The Rose Legacy (32 page)

“Do you have any of that oil and … green stuff you put on the bread for the picnic?”

Carina had to smile. “Olive oil, salt, and basil.” She set the items one at a time on the table.

Quillan sat down and eyed his plate. “I think I could get full just smelling this.”

“Your stomach would not agree.”

“My stomach rarely has much say over what goes into my mouth.” He sliced the bread and held out a piece.

She drizzled oil over it. “Now take a pinch of basil from the jar and crush it between your fingers over the bread.”

He did as she instructed, then salted it lightly. “Miss DiGratia, I can’t say when I’ve anticipated the first bite of any meal the way I am this one.” She looked to see if he was teasing, but he had a way of masking his intentions unless he wanted them known. “Then try the cannelloni first.”

“Cannelloni?”

“The pasta. Rolled and stuffed that way, it’s cannelloni.”

Quillan cut the cannelloni with his fork, took a bite, and let it tantalize his mouth as a true Italian would. The pain in her chest as she waited showed Carina just how much his opinion mattered.

He swallowed just as Mae came in with an empty stew pot. “Well, well, Quillan. If the others knew what you were getting in here, they’d revolt. They all keep saying something smells different, then looking down at their plates with the sorriest faces you ever saw.”

Mae’s entrance had interrupted Carina’s observation of Quillan’s first impression. But he spoke with closed eyes. “If they knew what I had here, they’d forget all about gold and silver.”

Carina’s breath caught. It was a beautiful compliment, something Papa might have said. Or Flavio.

His eyes opened. “But they hadn’t the good fortune of hauling in the supplies … gratis, I might add.”

Taunting. She knew him better now. He might trim the jaunty mustache and put on a clean shirt, but he was still the man she met on the wagon road.

“Well, I may as well see what all the fuss is about.” Mae slogged a cannelloni onto her plate and sat down at the table. “Hand me a slice of that bread, will you, Quillan?”

Carina almost laughed. Mae might have been one of the men, so coarse were her manners, but Carina blessed her now for easing the situation. She tasted her own serving and found it quite satisfactory. It brought to mind the first time she’d made cannelloni, and without thinking she told them the tale.

“It was my papa’s forty-fifth birthday and I was eight. Nonna had already cooked the meat, but I diced it and crushed the bread crumbs and grated the cheese. Then I added the nutmeg. The recipe read one quarter teaspoon, but a drop of oil had marred the one and all I saw was the four. So I added four teaspoons of nutmeg.” Carina sipped her tea.

“I watched for Papa’s first taste, knowing he would praise me well. And he did, though his expression didn’t seem to match the words. My brother Tony started choking, grabbing his throat and making a big play of it. I tasted it myself, certain it would be as wonderful as it looked.”

She waved her hand. “It was not. Mama told Tony to eat it. She said it was a different recipe, a little more on the nutmeg. Lorenzo claimed he liked it better, but I saw him forcing it down with wine.”

Carina dropped her gaze to her plate. “I’m ashamed to say that when my sister, Divina, laughed, I ran from the table in tears.” She took up her fork and cut into the tender, perfectly seasoned cannelloni on her plate.

“Well, honey, this might bring tears, but not through any fault of yours.” Mae patted Carina’s slinged arm with her warm palm. “It’s the best thing I ever tasted.”

Carina smiled and glimpsed Quillan through her lashes.

His gray eyes were studiously on her as he held a bite aloft. Then he took it without speaking and continued until his plate was finished. “I don’t suppose there’s more?”

It was impossible not to feel pride as she filled his plate a second time. But after all, hospitality was a virtue, one of the highest in Mamma’s esteem. Carina told them of the wondrous foods her Mamma prepared, how she herself learned at Mamma’s hand. She spoke of the long, sweaty days in the kitchen filled with laughter and stories.

It was a woman’s world that a man penetrated at his own risk. And, laughing, she told of Mamma’s spoon smacking Papa’s knuckles when he snuck in and tried to sample the wares. None of her brothers but Tony ever followed that example, and Tony was close enough to Carina’s age that she sometimes stole him a nibble or two.

Her words brought her family so close she ached for them to walk through the door and see for themselves … see what? What would they see? What would they think of her, sitting at the board table with Mae and Quillan Shepard? They suddenly seemed far away.

When Quillan had finished his second portion, Carina cleared that plate away and served dessert. The caramelized apples and blue cheese were a stark contrast, but pleasing to the palate after the rich cannelloni. “Take only a small piece into your mouth,” she instructed Quillan when he looked dubiously at the cheese. “It’s flavor is strong.”

“I don’t doubt that.” He tasted it, moving it around between his tongue and the roof of his mouth.

Carina waited.

He met her eyes. “It’s different than any cheese I’ve had before, but … I like it.”

“Now a bite of the apples, then the cheese again. All we lack is the Chianti.” Carina felt a glow she’d not felt since arriving at Crystal. It was almost like dining with family, the warm camaraderie and laughter, Quillan telling tales of his own food mishaps, Mae’s wonderful laugh filling Carina’s heart. Good food, good friends. What more could she want?

And then she caught Quillan’s eyes, saw in them the smoldering warmth, and she felt her stomach liquefy. What was this feeling inside her?
Innocente!
She knew the feeling, but it had no business being there.

Quillan hadn’t expected to enjoy the evening so much. He wasn’t sure what he’d anticipated, but a motherly Mae and a dazzling Carina DiGratia … He wasn’t sure what to do with that. He’d hoped to work her closer to solidifying the tentative agreement they’d made on the mountain.

He hadn’t thought to find her so real. He didn’t want to know her talents, her mistakes, her family, her laugh. He didn’t want see her as a real person. He needed her, and intrinsic in that need was risk, even danger. If he was right about Beck … But there was no “if.” He knew. And the man must be stopped.

Yet here was Carina, making him see, making him care. In the same way he’d held her on the mountain to keep her warm, safe, protected, he now discovered something inside that wanted to continue that role. Listening to her talk, to her laugh—it gave him a warmth, a depth he hadn’t tapped in years, if ever. He almost felt that he belonged.

Mae pushed up from the table. “Well, I’m not long for this night. These old bones need their sleep even if your young ones don’t.”

Carina started to rise also, but Quillan caught her hand. “Sit a moment.” He didn’t want it to end, but that wasn’t why he held her back. He would convince himself of that later, that he only needed to complete what he’d started when they rode down from the mine. It wasn’t just for himself. It was for all of Crystal. Carina included.

She sat, but she looked again as she had when he first came to the door, afraid to be alone with him. Did she think him such a scoundrel?

“Good night.” Mae sashayed to the doorway and fixed him with a look as clear as any warning. “I’m just next door.”

Did she think he’d make a play for Carina right there in her kitchen? His chest gave an unfamiliar lurch. And why not? He was alone with a beautiful, enchanting … He forced the thoughts away. He was as red-blooded as the next man, and those thoughts would only get him into trouble. Besides, Carina DiGratia was only waiting to be claimed by the one she loved before, loved still. It had been obvious when she spoke of her Flavio.

A surge of jealous anger caught him by surprise, and he felt Carina startle in his grip. His thoughts had shown and frightened her. He let go her hand, but she didn’t fly. Instead she sat looking at him with those large, expressive dark eyes. How long they sat, learning each other by sight, he didn’t know. But he realized one of them had to say something.

“Thank you for supper. If I’d known it would be so good, I’d have come before Friday.”

“If you’d come before Friday you’d have had stewed beef.”

They laughed. It felt good and natural to laugh with her, and that surprised him. He’d imagined a number of scenarios for tonight, but none the way it had been. None half so pleasant, and none that made him feel so perilously close to her. Now it was time to return to business. Quillan pushed back his bench a little, then crossed his arms on the table. “You’re going back to work soon?”

She seemed to close in. It couldn’t be a pleasant thought, spending all those hours with Berkley Beck. But maybe it was something more; maybe she’d changed her mind. Maybe she wanted no part of his plans, his plotting. Then she raised her eyes to his, and they were full of emotion, even concern. “I must warn you, he’s suspicious. Especially since you found me after the flood.”

Did he imagine the flush that came to her cheeks? She was grateful certainly, and with reason. She would have died in the shaft of the Rose Legacy. He had saved her life, and it brought a fresh rush to his system to think of it. “Does he know about the Rose Legacy?”

Carina shrugged, then winced at the pain. She held the injured joint. “Does it matter?”

“It might.”

She considered that, then shook her head. “I don’t know. He knew … that is, he told me to ask about Wolf.”

Quillan restrained the anger that memory conjured, anger at her and now fresh anger at Beck’s bidding it. “Why?”

“I told you before, he suspects you’re behind the violence in Crystal. He said a man who …”

Quillan saw the sudden caution in her eyes. “A man who what?”

Her voice came on a rush of breath. “Who robs a bank …”

He pushed back from the table, hanging his head back and studying the corner of the ceiling, tongue caught between side teeth. His anger toward Beck reached new bounds, and he fought to contain it. “Who else knows?”

“Then it’s true?” The pulse throbbed in the hollow of her throat.

“I was fourteen. I was taken in by a friend.”
Desperate to be accepted, needing to prove myself, wanting to be a man
. “I was duped, and the charges against me were dropped, the crime pardoned, the warrant rescinded. I did not rob the bank.”
But I did learn to trust no one but myself
.

He saw her eyes deepen, almost as though she looked inside him, saw his unspoken thoughts, his shame. He bristled. “If you think I’m guilty, why are you helping me? Or have you changed your mind about that?”

She shook her head. A strand of black satiny hair fell across her injured shoulder. He remembered squeezing the water from it, remembered it springing to life in his hands, remembered her lips shivering and her hands fending off the water. He remembered her nestled against him, and the need he felt to keep her warm. Why hadn’t they stayed up there on the mountain, in the mine, just the two of them? The thought caught him short. It was too much like Wolf and Rose.

He turned and studied the night-blackened window. So Beck had one more piece against him, but how? “How did Beck find out about the bank?”

Carina shook her head. “He left town and came back knowing. He said he saw the warrant.”

“Then he must have known it was canceled.”

“If he knows, he’s not saying. He said William Evans recognized you. That he knew about the robbery and made you pay to keep him quiet.”

Quillan smiled wryly. “He wouldn’t get much these days.” But that didn’t matter. The story was plausible enough to provide motive to a death that shook the town. Add to that the nature of the killing and the relationship of Quillan Shepard to the infamous Wolf, villainous killer and madman. It made sense. Perfect sense.

Who wouldn’t connect the two in the superstitious way of miners? Like father, like son. He should clear out as Alan said. It was obvious Beck could garner more support for his arguments than any Quillan could raise.

“What are you going to do?”

Her question was his own. “I need to know more. Beck’s obviously done his work on me.” He saw her flinch, remembered her throwing Wolf and his own disreputable birth in his face. Had she given Beck the information? Was she even now working to trip him up, to learn more to use against him?

The thought sent cold steel through him. He could well believe her duplicity. She was a woman. But the look on her face was concerned and earnest. And she was still his best hope. “In his papers, his ledger, was there anything …”

“I told you. Nothing but land disputes.”

“There must be more.”

“I’ve filed everything in the office. All the papers. I regularly balance his ledger. There’s nothing—”

“It might not be obvious.”

Carina waved her hand, frustrated. “Unless it’s in his rooms—and I’m not searching there.”

“I’m not asking you to. Only there must be something somewhere.” He jammed his fingers into his hair. How could he refute the case Beck was building against him without any proof to substantiate his own claims against Beck?

She suddenly paused as though a thought had caught her. “There is something. When I brought Nonna’s silver back from the hillside, I gave it to him for safekeeping.”

Leaning forward, Quillan anticipated her words. “Where did he put it?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t want to say.”

“Then you have two reasons for searching.”

She waved her hand. “I need only ask for my silver.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

Carina turned away, shaking her head. “I don’t know what to think. He has protected me. He is powerful. When that awful Carruther …” She shuddered. “He sent him off with a word.”

Quillan spread his own hands. “What do you expect? He’s his lapdog. He and others.”

Her brows pulled together. “What others?”

“Henri Charboneau for one.” When she startled visibly, he drew even closer. “What is it?”