This Fierce Splendor (28 page)

“You hadn’t met Ramon before today?” Elspeth asked. How strange. She couldn’t have mistaken the expression on the Mexican’s face as he looked at Dominic. She had received such a vivid impression of the man’s feeling for Dominic. “I thought he had been at Killara for a long time.”

“Dominic and Patrick both looked at her in surprise.

“Why would you assume that?” Dominic asked.

Elspeth frowned. “I don’t know. I guess it was because he was looking at you with such … affection.”

Patrick burst into laughter. “It isn’t men Dom usually inspires to instant affection. Perhaps we should inquire about Ramon’s tastes.”

“I don’t understand,” Elspeth said.

Dominic shot Patrick a lethal glance. “Of course you don’t, but I’m sure our Patrick will be willing to explain.”

Patrick looked a little sheepish. “Sorry, that kind of slipped out.” His gaze went to Ramon Torres, who had managed to lasso the gray mare and was leading her out of the corral. “Come on, I’ll get you Brianne’s old saddle from the barn. It will be lighter and easier for you to handle.”

The two men had evidently decided the subject was closed, Elspeth realized with frustration. They had both laughed at her and yet she
knew
she was right. Ramon had looked at Dominic with an almost loving gaze. “Thank you, that would be a great help. I certainly don’t want to have to depend on any
man
for assistance.”

Patrick pursed his lips in a silent whistle. “No, ma’am. You sure wouldn’t want that.”

Elspeth smiled reluctantly. Patrick might belong to the conspiracy of male supremacy, but he was trying to help her. “Which way should I ride so that I won’t get lost?”

“You don’t have to worry about that as long as you stay in the valley. You can see the house from practically everywhere.” He frowned. “Just stay away from the Mexican village. Sometimes the vaqueros drink a little too much mescal.”

“You’re letting her go by herself?” Dominic snapped. “For God’s sake, what are you thinking of?”

“Gran-da told me to go back to Shamrock today and help them finish up.” Patrick smiled innocently. “You’re the only one who’s not doing anything. I think you’re the one who should go with her.”

“No one has to go with me. I told you—” She broke off as she met Dominic’s gaze. He looked so strange. His gray-blue eyes were blazing, yet the curve of his lips was not tight but full and sensual. The tension emanating from him was nearly tangible.

“I’ve stopped listening to what you tell me,” he said thickly. He stood as if a statue, staring at her with his light eyes brilliant, restless. He turned away. “I’ll go saddle my horse. Be ready to leave in ten minutes.” Before she could speak he was walking swiftly toward the barn.

Patrick laughed softly. “I think Uncle Dom is a tad upset this morning. We’d better humor him and be sure we’re ready when he is. I’ll saddle the gray this time and tell you how to do it as I go along, okay?”

She nodded. “Splendid.” She cast a glance at the entrance to the barn through which Dominic had disappeared. She didn’t want Dominic with her, but no one seemed to care what her preferences were in the matter. She turned to Patrick. “Why don’t you go and say hello to Silver and Rising Star before you leave? I know they want to see you.”

Patrick’s smile disappeared. “I don’t have much time. I have to get over to Shamrock.”

Elspeth frowned. He hadn’t seemed in the least hurry to depart before this. “Don’t you want to see them? I know you like Silver and I thought you and Rising Star were old friends. Brianne told me that you all had lessons together when Rising Star first came to Killara.”

“That’s right.” Patrick kept his eyes fixed on the gray horse that Ramon was leading through the corral gate. “Rising Star didn’t know now to read or write English, of course, so Gran-da hired a school-teacher from back east to live at the house and give the three of us lessons.” He suddenly smiled. “But in three years Rising Star knew more than the teacher, so Gran-da let the schoolmarm go and Rising Star taught us. I’ve never seen anything like the way she worked to learn. She couldn’t seem to get enough. You should have seen the way her eyes would light up when she caught on to something. Lord, she was beautiful. Not like she is now. She’s different now. Just as beautiful, but different. When she first came to Killara, Brianne and I were four and she was sixteen but she seemed as much a child as we were. She was always laughing and joking and making up games.”

Elspeth’s gaze rested on his face and she experienced a flicker of anxiety she didn’t fully understand. It had something to do with the glow of tenderness illuminating Patrick’s eyes. “Then why don’t you go to the house and see them?”

He turned and looked across the courtyard at the house. He didn’t speak for a moment and Elspeth had the feeling he had forgotten she was there. “Maybe I will,” he murmured. “Just for a minute.” He tugged his hat down over his eyes and turned away abruptly, starting across the stableyard toward the barn. “First I’ll go fetch Brianne’s saddle for you.”

Elspeth stared after him, surprised at the suddenness of his departure, and then turned to look at Ramon, standing a few yards away holding the gray mare. His dark lustrous eyes watched her with bland good humor, and, as his gaze met her own, he smiled at her.

A sweet smile, but not the tender, loving one he had given Dominic.

“You were right, it is far more painful to trot,” Elspeth said.

“What?” Dominic looked over his shoulder, his expression abstracted. Elspeth experienced a surge of annoyance. It was the first word he had uttered since they set out an hour ago and exactly reflected the moody remoteness he had exhibited the entire time. There had been no need for her to be apprehensive about Dominic’s coming with her. She might as well have been alone. “You told me once it was more painful to trot than to gallop. I’m ready to attest to it.”

“I do recall saying that.” He remembered saying more than those words. He had told her that their next ride would be more enjoyable, but that hadn’t proved true. Not for him. The ride back to Hell’s Bluff from the cabin had been sheer torture, and this trip today had been little better. The tension coiled within him like barbed wire. No matter which way he turned to try to free himself, it only drove the barbs deeper.

He had tried not to look at her, not to speak to her, but it had done little good. She was
there
. He had never been so excruciatingly conscious of the physical presence of anyone before. Last night he had lain sleepless for hours, his body rigid and aroused and as aware of Elspeth lying in the bed in the chamber next door as if there were no walls separating them. His nerves had been tuned to such a pitch that he felt if she turned over in her sleep or her breathing changed tempo, he would know. “Do you want to stop and rest?” he asked.

Elspeth cast a glance at the red tiled roof on the house in the valley below. From here, on this summit in the foothills, it looked small and far away. Too far to attempt until she eased the nagging ache in the hollow of her spine and the numbness of her bottom. “Just for a little while.” She added politely, “If you don’t mind. I know I’ve taken a great deal of your time and—”

“For God’s sake, I don’t
mind
.” He cut her off harshly. “Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to stop.” He got off his horse and came around to stand by the mare. “I told you this wasn’t a good idea.”

“It was a good idea,” she said indignantly. “In spite of your forebodings, I didn’t fall off and it’s perfectly natural for me to become a little tired. There was no need for you to come with me, and I don’t need you to stay with me now. Why don’t you go back and—”

“
Be quiet
.” He jerked her from the saddle with more swiftness than gentleness. “You wanted to rest.” He set her on her feet, took the mare’s reins, and turned away. “Rest.”

She watched him lead his own horse and the gray mare down the trail and tether them to a pine tree several yards distant. Then he was turning and coming back to her, a brown saddle blanket over his arm, his expression as hard and closed as it had become from the moment he had seen her walking toward him across the stableyard this morning.

He spread the blanket beneath a pine tree a few yards away. “Sit down.”

She was becoming very tired of both his churlishness and his orders, but it would have been ridiculous to refuse a much needed rest out of sheer contrariness. She crossed to the blanket and sat down. The ground was hard but far better than the saddle which had reminded her of an instrument of torture before she had been on it more than fifteen minutes. She stretched her legs out in front of her, supporting herself on her arms. The sky was a brilliant blue between the spiky fronds of the evergreen branches above her, and it was blessedly cool here among the trees. A bird was singing somewhere above her and the air was full of the scent of crushed grass and pine. The surroundings were inexpressibly soothing, and, in a world so lovely, she found it difficult to remain annoyed with Dominic.

Perhaps he had a good reason for his shortness with her; he had probably wanted to spend these precious hours at Killara with his family yet felt it his duty to come with her. Heaven only knew, she had been burden enough of late to annoy a saint. Her dreamy gaze shifted from the peaceful blue sky to Dominic, who sat leaning against the gray-brown bole of a pine tree a few feet away. His arms were linked loosely around his drawn-up knees and his black stetson was pulled low to shadow his features. It was a relaxed position, but he was radiating a tension that seemed to reach out and touch her with its leashed power. He disturbed her, and she didn’t wish to be disturbed in this tranquil spot. She moistened her lips nervously with her tongue, trying to think of something to say that would rid the atmosphere between them of that disquieting emotional charge.

“Don’t do that!”

Her gaze flew to his face. “I beg your pardon?”

He drew a harsh breath, his fingers clenching together so tightly his knuckles turned white. “Never mind.” He closed his eyes. “Talk to me.”

She stared at him in bewilderment. “What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t care.” Anything to keep him thinking and not feeling. Anything to keep him from going over the edge.

She was silent, looking at him. What did he want from her? He was in need—she could feel it—but she didn’t know how to fill that need. Yet she desperately wanted to help him, she realized suddenly. “Shall I tell you about Kantalan?”

“Why not? Dreams are as good as anything else.”

“Its not a dream.” For some reason she experienced no resentment from the impatient comment. “Oh, I suppose dreams were a part of it, but if I hadn’t had more than that to hold on to, they wouldn’t have been enough to sustain me through all those arguments with my father.”

“I thought he believed Kantalan existed.”

“He did.” She looked down and began absently to smooth the creases in her riding skirt. “That wasn’t what the arguments were about. It was the city’s origin that my father wouldn’t …” She drew a shaky breath. “He said I was a fool, that I was an ignorant child who would never approach either his knowledge or his insight.” Her nails dug into the heavy gabardine of the skirt. “Maybe he was right about me, but he was wrong in this. I
know
he was wrong. Kantalan wasn’t built by the Toltecs, it was a separate colony. All the clues were there but he refused even to try to put them together.”

“Colony?” Dominic’s lids had opened and his light eyes were gleaming in the shadowy darkness of his face.

She wished she could see his expression, those translucent, burning eyes watching her were making her a little nervous. “Have you ever heard of a place called Atlantis?”

He didn’t answer her for a moment. “If I have, I don’t remember it.”

“Atlantis was an island, the birthplace of civilization. It was destroyed by a great earthquake that sent it to the bottom of the sea. Everyone thinks it’s a fable made up by Plato, but I believe it existed.” She
paused. “And I believe Kantalan was one of its colonies.” She waited, as if expecting him to refute her words. When he didn’t speak, she rushed on. “Oh, I know Atlantis was supposed to have been in the Mediterranean and Kantalan half a world away, but there are too many similiarities for them not to be tied together somehow. No argument can convince me that Kantalan didn’t spring from Atlantis.”

“I’m not arguing, Elspeth. I’m listening.”

And watching her with an intentness that made her heart pound and her mouth grow dry. She looked down again, her finger nervously resuming its tracing of the crease in the fabric of her skirt. “I’m sorry, I guess I’ve become accustomed to defending my theory from attack.” She moistened her lips again with her tongue. She heard a low sound, as if Dominic had suddenly shifted, but when she looked up she realized she must have been mistaken; he was sitting in the same place. Watching her. “It seemed so clear to me. There are so many similiarities.”

“What similiarities?”

“The legend of Kantalan speaks of its great pyramids, and Atlantis had pyramids. Both civilizations worshiped Ra, the sun god. Atlantis had four rivers intersecting the city and Kantalan is said also to have had four rivers forming a cross in the middle of the city. The legend speaks of a great lodestone in the temple of Ra that had magical properties. What other civilization could have given birth to such a wonder? Oh, there are so many things. I believe that the Egyptians, Toltecs, Mayans, and the Incas were also colonies, but that they somehow evolved differently. Perhaps because of Kantalan’s isolation it was able to retain its similarities to the mother country. Dear heaven, I hope that’s true. Can you imagine actually being there, studying a city that’s a mirror of Atlantis?”

“No, I can’t imagine it.”

“Well, I can.” Her eyes glowed softly with excitement and her breasts were rising and falling with each breath. “I can imagine strolling through the
streets and seeing the statues of the ten kings, of walking into the palaces and finding the ceilings of ivory and walls of gold. I can imagine seeing the four rivers that form a cross and the—”