The Wildest Heart (35 page)

Suddenly Ramon sat up, ripping my gown down the seam from waist to hem with one long, vicious movement. I made an involuntary gesture to cover myself, and he laughed.

“There's no need for modesty between us now! Tonight I fought for your honor and gained you as the prize. And what a prize!” His voice thickened as he gazed down at me. “A woman who does not need to wear those hideous corsets to improve her figure, a woman with a body as slender and beautiful as a dancer's. How lovely you looked, even when you were dressed as an Apache squaw. No wonder even Julio wanted you! You have a body and a mouth meant for passion and for pleasure. Perhaps it is only a matter of teaching you how to feel both.”

He had already begun to undress, still watching me. The gown I had worn lay in pieces on the floor, along with my petticoats, and the thin chemise I had worn under it was ripped down the front, to the waist, hardly sufficient to hide anything from his hot, ardent gaze.

I forget what went through my mind during the next few moments. The last thing I remember thinking, as he turned down the lamp and came to me, was that I must not think of Lucas! All it had been was a physical, carnal attraction—an animalistic thing. Perhaps Ramon's possession of me would wipe it out. I could not help the stiffness of my limbs when Ramon pulled the chemise over my head, nor my instinctive shudder of revulsion when he began to caress me. I began to think of the promises I had made to myself when I left England, that I would be completely free, that I would never allow any man to use my body again. And yet, it was happening once more, and I had done nothing to prevent it. This was my punishment for the ugly, uncontrollable feelings that Lucas Cord's touch and kisses had aroused in me. Why could it not have been Ramon instead who set my pulse racing and my heart pounding so hard I thought it might burst from my body? Why couldn't I
feel,
or at least pretend to feel?

Ramon tried to arouse some kind of response in me. He kissed me, he was gentle with his caresses. But I could give nothing in return. His body was warm, his flesh smooth to the touch. His embrace, at first, had nothing of the roughness and brutality I had experienced from his brother.

“Hold me, Rowena,” he whispered. “Put your arms around me, let yourself relax. I swear I will try not to hurt you.” And a little later, his voice roughened by passion, “For God's sake! Do you find it so hard to kiss me back? Why do you lie so still?”

I felt like a wooden puppet, and soon he lost his patience and became cruelly rough.

“What does it take to turn your coldness into warmth? Is it force you enjoy? Is it harshness?”

His kisses became hurtful, when I tried to twist my head aside he wrapped his fingers in my hair to hold me still and kissed me until I was breathless and gasping with pain and anger. His kisses were like blows, leaving bruises down the side of my neck and across my breasts. And in the end, when I could not help struggling against him, he took me by force, the pain of his entry making me cry out. And when it was over at last, I felt bruised and empty and degraded as he had meant me to feel, I think, when he had first brought me up to his bedroom.

I tried to rise, when he finally rolled off my body, but he pushed me back against the pillows. “In such a hurry to leave already? No—I have not done with you yet!”

Dully, I watched him walk across the room, and the lamplight became brighter, hurting my eyes. And now he was watching me, his mouth twisted in a sneer.

“No blood on the sheets? I see now that your coldness was all for me. Perhaps you showed another side of your nature to the man who took your virginity! Tell me, as a matter of curiosity, who was he, Rowena? Was it Shannon? Was it Lucas? Was that why you suddenly agreed to marry me? An available, gullible fool, eh? Were you looking for a convenient father for the child you may be carrying?”

I sat up, feeling bruised all over, forcing my eyes to meet his levelly.

“Oh, Ramon! What does it matter? You've had what you wanted from me, why can't we leave it at that? You don't have to marry me.”

He walked toward me, and I think he expected me to shrink away from him in shame and fear, but I would not do so. I stood up and faced him, with no attempts at false coyness.

“Marry you? Do you think I want secondhand goods? No, not for all your money would I marry you now that I know you for what you are! A lying, cheating bitch!”

He slapped me, hard and unexpectedly, sending me floundering back against the bed. “You will tell me, damn you! Who was he? Or was there more than one man? God, when I think how pure and untouchable I thought you were, with your cool and haughty manners and your way of holding yourself aloof—but it was only for me, wasn't it? How did you intend to account for your slightly shopworn state? Answer me!”

He raised his hand to strike me again and I rolled away from him, kneeling on the bed to face him.

“You want answers when you no longer have a right to ask me questions? Why don't you use your knife on me too, Ramon? Or would you prefer to shoot me? You arrogant Spanish men with your stupid, empty talk of honor! You knew that I was brought here by force, and you closed your eyes to it. You took me by force, and now you're disappointed to find I was not a virgin! But if I had responded to you, if I had played the whore, it would have satisfied you better, wouldn't it?” I pushed the hair back from my face, past caution, past caring, and my eyes glared into his. “I'll tell you why I hate men, Ramon. And I'll tell you why my blood didn't stain your sheets tonight. My stepfather raped me, when I was only eighteen. And you're the only other man who has had me since. Not Todd, not Lucas. Yes, even
he,
in his way, was too much of a man to try to take me by force, even when he had me at his mercy in the Apache camp!”

Ramon's face had changed; he was staring at me with a strange look in his eyes: as if he did not want to believe me, for his own pride's sake. “And now perhaps you wish he
had
taken you. I saw the way you two were kissing, remember? And yesterday, after you had cut your fingers with the knife, it was Lucas you wanted to see. It is always Lucas! It is because of him that I am trapped here, as if I too had been a criminal. My mother—when Lucas is here she does not care for her own sons. And Luz—and now you. Well, at least I had you first! It is one thing he cannot take away from me.” He caught my look and gave a strangely twisted smile. “You are thinking that I must hate him very much. You said so before. It is an odd thing. I do not hate him, but there are times when I do not like him either. And yet he is my brother; there is that bond between us. And you—for all your talk of hate, I think you feel the same way. I think that if it had been Lucas who brought you to his room tonight, your reactions might have been very different!”

I had no more answers for him. We looked at each other for a moment longer, and then I got up from the bed, and he made no move to stop me. I was naked, the torn remnants of my clothes not worth picking up. And I was past the point of caring. I walked to the door and unbolted it, and Ramon said behind me, his voice flat and without expression, “I suppose you are going to find him. Don't forget to try my mother's bedroom first.”

I didn't look back as I left his room, closing the door gently behind me. I think that by then my mind was a blank. I acted purely by instinct. I walked boldly down the gallery and pushed open the door of Lucas's room. He wasn't there, of course, but had I really expected to find him? He was hurt, wounded, no doubt he would turn to Elena for comfort.

Would I really have gone to her door, knocked on it, and demanded to see him? In the state of mind I was in at that time, I might have done so. All I knew was that I had to see Lucas, I had to find the answers to the strange yearning and weakness that consumed me whenever he touched me. I remembered the roughly efficient way in which he'd tended to my cut and blistered feet in the Apache camp; and later, the way he'd taken charge when I cut my fingers. Suddenly I remembered what my mind had been trying to shut out for the past hour, the way he had looked when I had let Ramon take me away. All that blood… Sudden panic took me. Perhaps he was badly hurt, perhaps he was dying, or dead by now.

I walked swiftly along the
galena,
my bare feet making no sound. Outside the thunder sounded much louder than before, and I thought I heard rain spattering against the roof in fitful spurts. Elena's door was open, and surprisingly she came out of her room as I drew level with it, just as if she had heard me, or had expected me to come. She looked at me. We looked at each other. And the only sign of surprise she showed at my unconventional appearance was the slight narrowing of her eyes.

I spoke first, forestalling anything she might have said.

“Where is Lucas?”

She threw back her head, and her face might have been a mask, except for the slight flaring of her nostrils. Her voice was a hard, cutting whisper.

“You dare to ask me that?
You,
coming naked from Ramon's bed? I should have listened to my instincts when you first came here! Your eyes were your father's, and that is what deceived me, but I should have known that your nature was not like his. I should have known that for all your talk of hate and dislike you wanted to take him from me. Did you plan everything that happened tonight, you and Ramon? Did you?”

All the smoothness and self-assurance had gone from her voice, and I could see that her fingers were like claws at her sides, longing to rake at my face.

I said contemptuously, “Did you plan, just so, to take Todd Shannon from his wife?” and I heard the hissing of her breath. I looked beyond her into her room and saw only her empty bed, with rumpled sheets that told of her restlessness, and she saw my look.

“You thought he'd be here? Did you think that if he was I would let him come to you? I underestimated you, Rowena Dangerfield, but I do not underestimate the love that Lucas has for me. Yes. He loves me; neither you, nor any other woman will ever have more than his casual embraces!”

“In that case, it should not worry you if I want to see him, should it?” I said coldly. “Where is he?”

We measured each other again in that moment, and at last, she shrugged, although her eyes remained hard and cold.

“He's gone. That Montoya—he let him go, with a storm coming up, and he's wounded, with a bullet still in him. Do you think, if he was here, that he would not be with
me
!”

I turned from her without another word and went down the gallery to my room. Luz was not there, but even if she had been, I would not have cared. The windows had been left open, and the wind had put the lamp out, but the lightning that streaked across the sky gave its eerie, occasional light, and I found my clothes. A blouse, high-necked in the Apache style. A full, ankle-length skirt. Moccasins for my feet. I did not bother to wear anything else underneath.

Elena had followed me.

“What are you doing? Where are you going?”

“I think you know.”

“You stupid fool! You'll never find him! He's probably out of the valley by now. Go out in this storm and you'll drown. And you're wasting your time, I tell you! Lucas hates you. Why don't you go back to the warmth and safety of Ramon's bed?”

“Is that what you would do in my place? You told me once that I was too much like you. Perhaps I'm just as unscrupulous. Does that make you less sure of yourself?”

She stood back to let me pass her, her mouth twisted. “Go then! And if the storm does not kill you, perhaps Lucas will.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “At least, you see, I am willing to take a chance.”

I went down the stairs, not looking back to see if she followed me or not. I heard voices in the dining room. Montoya's deep, sardonic drawl and Luz's high, hysterical crying.

I pushed open the door, and they turned to face me. She was huddled in a chair, her hands over her face, and he had his back to the fireplace, facing her.

Luz raised her head, staring at me. Jesus Montoya's eyes narrowed speculatively.

“I thought you were with Ramon!” she cried accusingly. And then, when she saw how I was dressed, “What are you doing here? Don't you know what has happened?”

“Of course she knows. She was there when it all happened.” He looked at me and his lips smiled, although his eyes remained opaque.

“Luz and I are to be married, as we should have been a long time ago. I will be taking her away as soon as the storm slackens. Don't you agree that it's a shame such beauty and youth should be wasted? I'm not much of a bargain, I'll admit, but I am better than some I could name.”

“No—no! I am not a piece of merchandise, to be bargained for! You forced Lucas to say what he did when he was wounded and might have bled to death without a bandage. He
would
have married me in the end. I know it!”

“Do you really think so? I do not, and it was for your sake that I persuaded Lucas to speak the truth for once. You heard him say he felt nothing but a brotherly affection for you. That he would never marry you. Don't worry,
muchacha,
I will soon make you forget him. And the children I will give you will keep you too busy for regrets.”

“Where is he?” I cut across their private quarrels, and while Luz only stared at me uncomprehendingly, Montoya nodded slightly as if he had heard something he expected.

“I could not persuade Lucas that it would be more sensible for him to remain here and have his hurts attended to. But I do not think he will attempt to go further than his cabin. You know where it is?” His eyes flickered over me consideringly. “I do not advise you to go out tonight. The storms here come up suddenly, and are all the more violent for that reason. The gullies become rushing watercourses. Perhaps you should wait.”

He understood—Luz did not.

“What are you talking about? Rowena, where are you going? I thought that you and Ramon…”