Wild Sierra Rogue (8 page)

Did he?

Didn't he?

All she could be positive about was, she'd been awfully hateful to Rafe. Yet with valiant intentions he took up for her, and like David with Goliath, he went after a taller opponent. This bespoke an ingrained goodness, a strength of character flagrant in fiction, but rarely witnessed in real life.

She at least owed Rafe an explanation. Could she say it? Could she admit that she, a drab if there ever was one, had been vain enough to think she needed protection from men, mostly from Rafe himself? Oh, he had kissed her, but that was to make a point. His passions weren't for her.

A tiny tug of emotion pulled at her heart.

Yet Margaret couldn't help feeling a vitality that refreshed her blood, bones, muscles, and soul. As a survivor of a terrible sickness, she rejoiced in the privilege of vitality.

“Cupcakes. Anybody wanna cupcake?”

The vendor's announcement roused Rafe. Or it could have been Margaret's voice, or the rattling of her change purse as she answered in the affirmative. Feeling hungrier than she had in ages, she bought two pastries plus a string of jerked beef, and handed one cupcake across the aisle.

“Keep it,” Rafe groused, as she bit into the other icing-covered cake. He turned his head.

“Rafe . . . I know you're a bit upset, but—”

“I'm more than a bit upset.”

His cupcake in hand, she stood and crossed the aisle to take the empty seat facing him, but he turned his attention to something on the other side of the window. The dark of night?

“I've apologized to Tex a dozen times. And I want you to know how sorry I am about . . . about, well, you know what I'm talking about. Oh, Rafe, I had no idea you'd fly to my defense.”

“That's right. You always figured me for a no-good, so why would you think I could act chivalrous?”

His boyish pout caused her to sigh in frustration and set the foodstuff aside. “Would it help if I apologize for deceiving you?”

“No.”

“My mother swears that sweets make for sweet.” She smiled—an unfamiliar expression. “I bet this cupcake would make your mood all better. Want to try it?”

“No.”

“Would you like for me to get back in my old seat?”

“Yes.”

Scowling at the hard set of his battered jaw, she exhaled. “If that's the way you feel about everything, why don't we consider our contract null and void? You can catch the return train, once we get to El Paso.”

“If I do, I'm keeping the money you paid me.”

Her Scottish thriftiness and Teutonic respect for money reared. “You will not.”

“Not much you can do about it, is there,
bruja?”

“You would like to think not!”

She realized something, and it hit her quite suddenly, right in the face. It was stimulating, arguing with Rafe. The nasty, hateful sort of pitched battles of the past weren't fulfilling, but small skirmishes did have their charm. She announced, “You'll either repay me, or you'll live up to your end of the bargain.”

They argued for a good half hour, until Sally Belle Ashkettle complained to the conductor, and he threatened to put Rafe and Margaret off the train.

 

 

The train pulled into El Paso in the hour before daybreak. Every bone in his face aching, Rafe gathered his belongings and stomped down the aisle, past yawning and stretching passengers, plus Tex and his broom of a sister. Repay her—huh! Like her father, she owed
him.

Making a fool out of him, letting him think she was engaged to her own brother—he ought to wring her scrawny neck. Last night, after they had argued over money and were forced outside to the undulating connections between the cars, she admitted her reasons. They made Rafe damned furious.
¡Estoy como aqua pa' chocolate!
Damned furious. The witch had thought he would rape her, had even hinted he might have touched Olga in anger.

Holy hell, rape Margarita!

Rafe Delgado didn't rape women. Never had, never would. And to tell the truth, he'd never been in a situation even to give it consideration. Yet he'd refused to give Margarita the satisfaction of a defense against such absurd charges. Nonetheless, he had assured her in lengthy terms that he had absolutely no interest in her, even if she tore her clothes off and begged him to ease the misery of her voluptuous lusts.

“Have no fear,” she said snootily. “I would sooner bare my bosom to Jack the Ripper, than to the likes of you.”

“What a nasty thing to say, even for a witch. That Ripper is a monster.”

That was last night. Today Rafe remained in bad temper. Witch. Broom! Harridan. Virago. He hated arguing, had had enough of it for a lifetime, thanks to the perdition of Chihuahua in late 1889, but arguing was all Rafe and Margarita seemed to do. Angry he might be with her, yet he would carry on to Chihuahua state with the McLoughlins, only because he was headed there anyway, thanks to that divine signal pointing southward. Once they reached the city of Chihuahua, though, he was history.

Why? Things could get ugly, once Arturo discovered the prodigal nephew returned, but Rafe had known this all along. To the point, Rafe had had his fill of the McLoughlins. For years they had been the death of him; this latest insult was the final blow.

As he descended the steps, he flipped a coin to the nearest porter. “You need to help the skinny lady behind me. She's got a
lot
of luggage in the baggage car.”

“Sí,
señor.”

Rafe tossed his valise across his shoulder and hastened down the platform. Tex's voice slowed but didn't stop his forward pace. “Rafe, can I buy you a cuppa coffee?”

“Not thirsty.”

“A shot of whiskey?”

“I told you, I'm not thirsty.”

“Wanna just hold up for a dad-blame minute?”

Turning to Margarita's brother, Rafe saw that the young hombre looked like the bowels of hell on a Saturday night; he had to feel even worse than Rafe, and that was more than awful. “What do you want, Jones? Uh,
McLoughlin.”

Passengers, including
La Bruja
and her not inconsiderable pile of possessions, passed by before Tex replied, “You've gotta forgive Maggie. She didn't mean no harm, playing like we was sweet on each other. You see, Rafe, she's kinda funny, my Maggie. She didn't like setting herself up to get hurt.”

“You've lost me. I don't know what you're talking about.”

“She's scared of men. Well, I mean she's scared of getting tangled up with one, so she does whatever she can to make sure that don't happen.”

“Why? She have a taste for women?”

“Naw, not Maggie. She ain't got no taste for nothing.”

“Why?”

Tex spat a wad of tobacco onto the ground. “ 'Cause she tied in with a feller up New York way, and got herself hurt real bad. That was a long time back. Myself, I wanted to go after him with a rope, but—”

“Wouldn't be that Frederick hombre, would it? The one who stole her manuscript.”

“Yep. That's him.”

Rafe's first instinct turned out to be sympathy. Since he knew about being betrayed, he understood what she'd gone through. But his sympathy didn't last long. All sorts of scenarios tumbled in his brain. He grinned. She
might
have experience in passion. His loins stirred once again, his insulted pride taking a back seat to lechery. Bedding the
virago
between here and Chihuahua city had possibilities, especially if she did some good old-fashioned begging before he allowed her nine inches of heaven.

Well, eight inches.

“Any chance your sister is a fallen woman?” He'd never had a taste for virgins. Yet, oddly, he had a contradictory urge to be the first man to sample from the font of her womanly delights.
You are one mixed-up hombre, Delgado.

“I don't rightly know what all she's done or ain't done, but I can vouch for one thing. She'd rather be an old maid than let down her hair with the fellers. That's why she's got a real tart tongue.”

Rafe took a cheroot from his coat pocket, extended it to Tex; the offer declined, he stuck it between his teeth and lit the end. Staring at the ground, Rafe swung the valise slowly from his shoulder, dropping it. Like Margarita, he knew what it was like to hurt. He knew it well.

The latter part of 1889 was hell turned heavenly. . . turned hell. He'd wanted to right Delgado wrongs—and there were many wrongs, including a bad, bad situation at the Santa Alicia silver mine. A contingent of Yaqui Indians had been given as gift to Tío Arturo. Rafe and his cousin Hernán—and to a certain extent, Rafe's half brother, the newly frocked Father Xzobal Paz—had opposed slavery in any form.

While this was going on, Gil McLoughlin asked Rafe to testify in his daughter's behalf. Uninterested in saving the rich
gringa
from herself, he'd sent her Texan papá packing.

McLoughlin had barely left the hacienda before Xzobal Paz brought news to El Aguilera Real. The slaves had arrived. Rafe and his followers had ridden to the Santa Alicia, had meant to make certain the slaves would receive fair treatment. The entrance to the Santa Alicia was lined with hired guns. Arturianos. They fired on Rafe and his men. And they fired back. A man stepped out of the office. Hernán walked into the line of fire.

Rafe squinted at the rising sun. That's what Olga had been to him—the rising sun. The day breaking into the abyss of night. Gentle, patient, easy to be around—Olga had been the beauty of Margarita without the threat to his masculinity.

“Rafe? You all right, old buddy?”

He gave a curt nod to Tex Jones. Correction. Tex McLoughlin. “How is your—?” A fist tightened in Rafe's chest; a vision of loveliness and serenity formed in his mind, as he finished asking the question that he couldn't pose to Margarita. “How is your sister?”

“Ain't you heard nothing about Charity? She's right famous. She and Hawk, well, that Wild West show they got together has done real good. And Ole Hawk, he took to Europe like a duck does to water. They're happy as a cuppla ducks in water.” He laughed at his own slim attempt at humor. “ 'Course, they got 'em some younguns now. Twins. A boy and a girl. And another babe expected.”

“I, uh, that's nice, but I didn't mean Char—”

“Rafe, I sure do thank you for helping our Charity, back when she was in trouble.” Tex offered a hand for shaking. “I didn't get to thank you then, but I wanna now.”

That out of the way—both men winced when their skinned knuckles made contact—Rafe got insistent. “How is your sister
Olga?”

Suspicion worked its way into Tex's open-as-a-book expression. “That's a funny look you've got on your face for a feller just making small talk about my sister. How well do you know Olga?”

From the funny look in
Tex McLoughlin's
face, another trial by fists might be in the cards. Enough of that, Rafe decided. “We got to be . . . friends, when she arrived from Spain to be with Charity at the trial.” As events played out, the trial was over in record time, even before Olga could arrive. Charity had gone free, had taken off with her man for Europe. Apparently the two sisters had passed on the Atlantic.

“Olga's a married woman,” her brother stated, disapproval evident. “Leonardo's a right nice feller.”

Rafe didn't repeat his question on her well-being. It was better not to know.

Picking up his valise, he stepped around Olga's brother and started again for the depot. Maybe Olga was the reason Rafe flew to Margarita's defense. Could it be that he still harbored feelings for the brunette beauty? Again and again—after he'd realized she wasn't coming back to Texas—he'd told himself his feelings for her were nil. His present interest spelled curiosity, pure and simple. Olga wasn't the reason he'd wanted to help her sister.

His actions had been for Margaret alone. She was the one female who didn't want him, and that had a powerful allure.

How would he handle her?

His gaze traveled to a wagon and the tall, thin woman standing beside it. A grin curved Rafe's mouth. “I'm going to make a sweet little pussycat out of that hissing she-cat,” he promised himself. “She's going to be purring in my arms between here and the city of Chihuahua.”

Whistling, he waved to her. Yes, Margarita was his intention . . . and Olga was simply a four-letter world.

Deep in Mexico, between Texas and the Gulf of California, amongst the series of canyons that gouged deep and wide into the high plateaus of the Sierra Madre mountain range, Tarahumaran drums echoed mournfully to greet the morning, while a light rain pattered against the roof of a cabana built in the Eden Roc compound. These sounds and the fingers of dawn beaming through a window to the east awakened the brown-haired male occupant.

As a representative of the Spanish government, he had duties to perform for the Queen Regent and her son Alfonso XIII, the only boy to be born a king. Thanks to the rabble of the United States becoming more and more sympathetic to the Cuban insurgents, the border between Mexico and the United States must be covered.

Unfortunately, the local
patrón,
known colloquially as
El Grandero Rico
—the richest baron among the rich—wasn't enthused about cooperating. Soon the master spy would sidestep Arturo Delgado by traveling to the Federal District, where he would call on the President.

Business, though, placed second in the Spaniard's desires.

In his prime, handsome, mustachioed—and having been forced into celibacy for the past four months—he reached for the beloved American female who slept on the next pillow, her flannel nightgown buttoned to her chin. “Wake up, my darling,” he murmured timidly, fearing rejection. Only with her was he timorous. “Will you permit me to touch you?”

She shook her head. “No. Sick.” Following a practiced path, she jumped out of bed and dashed for the slop jar that waited nearby, emptying her stomach, but not before tying a dressing gown around her growing middle. Ever modest, even after twelve years of marriage, she didn't allow her husband to glimpse anything that might be construed as nude or nearly so. But he was accustomed to her delicate sensibilities.

He said, “The babe . . . I'm sorry my son makes you sick.”

Her fingers gathering a wad of nightgown beneath her throat, she leveled her eyes straight at him. “Are you staring at me?” She blushed. “If you are, please don't. You know it makes me uncomfortable.”

“No, I'm not staring at you,” he lied, taking his fill of sable-dark hair and an oval face more exquisite than any work of art displayed in the Prado Museum of Madrid.

He looked at the small mound of her stomach, knowing she hated the idea of bearing another child, almost as much as she disliked being touched by his gaze. Or his hands. But he loved her, which was almost enough to make a fulfilling marriage. He felt certain that once the new babe came, she'd forget the last one.

And he worried. Did she know the truth about that infant?

Surely not.

And he had more crucial concerns. They were waylaid here in the wilds of Mexico. Getting out wouldn't be easy. In the interim, he had agents to supervise. “We should have stayed in Mexico City, where you were properly attended by physicians.”

But no. She had insisted on visiting her mother. He had, as usual, humored her, because he had much, much to make up for. If she knew the extent of his corruption, he would lose her, and the mere concept racked him with shivers. “My dearest wife, we should leave—”

Olga's shaking hand brushed dark, dark hair away from her temple, before groping for the thick spectacles that no longer helped her eyesight. “Please leave me be, Leonardo. Be assured I don't wish to hurt your feelings. But I just want to be alone.”

“Is it too much for a husband to ask the comfort of his wife's arms?”

She turned away. “Must you be indelicate?”

His patience snapped. The Spanish nobleman, cousin to kings, threw the covers aside and jerked on his unmentionables. Always, he'd done all the trying in their marriage. She'd never been able to return his love, nor would she verily
try
to fake the tiniest shred of affection. She ought to try harder. After all, hadn't he taken her back after her
perfidia
in Texas?

You think me a
tonto—
a fool as blind as you!
Not for a moment had he believed her story of rape, and still didn't, even after all these years. It would serve his countess right if he accepted the Swedish massaging woman's invitations. Or perhaps he should visit the whorehouse in the village of Areponapuchi.

But what would that prove?

Except for one cardinal sin committed upon his wife's first child—for which he would regret for an eternity—Leonardo de Hapsburg y Borbón, Count of Granada, deserved better than what he was getting.

“Back to bed, Olga,” he ordered, engaging a new tactic.
“¡Andele!”

“It's time to get dressed. I feel it in the warmth in the air, and—”

“Back to bed.” He advanced on his cowering wife.

 

 

Tapping her toe impatiently, Margaret stood beside the buckboard while the wagoner loaded her baggage for the quick trip between El Paso and its sister city of Juarez. Tex walked toward her; he was alone, the majority of the train passengers having departed the platform several minutes ago.

Where was Rafe?

Did he procrastinate as punishment for their tiff over money? Surely not. Rafe didn't know the word punctual, much less ascribe to the principle, that was all. An inner voice asked, “So you're now the authority on Rafael Delgado?”

She wasn't. And she didn't know what to make of him, indeed, but she was becoming more and more certain that Olga had lied.

At that moment Margaret saw him. His Stetson sat at a rakish angle; his wide shoulders accentuated the narrowness of hips supporting a gun belt. The power of his thighs outlined by the jaunty yet infinitely controlled lift to his step, he headed in her direction. She started toward him, meaning to impart a piece of her mind about his tarrying. But he stopped short. He took a backward step.

Margaret followed his line of sight, glancing to the right and seeing a cluster of men. Three of them circled a nattily dressed gentleman emitting the aura of money and lots of it. As for his companions, well, except for the de-rigueur-for-Texas holsters buckled at their ready, they didn't look menacing; and they seemed to be chatting amiably in Spanish, so why was Rafe continuing to move to the rear?

Feinting to the left, he ducked between two railroad cars, disappearing from sight. Where the heck was he going? Surely he wasn't—He wouldn't—Why, that rascal.

He was ditching her!

She turned to Tex, who yammered with the driver. “Take charge of my steamers,” she ordered, and plucked a derringer from the reticule that she tossed into the buckboard. “Get them to the station in Juarez. I'll meet you there.”

“But, Maggie—”

“Don't argue, Angus Jones McLoughlin.” Pistol in her right hand, she waved it. “Get gone to Juarez, and now!”

She picked up her skirts, damning the bulk of them, and ran after the artful dodger The quartet of men moved in her direction, the gentleman asking if he could offer assistance, but she'd have none of that. This was between her and Rafe.

As if he were within hearing, she muttered, “Who do you think you are? You didn't win the argument. And I won't have you cheating.”

She'd show him that he couldn't dash off, McLoughlin money in his bank account, and not pay the price. Up ahead she saw him crossing another set of tracks, heading south, for the river, it appeared. Slowing her pace, she aimed and fired. Naturally, he was out of range. And he didn't look back. He kept running.

So did she.

And she was surprised she could run this fast—she couldn't recall the last time she'd had the strength to run. Envisioning McLoughlin money collecting interest in his bank account had a powerfully stimulating effect, she decided. Self-congratulations vanished quickly, when her legs began to wobble and her chest to clamp. Trying to suck air in, she slowed but didn't stop.

Rafe descended an incline, kicking up dust as he went.

She gathered puny strength. “Stop!” she shouted from the hilltop and pointed the derringer. Less than a stone's throw separated them. “Stop, or I'll shoot again.”

He stopped, turned. Even though she felt faint, she could see him shaking his head in disbelief. Whether it was from getting caught—or from the ridiculous picture she must have made, her traveling suit in disarray and her hair falling into her eyes—or from any idiot knowing she couldn't fire this derringer again without reloading, she had no idea.

“Madre de Dios,
am I glad it's you.” Arms going akimbo, he called, “Come on down here. And hurry.”

“Rogue! You'd deceive me, would act as if I've shown up merely for teas and crumpets.” It was time to show him the person
now
in charge. In his language,
el jefe.
“You get back up here, Rafe Delgado.” Doggone it, could he hear her squeaking voice? “Right this instant.”

“Can't. Gotta run.” He jerked his head in the train's direction, frantically motioning her downward. “They're after me. And it didn't help, your calling attention with gunfire. Let's go,
cariño.
Now.”

Well, what could she do but obey? Already he was on the run again. She followed, needing to clutch her aching side, but unable to, else she would be forced to stop. He ground to a halt behind a dilapidated shack, scattering a couple of nested Rhode Island Red hens. When she faced Rafe, Margaret lifted her gun arm.
Maybe he won't notice it's a single-shot weapon.

“Dios
, put that damned useless thing away. You and pointed objects. I swear I'm going to break you of pointing them at me, I swear I will.”

“You dare to speak of my habits, when you have just tried to run out on your duties?”
Don't faint. Whatever you do, don't faint.
She leaned against the shack's wall, thankful for its support. She jabbed the barrel flat to his washboard-hard belly.

His click of tongue and sigh of exasperation accompanied a grin laden with sensuality, all of which took away the anxious look in his shadowed, bruised face. “If that derringer were loaded,
bruja,
you could do my women a great disservice, should your forefinger get a little itchy.”

Concern jumping into his gaze, he asked, “You're pale. Are you all right?”

As she nodded a reply, Rafe took the derringer from her clammy grip, stuffed it behind his gun belt. “Margarita, you're wrong about me. I wasn't running out on you. Did you see those men up there? The one in charge is my Uncle Arturo. He means to have me shot. I won't be a sitting duck for bullets.”

Shot? Bullets? The respectable Arturo Delgado would fall to such violence against a relative? All this seemed to be coming at her in ebbs and surges of clarity, as if she were in some supernatural warp of movement. With her head pounding, her stomach roiling, and with her lungs gone immobile, she couldn't think straight. “You . . . you'd b-better explain.”

“Later.” Rafe grabbed her arm. “Right now, we've got to get away from here.”

Unable to show the bossiness that had propelled her to him, she coughed. Deeply. “Where—we—g-going?”

“Mexico, of course.” Rafe stopped dragging her along. “What's the matter with you? I thought so. You
are
sick. Aw, hell. Aw,
chinga!”

He caught her as she fell unconscious.

 

 

It was probably no more than a quarter hour before Margaret came to, and when she did, she was resting on a patch of bald earth under the shade of a weathered shed, her head in Rafe's lap. A ripe odor assailed her; it wasn't Rafe. She heard the rush of water from the river that served as a dividing point between two nations. “Which side are we on?”

“The Mexican.”

“How did we get here?” she asked weakly, and noticed that the bottoms of his britches' legs were damp.

“I carried you. And,
gringa,
you are heavier than you look,” he added with a tease in his tone. He brushed a wayward hair from her temple and held a tin cup—where the devil had he found a cup of potable water?—to her lips. As she downed the refreshing drink, he inquired, “Feeling better?” At her confirmation, he brushed a leaf from her cheek. “You scared the hell out of me. Why didn't you tell me you're sick?”

“I'm not!”

Cantankerous about her health, she jerked her head from its cozy cradle and dusted her sleeves as, a tad recovered, she sat up. It was then that she got her first good look at the land of the Eagle and Serpent. “Good God.”

Mexico was no garden of temporal delights.

First of all, the shed turned out to be an outhouse. The sun-baked dirt surrounding it was littered with garbage, a horribly thin mongrel competing with a couple of equally thin hens for the scraps. Two buzzards lurked in a sick excuse for a mesquite tree. And from next to the skeleton of an old donkey cart, a trio of curious, grimy Indian tykes—the boy picking his nose—watched Rafe and Margaret.

Her heart went out to the children. “You'd think their mother would at least keep them clean. Poor little things.”

“They look healthy enough,” Rafe said, affront in his tone as well as in his face.

Margaret started to take another sip from the cup. “Heavenly days, where
did
you get this?” And who guaranteed it was potable? Revolted, Margaret whispered, “Whatever got into my mother that she would love this wretched country?”

“For a learned woman you can sure say some stupid things. Surely you don't imagine Eden Roc as anything like a peasant's meager abode.”