Savage Enchantment (12 page)

Had it really been three weeks? Twenty-one days since that ruinous night she had wedded with Simon?
Simon!

The very name lingered on her tongue like a bad taste.

Kathleen straightened from where she knelt on the stream's bank and rubbed her work-reddened hand along the small of her back. She arched her spine with contentment as some of the ache slipped away. At least there was one ache that she did not have to deal with that day -- the piercing abdominal pain that had come with each month's menstural.

Kathleen grimaced. She supposed she had Simon's nightly ravaging of her body to thank for that. Thank God, the telltale red that morning had also released her from her fears of pregnancy.

The other women were busy chattering over the laundry they spread on the grass to dry. But Kathleen, embarrassed by her position at the
ranchería
-- a white woman, a prisoner, in spite of the fact that they regarded her as Simon's wife -- could not bring herself to be spontaneously friendly in response to the polite overtures of the women, even to the thirteen-year-old Imelda who, in her pigeon-toed Indian gate, followed adoringly in Kathleen's footsteps.

Each time Kathleen washed a leather shirt of Simon's, or the disgusting breechcloth, it brought home hard to her that she was nothing more than a servant ... a slave by day and an odalisque by night. She was lower than the women about her. For at least they were there by their own free will, while she was reduced to obey like an animal at Simon's beckoning.

Kathleen went back to scrubbing the soiled clothing on the rocks, enjoying the feeling of the warm sunlight on her skin. In the three weeks she had been at the camp, her skin had darkened, had taken on the hue of warm honey, as Simon had told her one afternoon.

She bit her lip at the unwelcome memory. Simon had come in hot and sweaty from drilling the men and, taking her by the hand, practically dragged her down to the glade she had come upon that first evening in camp. "A loving wife washes her husband's back," he said, the roguish grin making him seem years younger.

"I'll never be your loving wife, Simon Reyes!"

"Oh, but you will, Kathleen. You will."

He had stripped before her then, unbuttoning the faded blue shirt, unbuckling his belt, and removing the knee-high leather leggings. Kathleen turned from him, her hands covering her crimson face, when he shucked the worn denim pants. He came up behind her so that she could feel the searing heat of his naked skin against her and took her hands from her face, turning her around to face him.

"Now,
mi esposa,
you will wash my back."

Kathleen threw the bar of tallow soap he handed her on the bank. "You wash it yourself!" she spat, defiantly planting her fists on her hips.

One dark brow cocked. "Would you rather I wash you? You know, you look like a peasant woman with your dusty feet and braided hair. Maybe a good washing will restore the breathtaking beauty that graced my home and married me all in the same night."

Kathleen understood the threat. "Get in the water," she told him, her voice as icy as the mountain stream.

He laughed lightly. "I thought so."

Like a powerful, sleet otter, he dived beneath the surface of the water, and Kathleen retrieved the soap, biting back the thousand curses that trembled on her tongue. She lifted her skirts and tucked them into her waistband as she had seen the other women of the
ranchería do.

When Simon broke water near the bank, she saw the kindling flame of desire in his eyes as his gaze fixed on her long, slim legs, and she knew her first real taste of a woman's triumph over a man. She promised it would be her first of many small revenges against the men that had raped her, had betrayed her with her own reward poster, had used her to protect himself, and who now degraded and humiliated her each night that he took her, laughing softly at her silent struggles that would inevitably end in her passive yielding.

But this time it would be different. Simon would not have the opportunity to dominate her.

Gingerly she stepped into the current. When she halted, the water swirling about her knees, Simon rose from the water and waded to meet her. Kathleen kept her eyes on the distant tree-shaded bank until he was at her side. Then her heavily lashed lids raised to the watchful face. A slow smile eased his harsh countenance.

I'm ready,
mi esposa.
Are you?"

"Sit down," she ordered. When he dropped to his haunches, she knelt beside him and, dipping the soap in the water, began to lather the broad, sun-darkened back. She had meant only to tease him with her nearness, but the intimate task was pleasurable. As her hand glided over his back, she marveled at the muscles that rippled just below the warm skin.

The tenseness eased from the muscles beneath the gentle prodding of her fingers, and Simon grunted a sigh of relaxation. His head turned to look back at her. "Then you
can
make yourself useful," he said with a grin. "You're not just another pretty face."

An image of herself, looking like a toil-worn squaw, flashed through her mind, and she had to laugh in spite of herself. "You're a rogue!" she said and, without thinking, playfully shoved his head under water.

He came up laughing and sputtering water, his wet curls glistening in the sun. "So, you dare to challenge your husband, woman?" With a whoop, he tackled her as she staggered ashore, bringing her down among the willowly tules.

Without understanding it, it seemed to Kathleen that a magical hush overtook the secluded forest glade. There was the sensuous scent of the tropical flowers, the erotic play of the water's current about her legs -- and her acute awareness of Simon next to her. She heard the quickening of her own breath. Her eyes slid upwards to encounter Simon's intense gaze, to see the nostrils that flared passionately. The smiles faded from both of their faces.

Inexorably the arms that enfolded her about her hips moved up along her back to pull her against him so that his wet body soaked her thin clothing, burning her skin with the heat of his desire.

Kathleen closed her eyes against the inundating passion that seethed like molten lead in the fiery green depths of Simon's eyes. A liquid warmth fanned out from the pit of her belly as his lips traced a searing path to the base of her neck, ending in the softest brush at her nape. A weakness she could not believe claimed her. She clutched blindly at the sinewy shoulders.

Intertwined with the ragged intake of his breath, she heard her own whispered moan. "No, Simon. Please, no."

The brutal grip that dug into the soft skin of her arms jerked Kathleen back to reality. She trembled with absolute fear, knowing Simon capable of breaking her apart and crushing her as easily as he would a matchstick.

There was a wintry gleam in his eyes. "You try my patience, Kathleen!"

He shoved her from him then, and stalked from the lagoon while she floundered helplessly in the reeds. When she had regained her footing, she saw Simon squatting calmly on the bank. Casually he took a sheet of cornhusk paper and tobacco from the tin in his shirt pocket and rolled a cigarette. All the while his eyes studied her with an intentness that disconcerted her.

"I get tired of reminding you of your marital obligation -- namely, a warm response." His eyes suddenly narrowed to mere slits. "Or is there another that can thaw your Yankee coldness?"

Kathleen waded from the water and occupied herself by wringing the water from her skirt. "There isn't anybody else," she said tersely. "It's just that I-I don't feel like that."

Simon took the cigarette from between his lips and tossed it into the water. "Kathleen, you're a little hypocrite."

"I'm not a hypocrite! I'm not!" Kathleen told herself as she wrung the water from the laundry with agitated motions. "He's so sure of his persuasive power over other women! He just can't imagine that I wouldn't feel the same as those others."

And she wondered again as she carried the laundry back to the camp just how many others there had been in Simon's life. How many others had shared his wickiup with him.

It was with a lightened mind she recalled that that night she would not have to share the wickiup with Simon. "I'll be leaving," he told her early that morning.

She had looked up quickly from the shirt she was mending. "Why? Where?"

Simon stopped at the doorway. "Do I detect curiosity -- or concern -- in that lovely voice of yours?"

"Neither," she said bluntly. "What you detect is sheer relief."

Her head bent low over the material, and she did not see the hand that tightened about the curtain in angry ridges. But his voice was even. "Then it should please you to know I'll be gone several days."

"Why? To put in your cursory appearance at the civilized ranchero? To woo the beauteous -- and wealthy -- Francesca Escandón? Or will your time be spent in the guise of the bandit vaquero -- profitably victimizing innocent citizens? How can you keep from despising yourself?" she asked him scathingly.

"I won't defend my actions to you or anyone, Kathleen," he said, his voice taut with the anger she knew he kept barely in check.

Still, she felt driven to provoke him that morning, why she could not understand. So when Simon said, "I've requested Renaldo to stay close by while I'm gone -- should you need him," she threw the mending down and bounded to her feet.

"To watch me, isn't that it? To keep me from escaping?" She flung herself against him with a cry of frustrated rage, beating with small clenched fists on his chest. "How long, Simon? How long will you keep me like this?"

He caught her hands in his, a feigned look of surprise on the rugged face. "Why, beloved, you know we vowed before God it would be for the rest of our lives -- 'till death do us part.' Wasn't that the way it went?"

"Then may God make your life mercifully short," she declared, her voice vibrating with a passionate loathing.

"He's despicable! A-an abominable, mercenary beast!"

Kathleen changed the direction of her pacing and continued her tirade, "I loathe him, Concha! What kind of low animal is he to force -- to have his way with me and then leave me all this time at the mercy of these -- these brigands?"

Concha set the dinner plate on the wickiup's platform and, folding her arms, faced
el jefe's amante,
his golden mistress, his lovely wife. The young woman was suffering one of those dark moods that seemed to have gripped her since
el jefe
left.

"He's been gone little more than a week," she told Kathleen placatingly. "And those people you call brigands, I might remind you, are friends --
your
friends, if you'd give them a chance.

"I'm sorry, Concha," Kathleen said contritely. "I-I guess it's the weather."

"No te preocuparás, niña.
Armand says everyone gets that way just before a storm breaks. Now eat your dinner. Else you'll be as thin as the old woman of the village. And
el jefe'll
turn his eye elsewhere.

"God that he would!" Kathleen snapped. "And leave me in peace!"

"Concha shrugged fatalistically and muttered,
"Quién entiende los modos de amor?"
before leaving Kathleen to her dinner.

Reproaching herself for her rudeness, Kathleen put out a tentative hand to detain the woman, but decided against it. She would probably only say something else ungracious, and she certainly didn't want to anger the only friend she had in the camp.

That was untrue, of course. There was Imelda. And Margarita and her brother Temcal. Kathleen had to smile, remembering how the youth, who was famed for his skill at silversmithing, had ducked his receding chin until it touched his bobbing Adam's apple the morning he presented her with a silver arm bracelet.

And then there was Renaldo. Dear Renaldo, who every night in Simon's absence slept outside her doorway. But Renaldo's Old World politeness kept the friendship between them on a more formal plane.

Kathleen toyed with the
refrijoles
and
cabrito,
but could not bring herself to eat. What
was
wrong with her? An aching, oppressive loneliness gnawed inside her, matching the gloomy clouds that had overcast the skies the last several days.

And then there ws the boredome. At least when Simon had been there, there had been the challenge of sharp words, the duel of honed wits to lend excitement to the days. And then there had been the nights. The whispered words of sex in both English and Spanish to stir her senses; the knowing fingers, the burning lips that roused her to frenzied heights.

Damn it! Why must she torment herself with memories of the man who ravaged her body, despoiled her spirit, and ravished her very thoughts? She looked down at the ring on her third finger. She would never remove it! It would serve to remind her of the revenge she would one day take on Simon.

Resolutely she put the man's mocking face from her and went to the doorway, moving aside the curtain. Yes, there was the faithful Renaldo. The way he sat on his blanket -- with his back against the wickiup, his arms crossed at his knees, and the sombrero pulled low over his scarfed head -- reminded Kathleen of her original conception of the Mexican people.

It had been a political cartoon run in the Boston
Times Herald
at the end of Texas's war for independence against Mexico. It pictured the Mexican as indolent and lazy, believing that everything should wait on the morrow. But the men of the
ranchería
didn't fit that description. They were forever occupied with something -- their horses, their guns, and -- yes -- their women.

And Renaldo most certainly didn't fit that misconception. He seemed more educated than most of the men, more cultured. What was he doing living like a bandit? But then, what was Simon doing living like a bandit? she asked herself. Why did he run goods with Nathan when he obviously didn't need the money? Or was he indeed involved in an insurrection?

"Renaldo," she whispered.

Sí, señora?"

Then Renaldo had been awake after all. He must have known she had come outside, but, in that polite manner of his, was merely waiting for her to break the silence. She slid down opposite him on the other side of the doorway.

"Who are you really, Renaldo?" She gestured at the multitude of forms huddled at the various campfires that dotted the valley, taking their evening meal. "Why are you living a life like this?"

In the darkness she could barely make out his face, and she was not sure whether he had heard her, but after a minute he said, in that soft, precise voice of his, "I was born on a rancho. My father was a blacksmith there. Before that he was a soldier, coming from Mexico to serve under Lieutenant Luis Aguello. The company was posted at the then-new presidio of Santa Barbara. When my father had saved enough earnings, he sent to the Tepic for his sweetheart, and he and my mother were married at Santa Barbara's mission.

"My father had great hopes that things would be different here; that a man would be reckoned by his accomplishments -- not by his class. But he found it was not to be so. He and my mother were not of pure Spanish blood, but a mixture --
cholos
they are called here."

Renaldo paused, and his sigh, a mixture of bitterness and wistfulness, was lost in the groan of the rising wind. Chilled, Kathleen wrapped her arms about her, patiently waiting for Renaldo to continue.

"When those hopes were dimmed," Renaldo said finally, "they set their dreams on me. Every
real
they earned went to pay the rancho's padre for my lessons. And so I became misfit -- too educated for those of my own class but too lowly bred for the Californios ... I, who can read and write, when less than a hundred of the grandees in all of California can even sign their name."

For some minutes the two of them sat wrapped in their own thoughts while the distant sky flickered with streaks of lightning and the nearby campfires burned lower.

But at last Kathleen could no longer contain her curiosity about the man who had bound her to him. "And Simon?" she asked in a voice that could just be heard above the rush of the wind through the tossing tree limbs. "Is his the same story?"

"That I couldn't tell you."

"Couldn't or wouldn't?"

"Both. Probably old Diego,
el viejo,
is th eonly one that knows the whole story. Maybe Father Marcos. I can only tell you that if it weren't for El Cóndor, the man you call Simon, I'd still be sitting feeling sorry for myself and those like me instead of doing something about it."

"Do you really think Simon's way is better?" Kathleen asked, not trying to hide the caustic bite in her voice.

"If you've ever been kept in one of the mission's compounds, then you could answer that fairly. There comes a time when rationalization and compromises won't reform injustice. I believe one of your own countrymen, Thomas Paine, put it much more succinctly than I."

"And where do you draw the line between the revolutionary -- the hero -- and the traitor -- the villain?"

"History draws that line. History and, in the final analysis, your own personal evaluation of the man, se)ora."

Overhead the lightning crackled. The first drops of rain pelted the Indian who sat bareback on the quarter horse. The animal danced each time the lightning zigzagged across the heavens, and the man bent forward, stroking the great beast's neck. "Gently, Salvaje," he whispered. "Home is just below."

From his lookout atop the glaciered butte, the
ranchería
could barely be distinguished. Only the smoldering ashes of the campfires betrayed its existence, and then only to the keenest eye.

"Home," he repeated to himself, with a mockery that contorted his face so that, had any God-fearing person seen his countenance at that moment, one would have sworn he was Satan wandering the earth that night and loosing the thunderstorm upon his chosen victimes.

Had there ever been a home? Simon wondered. No, that was the irony of it all. There had been a home -- one he had known as a small child. The security, the love, that had abounded in that mountain cabin.

What in God's holy name had made him take Kathleen there that first night? He remembered feeling as if it had been a desecration, allowing her in the cabin that had been his mother's. And his father's whenever the man could escape the responsibilities of the rancho -- and the eagle eye of his wife.

And now Simon had his own wife -- Kathleen.

What kind of welcome would she give him tonight? Would she quiver with fear when those moments of bitterness assailed him? Would her great, wine-colored eyes flash disdainfully, displaying the hatred for him that overflowed her heart? Or would she be in one of those rare moods when the pure pleasure of delight would erupt in her bubbling laughter?

His lips stretched in a grim line, and he healed Salvaje forward, holding the horse to a slow center, delaying his return. Regardless of her moods, he told himself, when they came together at night, the outcome was always the same. Her resistance, which he could but admire even while he strove to break it, and which always ended in her passive yielding to him as his will finally dominated.

And this angered him the greatest. Because there was a warm-blooded -- no, hot-blooded -- woman beneath that cold exterior. Dammit, he knew with every nerve in his body that there were moments when the real woman in Kathleen was just below the surface. Her passion, if released, would match his. But maybe it was to be another man that would taste the honey of her love, that would devour the pleasures she would willingly give.

The thought of her beautiful, tantalizing body spread-eagled for some other man to sample, to delight in, drove Simon at times to a feverish pitch. And he would turn it on Kathleen in perverse forms of mental cruelty -- and yes, wasn't his rapturous ravishing of her golden body a physical cruelty?

So what drove him to possess Kathleen? It was sheer foolishness to continue to keep her. Gemma was twenty times the lover Kathleen was. And Gemma knew all sorts of tricks to drive a man wild. And yet, didn't the mere mental image of Kathleen beneath him, her heavy tresses spread out like a feathered fan, drive him wild?

It was madness to keep Kathleen. And even crazier to try to trace this Edmund Woodsworth. To risk his life looking for a man who was nothing to him. But he, himself, must hold some interest for Woodsworth -- or else Gemma wouldn't have sent word that Kathleen's fiancé had been asking questions, had even wired for a detective out of New Orleans.

The trip had proved worthless. Woodsworth had disappeared by the time Simon reached Santa Barbara. Still, he felt instinctively that he had not seen the last of the man.

So much the better, he thought. For it would be just one more severed tie that bound Kathleen to her old life. And at the thought of her, Simon's hand came down hard on Salvaje's flanks, urging the quarter horse homeward.