Once A Wolf (15 page)

"As you pity yourself?"

The color rose in her cheeks. "You certainly didn't help by appearing as a wolf in front of those

men. They will think she summoned some sort of familiar. I suppose you could not resist a

dramatic gesture, whatever the cost."

"It doesn't matter what they think. They will not trouble her again."

"Then you agree that we should take her with us?"

"You've appointed yourself her guardian. Can you trust her in the company of villainous

outlaws?"

"The alternative is leaving her here, and that I will not do."

The feelings coming from Tomás and Rowena swirled around Felícitas head like a relentless

wind. She felt very small in the midst of it. When these two looked at each other, when they

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spoke… it felt like a fight that was not a fight, a drawing together and a pulling apart. In the

center of each was a hidden need for which the other had the only answer.

And she knew she had to go with them. She could not see into the future; she had not foreseen

Uncle's death or the way the villagers turned on her. It seemed that she could look into every

heart while her own remained a mystery.

Tio had raised her, cared for her, told her what she should do each day from waking to sleeping.

Her life had been free of choices—until the wolf and the woman came to save her.

But there was still no choice. This man and this woman were somehow bound by the same

destino. She, too, was bound. She could no more walk away from them than she could bring Tio

back to life. They had not come to her as the others had, to ask for the secrets of their fates.

But if she could help them—she, worthless empty vessel that she was—maybe she could learn

to help herself.

"Will you come with us?" Rowena asked.

She nodded and took the lady's hand.

The old man shook his head emphatically. "No, no he visto a nadie."

It was the fourth denial in the past half hour. Weylin sent the viejo on his way like the others

and started east toward home. He'd come to the end of this trail.

No matter how careful and casual he'd been with his questions, the villagers were suspicious

from the start. Randall might have warned them against him, knowing full well he wouldn't be

slow in following once he worked out of his bonds, but Weylin thought it more likely that they

were defending the outlaw of their own free will.

Randall had stopped here, of that Weylin had no doubt. He hadn't bothered to disguise his trail

as far as this village. He challenged his pursuer with his very carelessness.

That was nothing new. Time and again, Randall had kept one step ahead of Weylin. The people

who sheltered and aided him—men, women, and children—seemed to regard him as a kind of

everyman's hero.

An outlaw, a killer like Randall, could never be anything but vermin. He bought the loyalty of

these people with trickery and theft. Weylin had already ridden a careful circuit around the

town; Randall's outbound track had been wiped clean with brush, the scent confused by

livestock recently driven from one end of the village to the other.

So Randall had escaped… again.

Weylin removed his hat to mop the sweat from his forehead. He didn't bother with cursing.

He'd lost too much face as it was, when Rowena was taken.

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But he was stubborn. And patient. Very, very patient.

Under the circumstances, he knew it was time to go home. Cole would be at the ranch any time

now, if he'd received the lady's message. He wouldn't let her run off without coming after her.

He'd want to take command of the hunt.

That wouldn't be as easy as Cole surely believed. He might know the business end of the

Randall fortune and New York society, but he'd been too long away from the frontier, running

things from some fancy office back east. He was likely to go charging off half-cocked, thinking

he could buy or compel what he wanted. Like Father.

Cole just might have made a mistake in his choice of mate. Weylin didn't know much about

women, but he knew when they were trouble. Damn the lady for her arrogance and gullible

lack of common sense. He hoped she'd keep her head with Randall.

Her head, and everything else.

With a click of his tongue, Weylin turned his gelding toward the edge of the village. The people

watched him pass, their scents giving them away even when they hid from his view behind

thick adobe walls.

Just as he passed the last house, a small boy darted out from a doorway and shouted a taunt

that rang in the hush like a tolling bell. Weylin reined in the gelding and dismounted and

grabbed the boy before he'd run two steps toward safety.

The boy hung in his grasp, defiant and terrified. Weylin set him down. "That isn't polite," he said

softly in the boy's language. "Why are you angry? Have I ever done anything to you?"

Lower lip quivering, the boy shook his head. "But Papa said you are hunting—"

"Alonso!" A man who must have been the boy's father came running out of the house. He

caught Alonso's arm and gave him a shake. "Lo siento, señor. Please forgive the child for his

rudeness." He turned Alonso and marched him back to the house under the lash of a round

scolding.

Weylin observed until they had gone and mounted again. It was too bad… too bad a promising

lad like that had to fall under the spell of a killer. If Weylin ever had a son of his own…

He cast that thought from his mind. He had a job to do. When he'd brought Randall in—then he

could think about a wife and children. When he'd earned the right.

I will bring you back, he promised Randall. Justice always prevails in the end.

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Seven

On the third afternoon following the witch-girl's rescue, Tomás informed Rowena that they

were almost "home."

They had traveled, ever westward, among countless arid mountains and valleys, stopping each

night wherever a camp could be made away from human habitation. They'd circled well south

of Santa Fe, one of the larger towns in the Territory, and turned north and west until they

reached the wide, cultivated valley of the Rio Grande. The river was a vast ribbon of muddy

water, tinted by the earth through which it flowed. They crossed where it ran shallow and the

current was not too swift, climbing the sandy slope on the opposite bank. Here, in the county

known as Bernalillo, there was hardly a village worth the name.

Rowena had become inured to the primitive conditions of western travel—drawing water for

drinking and bathing from nearby streams, washing by hand those portions of her clothing she

could, sleeping with a minimum of privacy and only a bedroll for comfort, simple food cooked

over an open fire.

She had avoided Tomás assiduously, but she couldn't escape her awareness of him. If he could

push unwanted images into her mind, as he had done several times before, it was no wonder

that he could manage so small a thing as to make himself a continual presence in her thoughts.

If she should choose to call on her werewolf powers, she could shut him out.

But she would not. Nor would she concede that she felt anything for him but the strongest

disapproval for his behavior.

Except where the girl was concerned. Rowena had derisively compared Tomás to Robin Hood,

but she hadn't expected him to begin rescuing the persecuted. He certainly hadn't gained much

for himself in the transaction… unless it was his intention to win her approval. That he would

not find quite so easy.

Whatever his motives, she was reluctantly grateful. Having the girl to care for made it possible

to concentrate on something other than her own indefinite future. She saw to it that she and

the child had an area of each night's camp separate from that of the men. She made the girl

eat, and encouraged her to overcome the shock of her ordeal by speaking to her constantly of

the everyday things all women understood, regardless of position or language: the importance

of keeping hair neat, maintaining dignity in the face of adversity, and ignoring the failings of the

male gender.

The girl didn't participate in the discussions. She remained mute, though her face and eyes and

hands were eloquent of sorrow and loneliness. That was something Rowena understood.

Because the girl needed a name, she began to call her Hope—the gift she most wanted to

bestow.

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During the long nights, lying sleepless under the stars, she wondered why she felt so protective

of a girl she didn't know. It wasn't merely the sense of responsibility born of a lifetime of

noblesse oblige, the duty of the privileged to aid those of less fortunate estate. Nor was it the

maternal desire that made her want children of her own; Hope was nearly a woman, scarcely

more than ten years younger than Rowena herself.

No. There was something about the wilderness, this vast untamed country, that bared the soul.

She had sensed it the first time she'd crossed the prairie in Weylin's buckboard. She hadn't

grasped then how intimately acquainted she was to become with this cruel and terrible

landscape, and the men it had shaped.

When she found her own reflection in the unsparing mirror of the New Mexico sky, she knew

why she would defend Hope with her life. It was because they were alike. They were both

outcasts: the girl because of foolish superstition, and herself because of what she'd been born.

Neither of them had asked for their fates.

The difference between them was that Rowena had not given up. She continued to fight the

stigma of her birth. No one would ever have cause to drive her out because she was a monster.

And as long as she had anything to say about it, no one would ever again do the same to Hope.

She would find a place where even one accused of witchcraft could be safe and happy.

It only remained to win through the current predicament.

The place where they had come to rest this warm afternoon was a tablelike ridge called a mesa,

so common in this country. They'd been gaining altitude steadily all during the day's ride, and

from the abrupt edge of the mesa, clothed in tall pines and thick grass, one could look down

into a steep canyon cut into reddish rock, splashed with a strip of bright green to mark the

course of a stream. Hardier plants clung tenaciously to the cliffs and crumbling slopes.

"Just a few more hours," Tomás said, riding up to join her. He nodded toward Hope, who sat

alone at the edge of the mesa lost in her own hidden thoughts. "How is she?"

"Well enough. She is eating now, and showing interest in her surroundings."

" Thanks to your care of her."

So he had noticed. Rowena avoided his gaze. "Someone must. I… did not thank you for saving

her life."

"I didn't expect your thanks."

"I see. Then you didn't do it to gain my appreciation for your… chivalry?"

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He laughed. "I should not be surprised that you came to that conclusion, but you overestimate

your influence on my behavior. Not everything I do is for your sake. The whole world does not

revolve around Lady Rowena Forster."

Stung, she quelled her immediate response. "You will forgive me if I have some cause to doubt

your motives."

"Ah, yes. I'm un malo hombre, a bad man. Such men do not save damsels in distress."

Something in his tone, an almost bitter self-mockery, surprised her. It was very much out of

character. Had she judged him too harshly?

She prided herself on being just and fair, in expecting no more of others than she demanded of

herself. There had been times, before she left England, when she had failed in that standard

because of her own self-absorption and pain. She had misjudged good people and regretted it

ever after.

She was falling prey to the same pitfalls now. Good Tomás might not be, but he was not entirely

villainous. She had already seen ample evidence of that and chosen to ignore it.

"It was decent of you," she admitted.

"I believe that is the finest compliment I've ever received."

"Don't let it go to your head."

"What of my heart?" He leaned close. "I do have a heart, Rowena. I doubted yours until I saw

you dancing in Rito Pequeño, and with the girl."

The man could do more to raise a blush on her cheeks with such a lukewarm statement than

any other could with words of high praise and gallantry. "Why should you care if I possess a

heart or not?"

His eyes grew hooded as he started to answer, but he was interrupted when Sim Kavanagh

joined them. After his earlier hostility, Kavanagh seemed bent on ignoring Rowena.