A Lady of the West (9 page)

T
he Major was in a good mood that night, and Victoria didn't betray by either word or manner that she had talked with Angelina. Instead, she listened to him talking expansively over dinner. She nodded and smiled at all the right places.

She waited patiently, and when the right time finally presented itself in a small pause, she said, “I've been thinking how much I'd love to start riding again. All of us would. Do you think you could select some nice mounts for us? You have some lovely horses, and I know you would make good choices. Though not, of course, if you need the horses for ranch work.” Her face revealed none of her thoughts as she gave him a small smile, one that managed to be reserved despite its surface warmth. He wasn't sensitive enough to tell the difference and beamed at her compliment to his equine knowledge.

“Of course, my dear.” He patted her hand. “I should have thought of it myself.” He'd tell Roper to pick out three mounts suitable for ladies. No one on the ranch knew horses better than Roper.

Emma's quiet face had its own glow at the thought
of riding again, and Celia all but bounced in her chair. “When I've practiced and I'm really good, may I ride Rubio?” she asked.

He laughed at her foolishness. “You'll never be strong enough to control Rubio,” he said, boasting of the horse's strength. “You just stay with the quiet nags, and let the men handle Rubio.”

Just as quickly as that the brightness was gone from her small face, but she didn't argue. Celia seldom argued about anything. She looked down at her plate and pretended to concentrate on her food.

For once Victoria was glad the Major was so heavy-handed, because she was terrified Celia would take it into her head to try to ride the stallion. She picked up her spoon again and thanked him for the use of the horses, then made a commonplace remark to Emma, who had been trained in the same social graces and immediately picked up the conversation.

McLain looked around him at the three genteel, pretty-mannered women, and swelled with pride.

Victoria knocked on Celia's door, but no one answered. Worried because her sister hadn't recovered her spirits all evening, she opened the door and looked in, expecting to find the girl soundly asleep. Her heart sank when she saw the empty bed. Quickly she crossed to Emma's room, hoping that Celia was visiting with their cousin. Her knock brought only a nightgown-clad Emma to the door.

“No, I haven't seen her. I thought she was in bed,” Emma said in reply to Victoria's anxious query. “I'll get dressed.”

Celia had a lifetime habit, when upset, of finding a hidey-hole and burrowing into it. The refuge had never been in her own bedroom, but always in a smaller, tighter place, as if she needed the security of closeness. In the past Victoria had never been alarmed, but they were no longer in their old home.

Emma reappeared in little more than a minute wearing a plain skirt and shirtwaist, with a shawl knotted around her shoulders and her hair haphazardly pinned. “Do you remember the time the two of you were visiting us, when we found her in the chicken coop?”

Celia had been all of three at the time, and brokenhearted because she had been scolded. At other times she had been found in the storm cellar, a closet, under a bed, or a buggy, burrowed in hay (again, when they were visiting Emma), and once, when she was small, under a washtub. After an hour or two she would emerge sunny-tempered again, so they had ceased to look for her unless she was actually wanted for something.

They swiftly searched the house and found nothing. Victoria even poked her head into the Major's room; he had gone out after dinner, so she knew he wasn't in there. Neither was Celia. Carmita and Lola were sitting around the kitchen table and Lola said that she hadn't seen the señorita since dinner.

“Perhaps she is talking to the … the—” Lola stopped, frowning as she tried to think of the English word she wanted.

“The man who sells things from his wagon,” Carmita said.

“A tinker?” Victoria asked.

They both smiled at her.
“Si,”
Carmita said, relieved. “The tinker.”

“I didn't know a tinker was here.”

“He arrived just before dark, señora. He and his daughter. They are spending the night.”

Victoria and Emma looked at each other. A tinker, being new to Celia, might attract her like a cat to catnip. “Where is the tinker's wagon?” Emma asked.

“Next to the bunkhouse, señorita.”

The bunkhouse, where the men slept. Victoria hurried out the door. It was unthinkable that any of
them would attack Celia, yet at the same time she thought Garnet capable of anything. Unbidden the thought intruded of asking Roper for help, and she flinched from the idea as if it had stung her.

Emma kept pace beside her and they both slowed as they neared the bunkhouse, with the hulking shadow of the tinker's wagon beside it. Through the small window they could see the men sitting around a couple of small tables, or lying on their narrow cots. Nothing unusual seemed to be going on. Victoria was even more reassured to see Garnet playing cards at one of the tables. There was no one at all around the tinker's wagon.

“Let's separate,” she said, keeping her voice low so the men wouldn't hear. “I'll look in the stables and barn.”

“We didn't look in the courtyard; I'll go there, and check the blacksmith shed on the way.” Briskly Emma set on her way, and Victoria turned in the other direction.

Now that she was alone, the darkness seemed oppressive. Her heart began to beat faster as she quietly approached the long stables and entered. Most of the stalls' occupants were dozing, though a couple of horses put their heads over the top rails and whickered at her. She patted their velvet noses as she passed by, reassuring them. It was too dark inside for her to see much more than their large dark shapes, but all of the stalls were occupied and there was nowhere else in the long, low building for Celia to find a nook. No, the barn was far more likely. The barn was also where Rubio was stabled, away from most of the other horses because of his tendency to fight.

She opened the barn door just enough to slip through, and this time her way was lighted by a single oil lamp hanging on a post at the far end, close to Rubio's stall. The stallion, though, was quiet. Victoria could hear him making small rustling sounds as he shifted his feet.

She also heard another sound, the words indistinguishable but the timbre soft and definitely female.

If Celia were in the stall with Rubio .. .

On no account must she startle the horse. She lifted her skirts to keep them from dragging on the straw and quietly slipped nearer to the small pool of light.

She heard a groan and more rustles. Then a man's voice, unmistakably deep. The woman again, this time sounding as if she were in pain.

A chill coursed through her entire body. Celia?

She went closer, and the rustling noises were louder. She was still in the black shadows when she realized they weren't coming from Rubio's stall, but from the opposite side of the barn, where there was a small, unused box stall. The edges of lamplight were just spilling through the open rails, and she edged still closer, her heart in her throat because she was afraid it was Celia. Yet she didn't rush forward, and when she was close enough to see into the box, she was glad she hadn't.

The first glance told her that the woman in the straw wasn't Celia; she had a mass of dark hair. Nor was it Angelina. She didn't know the woman. She felt relief, then shock as she realized exactly what she was seeing. Such were her own experiences with sex that she almost screamed, thinking the woman was being raped. Then another firestorm of recognition went through her, and she had to jam her fist against her mouth to keep from making an outcry anyway. She saw two things simultaneously. First, the woman, far from being raped, was clinging to the man and encouraging him with whimpering, pleading words in Spanish. And, second, the man was Jake Roper.

The knowledge was like a blow to the chest. Air left her lungs in a rush, and she could only hang there, unable to move or breathe. The most incredible, unreasonable hurt filled her, and she tried to turn away, to leave quietly. She didn't want to see this, couldn't bear it—

But her legs still wouldn't work. Her muscles were frozen, and she could only stare helplessly, taking in details she didn't want to see.

The woman was naked except for her skirt, which was twisted around her waist. Victoria could tell that much, even though the shadows cast by the single lamp covered the lower halves of their bodies. Roper's shirt was off, revealing a powerfully muscled torso that glistened with sweat as he moved over his partner, the muscles tightening and flexing with his movements. The woman was clinging to his broad shoulders, her head thrown back and her eyes closed. Victoria stared at Roper's face, which she could see better than the woman's. It was tense and concentrated with fierce sensuality.

The woman gave a low cry and thrashed wildly for a minute, locking Roper within the grip of her arms. He held her firmly and began moving even faster. Moments later a deep groan of pleasure sounded in his throat.

A sheen of tears blurred Victoria's vision, and she bit her lip to hold back a sob. The small pain in some way released her, and she took a step backward.

Like an animal scenting danger, Roper's head came up, and he stared right at her.

It was only a second, yet it lasted an eternity. His face was dripping with sweat, the skin still pulled taut in the immediate aftermath of orgasm, his eyes fierce and his hand already on the heavy pistol that lay next to him in the straw. Victoria stood with her fist held to her mouth, her eyes wide and glittering with tears. She knew that he saw her, even in the shadows. She knew she couldn't stand there another minute, pierced by that strange pain. Her limbs stiff, she forced herself to step more deeply into the shadows, one step at a time, until she could no longer see them. Finally she was able to turn and hurry from the barn, no longer caring about silence, wanting only to get away.

Infuriated, strangely shaken, Roper lifted himself
from the woman and hitched his pants back up. She was still lying on the straw, her lush breasts glistening with sweat. Those breasts had excited him just a short time ago, but now all he wanted was to get away from her, and she deserved better than that. Damn it, he couldn't even remember her name. She'd made it plain, from the moment the tinker's wagon had pulled in, that she was interested in him. He'd taken her at her word. It was just a little diddling, not meaning anything to either of them except for the physical relief.

But Victoria had seen them. He thought grimly that the sex she'd had with the Major was probably starched and restrained, done in the dark with her nightgown pulled up only as much as was necessary. She had probably never dreamed of such things as nearly naked bodies rolling in the hay, sweating and straining toward completion.

Thinking of what she'd seen made him feel ashamed. He tried to push the unfamiliar emotion away, but it stubbornly refused to go. Damn, he wished it hadn't happened, wished Victoria hadn't had that stricken look in her eyes, wished that he could go after her and explain that it didn't
mean
anything. He wondered if she would understand that, or if she'd even care. But she'd looked at him as if he'd hurt her in some way she barely understood, and he was powerless to comfort her.

The woman—what was her name? something like Florence—was languorously sitting up, her face still dreamy. Not Florence … Florida? Fiorina, that was it. She stretched, lifting her arms to better frame her heavy breasts with their dark brown nipples, and eyed him with a kittenish sort of sensuality that made him feel hemmed in. He ignored her unspoken invitation for even further dallying and stuffed his shirttail into his pants.

“You'd better get on back to the wagon before your father misses you,” he said in a flat tone.

She pouted, but began cleaning herself. “He is already drunk and asleep.”

“He might wake up.”

“Even if he did, he wouldn't care.”

Roper strongly suspected that her “father” wasn't related to her at all, but it meant nothing to him one way or another. People got by as best they could. When she had dressed, he assisted her to her feet, gave her a kiss, patted her on her round bottom, then sent her on her way. As soon as she was out of sight, a black frown settled on his face.

Damn it to hell!

Victoria ran to the house, panting and near tears. Just before she reached it, Emma came to meet her.

“I found her,” Emma reported, her tone amused. “She wasn't in a hidey-hole at all, she was in the courtyard counting stars.”

Victoria forcibly regained control of herself and blinked the stupid tears away. Why on earth was she crying? It had been something of a shock, of course, seeing that, but nothing tragic. She wrenched her mind back to Celia, and received another shock when she realized that she'd forgotten her. It wasn't like her at all to be less than conscientious, and the lapse bothered her almost as much as what she had seen.