Return to Paradise (Torres Family Saga) (43 page)

      
When she lifted her head to stare into his eyes, for a brief moment, Rigo was startled. His wife seemed like a triumphant lioness surveying her prey with indolent possessiveness.

* * * *

      
The candle flickered as Rigo bent lower, holding the fragile yellowed pages nearer its fading light. He had excused himself immediately after dinner with his large and boisterous family, to seek privacy in an unused bedroom at the rear of the large house. Dawn inched its way over the jagged mountains in the east. He had been reading all night, held spellbound by the tragedies and triumphs of Aaron Torres' life, revealed with such naked honesty in these brittle pages. He felt he knew not only Aaron, his father, but Benjamin, his grandfather, to whom all the entries were addressed. Magdalena Valdés had loved Benjamin as a surrogate father in place of the treacherous Bernardo Valdés. How strange, she, an Old Christian, and he, a Jewish convert, should form such a bond, as these volumes revealed.

      
Now, after reading his father's reaction to Navaro's birth, he knew he wanted with all his heart to belong to this family. Aaron's words floated before his eyes, the handwriting on the page revealing his pain.

I miss my firstborn son most intensely. I will never cease my search for him. If God favors me with his richest blessing, I shall find my son...

      
The entries continued over the years. Villages were searched whenever a rumor of a blue-eyed Taino youth reached him. No matter how distant the place or unlikely the tale, Aaron had ridden in search of Navaro, always to be disappointed...until now. Rigo rubbed his eyes and closed the last chapter of the final volume Magdalena had given him. It contained the entry on the day when Benjamin's letter about him reached the Torres
hato
from distant Marseilles. Rigo cringed in guilt as he read Aaron's unbounded, incredulous joy at the news:

How can this be? After thirty years, God does indeed answer prayers in His own good time. Benjamin has found Navaro and saved his life. I count the days until they sail home.

      
Rigo swallowed against the tightening in his throat and blinked back tears. There was more of his uncle Guacanagari's emotionalism in him than he had ever imagined. He gathered up the volumes and stood, stretching his cramped arms and legs. It was past dawn now, time to begin the work day on the
hato
. If his father adhered to his usual habits, he would be downstairs to break his fast, then soon off to the stables.

      
Aaron stood in the doorway of his library silently watching his son approach. There was something about Rigo's expression, the tentative way his arrogant son was walking, that set the hair at his nape standing on end. Then he saw the diaries in Rigo's hands. His heart slammed in his chest and he choked out, “Where did you get those?”

      
“May we speak in private?” Rigo indicated the door ajar to Aaron's work room and then proceeded to walk past his father.

      
Aaron followed, uncertain of what to do or say as he faced his firstborn son whose love he had tried so hard to win, the stranger who had rejected all overtures. He felt a premonition about their relationship, but held his peace, watching as Rigo carefully laid the musty volumes on the long table in the center of the room.

      
“Magdalena gave me these when I returned from my talk with Uncle Guacanagari yesterday evening.” He waited for some reaction, very uncertain about how to approach what he must say.

      
Aaron's face could be as shuttered and expressionless as his son's but this time he did not mask his feelings. His eyebrows arched in amazement. “And did you find the contents interesting?”

      
“I know there was much that was very private, meant for no one else to read,” Rigo began slowly.

      
“Even my wife has seen only parts of these letters. I shared them with her because of her special love for my father...I suppose, after reading what she did, that is why she felt you would be enlightened by them.”

      
“I have been a very great fool to require this means of convincing me about your feelings.”

      
“I will not debate that point,” Aaron replied drily.

      
“Do not blame my stepmother for giving them to me. I am sorry if I have offended you. I know now how much you both have suffered...even if I cannot comprehend the depth of it. Until now, I had no one, no family to lose but for a foster brother who left me when I was a small boy.”

      
“Until now?” Aaron's voice broke into a whisper. “Do you now feel that you belong? That your family loves you...that
I
love you?”

      
Rigo's eyes met his father's and locked with them across the space of the room. “Yes. Most of all, you,” he answered simply.

      
Neither man was certain who took the first step, but in an instant they were embracing, trembling silently, too filled with raw emotion to speak. Both were soldiers, hard survivors, unused to displays of affection. Yet the blood ties stretching across thirty years would not be denied.

      
They struggled to regain their composure and Aaron spoke first. “After all the searching, the false hopes raised, then dashed, then finally finding you only to learn what calamity had befallen you...I felt so helplessly guilty for it all, Rigo.”

      
“Twas no fault of yours. After Uncle Guacanagari spoke of Aliyah, I understood what had truly happened. Then I read everything in your letters to Grandfather. I would wish to have known him and all his family.”

      
A small, wistful smile touched Aaron's lips. “Even though we are Jews?”

      
“Yes. I have learned to take great pride in my heritage. After a lifetime of cursing my Indian blood I have seen the mettle of the Taino and now I understand the remarkable men and women of the House of Torres. I am honored to call myself your son,” Rigo said humbly.

      
“No father could wish for a finer son. And soon there will be another generation of Torres children.” Aaron observed the way Rigo's expression again became shuttered after such an open display of emotion. “Things are not well between you and Miriam. Is there aught that you would speak of? Magdalena and I are veterans of many years in a less than placid marriage.”

      
“You have both been more than charitable in accepting our marriage. We have grievously wronged my brother.”

      
“Yet you love her and she you. I have seen this with my own eyes. Magdalena has commented on it, too. You cannot use Benjamin as an excuse for your own pride and stubbornness.” Aaron watched a stricken expression glance fleetingly across Rigo's face, then vanish.

      
“We are drawn together in passion and our lust has created a child. Tis not the stuff marriages are built upon.”

      
“Nonsense! If your passions were so strong as to allow you both to breech your sense of honor, it must signify far more than mere lust. And marriages are built upon far less substantial grounds in most cases.”

      
“Miriam is a lady, spoiled and headstrong, a woman who has worked at a man's profession and will not yield it. And I am a rough soldier, used to command and obedience. We do not deal well together.”

      
Aaron chuckled now. “Did you learn nothing from reading my letters? If ever there has been a woman headstrong, it is your stepmother! I was forced into wedding her by Cristobal Colon himself and bitterly resented it.”

      
“She pursued you across the ocean—she loved you.”

      
“Ah, so at last we come to the heart of the matter,” Aaron said, looking at his proud, lonely son. “You do not believe Miriam loves you, only that she was forced to wed you because of the child.”

      
Rigo turned and walked to the window overlooking Magdalena's flower gardens. His eyes saw not the rioting fuchsias, yellows and crimsons, only his wife's lovely face, her clear gray eyes, the proud uptilted chin and delicately sculpted mouth. “She was forced to abandon her life of wealth and comfort, her father's love, everything for me, and it eats like a canker at her soul, more with every passing month.”

      
“She is about to be delivered of a child. Women are scarce at their most amenable at such times. As a man with six children, I can speak with authority on the subject. Such remoteness does not mean that Miriam does not love you.”

      
“Never in these many months has she said she cared for me.”

      
“You, of course, have professed undying devotion to her,” Aaron replied sagely.

      
Rigo turned on his heel abruptly, once again facing his father. “No, I have not. She made it quite plain when I claimed her from Judah Toulon's house how she felt about me. For a while, aboard ship...I had hoped we might mend the breech and begin anew, but she again turned from me.”

      
“Yet she chose to wed you—and I know enough about my Uncle Isaac's friend Judah Toulon to understand how dearly that cost her. You and Benjamin both offered to wed her, so he wrote, as did other men her father approved. Miriam went with you, Rigo—not because of the babe, or because of honor. I have watched her these past months. She loves you and you use her ill by refusing to let down the barriers you have placed around your heart. You must speak the words first. Tell her you love her, for I know you do. Only then will you hear her speak her heart. Twill work.”

      
“You make simple what is most complex,” Rigo said sourly.

      
“Love is just such a paradox,” Aaron replied serenely.

* * * *

      
Rigo gave Peligro and himself substantial exercise riding after
cimarrones
all day, driving the wild cattle into pens. But by sundown, when both horse and rider were exhausted and drenched with sweat, he was no nearer to an answer about his wife than he had been that morning. Did Miriam love him? “There is but one way to learn the truth. Father is right. I must risk all and tell her.” As he rode toward the compound, numerous other riders joined him, laughing and joking, glad of a good day's work passed without sighting raiders or experiencing any other mishap.

      
“Perhaps the wretched curs have been treated to enough of our steel,” Rudolfo said. “I saw no sign of cattle missing.”

      
“Between our men and Guacanagari's, we sent those Frenchies scurrying like rats back to their ship,” another rider said.

      
“Yet it is not safe to ride alone until we know who the Spaniards are who deal with Brienne,” Rigo interjected.

      
When they separated at the compound gate, each going to his own home, Rigo decided he would search out Miriam. Better to have done with the confrontation before another day passed. As he swung down from Peligro by the stable door, his father rode up on his big chestnut. The expression on Aaron Torres' face was grim. With a feeling of dread, Rigo walked over to meet him.

      
“Miriam went to an outlying Taino village this morning to treat a boy who fell into a mine. Magdalena says she should have returned by now yet there is no sign of her.”

      
“Did she go alone?” Rigo's hands clenched into fists and his heart accelerated with fear and fury.

      
“Magdalena was away in one of our orchards when the runner arrived. When she returned, Miriam had departed with only the runner and another of Guacanagari's men. My wife would never have allowed her to go so far with such little escort,” Aaron replied grimly.

      
As he remounted Peligro, Rigo said with a constricted throat, “You think the raiders have her.”

      
“There is every good chance.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

      
Esteban Elzoro observed Miriam Torres dispassionately from a twenty-foot distance. She was great with child. Idly he speculated about how she might look after her delivery. A bit too tall and thin for his tastes, he decided, yet there were those lovely silvery eyes and all that bronze hair. She sat, bound hand and foot, with a blindfold across her eyes. He had insisted on that precaution when he sent his men to capture her. He could not chance that she ever recognize him. If she did, his associate in Marseilles would be exceedingly wroth and he might find himself stretching a rope as a renegade.

      
“What good fortune that the half-caste's wife fell so easily into our trap,” he said to Vincente Yarros, the leader of his raiders.

      
The burly man touched his grizzled cheek, which was covered with scratches. “She did not fall all that easily. If I had not your strictest orders against injuring the wench, she would be dead. Who would think such a frail, pregnant woman could fight so?”

      
“Well, she is unharmed and you shall be rewarded. Soon her family will come seeking her and we shall be able to finish Rigo Torres once and for good.”

      
Yarros spat and scratched his thickening middle. “I like not trusting the intelligence of an Indian boy to lure the half-caste into our trap.”

      
“Juan knows what will befall his brother if he does not do as he is bidden,” Elzoro said with finality.

      
The boy, Juan, had been a slave all of his life, working as did his older brother and all his family, in the fields and mines that belonged to Elzoro. He sat disconsolately across the fire, staring into its flames, not eating the meager ration of
cassava
bread. The lady had been so kind. She had come in response to his summons and set all Filipe's broken bones. Her skills were truly magical. And she was with child. Now he was instructed to lure her husband to certain death. How could he do it? How could he not, and let Elzoro decree Filipe's death?