Then she thought of the obstacles that still lay between them: his hatred of her uncle, his vow to regain Rancho del Robles, the danger he faced as the outlaw El Dragón. Perhaps most important, she recalled the fact she wasn’t the woman he had wanted to marry.
Even nestled snugly in his arms, Carly found it difficult to sleep.
***
“I can’t believe she’s actually gone and married him. She doesn’t even know him.” Vincent Bannister sat across from Fletcher Austin at the Stockman’s Club in San Francisco.
Fletcher had come to the city for the annual fall meeting with his attorney, Mitchell Webster, and his friend and financial advisor, William Bannister, to discuss the distribution of profits at the end of the fallmatanza,the slaughtering of cattle for hides and tallow, as well as the sale of several thousand head driven north to the gold fields.
The meeting had gone as planned. Webster had left, but William had accompanied him to the posh Stockman’s Club, and young Bannister had joined them. From the moment of his arrival the younger man had talked of nothing but Caralee.
“How could she do it?” he continued, speaking more to himself than to Fletcher. “I thought she cared for me at least a little.”
“Yes, well, obviously we pushed her too hard.” A waiter arrived, carrying crystal tumblers filled with fine Irish whiskey and branch water. The man set them down on the polished rosewood table in front of them, then quietly slipped away.
Fletcher shook his head. “I should have known better. I should have known she would rebel… after all, she is her mother’s daughter.” This last was said with an odd pang of pride. Lucy Austin was a woman unlike any he had known, beautiful, talented, intelligent. She had wasted herself on that no-account miner she had met in Philadelphia. True, the family had been poor then, and Lucy hadn’t believed her older brother when he said one day he would be rich, wealthy enough to take care of them both.
Marrying Patrick McConnell had been a stupid thing to do, even if he was blue-eyed and handsome. Lucy had paid, of course, with a lifetime of drudgery. But in the dozens of letters he had received through the years, his sister had never complained.
In the overstuffed chair across from him, William spoke up, breaking into his thoughts. The taller man uncrossed his long legs, which were encased in perfectly tailored brown wool slacks. “It was definitely an odd turn of events,” he said. “As you can see, my son has not yet recovered from the loss. It appears he held Caralee in extremely high regard.”
“I’m sorry, my boy. Part of the blame belongs to me. I don’t believe she would have acted as she did if we had given her a bit more time.”
Vincent leaned forward. “You think she did it just to spite you? That she might have cared for me after all?” He eased back in his chair, his hazel eyes lit with a glow of satisfaction. “Yes,that must be it. As I said before, she hardly even knew the man. God only knows the misery she must be suffering. Unfortunate for both of us, I suspect.”
Vincent rattled on for the next few minutes about the sad state of affairs Carly had gotten herself into, but Fletcher’s mind had suddenly swung in another direction.
“Excuse me, Vincent. What was it you said before… something about her hardly even knowing him?”
“That’s right.”
Absently, he rubbed his chin. “Perhaps she knew him better than we believed.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe Ramon de la Guerra is somehow connected with this outlaw, El Dragón. Maybe he and Caralee were together while she was being held in the mountains.”
“I cannot imagine there is any truth to that,” William argued. “The de la Guerra family is highly respected. Besides, Don Ramon was with us at del Robles the night the Spanish Dragon robbed the stage.”
“True, but maybe he was somehow involved. If that is the case, it’s possible de la Guerra may have ordered the abduction. The bad blood between us runs deep. It would suit him well to usurp something of mine… perhaps even my niece. If the bastard took her virtue, Carly would have felt obliged to marry him.”
“If that is the case,” Vincent put in, “why would she have kept his secret after she escaped?” It was obvious the boy preferred the first scenario, but Fletcher had begun to believe he might have stumbled onto the truth.
“I don’t know.” He leaned back against the green brocade settee, a thick finger drumming against the side of his glass. “But as soon as I return to del Robles, I’m going to try very hard to find out.”
***
A week had passed since Ramon’s return. A week of passionate kisses and sultry nights, of making love and learning the secrets of her husband’s hard-muscled body. Once they traveled to a place on del Robles land, a secluded spot where Ramon had come as a boy. A narrow creek tumbled from a high ledge into a shallow pond surrounded by pine trees. They made love in the soft green grass beside the pond.
Carly smiled as she thought of it again this morning, then she swung her legs to the side of the bed and came to her feet. Ramon was already up and gone, off to work with the men to finish the fallmatanza.They had all been working hard, rounding up cattle, branding calves, sorting the strays from the herd, and separating those that were being slaughtered from ones being sold on the hoof.
Carly stretched and yawned, her back a little stiff from the hours she had spent working over the tallow pots, huge iron cauldrons used to heat the fat taken from the slaughtered steers. It was melted into lard, some of it kept, some of it sold, and some of the tallow stored for later use in making soap and candles.
Even Ramon’s mother and Aunt Teresa pitched in, and obviously were pleased that Carly felt no hesitation in doing the same.
Dressed in a simple gray cotton skirt and white cotton blouse, she grabbed a shawl and left the house. Outside, the rancho buzzed with activity, the vaqueros busy saddling their horses, the kitchen humming with the voices of men finishing the last of their morning meal. Old Blue had been up for some time, shuffling about, clanging pots and pans, setting tin plates on the table. Even on this small rancho, the cook was awake long before dawn, tending the fires, making coffee and thick pots of cocoa, frying tortillas and meat.
Carly helped for a while, enjoying the robust smells and simple good cheer of the women. But as the sun crept higher above the mountains, bathing the fields in a haze of bright gold, it beckoned her out of thecocina,and she went in search of Ramon. The walk would do her good, she reasoned, help to stretch her weary muscles; and the day was warm, the sky overhead as blue as a jay on the wing.