Orchids in Moonlight (36 page)

"No." He gripped her shoulders, pressed his lips against her forehead. "But thanks to a banker steering me in the right direction, I was able to find one of the men who was also an investor in that last mine. He told me he lost a great deal of money and also suspected salting but—like everybody else except your father, it seems—lacked proof. He didn't know your father, by the way, but heard about someone pledging a bogus map.

"He says he wishes now
he'd
been smart enough to pledge with bogus money," he added with an amused smile.

"So we're right back where we started from." Jaime turned from him with a sigh and went to sit on the divan, eyes downcast. "We can't prove anything, and even if we could, that's not going to tell us what happened to my father. But I have to keep believing he's still alive."

"Of course you do." He sat down beside her. He could see she was depressed and dreaded telling her of the scene in the greenhouse.

She related the conversation with Stanton at breakfast and said, "He was very angry and tore out of the room, and I haven't seen him since."

With a deep breath of resolve, Cord decided to get it over with. "I just did. In the greenhouse. It seems someone told him I've been asking questions. He accused me of working for you and ordered me off the estate, unless I want to be shot on sight."

She looked at him in horror. "Oh, Cord, no. Then you have to leave, but what about me?" Realizing how panicked she sounded, she added, "I mean, I can't do much snooping when Blake is always around."

"Don't worry. I intend to keep on till I've run out of ideas, but I can't risk coming here to see you anymore." He thought a moment. "There are steps below the greenhouse, leading down to the beach. Nobody ever uses them, and some of them have crumbled badly, but they're safe enough if you're careful. That part of the beach will be a good place for us to meet, because the guards avoid it. The Yahi Indians build altars there, supposedly to summon their gods."

"I know. Blake showed me one when we were riding. It was creepy."

"They do it to scare the guards into not going any farther. Some of them live in caves in the cliffs just north of there. Anyway, meet me there at midnight. You'll have to grope your way in the dark. You can't risk using a lantern, because the guards might see the light. But with luck, all this will be over soon."

"I don't see how." She shook her head dismally. "Just when we think we know something, we run into a stone wall and can't find out anything else. I'm beginning to think it's hopeless. If Stanton did do away with my father, he covered his tracks well. We aren't going to be able to prove anything. I think I should just get out of here and try to find a way to work my father's mine. If he is alive, surely, sooner or later, he'll come out of hiding."

"Don't do anything impulsive. Give me a few more days."

She looked at him sharply. "Are you on to something you aren't telling me about?"

"I'm not sure." He did not want to get her hopes up, only to let her down if his suspicion proved wrong.

"You're always keeping something from me," she accused, but gently.

His smile was wistful. "I suppose it's always best to keep a part of yourself private."

Jaime took a deep breath. It was time she let him know his past did not matter, for she had decided perhaps that was why he held so much of himself back. "Maybe you do so because you've known prejudice, but that wouldn't be the case with me. It doesn't matter to me you were raised by Apaches."

His face turned to stone. "Where'd you hear that?"

"Link Cotter told me, back in Sacramento, the morning you left." She plunged on, figuring she'd gone this far, she might as well say it all. "Frankly, I wouldn't care if you did have Indian blood, or even if you were
all
Indian. You saved my life once, and I'll always be grateful."

"Some people feel if a man lives with Indians, it's the same as being one, which makes him a savage, socially unacceptable and not to be trusted. That's why I keep it to myself, but unfortunately some of the soldiers at the fort in Texas where I once worked spread the word, and it keeps following me."

"I'd like to hear about it, if you care to tell me."

He nodded. "Maybe it'll take your mind off your own troubles."

And so he told her of those years with the Apaches, how they came to be and the circumstances that finally, mercifully, brought them to an end. "I learned a lot. I've no doubt it saved my life a few times during the war. But it was a miserable existence, one I'd never want to endure again. I'd like to forget it, but I knew the day that preacher swore he was going to beat the savage out of me that it would always be with me, like a brand."

She touched his hands, which were clenched on his knees. "Maybe not. Maybe one day you'll settle down and live a normal life. Have a wife. A family." She tried to keep her voice light, so he would not detect the longing she fought to conceal.

In that crystallized moment, when their eyes could not deny becoming the mirror of their souls, Cord looked at her and knew, beyond all doubt, she loved him. Just as he loved her. But what could he do? His father's blood flowed in his veins, and he could not cast aside the image of his father clinging to his mother's cold, stiff body for days, heating off the swooping vultures as he refused to let her go.

It was one thing to love someone, Cord, reasoned miserably, but another to let that love gnaw away and destroy a man's spirit, his will to live. No, by God, he resolved fiercely, he'd not be so weak. He would live his life with commitment to no one except himself.

Jaime shivered, but not with cold. She detected something in Cord, something mysterious and disturbing, but knew it would do no good to probe. For a moment, she had almost felt as though she had touched that part of him he kept locked deep inside, but a shadow had crossed his face. He had withdrawn behind the invisible barrier once again.

Reminding herself that she had made a personal vow to savor the moment and not think of the future, she moved to twine her arms about his neck and kissed him deeply.

Cord's blood became a heated river of desire racing through his veins. His hands gently cradled her face, holding her captive as he reveled in the delicious touch of her tongue.

He drew his mouth from hers to trail hot wet kisses down her throat, feeling her tremble at his touch and melt against him. Her robe fell open, her naked breasts spilling to welcome his touch. He raised hungry eyes to feast upon her, sweeping her tiny waist, her rounded hips, and her slender legs.

With a husky groan, he lifted her in his arms and carried her swiftly to the bed and laid her down. He unfastened his holster, pausing to ask, "Is the door locked?" She nodded. He tossed the guns aside recklessly, then peeled quickly out of his clothes.

The spark that had so easily ignited erupted into raging, hot, licking flames of passion that would not, could not be denied. He stretched out beside her to pull her almost roughly into his arms. "Tonight," he avowed raggedly, "I'll be a savage, my dearest, because I want you as I've never wanted a woman before."

But want me forever, my darling, Jaime cried within, not for this moment, not for this night, but always and ever!

Unable to speak the longing of her heart, she could only show him with her body how much she cared.

* * *

Enolita ran screaming toward the house, feet slipping on stones wet from the ocean spray as she struggled to keep from falling.

In Jaime's room, the sound was barely heard, for the greenhouse was situated on the northernmost point, at the opposite end of the mission. Cord stirred, but only slightly. Jaime's head was on his shoulder, and her arm about him tightened as something tried to needle her awake. Yet they slept on, exhausted from their frenzied passion.

Blake was downstairs, brooding in the parlor. He was still aching in body and spirit from the ugly confrontation with his father. Startled to hear Enolita yelling, he painfully pulled himself from the chair and went to see what was going on.

She shoved open the door leading into the rear hallway, still shrieking at the top of her lungs. He grabbed her shoulders and gave her a vicious shake. "Get hold of yourself and tell me what's happened," he ordered tersely.

For a moment she could not speak as she struggled to breathe past the sobs choking in her throat. Finally, she managed to whisper raggedly, "Oh, Senor Blake. I'm so sorry. So sorry. It's your father. I found him in the greenhouse. He's dead. Murdered. Oh,
mi Dios, mi Dios."
She lapsed into her native tongue.

He pushed by her and, despite the sharp stabs of pain in his side from his father's brutal kicks, rushed to the greenhouse. Enolita followed close behind, fighting hysteria.

He saw the shears sticking from his father's throat and froze. Then, with a roll of nausea, he whirled about dizzily to clutch the edge of a table.

Enolita whimpered, "Who would do such a thing?"

"Get the guards," he managed to croak. "Now."

She fled to obey.

With great effort, Blake forced himself to turn around and go to his father, blanching to see how his eyes were frozen in the horror of the final seconds of his life.

Later, Blake would wonder why he reached out for the weapon and supposed it was because he found it grossly offensive to leave it stuck there, blades swallowed by the curdling blood.

His hands closed about the handle.

"Oh, God, no."

Startled, he yanked the shears out, and blood that had not yet coagulated spurted on his hands, his clothing, as he whipped about to see Morena coming toward him.

"What have you done?" She saw the scissors and threw up her arms to fend him off. "No, don't hurt me. Dear God, why did you kill him?"

With a cry of indignant denial, Blake flung the shears away from him. "I didn't do it. He was already dead." He pressed his fingers against his temple, smearing blood on his skin. "You've got to believe me. I didn't. I couldn't."

Suddenly he fell silent, washed with disgust to realize he was groveling to the woman he despised.

He swung his head from side to side. "Damn you, no. I don't have to defend myself to you." His eyes narrowed. "But it was
you
, wasn't it? You killed him. The two of you were always fighting, and lately it was getting worse. You killed him because he finally told you to leave, didn't you?"

She ran by him to fling herself at Stanton's feet, wrapping her arms about his legs as she wailed. "No. Never. I loved him. I could never do such a thing, I swear it. But I know who did. It could only have been him."

The sounds of shouting came from outside as the guards rallied to Enolita's alarm.

Blake jerked Morena away from his father's body, unable to bear the sight of her clinging to him. "What are you talking about? Tell me what you know about this, damn you."

Her words tumbled out in a frenzy. "Austin. The bodyguard your father hired. He had me spread the word this morning he wanted to see him. He was furious because someone had told him Austin was enamored with Jaime, and he knew you were courting her, and he was going to run him off. And I saw him come in here right after I left to go to bed. I had tried to get your father to come with me, but he was determined to wait and have it out with Austin.

"Now look what he's done." Her voice rose shrilly once more. "He's killed the man I love, all because of your whore." She looked up at him accusingly with angry, tear-filled eyes.

Blake grabbed her. Resisting, she threw herself to the side, against a table, knocking over plants as he shouted, "You're lying. Jaime can't be involved with anyone else. She's with me every day. And don't you call her a whore," he warned.

Some of Morena's bravado was returning, and she taunted him. "Every
day,
did you say? What about the nights? It is Austin who sleeps with her. Not you."

Two of the guards came running in. Enolita was right behind them.

Incensed beyond reason, Blake had raised his hand to strike Morena, but she caught his wrist. "I can prove what I say."

The guards were staring, momentarily paralyzed, at Stanton's body. Then one of them came alive to grab Morena and twist her arms painfully behind her back. "What do you want us to do with her?"

Enolita pushed her way forward. "No, no. It couldn't have been her. I heard her come in and go to the cellar, and he was alive then. I know, because he called me to bring him more whiskey. Then later, when I started out here to ask if he needed anything else because I wanted to go to bed, I saw that man, Austin, coming in. I went back to wait, and I fell asleep. When I came back, this is what I found." She pointed to the body and shuddered.

"You see?" Morena shrieked as she struggled with the guard. "Austin was the last one here. It could only have been him." She watched anxiously as Blake silently debated whether to believe her. When she had found Cord in bed with Jaime, she had made up her mind to get rid of him, one way or another. And now the time had come.

"I can prove it, damn you," she yelled impatiently. "They are together right now." And she knew that to be so, for she had crept through the secret passage to make sure.

She continued to taunt. "Are you man enough to face it? Or are you so hellbent to punish me because your father loved me that you're willing to let them laugh at you behind your back over how blind and stupid you are? Or maybe you're just such a coward you can't stand for these men to see what a fool you are for your whore."