Night Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (40 page)

      
Lee, too, was envisioning the picture of her with her hair flung back and breasts arched, straining to ride him like some pagan goddess on a wild stallion. Then, he felt the stiff, still way she lay now that her passion had abated. Always it was the same—the irresistible melting into him when he reached out to her with his own fierce hunger, then the angry withdrawal after her body's needs had been assuaged. She used him in a far more dishonest way than her mother had used her father.

      
Slowly, he raised her off of him and then rolled them both to their sides facing each other. But he did not release her. When she refused to meet his eyes in the dim white moonlight, he reached up and took her small chin in his fingers. Rather more roughly than he had intended, he raised her face to his. They were only inches apart.

      
“Regrets again, Night Flower?”

      
She forced herself to meet his eyes. “No more than you have, Lee.”

      
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? You're the one who always freezes up and then turns on me afterward,” he replied bitterly, angry at the vulnerability and hunger he always seemed to reveal to her.

      
“Can you honestly say you didn't regret it the first time, when all your plans for an annulment were destroyed?” Her eyes accused him.

      
“That's all over now,” he evaded. “We're married, Mellie, and we have to live together. It's inevitable that this happen, even though we sleep apart. A man and a woman who are attracted to each other like we are can't be under the same roof without making love,” he argued reasonably, but he knew anger was creeping into his voice.

      
She shook her head and pulled away from him. “In other words, you want me, but you don't like it. Well, there's one simple solution to our dilemma.” She rolled quickly out of his reach and scooped up her night rail as she moved across the floor toward the door. “If we don't live under the same roof, both of us should rest easier.” She vanished down the hall with a slam of the door.

      
He flopped back angrily onto the bed and swore softly in Spanish.

Chapter Twenty

      
“I can't live this way, Obedience, I just can't,” Melanie sobbed out as the big woman rocked her gently in her arms.

      
“Now don't take on so,” Obedience said. “Let's git inside and set a spell ‘n yew kin tell me all ‘bout it.”

      
Leaving Liberator tied at the side of the boardinghouse, Melanie and Obedience walked arm in arm around to the kitchen door. It was just after dawn. Pink and mauve streaked the morning sky. Melanie had not slept at all last night when she returned to her lonely room. After restlessly pacing for several hours, she had thrown a few clothes in a bag and fled the ranch in the darkness, returning to the Oakleys' boardinghouse and the common sense and assurance she knew Obedience could provide.

      
“Now, I 'spect that young husband o' yourn’ll come flyin' in here madder 'n a scalded dog in a few minutes, so yew better talk fast.” Obedience spoke as she began to make a giant pot of coffee. Even Sadie was not astir yet, and the usually busy kitchen seemed eerily quiet.

      
Melanie sat on the edge of a chair, fidgeting nervously with her skirt, looking like a wild bird ready to take flight. Her hair hung in tangles down her back from the furious ride into the city, and her silk shirt was buttoned crookedly.

      
“I don't know where to begin,” she whispered helplessly, splaying her fingers across her knees.

      
“How ‘bout with last night?” Obedience supplied shrewdly and was rewarded with a guilty red flush from the young woman. “He hurt yew?” she asked incredulously, not really believing it herself.

      
“No, no—sometimes he frightens me, but...he's never hurt me.”

      
Obedience nodded in dawning understanding. “He pleases yew too good, huh?”

      
More scarlet blushing and silence.

      
“Look, honey, what yew feel's right ‘n natural—ain't nothin' ta run from.”

      
“It is if your husband's angry with you afterward,” Melanie said in a sad, soft voice. “He wants me. As long as we're living under the same roof, he can't seem to help...well...” She faded off in a misery of embarrassment.

      
Obedience gave a low, rich chuckle. “‘N yew cain't seem to help it neither, which is jist 'zactly whut nature intended.”

      
“But he doesn't love me! He was forced to marry me and never intended to consummate the marriage,” Melanie blurted out. Once that shameful revelation was made, it was as if a dam burst inside her. She told Obedience everything, from their hateful agreement about the annulment that day in the orchard until their explosive confrontation the night of the ball.

      
“So you see, after it happened again last night and he acted the same way afterward, I just couldn't go on living like a prisoner, a—a whore. All he has to do is touch me and I can't help myself.” She hung her head and big shiny tears spilled down her cheeks, splashing on her hands clenched in her lap.

      
From what Deborah had told her, Obedience knew that Melanie's illegitimacy and neurotic mother had left her with painful scars that she obviously still felt. A proud, pedigree-oriented
Tejano
like Lee Velasquez would just naturally do and say all the wrong things, unwittingly playing on her insecurity. But for all that, Obedience was certain they belonged together. If only the young fools could open up to one another and admit their fears and mistakes.

      
Before she could counsel any further, the sound of hoof beats and flying gravel outside the kitchen door interrupted her. “If ‘n I don't miss my bet, thet's yore husband. Notice how glad he is ta be quit o' yew,” she said with a wink as she ambled quickly toward the hall door, leaving Melanie to face Lee alone.

      
After taking the porch steps two at a time, he was at the door in a couple of long strides. Melanie stood up and balled her fists in her riding skirts, defiantly facing him as he slammed into the room, filling it with his menacing presence.

      
Furiously, he threw the note she'd written him onto the kitchen table. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? We're married, lady, and moving back under Obedience's wing won't undo it.”

      
“I won't live with you and be subjected to your lust and your scorn afterward,” she replied, proud of her icy control.

      
“My lust, you damned little hypocrite! As if you don't return it! I've got to commend my sweet little bride—she's been a real apt pupil. With a few more lessons, I'm sure you could—”

      
“Could what?” she interrupted his hateful diatribe with a shriek. “Open my own bordello—or be placed on Rampart Street like my mother was?”

      
He ignored her outburst and reached for her bag, sitting forgotten on a chair near the door. “Come on, wife. We're going home.”

      
“No. You don't want me for a wife. The only reason you even came after me is because you're afraid of my father!” she said spitefully.

      
He dropped the bag as if he were burned. Slowly, he crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her contemptuously. “Rafe Fleming be damned,” was all he said, in a low clear voice. Then, he turned and walked out the door.

* * * *

      
Melanie remained at the boardinghouse, occupying her old room once more. For the next week, she went to the newspaper each morning, saying nothing about her estrangement from her husband. If Clarence knew, he and Amos forbore mentioning the situation.

      
After riding Sangre furiously back to Night Flower, Lee spent the week breaking mustangs, a hot, dangerous, and dirty pastime better left to the
mestañeros
he had hired. But he needed to do something to burn off the killing rage that suffused his body. Each night, aching and exhausted, he lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking of the woman who no longer slept down the hall.
She's no farther away in San Antonio than she was under my roof, that's for damn sure.

      
She was right about one thing. He could not make love to her if they lived apart. Still, the maddening desire for her did not abate. Finally, after a sleepless week, he went to San Antonio, not to be a supplicant at the boardinghouse once more, but to visit a discreet brothel on the outskirts of town.

      
Just as the first streaks of light were inching their hazy way across the dirty windowpane, Lee rubbed his eyes and looked around the room. Sunrise. It looked to be a cloudy day; but then if Clarice didn't clean her windows any better than she cleaned her room, it might be full sunshine outside.

      
The place was a sty. Silk stockings and frilly underwear were tossed in artless abandon across the chairs and carpet. A dinner tray sat on a dust-coated walnut table alongside the horsehair sofa, its half-eaten meat and potatoes pooled in congealed gray grease with a steak bone protruding obscenely from beneath a linen napkin that had been hastily discarded. Ashtrays filled with cigars, cigarillos, and pipe ashes attested to the number and variety of customers Clarice had entertained in the past few days.

      
Dragging himself into a sitting position, he looked down at the woman sleeping next to him. The taffy color of her hair was betrayed by darker roots in the morning's merciless light; and her face, although youthful, was smeared with rouge and kohl. He had selected her last night because she did not yet have the hard, practiced airs of the older women. She seemed somehow vulnerable in such a gaudy pleasure palace.

      
Now as he stared at her, visions of his radiant ebony-haired wife flashed unbidden into his mind, her clear golden skin innocent of paint. He could almost smell her sweet, musky scent after making love.
But here I am sleeping with a pathetic doxy while she sleeps alone only a few blocks away.

      
Angrily, he threw back the sheet and swung his long legs over the edge of the bed. Clarice muttered something unintelligible in her sleep and rolled over. Lee dressed hastily and tossed a generous payment on the bed where he had lain. He quit the room without a backward glance.

      
The cool, cloudy day would be ideal for working stock. His men had just brought in a half-dozen really good mustangs culled from a large herd they'd captured to the west. He should ride quickly back to Night Flower and start breaking them. But something kept him in town. He walked slowly toward Simpson's Livery to reclaim Sangre, then changed his mind and strolled over to the secluded little park behind San Fernando Church.

      
Larena had come to meet him here and tell him that she would not wait for him. Thinking it was a good thing she had been so sensible, he absently kicked a pebble with the toe of his boot. Obviously, he would never be able to get an annulment to marry her now! But was she right about him and Melanie? Already, he had betrayed his marriage vows with a brief and most unsatisfactory copulation in a whorehouse.

      
But his wife had made it abundantly clear that no matter how much she might respond to his touch, she wanted no part of a real marriage. She did not want to be his wife and bear his children. She wanted to crusade for the Indians and slaves, for women's suffrage and temperance. That last thought caused him to wince in guilt and massage his aching temples. He had drunk entirely too much whiskey last night.

      
But what do I want?
he asked himself in confusion. Deep in thought, he did not see Father Gus come around the low-hanging cypress limbs along the path he was walking. The priest was on his way to the Indian school after saying an early morning mass in San Fernando's. They nearly collided before Father Gus reached out to steady him as he sidestepped from the path.

      
“So early for you to be in town, Leandro,” he said levelly, taking in the other man's rumpled clothes, unshaven face, and bloodshot eyes. The smell of cheap perfume and musky sheets clung to him. Knowing that Melanie had moved into town last week, Father Gus intuited where Lee had spent the night, and it was not in his wife's arms. He'd bet his burro Francisco on that!

      
Meeting the clear blue eyes of the priest, Lee sighed in resignation as a twisted grin spread unwillingly across his face. “Can't a man ever sin in private, Father?”

      
“
Ja
. He can. But does he want to live with it in private after it is done? That is the real question.” The words were spoken with no recrimination.

      
They walked aimlessly through the tree-shaded park and out onto a side street, nearly deserted at such an early hour. Father Gus knew that if Lee wanted to unburden himself, he would do so. If not, no amount of lecturing or cajoling would make the private, self-contained
Tejano
unbend. He strove for a neutral topic they could discuss. “Our children conjugate Latin verbs from the grammar book you sent us. Also they read Chaucer and Cervantes. Even my poor English grows better each day as I study Mr. Keats and Father Newman. We all thank you for the wonderful books.”

      
Lee shrugged dismissively. “They were gathering dust. I've already read them. Anyway, I have little time or need to conjugate Latin verbs or read poetry and essays these days. Melanie was amazed that I gave Uncle Alfonso's books to Indian children,” he said in a voice laced with scorn and regret.

      
“How is your wife?” the priest asked gently. “I have not seen her in many days. Lame Deer asks for her.”