Return to Paradise (Torres Family Saga) (21 page)

      
Judah would hear nothing about Benjamin's quest for Rigo. Marriage between his daughter and “the accursed savage,” as he had taken to calling Rigo, was never a consideration. “As if Benjamin could convince him to come for me, anyway,” she murmured bitterly in the chill silence. Instinctively her hand reached up to rest on the slight swell of her belly. She renewed her oath to protect the babe. Remembering Rigo's feverish revelations about his own scarred childhood, she promised, “I will deal with Richard DuBay. No one will shame or harm you!”

      
A loud noise belowstairs interrupted her troubled thoughts. The massive front door had slammed closed and servants' voices were raised in a babble of protest. Then she could hear her father, his voice much lower, silencing all save for one. Like a sleepwalker she crossed the thick Turkish carpet of her room and opened the door. Her mouth was dry, yet her palm upon the heavy brass knob was damp. When she heard his voice slice through Judah's protest, she walked down the hall on wobbly legs.

      
“I will see the Lady Miriam, now.” Rigo held his sword pointed at the throat of a burly doorman. Judah had just commanded the brute to throw him into the street.

      
“You cannot kill all my servants, savage that you are. I will have you put on the rack until your Spanish bones crack and pop if you do not leave here at once!” Judah shouted, the veins in his temple bulging out, so great was his fury.

      
“I have fair killed a fine stallion riding from Italy in the icy blasts of winter. After such a brutal journey, I will not be denied.”

      
“I am her father and I do deny you. Tis my right.”

      
“You speak of rights. I will hear from your daughter's own lips her will in this matter. Or, would you we discussed it in front of your whole household?” Rigo's sword moved from the doorman's chest and he gestured about the entry, now filling with servants.

      
“My daughter will wed Richard DuBay!” Judah paled, fearing that Miriam's shameful secret would be revealed. “All is settled.”

      
“Nothing is settled until I have spoken with her,” Rigo replied, his blade once more centered on the doorman, who had advanced a menacing step only to retreat when he felt the sharp prick of cold steel.

      
“Let us discuss this privately in the library, Father. I would not have my name the subject of even more gossip,” Miriam said from the top of the stairs. She studied Rigo as she began her descent. He did indeed look as if he had ridden for weeks without respite. His heavy cloak was rain soaked and his face was drawn and unshaven, shadowed by a heavy black beard. He looked tired and haggard and dangerous.

      
When she stepped into the corridor, Judah dismissed the servants and walked stiffly behind her, ahead of Rigo, as if keeping them apart by his physical presence. She turned the knob and let the oaken door swing inward on well-oiled hinges.
I must face him
. Miriam could scarcely draw breath as she stood in the center of the large room.

      
Cold gray light poured in the window, etching Rigo's harsh expression even more sharply. His eyes were storm dark as they pierced her, sweeping insolently from her face to dwell on her belly. She bore his perusal without a twitch yet each second was an agony that ate at her soul.

      
Judah was the first to break the silence. “You have no place in this house, Spaniard. There is nothing for you and my daughter to say to each other.”

      
Rigo still held the naked blade in one hand. Resting it point down on the polished hardwood floor, he ignored Judah and asked Miriam bluntly, “Are you with child?”

      
“Would it not better suit your purpose to ask if tis yours?” she replied levelly.

      
His jaw clenched involuntarily as he replied, “We both know the truth. Tis mine.” He combed his hand through his long, wind-tangled hair.

      
“It matters not that you have gotten her with child. She will wed Richard DuBay,” Judah thundered.

      
“No other man will claim my child.” Rigo's voice was ice cold. “You think me a savage without honor, but life has schooled me well. I will not repeat the sins of Aaron Torres. I will wed Miriam.” Rigo's face was shuttered as he faced Toulon.

      
“Perhaps I do not choose to wed you,” Miriam said angrily, her eyes flashing from her father to Rigo.

      
“You will not consign my child to a life of rejection! I know how that crafty merchant will treat a bastard's bastard.”

      
“You impute your low standards to a worthy man,” Judah said with contempt, relieved at Miriam's refusal.

      
“A worthy man,” Rigo echoed. “Is he so, lady? Would you rather spend your life safe in Marseilles in a rich man's house...at the price of your child's happiness?”

      
“Would you make such a paragon of a father as to guarantee greater happiness?”
Why do you speak only of the child, never of me?
her heart cried. Yet she held her peace.

      
“The babe will have Indian blood. If it is raised on the Torres
hato
, surely that will be the better life, no matter how unworthy a father I may be.”

      
Judah crossed to stand between the two combatants, shielding his angry daughter and staring in rage at the half-caste. “You will be no father to this wretched child! You are not fit to stand in my house. You have heard Miriam's words. Now leave. She weds DuBay, one of our own people.”

      
Miriam flinched at her father's cruel words yet said nothing.
This wretched child
. She had shamed him, dishonored their family name. She deserved no better...but must the innocent babe suffer for her sins?

      
As if reading her mind, Rigo looked past Judah's shoulder to fix his piercing blue eyes on her pale face. “Do you say me nay? I have ridden far to claim what is mine. If you would have none of me, you can yet have the vaunted Torres name. My esteemed father's family grows rich in the Indies—or so says Benjamin. They will honor you and love the child, Miriam.” He could sense her weakening resolve.

      
So could Judah Toulon. “Aaron Torres is a
converso,
wed to a Christian. In that savage wilderness you would be the outsider, Miriam. I forbid it!”

      
Miriam felt her heart rip. Could she choose total separation from all that was dear and familiar here in Marseilles? Yet she must think first of the child, for Rigo was right. DuBay had been bribed to wed her and could treat the babe any way he chose. If it was swarthy as its sire... Her mind raced back once more to Rigo's feverish raving about his childhood. She looked at her father's mottled face, both furiously angry and beseechingly frightened at the same time.
I will never see you again, Father. Forgive me
. “I will wed you, Rigo,” she said in a low voice that broke, yet her back was straight, her head held high.

      
Judah looked at her with darkened eyes that grew flinty and fierce when her familiar gray eyes returned his stare unwaveringly. He recognized the resolution in her and something inside him snapped. He reached for the long full sleeve of his cloak, methodically rending the heavy velvet. “I have no daughter,” he said, then began the rote words in Hebrew.

      
His eyes were lusterless now, not seeing her as she stepped past him to stand trembling yet dry-eyed before Rigo. “I am ready. There is nothing in this house that belongs to me now. You must take me as I am for there will be no dowry.”

      
Rigo scowled. “Think you I would claim a woman just to gain her wealth?” He reached for her hand, limp and ice cold, pulling her with him as he left Judah Toulon mumbling in some unknown tongue. The old man seemed not to notice their departure.

      
“Has the very idea of your wedding a half-caste addled his brain that he babbles so?” Rigo asked as they entered the drafty corridor to the front entry.

      
“Judah Toulon does not babble. Tis Hebrew, the prayer for the dead. When a Jew weds outside our faith, the law of Moses dictates that parents must mourn, for that child is dead to them for all eternity.” She could feel Rigo's grip on her arm tighten as he swore beneath his breath.

      
One look at the dangerous Spaniard's face sent the servants scurrying for cover, even the brutish doorkeep. She herself did not dare to meet the blazing anger in Rigo's eyes. Its heat radiated all about her even when he opened the front door and January's icy blast of rain smote them in the face.

      
“Hold this about you while I mount,” he commanded as he enveloped her in his heavy cloak. Miriam closed her eyes and buried her face in the heavy wool, filled with the scents of this man, who had changed her life so irrevocably. He was a stranger who would soon be her husband and yet...yet every subtle nuance of smell, touch, voice and movement was achingly familiar. Since that night when she had bathed his naked, burning flesh, how often had she studied him? Dreamed of him?
I am bewitched
.

      
Rigo mounted his stallion and scooped her up in front of him, then murmured to the big black, “Easy, Peligro, easy.”

      
“My father's men will not give chase. You may sheath your sword,” she said.

      
“Had I never unsheathed my sword, my lady, we would not have come to this sorry pass,” he replied, kicking the stallion into a brisk trot up the twisting streets toward the Torres palace.

      
The rain hid her tears and she made no reply to his crude innuendo.

* * * *

      
“I have sent to my old friend, Francois Moreau, to arrange the marriage,” Isaac said as he paced back and forth in the large bed chamber he shared with Ruth.

      
His wife wrung her hands and then sank onto the edge of a couch set against the wall. “Are you certain this marriage is for the best? Miriam is so desperately unhappy. I fear what this breech with her father will do to her.”

      
“Joining her life to my nephew's half-caste bastard was her choice, not ours, certainly not Judah's,” Isaac replied irritably. “At least the rogue returned to wed her. I warned Benjamin when he brought his brother here twould come to no good.”

      
At the mention of Benjamin, Ruth's eyes filled with tears. ”Tis Benjamin who should wed her, not Rigo.”

      
“Miriam has always been strong-willed—and until now possessed of sound judgment. She has chosen the Christian. She must accept conversion and a priest must wed them. I have sent to my ship's master to arrange the swiftest passage to Española. She would travel most safely ere her time draws near.”

      
“Twill not be until the end of June. There is time enough, Isaac,” Ruth said gently.

      
“If I can abide the sight of that foul seducer long enough to see him wed Miriam Toulon, that is time enough!” Isaac said grimly.

      
He walked to the table and poured himself a goblet of unwatered wine. Although from the finest vineyard in Provence, it tasted bitter as wharf swill. From the moment he had learned of Miriam's disgrace, he had felt stricken with guilt for not seeing danger in the Spaniard's presence among them. He should have denied Benjamin's pleas and sent the outcast to dwell among his own kind as soon as he was out of danger from his wound. He should have—

      
“You blame yourself,” Ruth remonstrated, knowing the way his mind worked after all the years they had lived together. “Isaac, do not. You could not turn away Aaron's son. And,” she sighed, “Miriam should have known not to trust his wickedly handsome face. She is no green girl.”

      
He snorted in affectionate derision as he walked over to place his arm about her shoulders. “She is scarce all that worldly as to recognize the Spaniard's guile. Let us trouble no more about it. Tis out of our hands now. Soon they will be wed and off to the Indies.”

      
“Far better to have Aaron and his family safe here with us,” Ruth said wistfully.

      
“Perhaps someday we shall, but not yet,” Isaac replied, patting her comfortingly as he gazed at the candle's flame.

* * * *

      
Rigo spent the following days away from the Torres house, trying desperately to sort out his confused emotions. That the haughty Torres family blamed him for Miriam's fall from grace was obvious. That they also considered him an inferior choice for a husband was even more apparent. Yet their opinion of him did not signify. Miriam was cool and aloof when not spitting at him like a cornered she-cat. “What did I expect? That she would fall into my arms and declare her love?” Long accustomed to protecting himself from the pain of rejection, Rigo de Las Casas would not make that foolish mistake.

      
His own guilt held him in silent thrall. Even if he felt she held any regard for him beyond the flaring lust that had led them to this travesty, she had been his brother's betrothed. The only person in this whole accursed Torres family whom he genuinely cared for, he had betrayed.

      
The winter rain suited his mood as he dismounted and handed Peligro's reins to a stableboy. He had arranged everything for their passage to the Indies, using the letter of credit his father had sent when he believed his firstborn came willingly with Benjamin and Benjamin's bride.
My father. What will he be like?

      
Everyone in the family said Benjamin was an exact replica of Aaron Torres. Rigo's mouth twisted bitterly. But for his dark hair and skin he, too, must be an exact replica. “Too late we both learn of responsibility for our by-blows,” he muttered, then mentally corrected himself. Miriam's child would be no bastard. She was a white woman, a lady whose virtue must be protected.
Even at the cost of my soul.