take your time. I'll try to feed your husband."

Katherine didn't take the time to wash as thoroughly as she would have liked, curbed by the memory of Damian, lying there so slack and hot. With a clean face and hands, she returned to the fire. Julio had built it up again, creating a roaring blaze that shot sparks up above the treetops. The smell of soup and meat blended with the smoke, and Damian leaned against Julio's shoulder to sip broth from a cup.

She bounded forward. "Is he awake?" Damian whispered, "My Catriona."

Kneeling beside the bed of boughs, she stared into his beloved face. "You must get well."

"Yes." As if the words and the effort of eating were too much for him, he drooped, sliding sideways.

She caught him in her arms. Putting down the cup, Julio helped her make him comfortable. "I would like it better," he said, "if he were tossing and complaining. This stillness worries me." Seeing her stricken face, he added, "Of course, I'm no doctor. When Nacia gets here, she'll help him."

The blankets twisted in her hands.

"Better tuck him in," Julio advised. "You have meat cooking on the fire, and you were asking about Nacia and me. I was going to tell you."

She stared at him blindly, not understanding a word.

"I've been fornicating with every loose woman in California in hopes of fathering a child."

She blinked. His bluntness penetrated her stupor. "I-what?" He seemed pleased that his shock tactics worked. "Nacia and I have been married for years. We have no children."

"No." Katherine wrapped a blanket close around Damian and bent her head, listening.

"Nacia was a maiden when I married her. It's nothing, this producing of children. The lowest gorr6n drops his seed and children spring up, unwanted. Yet we didn't have any." He sighed. "I realized that, despite my youthful debaucheries, I had no children."

"Most men consider that a fortunate circumstance."

"Such bitterness," he chided, and she remembered what an acute man he was. "There are rumors you've had a. bastard child."

"You joke," she said horrified.

"There are always unkind people, and the Americans who come here frequently aren't of the best caliber." He flipped the beef on the fire. A pot steamed on a rock close beside the flame, and he dipped out a bowl and passed it to her. "Not every moment of your existence has been lived under their watchful eyes, and there's speculation."

Not even horror could obscure her appetite, and she savored the spicy beans. "No wonder Senora Rodriguez considered me unsuitable for Damian."

He grinned at such blunt speaking, but he let her distract him. "I tried to keep my experiments quiet, but there's no way a man like me-a bastard, a bad seed-could keep the gossip from spreading. As it spread, and none of the women conceived, I became careless." His lids drooped as he remembered. "Even… reckless."

"Julio, you almost killed your marriage for male pride," she reproved.

"No," he denied. "I didn't mind that I couldn't father a child."

She pulled a disbelieving face.

"Well, only a little." He made a so-so motion with his hand.

"At one time, I cared too much, but I have become resigned to my unfruitful state. But I did know how Nacia wanted children. She talked about them, longed for them, planned for them."

Incredulous, she asked, "How would producing a baby elsewhere help your marriage?"

"If I could have fathered a child with another woman, Nacia and I would have had hope for a baby of our own. Or perhaps, if Nacia had never conceived, my consort would have been amenable to letting us raise the little one." He shrugged sheepishly. "Stupid, I suppose, but I had to know if there was hope. I was afraid Nacia would leave me."

"Where do you think she would go? Back to live with her parents?"

Her scorn faded beneath his sad dignity. "When she chose, Nacia had a way of leaving me even when we were in the same room. I didn't want the dutiful wife. I wanted Nacia's heart and soul, forever."

Indignant for Nacia, she said, "So you did everything in your power to drive her away."

"Just because spiteful people call me a bastard doesn't mean it isn't true."

"A masterful justification."

He continued hastily, "Nevertheless, you're right. I couldn't stand to see Nacia so unhappy. I didn't stop trying to prove my manhood with every whore down the coast, but I couldn't stand Nacia's unhappiness and the way she supported me against every attack. I made plans to convince her to stay with me."

"As if she needed persuasion," she scoffed.

A smarmy expression of satisfaction softened his face. "She is wonderful, isn't she?"

She enjoyed seeing the cynical Julio moved to adoration by his own wife. "Very."

"I thought to persuade Nacia with my own land. I thought if we could go and build our own house, one that wasn't part of her inheritance, perhaps she could forgive me for depriving her of children. So I played a game of cards with the governor, and won a grant of land in the Sacramento Valley. Hmm, the food's ready." He cut chunks off the beef and handed her his knife, threaded with beef.

The odor of the meat made her mouth water; her first greedy taste burned her tongue. "So why did you kiss me? Why did you fight with Damian? It seems you had destiny in your command."

Rubbing his face, he left a streak of charcoal on his nose.

"One day I was in the Sacramento Valley, working like a dog, when I thought-what is Nacia doing while I break my back building a rancho?"

"Pining for you?"

"That didn't occur to me." With wry self-mockery, he said, "I just knew how hurt she'd been about my women. What if she took a leaf out of my book and took a lover? Or several lovers?"

"Nacia wouldn't want revenge."

"No, I know that now. I knew that then, too, but if it was so clear to me that I was without seed, it could be dear to her, too. She did want a child, and she could have one with another man. I told myself it wouldn't matter. If she had a child, I would raise it as my own."

"Noble."

Solemn, he said, "I would raise it as my own. I'm the last man to cavil about a child's background. It was the thought of Nacia beneath another man's hands that drove me to drink."

"Literally."

''Yes, and when I'm drinking, I see things with a warped logic.

Damian had loved Nacia before I had. He would be her choice to become the father of her child." He handed her a rag. "Damian had everything. He'd always had everything. Anyone else would have killed me for insulting him as I did."

She wiped her hands and handed his knife back. "A healthy dose of cowardice, too. You're a sensible man."

"A high compliment coming from you, indeed."

"Didn't it occur to you it could be Nacia's fault that you had no children? That you'd simply been unlucky in your timing and your choice of women?"

"I wish that were the truth, but I'm afraid it's not. Nacia's parents had nagged us to produce an heir, not unfairly, I thought, and we tried. And tried and tried." He closed his eyes in retrospection. "We've been making regular and passionate attempts our whole married life. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Yes, I understand what you mean," she snapped.

''It's hard to know," he drawled. "You lack the sensuality and emotional good sense our women have."

She turned her face away from the firelight, afraid her own sensuous memories would show in her face.

The sly, amused voice of her companion proved she hadn't concealed her expression. "I have always thought you considered Californio men to be useless. Perhaps Damian has proved we are good at something?"

"You're a pig, Julio." She wet the rag again and laid it on Damian's brow. "What good will such knowledge do me, if fate takes him from me? I'd be better if I'd never met him and lived in ignorance all my life."

He leaned over her and knocked her hand away from Damian. "Never say that. To live without ever having loved? Without the pain and the effort and the kind of physical pleasure that brings tears of delight to your eyes?"

"I was happy before."

"You were not even living before," he said. "Katherine, listen to me. We're alike, you and I. We're the outcasts. I'm Spanish, I'm Californio, I'm a man, but none of that cancels the fact that I'm a bastard, and there's no way to change that." He waited.

She waited. She didn't want to ask, but he wouldn't continue until she signified her curiosity, so she answered with a grudging, "I agree."

"You're an Americana. You're educated, you're cultured, you're a lady, but none of that cancels the fact you're an Americana. More than that, I think, you've been an outcast your whole life, simply because of the mean-spiritedness of your family."

"Yes."

"We're both married to people who are the epitome of California society, and we will never, ever, measure up to that society's expectations of a mate for Nacia, a mate for Damian."

"True."

A little smile quirked his mouth at her monosyllabic answers, but they satisfied him. "No matter what we do, no matter how properly we act, for the whole rest of our lives we will hear the occasional hiss of a narrow-minded person. Nacia doesn't care what they say about me. She never did. Only I care."

"You're a good man," she offered.

"I know. But still I hurt when they whisper 'bastard' just loud enough so I can hear. Only with Nacia, I forget the hurt." He tapped his chest above his heart. "Damian loves you."

"He hates Americans."

"But he loves you. I've known Damian my whole life. He'll grow with California, adjust to the invasion. The only thing that would ever harm him is if you don't trust him enough to give him a chance."

She stared at him, unmoved by his vehemence.

"Katherine. My mother-in-law married at thirteen. She hasn't changed an opinion or shared an emotion in all that time. Nacia was sixteen when she married me, yet she could teach her mother everything about life, about kindness, about joy. Nacia makes me whole. I make Nacia whole." His palms joined, fingers twining. "If Nacia vanished from this earth at this moment, I would still be more than I was before. Has Damian taught you nothing?"

She looked down at her own hands as they stroked Damian's head. She thought about the things that Damian had taught her. About passion, and tenderness. About the impatience of a man ignored, and his sweet revenge. About adventure and treasure-real treasure, the kind she'd seen in his eyes.

Whatever she had been shifted. A new person emerged, forged of the old Katherine and the strands of Damian.

Like a newborn, angry at being thrust from the safety of her previous being, she cried through the long night until she slept, exhausted, at Damian's side.

"What will she do when he dies?" Nacia whispered, her gaze resting on the two still figures in the sickroom.

"I don't think it has even occurred to her," Julio answered solemnly. "She's kept him alive this last week with her sheer strength of will."

"The fever burns him and I can't stand to watch her hover over him." She touched his hand. "Night after night, she stays and strokes him with cool cloths and talks to him. She naps only for a few morning hours, when his fever's down. This is the first time I've seen her asleep at night."