The Wildest Heart (30 page)

My smile was just as deliberate as hers had been, and I thought her slight nod was an acknowledgment.

I lay back after she had left and closed my eyes. The throbbing in my hand was already less painful, and the broth I had drunk made me feel drowsy in spite of myself.

Why had I insisted that I must see Lucas? Until I had seen Elena, and watched her smile, there had been nothing further from my mind. But now it had become a challenge between us. I did not doubt that she would send him to me, and I would send him back, hating me more than ever. Or would I? As I had done so often before, I thought of a chess game. The black queen and the white. Who were the pawns? Or the kings, for that matter? Chess was a game of powerful women, and I would match Elena for the sake of matching her, if I had to.

I must have dozed off. The sound of the door banging back upon its hinges awakened me, and I could not help wincing. “Must you always be so noisy?”

“What in hell do you have to say to me that you haven't said before?”

“Your sense of—
duty
cannot fail to amaze me,” I murmured in an exaggeratedly pained voice, and caught the wicked green gleam of his eyes through my shuttered lashes. I thought he controlled his anger with an effort, and it pleased me.

“Elena said you wanted to talk to me. Why me?”

“Elena said she'd send you to me. Why? Because I felt I had to thank you for your presence of mind, of course. That is what I told her, and she chose to believe me, I think. And I was rude. I must apologize for that too.”

“You might fool me if the look in your eyes matched the words you say.”

“I had no idea that my eyes betrayed me so.”

Lucas stalked angrily past my bed to the window, and stood looking out.

“You want to play games, try Ramon. Maybe even Julio. That how you got even Shannon eatin' out of your hand?”

There was contempt in the look he turned on me then, but I faced it without flinching.

“Why do you so despise the same traits in me that you obviously admire in your—in Elena?”

He noticed my studied pause, as I had meant him to, and his eyes squinted at me dangerously.

“Why don't you come right out an' say whatever it was that was so urgent you couldn't rest?” His voice was carefully controlled, but the huskiness in it was even more apparent than usual, and I could sense his eagerness to leave. It made me even more determined to keep him here longer—long enough, perhaps, for Elena to wonder.

I made my voice deliberately innocent. “But I have already told you. I wanted to thank you. I must have seemed very ungracious, and I know now that you only did what needed to be done. I am not often so clumsy, and you know you
do
have a way of rubbing me the wrong way!”

“I can say the same thing about you, an' that's for sure!” Lucas said grimly, but I thought he gave me a rather puzzled, wary look, as if he wondered what I was up to this time.

I said softly, “I wanted to ask you not to be angry with Luz. It wasn't her fault. I insisted that she should have the chance to go riding… she's young and so pretty, it isn't fair that she should have to spend most of her time slaving in the kitchen!”

I thought I saw him flush with anger. “Luz is not a slave here! No one treats her as one. She does not think so.”

“But then what
is
her position here?
Mine
is clear enough of course, but Luz? I understood at first that she was your… how do you say it in Spanish?… Yes, your
novia.
And she's in love with you—the poor child can hardly hide it. Are you going to marry her, Lucas? Or are you going to live this way forever, torn between your lust for Elena and your guilt because she was your father's wife?”

He looked as if I had struck him. His face whitened, and for an instant there was almost a stunned look in his eyes, as if he could not believe that I had said the words out loud.

“Christ!”
he said at last, and his voice shook with the effort of controlling his anger. “This time you've damn well gone too far, you meddling…”

“Too far, you say? Because I've been honest enough to speak the truth? Don't you see that it needed to be said, just as what you did for me this afternoon, when you cauterized my knife cuts, needed to be done? Or are you such a coward that you will not even admit the facts to yourself?”

“Will you be quiet?” He took a threatening step towards me, but I sat up straight and faced him boldly.

“No! And why should I be? You've told me, too often, what you think of
me.
And there's Luz, whom I've grown fond of. Since you've seen fit to meddle in my life, Luke Cord, why should I not do the same with yours? As your concerned sister, of course.”

He stood there and stared at me as if he could not trust himself to speak, and there was something in his face—a mixture of pain and frustration and rage—that suddenly made me ashamed of the game I had been playing. I had a weapon to use against him now that I knew where he was most vulnerable, but strangely enough I seemed to have lost the inclination to use it.

I forced myself to go on, keeping my eyes steadily on his. “Why, Lucas? If you love her, why won't you
do
something about it?”

“Do something, you say? Do what?” The words seemed torn from him, as if he could not help himself. “Do you think that we could ever marry? That they would let us? My God—how could
you
ever understand how it feels to want and yearn for something you know you'll never have?” I saw him turn away from me like a blind man and stand by the window, looking out, his fingers gripping the sill. “Elena's like—I think I fell in love with her the first moment I saw her. Ever since then she's been like a fever, like a sickness I can't shake off! And yet I don't want to shake it off either. Can you understand that? Can you understand how it happened? I thought, at first, that she really was my mother. That I was her son. It was natural for me to love her then, and I did without question. And then one day she told me. I was old
enough
to hear the truth, she said. It must not make any difference to me, or to our relationship, for she loved me even more than she did her own sons, and I—God help me, all I could think of was that she was not my mother—that she was a woman, and I wanted her. Nothing else mattered, do you hear? I could think of nothing else but having her—holding her in my arms, kissing her mouth, and hadn't she told me that she loved me? ‘Much more than if you had been my son,' she had said, and I read the meaning I wanted to read into her words. I… ah,
hell!
”

The sudden violence in his voice as he swung around suddenly to face me made me gasp.

“Why am I telling
you
all this? Why you? I've always known you judged me, an' hated me. And I don't even like you. But you know what? You
do
remind me of her in some way. The way your hair hangs so straight and heavy, and a certain look you get on your face sometimes when you get mad or stubborn. But you've got the damndest cold eyes I've ever seen, except when you're angry.”

“Is that why you try to make me angry so often?” My voice came out as a mechanical whisper, and I had the strangest, light-headed feeling that I was on the brink of some frightening discovery that would change my life forever. I did not want to be changed, I did not want to feel helpless, to find myself completely incapable of either motion or protest as Lucas crossed the room to me.

He stood looking down at me with a baffled expression, as if he were really seeing me for the first time, and something in his eyes made me catch my breath.

“Why did you make me say those things out loud? What do any of our lives or our secrets matter to you? I think you play some game of your own, like the chess your father tried to teach me. If I love Elena, what is it to you? Marry my brother and leave this valley. Forget about the rest of us. For I do not think you care for anyone but yourself, Rowena Dangerfield.”

He had spoken to me in Spanish, his voice oddly harsh, and it was in the same language that I replied to him.

“Did you kill your father?” I couldn't help myself, I didn't even understand why I asked the question. He flinched visibly; but surprisingly, he answered me.

“So you've thought that too? Yes—you see, I can admit to guilt when it is deserved. It might be said that I killed my father, but not in the way that you're thinking. I didn't fire the guns that put the bullets in him, but I was the cause of his being on SD land that day. You want to know how it happened? You haven't guessed?”

He gave a short laugh that wasn't a laugh at all, a muffled sound of self-contempt, and contempt for me as well.

“How innocent you can look! And I could almost swear your mouth is trembling. Why, Rowena? You want to hear the truth, don't you, so you can judge me for what I am?” With a lithe, violent movement he dropped his body onto the bed, holding me down against the pillow by the shoulders while his eyes looked narrowly into mine.

“Listen, then, and if you ever speak of this to me again, or tear at me with your questions, I swear I'll kill you!”

His voice was soft, but there was a threat in it that held me still and silent while he went on speaking. “He found us together. No, we weren't in bed, but I was kissing her, holding her in my arms, and her arms were about my neck. He walked in. Neither of us had expected him to return from Mexico that day so perhaps he came back so unexpectedly with a purpose. I'm only surprised that he was so calm. If I had been in his place I think I would have killed. As it was, he only walked up to her and struck her; and I would have killed him then, if she had not flung herself between us and told me to go. And he said—he said: ‘Yes, you had better get yourself out of my sight, before I forget myself, and leave my wife to me. For I was responsible for the death of your mother, and would not have
your
blood on my hands as well.' And she kept screaming for me to go—to go quickly. Christ, I was so goddamn young then, I didn't know what in hell I should do! But I knew that I was guilty of a terrible crime, and he had every right to kill me if he wanted to. I think I would have preferred it if he had! But all he did, when I hesitated, was to strike at me contemptuously, as one would a dog, with the butt of the gun he wore. I still carry the scar—you see? Among others, but this one is the mark of Cain.”

There was something so terrible, so despairing in his voice that I could not bear to hear more.

“But you left! You didn't kill him!” I cried out, and felt his fingers bite into my flesh.

“I should either have stayed, yes, and killed him myself, or taken her with me. He used the whip on her, and then he left. He blamed her for everything; he said he would find Shannon and tell him where to find her
,
so that the feud would be ended forever. But Shannon's men found him first, and they killed him from ambush, without giving him a chance to speak or even to defend himself. And if he had not been killed, I would have hated him forever for what he had done. As it was…”

“You killed the men who killed him. You revenged him! Even my father said it had been a fair fight, that you were justified.”

“I didn't kill those two men for
him.
I killed them for
me.
You saw that at the very beginning, didn't you? I killed them, they didn't kill me—an' your father saved me from a hanging. He shouldn't have, should he? Because then you wouldn't be here.”

“You
wanted
to die?” My voice was an accusing whisper.

“I don't know! Mebbe I did. I was so damned mixed up and confused I can't remember any longer. An' even after that…”

He didn't finish it. He didn't have to. I saw the look on his face and knew that he was thinking again of Elena. I don't know what madness took hold of me then, or if it was something in the broth that Luz had brought up to me. I hated Elena and I hated him. For there had been Flo, and there was Luz—and perhaps countless other women he'd played with and used, while all the time, all the time it was Elena he craved. I said in a voice I hardly recognized as my own:

“Perhaps all you need is something else to think about. Another woman who is just as unattainable, and just as calculating,” and I put my uninjured hand up and touched the hair at the back of his neck, pulling his head down to mine.

I cannot remember now what it was I meant to prove. Did I mean to punish him for his earlier repudiation of me? Had I intended to show him that women too were capable of using their lips and their bodies to arouse a passion they intend only to use, never to fulfill? Or was it Elena's sureness of him that I challenged?

Whatever I had meant to prove or to achieve was all forgotten when Lucas kissed me. Even now, as I write the words, I can feel the emotions that erupted from nowhere, to take possession of me, draining away my will.

It was not as if I had never been kissed before, or responded to a man's lips. Todd Shannon's kisses had left me breathless and dizzy, forcing a response from me. He was a man used to getting his own way, a man who had decided he wanted me, and showed it.

But Lucas kissed me as if he hated me, as if he could not help himself, after that first instinctive movement of withdrawal I sensed in him—as if he was a man who had reached the depths of despair and had nowhere else to go.

I was there. I was a female and my lips were warm, and I had deliberately maneuvered him into this. He knew it and I knew it in those first few seconds when his hands moved from my shoulders and along my neck as if he longed to strangle me. And then he was holding my face with his palms against my temples, fingers tangling in my hair so that I could not escape his angry, hurtful kisses even if I had wanted to.

It was then that I realized I did not want to escape, and the discovery was frightening, as I felt myself swept across the threshold of feeling such as I had not dreamed existed within myself. It was like being possessed by a demon.