Angel In The Rain (Western Historical Romance) (31 page)

“From your own lips, you speak of retribution,” Rane continued. “So, tell them! Tell them how you got my mother with another of your bastards!”

Angel’s father cursed under his breath.

“Don’t interfere,” she whispered.

While her heart shattered at the sight of the raw pain that ravaged Rane before her eyes, she knew there was still a chance. If he could get it all out in the open, air the past at long last, the terrible scars he carried might yet heal.

“He got her pregnant again,” Rane said. His voice had softened to the deceptively mild tones she knew so well. “Only this time, something was wrong. This time, she got sick—so sick she could no longer work. And when the
patron’s
wife realized that one of her servants was falling down on the job, she very quickly righted the situation. She ordered my mother off the property.” His blazing eyes narrowed to mere slits that burned into Horace. “Do you remember,
patron
?”

The question met with stony silence.

“Damn you, do you remember!”

The unexpected violence in Rane’s plea nearly brought Angel out of her skin. She realized, until that moment, she’d never truly heard him raise his voice.

“I came to you,
begged
you on my knees to help her. Do you remember what you said to me? ‘Run along, boy. There’s nothing I can do.’”

“There
wasn’t
anything I could do,” Horace said at last. The way his breath heaved faster and the hard dip of his brows betrayed that his son had finally touched a nerve. “I couldn’t make special concessions for one insignificant servant. Francine would have questioned it.”

“And you couldn’t have her asking questions, could you?” Rane retorted. “She might have uncovered your nasty little secret and learned about Maria Mantorres being your mistress all those many years.”

Angel had seen Rane in more than one dire predicament, had seen him snuff out life and nearly lose his own. Even in those very desperate circumstances, she had never heard such raw emotion fill his voice. How many years had he lived for this night?

He seemed to run out of steam then, and his dark gaze flickered over each of them before he tilted back his head and released a long, sighing breath. Relief? Sorrow?

“So, what did happen to Maria?” Horace asked. “Since you’ve accused me of her death, I think I have a right to know.”

When Rane looked at Horace again, the brightness shimmering in his eyes shredded Angel’s heart.

He swallowed, sending his Adam’s apple gliding beneath the skin. “I tried to take her back to Mexico, to her village. She died before we got there. She bled to death on the bank of a creek.” His dark, haunted gaze touched on Angel for a brief instant. “That’s where I buried her,” he concluded.

In her mind’s eye, Angel again saw that small grove of cottonwoods near Rane’s adobe, and him standing reverently beside a narrow grave with his hat in his hands.

Horace expelled a harsh breath into sudden stillness. “Well, now you’ve got what you always wanted. I’ve confessed.” Very deliberately, he placed the Colt in his hand on top of the desk. “So, go ahead,” he said. “Finish what you came here to do. You’ve waited for it a long time.”

As Rane stared at the old man before him, Angel could almost see him drawing deep within himself, summoning his last shreds of inner strength. Instead of blazing with hatred, his eyes grew cold and impassive.

“No,” he said with calm finality. “That would make it easy for you...
Papá
. You’ll get no mercy bullet from me. Dying is one thing you’ll have to do on your own.”

Rane turned and started for the door.

Roy stepped into his path. “Don’t leave just yet, Mantorres. This ain’t over.”

“As far as I’m concerned, it is.”

“You just stay put,” Roy ordered. He headed for the desk. “Let’s have a look at that wound, Horace.”

Angel reached out and clutched onto the back of a chair, suddenly feeling as if she might fall without the support. The upheaval of the past thirty minutes was finally taking its toll. She sat quickly and pressed her hands between her knees to try and control their trembling.
Rane was Horace Lundy’s son.

Roy knelt beside Horace’s chair and pried his hand away from his stomach. After ripping apart his shirt, Roy examined the wound. When he lifted his head again, grim acceptance carved deeper grooves into his leathery face.

“It don’t look good, Horace. Not good atall. There may not be much time, so why not do the right thing?”

Horace’s craggy brows peaked. “Surely you don’t expect me—”

“I surely do,” Roy said. “You ain’t got nobody else, so who’s it gonna hurt?”

Rane stood leaning against the doorframe, his back turned to the two men, ignoring them, to all appearances. However, Angel was aware that something extraordinary was taking place. Her father pulled paper, pen, and an ink well from a drawer and placed them on the smooth surface in front of Horace.

“Just do it,” Roy urged.

Grimacing with pain, Horace leaned forward, picked up the pen and dipped it. After a long moment’s hesitation, he started writing. The scratch of the pen moving across the paper grated through the silence for several minutes, then finally stopped. Horace looked up at her father and handed him the quill. “There. If you like, I can sign it in blood.”

Ignoring the remark, Roy leaned over the desk and added something to the page Horace had written.

Angel’s curiosity nearly pulled her from the chair, but she somehow managed to stay put.

Roy laid the pen aside and straightened. “Mantorres, would you come over here.”

Rane turned, his eyes narrowed with suspicion as he walked to the front of the desk.

Horace placed his hand over the sheet of paper and slid it forward. “Here. This is all I can do for you now.”

Rane picked up the page and tilted it toward the light. Immediately, his gaze shot to Horace, questioning. “Is this your idea of a joke?”

Horace shook his head. “It’s no joke.”

“Well, then, you’re mistaken,” Rane said, “because you just got the last laugh.” His lips compressed as he crushed the paper in his fist and let it drop to the floor. Despite her father’s protests, he walked out the door and kept going.

Curiosity finally won. Angel stood and walked to the front of the desk. She picked up the wrinkled paper, straightened it, and saw that her father had signed and witnessed Horace’s last will and testament.

Chapter Twenty

Warm wind buffeted Angel’s face. She leaned into it and goaded her mare to a faster gait. From a distance, the Flying C looked more deserted than the Hacienda. The corrals stood empty, the gates ajar. She slowed to a walk when she reached the compound and listened. Only the chirp of crickets and the muffled plod of the mare’s hoofs on the softly churned earth came back to her.

She’d expected to see some of her father’s men. The gaping barn door and darkened bunkhouse told her they still hadn’t returned from the creek. Perhaps her father had summoned them to the Hacienda.

Will Keegan, along with a couple more of her father’s men, had arrived on the scene soon after Rane’s departure. Horace had been in a bad way by that time, and getting worse. Her father had sent her from the room to spare her from witnessing the man’s death. And she hadn’t argued. She walked out of Horace’s office and kept on going.

Now, she almost wished she’d stayed.

The sight of the big white house with all its windows darkened filled her with near despair. She had hoped to find a willing ear and solace in Carmella. The small window in the housekeeper’s downstairs bedroom stared back at her, as silent and lifeless as the rest of the house. Could the woman possibly have retired without knowing the outcome on such a night? More likely, she’d been afraid to stay alone.

Angel felt her way up the back stairs and crossed the hall to her bedroom. After closing the door, she sighed and leaned into the heavily varnished wood. A long night awaited. Exhaustion pulled at her, but the thoughts churning through her mind allowed no rest.

She crossed the room and dropped her hat onto the seat of a chair. Acrid sulfur filled her nostrils when she struck a match and lit the lamp on her bedside table. Moving to the solitary, south-facing window, she pressed her forehead to a cool glass pane and sent one last yearning look into the dark distance before she drew the curtains together.

The snap of the lock startled her. She whirled, her heart stampeding.

Rane stood just inside the door, watching her.

She clapped a hand to her chest. “You scared the life out of me!”

“It seems to be a habit,” he said, his expression as solemn as death.

She lowered her trembling hand, stepped away from the window and blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Did you see Carmella?”

“Yes, I saw her.”

“Where is she?”

“I would imagine she’s asleep in her room. Why didn’t you tell me she was here?”

“I haven’t seen you. Until tonight. And you’re a fine one to even
try
and suggest I’m the one who’s been keeping secrets.”

Angel shook her head, frowning. The conversation had gotten off on the wrong track. She didn’t want to argue with him. There were other issues more pressing. During the ride home, her thoughts had been consumed with all the different possibilities opened up by Horace’s revelation. If only Rane had stayed. After he’d bolted from Horace’s office, she’d been wretched with thoughts of him out there somewhere in the night, alone and hurting.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

“How could I tell you? Besides...would you have believed it?”

At a loss, unable to answer, she turned from him and stood before the dresser.

After a moment, she lifted her eyes and found his reflection in the mirror. He pushed away from the door and moved in close behind her.

“Would you have believed me?” he asked softly.

Her gaze met his in the silvered glass. “You never gave me the chance.”

She saw his arm move and felt the brush of his fingertips against her hair. She closed her eyes as the ticklish sensation wound through her. He moved closer. A touch of warm breath replaced his fingers. He leaned in and pressed a lingering kiss to the nape of her neck.

“I need you tonight,
mi ángela
. Please don’t turn away from me.”

The rich, dark seduction of his voice, so full of need, stroked more deeply than his hands or his lips ever could.

She turned.

Gently, he cupped her face, his shadowed eyes searching hers, as if he tried to see into her very soul.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he said. “It’s risky.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

She lifted on tiptoe and pressed her mouth to his. For several seconds his lips remained firm, then he softened, and she opened to him, like a budding rose beneath the sun, and offered all she had to give.

The smell of burnt gunpowder clung to his clothing. But the taste of him, the wildly intoxicating essence of him was pure Rane. His tongue glided between her lips to join with hers as he applied gentle suction. A low moan that sounded part pleasure, part protest rumbled in his throat.

She sensed him pulling back from her, even before he ended the kiss. Too quickly, he released her and stepped away, out of reach, putting distance between them once more.

Bewildered, she watched him pace to the far side of the room. He reached up, as though agitated and jabbed his fingers through his hair, already in wind-blown disarray. Then he shuddered. She couldn’t even begin to guess at the agonizing memories trapped inside his head. He’d been only fourteen when he watched his mother die and buried her with his own hands. Tonight, he had relived it. Emotions too long held at bay seemed to be clawing to the surface.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have left the Hacienda like that.”

“You think I should have stayed.” The way he said it, flat, emotionless, his voice held neither question nor statement, but both seemed implied.

“He was dying, Rane.”

“What did you expect me to do, wait around for it to happen? Why? I was never anything more than dirt beneath his feet.”

For a moment, his dark gaze bored into her. He looked away, but not before she saw the telltale tightening of his lips.

“So, tell me. After I left, did he suddenly have a change of heart?”

While he kept his voice emotionless, there was an underlying edge to his words and she knew, although he would never let on, he was hanging on her answer. She fervently wished she could summon the courage to lie.

His heavy-lidded gaze flicked in her direction once more. For an instant, a phantom of his old smile touched his lips. It did nothing to dispel the cold darkness in his eyes. “I didn’t think so.”

He switched his attention to the carpet and shook his head. An empty chuckle slipped from his lips. “I never truly believed he would admit it. Not even to me. All these years, I’ve waited. Now that it’s done, it’s time to move on.”