Texas Homecoming (26 page)

“That was my life. It is good enough for her.”

“It wasn’t nearly good enough for you,” Cade said. “According to my grandfather, you are worth two of your husband.”

Pilar’s surprise at Cade’s remark didn’t compare to her grandmother’s. It left her speechless.

Cade took Pilar’s hand, pulled her toward the door. “We have to talk.”

Pilar felt her spirits plummet. She knew that after last night, Cade believed she had decided to marry him. She had, but Laveau’s arrival had shown her the futility of her
decision. She had tried to ignore the problem, had wanted to believe Cade’s assurances that they could think of something, but nothing but the death of her brother or her lover could eliminate the hatred between the two men.

“She has nothing to say to you. I forbid you to speak to him. I want him out of the hacienda immediately. Every calamity that has befallen our family is the fault of his family.”

“I do have some things to say to Cade, but I can say them in front of you, Grandmother.” Pilar tried to gather her thoughts, say what she had to say.

“If I could have foreseen what would happen, I would have left your grandfather’s house the day you arrived. I would have camped in the forest. I would have thrown myself on the mercy of the citizens of San Antonio. I would never have risked falling in love with you. But I didn’t know, and I did fall in love with you.”

“Pilar! How can you say such a thing?”

She ignored her grandmother. She would have years to face the old woman’s recriminations. “You did much more for me than you will ever know. You made me a whole person. No matter what happens, I will always be grateful to you for that.”

“A person who turns against her brother and has no respect for her elders.”

“I thought being in love, being loved, was enough to enable us to ignore the world, but I was wrong. The world doesn’t pay heed to love. Greed and ambition, hatred and revenge demand all the attention.”

“We don’t have to let it,” Cade said.

“You already have. You took a vow to hang my brother for what he did, but I can’t be the wife of a man who would
hang my brother any more than I could be the widow of a man killed by my brother.”

“Laveau won’t—”

“This is not about you or Laveau anymore. It’s about me, what I want, what I
need.
Last night I made you a promise I thought I could keep. I’m sorry, but I was wrong.”

“Pilar, you can’t—”

“What promise?”

“Before that, I asked you to round up and sell the cattle for us. I thought I could endure seeing you from time to time, working with you, but I can’t do that, either. You must take your friends and go. I’ll ask Bolin Bigelow if he’ll work for me.”

The paralysis that had held Cade motionless fell away and he surged forward. Pilar tried to avoid him, but there was no possibility of resistance. He swept her into his arms. “I’m not going to let you do this.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“This is my happiness you’re talking about, not just yours.”

“You couldn’t be happy married to a wife who was miserable.”

“I’d be even more miserable not being married to you.”

“I forbid to you talk in this manner,” her grandmother said.

Cade ignored her and kissed Pilar ruthlessly. Her grandmother’s outraged screech had no effect on him. “You can’t deny that you love me.”

“I don’t. I never will, but I won’t marry you.”

Cade seemed to freeze. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

He released her and stepped back. “Your brother isn’t
worth the sacrifice of my happiness. He most certainly isn’t worth the sacrifice of yours. I won’t let you do this.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“Yes, I can. I don’t know how just yet, but I will figure it out. Laveau diViere is a liar, a traitor, and a thief.” He ignored another shrill protest from her grandmother. “I won’t let him spoil your life.”

“If he’s so vile, why should you want to marry his sister?”

“Because you’re as wonderful as he is vile. Know this, Pilar diViere, you are going to be my wife. And you’re going to
want
to be married to me.”

He turned and stalked out of the room.

“I wish Laveau had shot him.”

“No, you don’t, Grandmother. Because then I would have had to kill Laveau.”

Pilar lay awake, too restless to sleep, her brain in constant turmoil with questions she’d asked herself a hundred times only to discover they had no answers. The last three days had passed with agonizing slowness. Cade refused to leave the ranch regardless of what she or her grandmother said. When she asked why he ignored her, he said only that he was waiting for her to come to her senses. His friends were equally uncommunicative.

Even Owen, who usually was quite happy to put a spoke in Cade’s wheel, had cast his lot firmly with his cousin. “You’re wrong,” was all she could get out of him.

Holt wasn’t much better. “It’s stupid to be loyal to someone just because you share the same parents.”

Nate and Broc avoided her. Rafe rarely spoke. Ivan refused to talk about anything except how to put indoor plumbing in the hacienda.

“They would go if you did not cook for them,” her grandmother said.

“They would simply do their own cooking.”

Her grandmother didn’t understand men who would prepare their own food, but then her grandmother didn’t understand anything about a man like Cade. Pilar decided she must not understand him very well herself. She had begged him to go, pleaded with him. He’d said he’d leave when she didn’t love him any longer. Her reply that he’d have to stay forever elicited “That’s exactly what I mean to do” from him.

He had to go, but she didn’t want him to.

Frustrated, she sat up in bed. Silence reigned in the hacienda except for the soft breathing of Wheeler asleep in the corner. She got out of bed and went over to the window. She didn’t know why she was so restless tonight. It was almost as though she could feel something about to happen. She kept telling herself she was being foolish, that Cade was sleeping next door with more than a dozen men scattered through the hacienda. They were armed and prepared for any attack. It would take a small army to break into the hacienda. Yet the feeling that Cade was in danger would not leave her.

She felt her lips curve in a rueful smile. The only person in danger would be anyone foolish enough to attack Cade. He was big, powerful, and according to his friends, the best hand-to-hand brawler of the group.

That wasn’t the only kind of hand-to-hand encounter he was good at.

Pilar felt herself grow warm with the memory of their lovemaking. She had comforted herself by reliving every kiss, every moment of ecstasy, but each time left her longing for more, having to fight harder to convince herself she
couldn’t marry Cade, that she shouldn’t simply open the door between their rooms and go to him.

She’d hoped he would come to her, but she knew he was too honorable to use her body against her. She was thankful he had such firm principles. She doubted she could have held out against him.

She looked out the window. The night seemed perfectly designed for skulduggery. The full moon hid itself behind dark clouds that scurried across the black sky, almost as though racing ahead of some pursuing enemy. The leaves of the trees remained deathly still, rendering sounds louder, more ominous. The inky blackness under the trees could have shielded the entire army of the devil.

Pilar chided herself for being so foolish. She hadn’t behaved this irrationally since the night the squatters attacked the hacienda. It had been wakefulness then that had enabled her and her grandmother to escape.

Could her wakefulness again be a harbinger of danger? Should she wake Cade and warm him?

She didn’t have to turn her head to visualize the door between their rooms. It would be so simple to walk over, open it, warn Cade.

Warn him of what? That she had premonitions of danger? He’d think she was crazy, or making an excuse to get into his bed. She forced herself to put the door out of her mind. She
would not
go through all the arguments again why she couldn’t marry Cade. She
would not
go through all the reasons she couldn’t go into his room and let him make love to her. She
would not
recount all the reasons Cade was at least a hundred times a better choice to manage her herds than Bolin Bigelow. She
would not
attempt to remind herself of why she would go mad if she had to see him, talk to him, be near him for as much as one month
and not be able to make love to him. Going over the same territory was making her so irritable she was jumpy.

She opened the window to let some of the night air cool her fevered body. Her grandmother believed night air contained dangerous miasmas that harmed the constitution. Pilar wondered if there was something in the night air that could unsettle the mind. The air tonight seemed thick and sinister. She told herself she was imagining things, that one night’s air was much the same as any other night’s. Maybe a storm was brewing.

She closed the window and turned back to her bed, determined to put the premonitions out of her head. But getting back into bed did nothing to remove them. She still had the feeling that something was going to happen to Cade. She lay there for a while—she had no idea how long—her hands folded across her chest, eyes closed, her body straight and rigid. She
would
go back to sleep. She
would
stop imagining that sinister persons lurked outside the hacienda.

Finally she could stand it no longer. She threw the covers aside and got out of bed. Regardless of how ridiculous it seemed, she wouldn’t be able to go to sleep until she satisfied herself that Cade was sleeping soundly in his bed. She wouldn’t wake him up, just ease the door open, listen for his breathing, then get back into her own bed reassured and able to go to sleep.

She crossed the room on tiptoe, eased the door open, and stared into the blackness that filled the room. She could barely make out the bed against the wall and the shape of Cade’s body. He was sleeping on his side, turned toward the window and away from the door. He moved restlessly, flinging his arms, jerking at the covers as he turned on his other side.

She struggled for a moment with the desire to get closer to him, to stand for just a few minutes looking at him, drinking in the feeling of completeness that only he could give her. She finally began to back away. She knew that if she crossed the room, she would stay for the rest of the night.

She backed through the doorway. Just as she reached out to pull the door shut, her ears caught the faint sound of a door opening. Thinking it was her own door, she was prepared to jump back into her room and into her bed when she saw a rectangle of light open on the far side of Cade’s bedroom. Framed in the light was the outline of a man with a knife in his hand.

Chapter Twenty-six

Bedeviled by a dream in which he was pursued by a dozen gun-toting rustlers, Cade tossed restlessly on the verge of wakefulness. A scream brought him out of his fitful slumber as a sense of impending danger caused him to roll to the far side of the bed.

In the same instant that he realized Pilar was in his room, a knife plunged into the mattress where he had lain half an instant before. His attention was riveted on the dark form hovering next to the bed. He could barely make out Pilar’s shape as she raced across the room to get between him and his attacker. It was incredible that she would do such a thing. She could be killed.

But even as he got his feet under him and prepared to launch himself across the bed, the intruder pushed Pilar to the floor. “It’s Laveau,” she cried as she lost her balance. “He means to kill you.”

Cade struck Laveau with the full force of his body, and they went down together. Cade located the knife as it
opened a cut across his ribs. Forcing himself to ignore the pain, he twisted about, using his weight to pin Laveau to the floor, struggling to get a grip on his knife hand before he could strike again. He caught Laveau’s wrist just as it swung a second time, but not before the point of the knife entered the flesh of his upper arm. Muttering curses at the pain, Cade gripped Laveau’s hand in both of his and broke his wrist.

He heard the bones snap—it sounded like the breaking of small, dry twigs—before Laveau’s scream of pain shattered what was left of the night’s quiet.

Light suddenly illuminated the darkness. Pilar had struck a match.

“The boys have been waiting for a chance to get their hands on you,” Cade said, attempting to get to his feet. He slipped and fell, reached out, and found the floor covered with something warm and wet. His own blood. Suddenly reminded of the pain, he put his hand to his side, felt warm blood as it soaked through his nightshirt to coat his hand.

“You broke my hand,” Laveau wailed.

“I preferred that to having a knife in my heart.”

“The others will be up here in a moment,” Pilar warned. “Get away while you can.”

“How am I supposed to survive with a broken hand?”

Pilar pushed her brother toward the door. “Go. Please. Before they find you.”

“Stop,” Cade said. He reached under the pillow for the gun he always kept at his side. Just as his fingers closed around the gun, Pilar threw her body across his arm.

“Run,” she screamed at her brother, “or they’ll kill you!”

“Let go of my arm,” Cade said.

“I won’t let you kill Laveau. I can’t.” She turned to look at Laveau. “Go, you idiot! Can’t you hear them coming?”

Before Cade could free his arm from Pilar’s grip, Laveau seemed to come to his senses, become aware of the danger. He darted through the door into Pilar’s room moments before Rafe charged through the bedroom door.

“What’s going on?”

“It’s Laveau,” Cade said. “He tried to kill me. He ran into Pilar’s room.”

Pilar couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard something hit the ground outside. She hoped Laveau had jumped from her window. The risk of a broken leg was better than the certainty of a broken neck.

Rafe darted through the door between the rooms as sounds of running feet and shouts of alarm sounded from all corners of the hacienda. In no time at all the room was crowded, the light of three lanterns exposing the knife wound in Cade’s side.

“He cut you,” Owen said.

“He has a knife,” Cade said, getting to his feet slowly.

“He must have jumped from the window,” Rafe said when he returned to the room. “Come on. If we hurry, maybe we can catch him.”

“I’ll get my bag,” Holt said. “You need stitches.”

The room emptied as quickly as it had filled. Cade turned to Pilar. “You let him escape. You held my arm until he got away.”

“I couldn’t let you kill him.”

“I wasn’t going to kill him. I was just going to—”

“Hold him so your friends could kill him. That’s pretty much the same to me, Cade.”

“He’s a traitor, Pilar. He’s responsible for the deaths of innocent men.”

“I know, and I accept that he must pay his debt, but I can’t let you be the one to collect it.”

“But you won’t marry me. It doesn’t make any difference.”

“I can’t stop loving you. That’s what makes the difference.”

“But you don’t love me enough to marry me.”

“I want to marry you more than anything in the world, but I can’t, knowing sooner or later you’ll be responsible for my brother’s death. I understand why you feel you’ve got to do this. Please understand why I can’t.”

“The war—”

“The war is over. It’s time for people to rebuild their lives. I’m sure there were many terrible things that happened, but if you can’t let go of them, you’ll never be happy.”

“I can’t let go of this. If you had known the men—”

“But I didn’t. I’ll never be able to feel any different.”

The choice before Cade was simple. Hold on to his need for revenge and lose his chance for happiness or give up his pursuit of Laveau and marry the only woman he could ever love. But he couldn’t turn his back on his dead comrades any more than he could give up Pilar.

There had to be a compromise. He had to be able to find it and convince her to accept it. In that moment he knew what it was.

“Come here.”

She came gradually into the light of the single candle.

“I’ll make you a promise. I will not pursue Laveau, but if he falls into my hands, I can’t in all honor let him go. I’ll turn him over to a sheriff or some other law officer and do my best to see he gets a fair trial. I’ll do my best to convince my friends to do the same.

But if I do that, you’ll have to make me a promise.”

“What?”

“If I should happen to be the one responsible for turning Laveau over to the authorities and he is judged guilty and hanged, you will not hold me responsible for his death. You will have to be able to accept the fact that his actions determined his fate.”

She didn’t move, not even by the flicker of an eyelash. He waited, his breath suspended, knowing that the rest of his life would depend on the next words she uttered. As the moment stretched into more and more moments, he began to fear he’d asked too much of her. But he couldn’t ask less. He was honor bound to fight for justice for his men. There was no one else to do it for them. If it meant he had to sacrifice his happiness, he had no choice.

Pilar’s shoulders sagged. Her face relaxed into a very slow smile. “Yes,” she said. “I would very much like to be your wife.”

They were still clutched in a fierce embrace when Holt returned.

“Let me borrow him for a minute. If you want to marry him, he’s going to need all the blood he has left.”

Cade and Pilar felt like two castaways caught in the eye of a storm. Cade’s friends had shouted at him, and Pilar’s grandmother had done everything but take a hairbrush to Pilar, but no one could make them change their minds. Nobody was willing to accept their compromise. They all felt they had been betrayed. The rancor of Cade’s friends had been particularly hard on him. Nate was so angry he had threatened to go after Laveau himself. Owen’s attack had been just as sharp until Rafe spoke up.

“Cade doesn’t owe you the rest of his life,” he’d said, cutting Owen off in the middle of a particularly acrimonious diatribe. “He saved your lives in Virginia, and he’s
giving all of us the means to start fresh. He’s fulfilled his duty as our leader.”

“The hell he has!” Owen shouted.

“He’s put limits on it,” Rafe said, “limits determined by his personal need for happiness, his need to put the war and all its immorality behind him. The fate of this country depends on people like Cade and Pilar being able to work toward a future that’s better than the past. We all have our individual ghosts we need to put to rest—hanging Laveau or whatever else it may be—but knowing that Cade has made the compromises necessary to create new hope and a new life should encourage you to do the same when your time comes. Now if you can’t accept his compromise, I say you ought to get the hell out and leave him alone.”

Rafe’s speech, the longest anyone had ever heard him make, had forced his friends to reexamine their feelings about what Cade had done. It was clear that the vow that had bound them together would never again be their all-consuming obsession.

“That’s as it should be,” Rafe had said before retreating into silence.

The only person who seemed pleased was Cade’s grandfather.

“It’s about time you got sensible,” he said to his grandson. “No point in letting all that land go begging over a bunch of dead men.”

Senora diViere refused to come out of her room while Earl was in the hacienda. Her temper had become so volatile, Pilar was tempted to ask the old curmudgeon to move in just to give her relief from her grandmother’s continual anger. Now that she was going to be his daughter-in-law, he didn’t find so much wrong with her.

“It’s amazing how the prospect of wealth can improve a
person’s character,” Cade said to his grandfather.

“Don’t get smart with me,” Earl said. “You’ll have to work for your money. Her steers are as wild as bejesus.”

Cade had to listen to his grandfather’s plans for ways to take the quickest advantage of the diViere land and herds. Pilar had to endure her grandmother’s lamentations that the Wheelers would rob them of everything they had. She swore she would go live with Laveau as soon as she knew where he’d settled. Earl said he hoped she didn’t change her mind. “Just her being here is enough to turn a baby’s milk sour.” He winked at Cade. “I expect you’ll be welcoming your first son come summer.”

“Or daughter,” Pilar said.

“Wheelers don’t have no daughters,” Earl said proudly.

“Things have changed, Gramps,” Cade said. “I think it’s time you had a great-granddaughter.”

Cade teased his grandfather so much the old man threatened to return permanently to the Wheeler ranch, but he changed his mind when Senora diViere said she wouldn’t leave her room until he left the hacienda.

“It’s my Christian duty to spare you from having to face that woman across the supper table every night,” he told Cade.

To escape the overheated emotions swirling around them, each evening after supper was over Cade and Pilar would sneak away by themselves to a small hill they’d discovered overlooking the valley where the San Antonio River made its way to the Gulf of Mexico. There they could concentrate on their love and each other. They didn’t do a lot of talking.

“I’m sorry about my grandfather,” Cade said. “He’s really not as bad as he seems.”

“My grandmother is worse than she seems. She really hates you.”

“Maybe she’ll change after your first son is born.”

“She’ll say Laveau’s son should have been born first.”

“I don’t care as long as you continue to love me.”

“I’ll never stop.”

“You don’t regret it, do you?” he asked a few moments later.

“I’ll never regret marrying you.”

“Not even though it means you’ll be estranged from your grandmother?”

“I love my grandmother, but I can’t live my life for her. I want to live it with you.”

“And all those great-grandsons we’re going to give her.”

“Them, too, but it’s you I love. It’s always been you. There’s never been anybody else.”

“Poor Manuel. I feel sorry for him.”

“Don’t. He’ll marry some meek girl who’ll think he’s a god. She’ll devote herself to pleasing him and making him feel he’s the most important man in the world. He’ll love it.”

“That doesn’t sound half bad. Do you know any girls who might like to devote their lives to pleasing me?”

Pilar punched him. “You look at another woman, and I’ll scratch her eyes out.”

“Mine, too?”

“No. I want you to be able to see what a wonderful choice you made.”

Cade’s laughter started as a low rumble and grew in volume until he was really quite loud. “I could be blind and still know you were perfect. Dangerous, but still perfect.”