Ryan's Hand (8 page)

“Yes. We need them for the roundup that will be taking place in the next few days.”

Cara couldn't imagine why she said aloud the thought that next popped into her head. She did not think it was the wine that provoked her impudence but rather the way Jeth Langston sat on the desk, handing out orders to her like some feudal lord. “How unfortunate for you,” she said innocently, “that you lost that horse you so had your heart set on capturing. His name says a lot about him. Devil's Own, isn't it?”

The sudden stillness in him communicated itself to her, a coiling tension that had the potential to unleash like a whip. “Watch it, Miss Martin,” Jeth cautioned, his voice soft as a feather along her spine, raising goose bumps.

“Oh, I intend to,” she assured him, deliberately ignoring his meaning. “Next time I'll be prepared for the punch behind this marvelous wine.”

Jeth observed the bewitchingly beautiful face she turned up to him. A muscle along his jaw twitched. With great control, he reached down and took the glass from her hand. “You'd better leave now,” he advised. “Go on up to your room. I'll have Fiona bring your dinner up immediately.”

“How kind of you,” said Cara demurely, giving him a smile prompted more by the alcohol than by any sincerity. He followed her to the door, but at it she thought of something and turned unexpectedly. “Mr. Langston—oh!”

She found herself caught in his arms. He held her steady against an immense, well-remembered chest and looked down at her almost indulgently. “Yes, Miss Martin, what is it?”

“Mr. Langston, where is Ryan buried?”

The arms fell from her immediately, and she nearly fell against the heavy doors. “At La Tierra,” he informed her coldly, “where he should have died.”

That night Cara slept deeply but fitfully. Her dreams seesawed between two fuzzy realms in which she heard the whinnying lament of horses mixed with the cry of seagulls. Ryan appeared often. Each time he did, she cried his name in delight and ran excitedly after him down a long sandy shore only to have him disappear in the waves that washed his footprints from the sand. “Ryan! Ryan!” she called time and time again, flailing her arms in disappointment and bereavement. Once when she cried, someone else came to her, someone whose shadowy form hovered over her and spoke her name softly. The form bent and released her from the tentacles pulling her down into deep warm water where she wept for a nameless fulfillment eluding her heart.

The next morning Cara woke to a room bathed in sunlight. She had forgotten to pull the draperies the night before, which wasn't surprising when she remembered how exhaustedly she had climbed into bed. She lay in the warm nest of covers trying to remember where she was, and the events that had brought her here. The last vestiges of her dreams faded away and left her with the feeling that she had wrestled with them more than she had actually slept. Her neck and face felt sticky, as if she had cried sometime in the night.

Almost immediately after swinging her feet to the yellow rug she heard the sounds of horses and men. “They're breaking the horses today,” she remembered, and recalled that Jeth Langston had forbidden her to go anywhere near the breaking pens.

“Fine,” she said aloud to Ryan's photograph on the bedside table. “That leaves me free to explore the rest of the ranch without running into your brother!”

After she had dressed in slacks and tailored shirt, she wondered what to do about breakfast. Her dinner the night before had been excellent, but she had been too tired and woozy, she remembered ruefully, to eat much, so she was hungry this morning. Will I be allowed to eat outside my room? she wondered. Then a chilling discovery presented itself. She remembered with certainty leaving the photograph on the mantel just before going out to investigate the origin of that strange rumble. She had not moved it since, of that she was positive. Fiona had not even glanced at it when she came for her last night.

Then what was it doing on her bedside table?

Puzzled, Cara pulled on a sweater matching her blue slacks, then went out into the wide hall. Now that she did not have the disapproving Fiona at her shoulder, she could inspect her surroundings leisurely. Light streamed in through the series of arched windows in the white stucco wall facing her room, and she went to one and peered out. The layout below was as she should have expected. Indeed, La Tierra's big house had been built in the tradition of a Spanish grandee's hacienda, for its inner wall surrounded a tiled, verdant courtyard, enormous in size.

An Olympic-sized swimming pool, its clear blue water and deck of colorful tiles twinkling in the fresh morning sunlight, commanded the largest area. Set back from it was a cabana with a red Spanish-tiled roof like that of the house, and nearby was an entertainment area with a stage. Across on the far side was a commodious brick pit for barbecuing, its gleaming enamel hood the same bright yellow as that of the table umbrellas dotting the deck. Other matching patio furniture and an abundance of tropical plants providing greenery and shade completed what in Cara's mind was an opulent picture of Southwestern relaxation.

The pool reminded Cara that Jeth had once aspired to become an Olympic champion, a dream that had forever been deferred when he'd had to assume responsibility for La Tierra and a little brother named Ryan. Ryan had told her that Jeth still swam religiously every day, no matter what the weather, which accounted for the corded, well-toned body of the man and the lack of a pale forehead due to the constant wearing of a hat in the sun.

She followed the horseshoe corridor to the other wing, then came back to stand before heavy double doors leading to a room the width of the top floor. This has to be
his
room, she thought, wishing that her room was in the other wing so that she would not have to hear him pass by her door each night. She had not heard him last night, apparently having fallen asleep before he came to bed.

Going down the stairs, Cara encountered a fresh-faced young Mexican woman who actually smiled at her. She was carrying an armload of fresh sheets and towels. “
Buenos dias
, señorita,” the young woman greeted her, and Cara's face showed her pleasure at the first friendliness she had been shown.

“Good morning to you,” she responded cheerfully, but when she would have introduced herself, the young woman hurried away up the stairs as if she had been warned about speaking to the yellow-haired intruder.

Ignoring the sharp little pain from the rebuff, Cara went on down the stairs in the direction she guessed the kitchen to be.

She found Fiona at the gleaming kitchen counter busily chopping peppers and onions. The tantalizing smell of coffee came to her. “Good morning, Fiona,” she offered politely. “May I help myself to coffee?”

For answer, Fiona pointed with her knife to a large stainless pot on the stove. “Thank you,” Cara said, and then, “Fiona, could you tell me what's expected of me concerning my meals? Do I have to eat in my room or may I eat here in the kitchen? I'm quite sure—er—El Patrón would not care for my company at mealtimes.”

When Fiona did not answer, Cara persisted. “It would be silly for you to have to climb those stairs bringing my meals to me. As a matter of fact, I can even prepare my own—”

That statement got the attention of the impassive-faced Fiona. The eyes she turned on Cara had fire in them. “
My
kitchen!” she declared, pointing the sharp knife at herself for emphasis. “Nobody cooks here but me. You may eat here, but you—you don't cook here!”

Cara smiled at the feisty little woman and tried what little Spanish she knew. “
Gracias. Yo comprendo.
”

Without asking her, the housekeeper prepared for Cara a fluffy omelet containing a sharp Mexican cheese and topped with a spicy sauce made from onions and fresh tomatoes and peppers. With it were a small breakfast steak, so tender that Cara could cut it with a fork, and steaming, freshly made flour tortillas.

“Oh my,” sighed Cara appreciatively when she had finished, “you cook as superbly as you keep this house, Fiona.”

Fiona did not respond to Cara's compliment. She had kept her back to the Bostonian all the while she had been eating, but Cara sensed the woman was aware of every bite she took.

The housekeeper was obviously in charge of all matters pertaining to household personnel and maintenance, with the kitchen the office from which she dispensed her orders. Several Mexican workmen came into the kitchen by the back door while Cara was eating. They raised brows when they saw her, then nodded curtly and addressed Fiona in Spanish. The same was true of the maids who wandered in and out. Pointedly ignoring Cara, they discussed in their native tongue their duties for the day as well as, she was certain, their thoughts and opinions about the intruder who sat at the kitchen table.

With a sigh, Cara took her coffee through a swinging door into a large formal dining room. Again the icy atmosphere of the white walls and gray-tiled floors oppressed her. What a remote, cold, unfriendly house, she thought. No wonder Ryan had called his home a tomb.

The dining room let out through carved double doors into an alcove that probably had been meant for a sitting room. The furniture, though costly, appeared never used. Even the spring sun shining through a wide arched window could not dispel the pervasively Spartan atmosphere.

Cara strolled across the entrance hall to the living room she had passed through last night to Jeth's study. Her eyes were taking in the ample proportions of the austere room when an object in a far corner made her gasp with disbelief. A Steinway! A real, honest-to-goodness Steinway! She set her coffee down on a marble-topped table and flew to the majestic grand piano that sat augustly in a pool of sunlight.

“Oh…” she breathed, hardly daring to believe her eyes. Reverently, she pushed the cover from the keyboard. Her fingers gently touched the ivory keys without striking them, savoring the moment when she would summon forth the quality of tone for which this aristocrat of all pianos was renowned. Cara pulled out the bench and sat down. She flexed her hands—it had been a long time since she had played—then ran her fingers up and down the keyboard in a series of chromatic scales to limber both her fingers and the tone of the piano.

Borne away on the strains of a Chopin concerto, she had only been playing a short while when suddenly there appeared beside the bench an incensed and ferocious Fiona. Cara looked up quizzically, barely removing her hands before the housekeeper vehemently pulled the lid down over the keyboard. “What's the matter with you?” Cara cried, beginning to get angry, too.

“Señora Langston's!” the housekeeper explained explosively. “No touch! Señora Langston's! Not Ryan's whore!”

Cara was up from the bench instantly, her body shaking in rage at the presumption of this woman to call her such a name, but more importantly to deny her the exquisite release the piano would have provided from the horrors of her confinement.

Cara faced the housekeeper levelly. “Don't you ever do that to me again, Fiona,” she said in a quiet voice that carried conviction. “And don't you ever refer to me by that name again—ever!” Leaving the housekeeper standing stonily at the piano, Cara marched from the room and up the stairs. Once in her room, trembling with fury, she searched in the closet for a warm jacket. She saw that her room had been tidied, the bed made. She could still hear sounds of loud activity coming from the corrals, but she had to get out of this house. Surely there was somewhere on this vast ranch where she could go without causing trouble.

Skirting away from the house, Cara walked in the direction of a tree-shaded rise of land some distance away. Hands in pockets, face up to welcome the sun and the dry, brisk wind that blew across the plains, she tried to deal with the aching disappointment that welled inside her. How could she live in a house with a Steinway and not play it? It was a crime to regard an instrument like that more as a monument to the dead than as a source of joy to the living.

Until now she had not realized how much she missed the piano that once graced her childhood home. On it she had learned to play the music that would later bring such solace to her life. The day the Steinway had been sold, she walked the beach for hours, mourning the loss of an old friend.

Cara was sickened, too, by the encounter with Fiona. She had hoped she could come to care for the irascible little woman whose industry and devotion to La Tierra impressed her. She doubted now whether the housekeeper could ever be induced to like the outsider from Boston, the woman she thought of contemptuously as Ryan's whore.

Cara reached the foot of the small hill and was intrigued by its number of trees and lush carpet of young grass when the surrounding land stretched bare and treeless. Staring up at its top, she glimpsed between the green, feathery branches of the mesquite trees something that looked like a wrought-iron fence, and her breath caught. Jeth's answer came back to her from the night before when she had asked where Ryan was buried: “At La Tierra—where he should have died.”

Cara, certain of what she would find, climbed the hill to the black iron enclosure of a small, private cemetery. New spring grass grew tenderly between the stones to the dead, and Cara gave a sudden, startled cry when she saw the fresh earth that indicated a new grave. A monument, yet unbleached by wind and storms and time, rested at its head. Cara stumbled forward calling, “Ryan! I've come, Ryan. I've come.”

S
he did not know how long she had sat on the ground with knees drawn to her chest, forehead resting on folded arms, before she became aware of a pair of black boots and silver spurs planted apart on the other side of Ryan's grave.

“Oh!” Cara exclaimed, caught by surprise, and blinked up at the dark countenance of Jeth Langston. He frowned at her from beneath the firm set of his black Stetson, and for the first few seconds she did not know who or what he was. With the sun behind him, he looked menacing in black leather chaps and vest, and she thought at first that he was some angry god come to wreak his vengeance.

Cara got to her feet without his offering to help and braced herself for what was to come. When neither spoke after several seconds, she offered lightly, “You go first.”

“Miss Martin, you cannot seem to stay out of trouble.”

“Well, so it seems. I'm sure you're referring to my run-in with Fiona over the Steinway a while ago. She must have gone immediately to tell on me, although I will say that surprises me. I would have bet that she was one to fight her own battles.”

“You would have won that bet, Miss Martin. Fiona did not
tattle
on you. I overheard the two of you when I came to see who was playing my mother's piano.”

Cara brushed at the sand adhering to the seat of her slacks. “So which am I to be strung up for—playing your mother's piano or insulting Fiona's sense of propriety?”

“Neither, Miss Martin,” Jeth answered in cold rebuke. “But for an intelligent girl, your willful ignorance of the shaky position you're in at La Tierra is astounding.”

“I understand clearly the shaky position I'm in—I saw only that it was a Steinway,” Cara defended soberly. “It didn't occur to me that it might have been your mother's.”

“In that case, don't take liberties with the possessions of my house, Miss Martin, not unless I give you permission. Is that clear?”

“Quite,” said Cara, finding it hard to look at him against the light. Her eyes stung miserably. She wanted to believe the sun or the dry, cold air responsible, but her honesty would not permit it. There was something about Jeth that transcended her growing fear of him, that forced her to admit that he was a man who stirred strange and bewildering emotions within her that she did not understand. “Is that all?” she asked him.

“No, Miss Martin, it is not.” The words were exactly delivered. “Since this game is being played with a deck stacked in favor of the house—and since you can't seem to figure out the obvious for yourself—I am going to give you a little advice. You need Fiona. Don't antagonize her. You can avoid it if you understand that she reveres the Langstons, especially the memory of my mother. She is enraged that an outsider like you should try to usurp what belongs to the family. When you sat down at that piano this morning, when you began to play her patrona's most loved possession, you committed what to her amounted to a sacrilege—”

“I get the picture!” Cara broke in, unable to bear any more. She turned her head away so that he could not see the dejection sweeping through her. Hands in pockets, jacket billowing open, slight form buffeted by the wind, Cara presented a vulnerable picture to the tall, powerful man looking down at her. He saw how the sun played in the waves of her tossed hair, exposed the clear purity of her skin and the tender curve of her throat. He saw her blink at the sting of tears she was too proud to shed.

Jeth said in a less steely tone, “Miss Martin, sell Ryan's share to me and leave La Tierra. We'll call it a draw, and you will have heard the last of me. You would have no need to ever fear me again.”

Cara shook her head obstinately. “No.”

“Then you're asking to be broken, you know,” he warned her gently, “just like all the other enemies of La Tierra have been.”

“Rather like those poor creatures you brought down from the mountains will be, I suppose,” Cara remarked with distaste, thinking of the proud, spirited horses who right now were feeling the grip of saddles, the dig of spurs.

“Not at all. Here at La Tierra we're rough with horses, but never punishing. With you, I would be both. Once our horses have earned their yearly keep during the roundup, they're set free to roam until the next one. But you, Miss Martin, I would never free to enjoy the spoils of your relationship to Ryan. I would make sure you carried the brand of La Tierra all of your life.”

Cara, who had kept her head averted, faced him defiantly, her blood running cold. “You would never get the land back.”

“Oh, yes, I would, Miss Martin. Have no delusions about that.” He turned to go.

“There is one horse that got away from you, that doesn't wear your brand—one that you won't be breaking for the roundup!” The words were out before she could stop them. Shocked at her outburst, she watched in dismay as the rancher paused, then turned slowly. His eyes gleamed with surprise and the thrill of challenge.

“You, Cara Martin, will not be so fortunate. Am I to take that as your final answer to my request that you leave La Tierra?”

“Yes,” she said quickly. She would give anything to take back her taunt. What a fool she had been to ruffle his king-of-the-walk feathers. What could she gain from it?

“Then I'm looking forward to the pleasure of your company under my roof, Miss Martin. This evening you will have dinner with me. Wear something red, a most appropriate color for you in more ways than one. I'm sure that among all those dresses Ryan bought you there is something suitable.”

“No,” Cara said firmly.

“You will if you want to eat. Afterward you will play for me. Come to my study at seven and we'll have a drink. Now if you'll excuse me—” He touched his hat brim in mock respect. “I've wasted enough time for one day.” Once again he turned to go.

“Mr. Langston?”

With a sigh of impatience the rancher paused, keeping the broad back to her. “Yes, Miss Martin?”

“Is…this place off-limits too?”

Without turning he answered, “No, Miss Martin, not unless I'm here.”

Cara watched him descend the hill with supple ease to the untethered bay waiting patiently below. The man was so sure of himself, so sure of her. She was sure of neither.

Cara spent the rest of the day in her room. She wrote a letter to Harold St. Clair assuring him that she was still in one piece, infusing her comments with a humor she did not feel. Afterward she thumbed through a book she had brought with her on conversational Spanish, thinking that if nothing else was gained from the year, she could at least learn a new language. But her attention persisted in wandering, and after trying to read a few pages she put the book down and went outside to sit on the terrace in the sun. Her thoughts drifted to Ryan. “Do you trust me?” he had asked as he lay dying. Even now, with all of her heart, she did. But why had he left her his share of La Tierra? Why had he made her promise to come here, where he knew she would be at the mercy of his brother's vengeance? Had Ryan hoped to play matchmaker? But that was preposterous under the circumstances. He had known how she felt about men like his brother, and he would certainly have foreseen how his brother would regard and react toward her. The situation was impossible.

The lunch hour came and passed, and Cara's hunger pains reminded her of the evening ahead. Her pride rebelled that in order to eat she had to join Jeth Langston for dinner, but she knew that the rancher was perfectly capable of letting her go hungry. Cara flipped through the dresses hanging in her closet and found the red dinner dress she had worn in Dallas. Angry at her cowardice, she admitted she did not have the courage not to wear it.

Late in the afternoon when she was tired of her room, she took a stroll down the horseshoe hall to the other wing. A door was open to one of the bedrooms, and since she knew that no one occupied this floor but herself and Jeth, she peered in.

“Ryan's room!” she exclaimed to the lofty silence, for even though it was a cavernous room, it wasn't totally devoid of the warm, vital presence of the man who had once lived here. At one end was a small library she knew Jeth had ordered built for his brother when Ryan became interested in law. The shelves still contained some of his books.

The room echoed a loneliness that struck an unhealed wound, and she left quickly, closing the door behind her. She felt closer to Ryan at the cemetery where the wind blew freely across the wide Texas plains.

A splash in the swimming pool brought her to one of the arched windows overlooking the courtyard. Looking down on the pool, she saw a long, tanned figure swimming underwater. A dark head surfaced, wet and sleek as a seal's. She watched him begin a routine of laps, cutting the water effortlessly with long, powerful arms, until suddenly she had to back away from the window, unable to bear watching him any longer. Her heart had begun a fierce beat. A strange longing throbbed in her stomach, forcing her to lean against the cool surface of the stucco wall to steady her breath. A sense of helpless anger flooded her. Was not even her own body to be an ally in this alien house against the enemy below? Would it, too, seek to destroy her?

At precisely one minute until seven, Cara descended the stairs. She had not heard Jeth come up to his room from the pool, but she did hear him go down. He had passed her door as she was finishing dressing, and her heartbeat stilled when she heard the firm tread of his boots striking the tiled corridor.

Not even the knowledge that she looked her best in the red dress that Harold had admired could inspire Cara with confidence. She drew in deeply as she knocked on one of the double doors, and pressed to her breast the framed photograph that she had brought with her from Boston.

Jeth himself opened the door. He was dressed in black tonight, the Western cut of his attire emphasizing the broad shoulders and trim waist and hips. With the lamplight behind him, he filled the doorway with a sinister presence. “Well, good evening, Miss Martin,” he drawled mockingly, the cool gray eyes marking the red dress, then sliding down her from head to foot. “How nice of you to come.”

“Did I have a choice?”

“No,” he said dryly, “but let us observe the amenities as if you did.” He moved aside just enough to allow her room to pass. “I suggest you sit by the fire. A norther is coming out of the Panhandle and will be here before we sit down to dinner.”

Cara was happy to do so. She was chilled through and through, and her knees felt trembly. Taking a seat in one of the two tall-backed chairs flanking the fireplace, she asked, “When does spring actually arrive in Texas?”

Jeth had gone to the bar where a silver wine cooler waited with the exposed neck of what Cara assumed was a bottle of the wine she had been served the night before. She watched as he withdrew a crystal goblet from a bed of ice, then uncorked the napkin-wrapped bottle. “That depends on what part of Texas you're asking about,” he informed her, pouring a clear, sparkling stream of wine into the glass. He refilled his own with bourbon and brought both to the fire.

“Thank you,” she said, taking care not to touch his fingers when he handed her the glass. “You were saying?”

“Texas is a big state, Miss Martin. In our coastal areas, spring has already arrived. In the Panhandle it won't come until the last of May. Here we'll be lucky to see our last frost by Easter.”

“Texas can be quite overwhelming.” She smiled politely, hoping she didn't sound critical. The state had begun to fascinate her, and she wanted to know more about it.

“Like its people?” Jeth asked with a trace of mockery, settling in the chair opposite her.

“I never found Ryan overwhelming,” she said. “That reminds me. I brought this for you. It meant a great deal to Ryan. He kept it on the mantel of his town house.” She handed Jeth the photograph.

Jeth reached for it, the firelight flashing on the diamond brand in his ring. “Yes,” he mused, studying it. “I saw this last night.”

Cara straightened in her chair. “You were the one who moved it! Then—then you were the shadow in my dream…You were the one who…rescued me.”

“Did I?” Jeth raised a cynical eyebrow. “We fight such awesome demons in our dreams, don't we? You were crying out in your sleep. I was on my way to my room and heard you. You sounded desperate, so I went in. You were wound in the covers, so I loosened them. That's when I saw this picture.”

Cara couldn't resist saying in surprise, “I'm amazed that you bothered.”

Immersed in the study of the picture, Jeth said, “I might not have except that you were crying Ryan's name over and over. I've had a few of those nights lately myself.”

“Of course you have,” Cara said quietly, feeling sympathy for him. She knew how lonely it was to be facing a future with no family whatever. Ryan had been right about Jeth. This man needed a loving wife who would give him children to make this austere house a home.

Jeth placed the picture on the wide stone hearth, then stunned her by saying, “You have beautiful breasts. You are well-endowed for someone of your small frame, aren't you?”

Remembering the flimsy nightgown she had pulled on last night in her exhausted haste to get to bed, Cara choked on the wine, almost spilling some of it on the red dress. “How dare you!” she sputtered, holding the dripping glass over the hearth. Jeth produced another of the white lawn handkerchiefs like the one he had given her in Dallas, which she had not yet returned. Taking it, she said indignantly, “You had no right to—to look me over while I slept!”

“Why not?” he asked calmly. “And Miss Martin, don't use the phrase ‘how dare you' again. You are in my state, on my land, in my house, and I will dare anything I damn well please. Thank you for the picture. Tell me about Ryan. Were you with him when he died?”

Cara's head swam, and not from the wine. This man had the power to provoke the most quixotic feelings within her. In the space of a few moments, he had roused her fear, hatred, sympathy, anger, and now she found herself wanting desperately to comfort him, to tell him how much he had been loved by Ryan—that, like him, she did not understand why his brother had not told him about his illness, why he had left to her what rightfully belonged to him. But she could not share those thoughts with this skeptical man, and so she carefully took a sip of her wine and answered simply, “Yes, I was with him, Mr. Langston. He was in some pain, and had to be sedated the last few days of his life. But at the end he was very lucid. He spoke of you often, and I—I know he loved you very much.”