Moon Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (51 page)

      
“I'm not sure I should allow this revolutionary, seditious material under my roof...” Feeling her stiffen and begin to retort, he chuckled and said, “Think you'll like your new home, Moon Flower?”

      
She sighed and relaxed in his arms. “It's beautiful, right down to the potted bougainvillea and oleanders in the courtyard. They always were my favorites.”

      
“I had them dug up from the lake house garden and shipped here.” He tightened his grip, letting one hand wander down from her arm to her waist.

      
“Were you so certain then that you'd find me?” she said, turning in his arms to face him.

      
“I only knew I would never give up looking,” he answered simply.

      
Before either of them could say more, Adam came bounding down the hall and burst into the library. “Mama, Papa, Joe says I can pick my own pony! He's got a whole corral full of them!”

      
Rafe scooped the boy up. “Let's just take a walk down to the corral and see what's there.”

      
“We just arrived, Rafael. Don't you think we should wait for just a bit—let Adam get used to his new home?” Deborah's voice reflected her protectiveness. Things were happening so fast!

      
A trace of the old arrogance slipped into his manner as he replied, “I thought you understood, Deborah, that Adam's riding lessons are long overdue. If Joe has some likely ponies gentled, there's no reason not to let Adam choose one now.”

      
“Oh yes, Mama, yes!” Adam joined in.

      
Reluctantly, she walked with them from the house to the corral, located by one fork of the creek. Joe was standing there with a younger man, whom he introduced as Micah Torrance. “Ya ready, Tad?” the slim cowboy asked, his clear gray eyes alight as he watched Adam's fascination with the ponies. At the boy's excited nod, he vaulted the corral with a small hackamore in his hand.

      
“That little paint with the star blaze looks spirited and smart,” Rafe said, pointing to a frisky pony eyeing them from across the enclosure.

      
“He's awfully big, Rafael,” Deborah interjected.

      
“He ain't—isn't either, Mama!” At Adam's outburst, Rafe motioned for Micah to slip the hackamore on the pony and bring it to them.

      
For the next quarter hour, Adam got to know Blazer, his name for the prancing, pretty little pony. Then leaving Joe and Micah to watch the boy, Rafe escorted the fretting mother back to the house. He was somewhat disappointed with her initial response to her new home, but uncertain of exactly what he expected of her. She was obviously pleased to see her things here, yet there was a reticence to her manner that had little to do with Adam's getting his first pony.

      
When they entered the parlor, he said, “Go upstairs and I'll have Lucia—”

      
“What do you need, Rafe?” The pretty Mexicana entered from the courtyard, apron in hand, a large smile wreathing her face.

      
“Deborah would like a bath before dinner. Get Dom to bring water from the well and fill the tub,” he replied. Smiling back at Lucia, he did not see the stricken way Deborah stared at her.

      
Lucia did. Nodding, she left to do as she was asked.
So, she is jealous of me!
A wistful smile touched her lips.
If only she had reason to be.
In the five years they had worked to build Renacimiento, Rafe had never treated her as anything but a substitute for his beloved sister in New Orleans.

      
After the kitchen helper had lugged a dozen buckets of warm water to Deborah's room, Lucia then went up with clean towels. Knocking hesitantly, she entered when Deborah bid her do so.

      
Rafe's wife was standing at her dressing table, brushing her waist-length silver hair. She looked up at Lucia.

      
The chill in her eyes was obvious to the Mexicana. “I have brought linens for your bath. You'll probably need at least two to dry all that beautiful hair,
Señora
.” She smiled warmly.

      
“Thank you. Just put them on the bed, if you please.”

      
Lucia hesitated, her hands twisting in the snowy towels. “Señora, I think you misunderstand some things. Rafe has been obsessed with finding you. He built this ranch as a home for you—
nada,
nothing, no help or money came from his father in New Orleans. This house he's made a shrine for you. You are the one he loves.”

      
Deborah put down the brush and turned, wanting to hate the earnestly entreating woman but finding it difficult. “So he says, and in his own way, Rafael always did love me, I suppose. But there's love and...there's fidelity to that love, not necessarily the same thing,” she finished in a strained voice.

      
Lucia nodded. She knew little of Rafe's life in New Orleans, but much of the double standards of men in her own culture. “I will not tell you he has led a life of celibacy for the past five years since we escaped the Comanche, but I will tell you this. I have never been his lover.” She looked Deborah straight in the eye.

      
Steady brown and lavender gazes locked for a pregnant moment as the women took each other's measure. “I want to believe you, Lucia; but this is so far out in the wilderness with no other women around, and you are so attractive, so...”

      
“Available?” Lucia supplied for her. “I won't deny I would have agreed if he had asked me, but he did not. As to the other”—she shrugged—“he has been a man driven for as long as I have known him. He works until he drops each night. A few times a year, he goes with the vaqueros to the small towns several days' ride to the east. But that was before he found you. He will not lie with whores ever again,
Señora
.”

      
“I pray you're right, Lucia, truly I do,” Deborah said in a choked voice. “I appreciate your honesty with me and I would like to be your friend. Please, call me Deborah. You—you said you escaped from the Comanche with my husband. You've been through a great deal together. Now you know him better than I do. He's changed so much since New Orleans. Building this place must have hardened him. He killed a man outside San Antonio...” Her voice faltered as the grisly scene flashed before her eyes once more.

      
“Enrique Flores,” Lucia said in an icy, calm voice. “So, Rafe finally found him.”

      
“How did you know?” Deborah's eyes were wide violet pools now.

      
“Rafe heard he was in San Antonio. Flores was a fiend—filth, who sold your husband to the Comanche,” Lucia replied with vehemence.

      
“But you didn't see...you weren't there when he gutted that man,” Deborah said in a choked voice.

      
“The pig died quick, I am sure—too quick! I was there, Deborah, when Flores watched Iron Hand's men tie Rafe down and strip him naked. They brought red-hot tongs to rip off his manroot—that's the kind of monster Flores was—he brought many men to that death! Only Rafe's
puha
—his courage—saved his life.”

      
Deborah turned, shaken and ashen. “He's lived through so much.” She raised her eyes to meet Lucia's. “It's strange, you know. I thought that I had too—making a new life in Texas, running a business, raising Adam. But I never realized what he had to suffer to build Renacimiento.”

      
“He has survived things that most men would not have been able to face,” Lucia said quietly. “The night we escaped, he was hit in the side by an arrow. War arrows are barbed with three prongs on each side. I had to pull it from his flesh while he bit on a green willow branch to keep from making a sound. I tied the wound up and he rode for three days, bleeding all the while.”

      
Remembering all his scars and her cruel remarks to him about them, she felt ashamed. “I really don't know him at all. I guess that's what frightens me—he's lived through such violence and evil—it's made him violent, but...”

      
“It has not made him evil, Deborah. No man who loves with the single-minded devotion of Rafe Fleming can ever be evil. He is the gentlest man I've ever seen when he tames horses. Put Enrique Flores from your mind. He does not deserve anyone's pity. Only remember how good it is to have a man like Rafe Fleming on your side,” Lucia said with pride. “He saved my life.”

      
“Rafael saved me, too. Flores had abducted me when the army left the city. Rafael followed him into the thick of shooting between rangers and Mexican soldiers to rescue me.”

      
“We both have reason to love him; but, Deborah, it is you that he loves. You are his wife, his woman. Me he treats like a sister. I am not your rival, nor ever will be.” She stretched out her hand in entreaty. Silently, Deborah clasped it and they embraced.

* * * *

      
After a long, relaxing bath, Deborah came downstairs for dinner. Seeing Lucia basting several large prairie chickens spitted in the wide stone fireplace, she offered to help. “I've cooked for twenty ravenous boarders for years, so just tell me what you want me to do and I'll do it.” Her smile was as warming as the air circulating around the hearth.

      
Lucia wiped her brow with the back of her arm and nodded with a grin. “Well, Dom usually sets the table while I make coffee and finish cooking the vegetables and carving the meat. Nice boy but clumsy. He breaks a half dozen dishes a week.”

      
Deborah laughed. ‘Then, I'll set the table and fill the bowls while you carve.”

      
During the meal, Deborah felt Joe's eyes on her, then watched his shrewd gaze shift to Lucia and back to her.
He knows she's in love with Rafael and wonders if I'm jealous,
she thought in silent amazement. During the journey to Renacimiento, Rafael had talked a great deal about the half-breed Cherokee partner who had saved his life and taught him to survive on the frontier.
Now I begin to realize just what horrors he had to survive.

      
As Lucia and Deborah cleared the table, Rafe, at Adam's insistence, took his son down to the corrals to check on Blazer once more. Having Dom to help her with the dishes, Lucia ushered Deborah out of the warm, steamy kitchen. “You've had a long ride and lots of excitement. Go take a walk in the cool evening air before turning in.”

      
Taking the kindly advice, she headed for the courtyard, filled with beautiful potted flowering shrubs and trees. Beyond the house lay an herb and vegetable garden. Curious to see what it contained, she walked the neat rows and knelt down to examine a fine cluster of lemon mint leaves.

      
“Right glad ta have ya home, ma'am. Rafe'll be able to settle down now, I reckon.” Joe had come up behind her silently.

      
With a start, Deborah looked up at him but before she could stand, he squatted in the dirt beside her. ‘Always cud judge a female by whether she had a way with growin' things. You'll do jest fine here, Deborah.”

      
“I—I do want to belong, Joe,” she said uncertainly.

      
“You will,” he answered simply. “Ya made a real fine start by acceptin' Lucia.” His eyes searched her face.

      
Deborah blushed under his kindly scrutiny. “I knew you understood—that is, you knew I was jealous of her. But now, I believe my husband and she weren't lovers. Rafael and I are strangers to each other in so many ways. We've built separate lives for the past six years...”

      
”Ya both built 'em in Texas, didn't ya?” At her nod, he pressed further. “Tell me, all them years alone, did ya ever quit thinkin' o' Rafe?”

      
“No, never,” she replied in a pained whisper.

      
“Wall, he never forgot ‘bout you neither.”

      
“I could see that the moment I entered the parlor,” she said with a tremulous smile.

      
“Don't let him bein' different than the dandyman he used ta be worry ya none,” Joe reassured her. “He's a hard man fer a hard land; but if n ya lived in Texas fer six years, ya oughtta savvy thet.”

      
A hint of a smile played around her lips as she eyed him. “Some things about his transformation have been surprising, I must admit.”

      
“Like who he keeps company with?” He grinned. “I may be a Frenchy, but I ain't 'xactly a blue-blooded Creole.”

      
“I never expected my husband's views on race to change so dramatically. At least that's one thing we'll never argue over again,” she said with a smile.

      
“Funny how bein' on th' receivin' end can change a body's idees ‘bout thet.” Joe turned and spat a lob of tobacco into the bushes.

      
“You mean being a slave of the Comanche?” Deborah shuddered.

      
“Yep. Rafe don't hold with no man ownin' another, white, red, er black, not no more.”

      
“He's learned some lessons, but in other ways he's still the same arrogant, egotistical male he always was,” Deborah said, thinking of his high-handed tactics in bringing her to Renacimiento.

      
“You want him ta be different? Give in ta ya all th' time, let ya run over him?” he asked, knowing the answer.

      
“No... not that. I wouldn't want a man I could dictate to...” She halted in puzzlement, unable to put her own feelings into words.

      
Joe chuckled. “After survivin' everthin' th' both o' ya did alone, you oughtta be able ta make it together. He's a strong man—be a strong woman. Mebbe back in New Orleans he couldn't handle thet. I never knowed Rafael Flamenco, but I sure as hell know Rafe Fleming.”