The Beloved Woman

by Deborah Smith

  Katherine leveled her pistol at the vaquero as Justis scrambled to his feet. He grabbed the lariat and heaved backward on it before the vaquero could anchor it to his saddle. The man yelped in surprise as the incredible power at the end of his rope snapped him off his horse. He crashed, facedown, on the forest floor.

  But there were other vaqueros now, lots of them, their reatas cutting the air with vicious whipping sounds. Katherine fired the pistol, and one man fell, clutching a wounded arm. Another lasso settled around Justis’s neck, choking him. Two more pinned his arms to his sides. Still he managed to dig his heels into the ground and stay upright, struggling to reach the pistol tucked in his belt. Katherine ran to him and pulled it free.

  “Alto!” she screamed, and pointed the gun at the rider nearest her. From behind her a vaquero brought the hard wooden shaft of his torch down on her wrist. The gun flew from her grip and she staggered against Justis, gasping in pain.

  The attack on her wrung a deep primal bellow of rage from him. It startled the vaqueros for a second, and he jerked one arm free. He slid a knife from a sheath on his belt and sliced the taut lariat lines apart with a swift stroke.

  The vaqueros yelled in dismay and closed in on him as a group. Katherine was hauled, kicking and punching, across a rider’s saddle. With the help of another he held her facedown while she struggled and screamed every oath she knew.

  She heard the heavy thuds of the vaqueros’ fists and torches falling on Justis; she heard their agonized curses before they bludgeoned the knife out of his hand. Then there was only the scrambling and grunts of a dozen men intent on beating one man unconscious—and having a difficult time doing it.

  “Alto! Por favor!” she begged. “Give him mercy!”

  But they didn’t, not until he was limp on the ground, his hands and feet tied. The vaqueros holding Katherine finally let her go. She tumbled from the horse and crawled to Justis. His face had several bad gashes and was covered in blood. Red spittle showed on his lips when he coughed. She cradled his head in her hands and ran her fingers over the knots already swelling beneath his scalp.

  “Catalina, you brought this on him and yourself. It is your fault. If you had stayed at my rancho, all would have been well.”

  She looked up to find Vittorio watching calmly from the back of his huge golden horse. “What are you going to do with us?”

  “I am simply going to take you and your husband back to my rancho, along with all the troublesome Protestants.”

  Justis stirred weakly. She wet her fingers and cleared blood away from his eyes. He looked at her, dazed at first, then with recognition. “Help me sit up,” he said in a tortured whisper.

  She eased him upright and sat behind him, bracing him with her body. His hands were tied behind him and she bit her lip to keep from crying out when she saw their bleeding knuckles. Judging by the number of vaqueros who lay on the ground clutching various parts of their anatomies, he had put up even more of a fight than she realized.

  “Greetings, Señor Gallatin,” Vittorio said pleasantly. “Welcome to California. I heard that you visited my rancho yesterday and coaxed some of my servants to sing for your gold. They have been punished for that. I thought you were dead. Catalina said you were killed in a mining accident.”

  “Not … dead … yet,” Justis muttered, coughing. “Came to get Katherine away from you.”

  “Away from me? She might have run temporarily, but she never intended to stay away for long. Hasn’t she told you what she and I have shared? She was my mistress before she left.”

  “Don’t believe it,” Justis answered.

  Katherine bit her tongue to stop her own denial. Vittorio’s mind wasn’t normal. If she were going to save Justis’s life, she had to plan unusual negotiations. “My husband doesn’t understand our relationship, Vittorio. But I’m sure that once I explain it to him, he’ll leave us in peace.”

  “Explain,” Justis ordered in a pained, rasping voice.

  Vittorio smiled. “After we return to my rancho I will tell you what she and I did together, Señor. Perhaps I will even demonstrate.”

  “God damn you to hell,” Justis said weakly, and spat blood at him. He tried to twist his head enough to look at her. “Explain.”

  “Be patient,” she said. “Be quiet.” She cast a calm, inquisitive gaze at Vittorio. “What will you do with him? And the missionaries?”

  Vittorio flicked a long quirt back and forth over his horse’s neck, making the stallion dance nervously. The Californio’s dark eyes gleamed at her, full of victory and anticipation. “The overzealous missionaries have to leave my country, I fear. They are troublemakers. I have already spoken to the governor about them. He agrees. As for your husband—he has bribed my servants, hurt several of my men, and insulted me to my face. I think he will have to be punished. Here we rancheros hold our own trials. I will have one for him. It will be fair.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I knew you would be reasonable.”

  He nodded, mollified by her polite attitude. As always, he set great store by pleasant manners and gentility. “Now come with me, Catalina.” He gestured to his men. “Find a wagon and put this Mr. Gallatin in it.”

  She almost sagged with relief. For the moment, at least, Justis was safe. Her worst fear had been that Vittorio would shoot him on the spot. “Try not to cause any more trouble,” she told Justis sternly, and got to her feet.

  “Katie.” He said her name like a warning. His ravaged face made her fight for control with every shred of her willpower. He was so badly hurt, he could barely sit up now that she no longer braced him. Listing to one side, his breath wheezing, he stared up at her groggily. “I don’t believe it.”

  “I never asked you to come look for me. Do you expect wifely concern from the woman you humiliated and deserted?”

  “Katie. Don’t.” He sank to one side, helpless.

  Katherine walked to Vittorio and held up her arms. He lifted her in front of him on the saddle and reined his horse around. She forced herself not to look back. It was the most difficult thing she’d ever done.

  CHAPTER 19

  HIS ENTIRE head throbbed with pain, and at times Justis was so dizzy, he would have toppled forward had not his wrists been tightly manacled to the post behind him. He could barely breathe through his broken nose, and one eye was swollen shut. The itching of the caked blood on his face was enough to drive him half crazy, and he couldn’t bend forward enough to scratch it on his knees. Whenever he moved he felt as if someone were kicking him in the ribs.

  He leaned his head back against the post and shifted gingerly on the matted straw under him. He was in some sort of empty wooden shed that was too clean to have been used—recently at least—by any kind of livestock. Posts were sunk in the ground at odd places, with iron eyelets embedded deeply in them. He decided finally that the place had been designed for shearing sheep.

  The vaqueros had dumped him there around midday, after traveling all night to return to the rancho. They’d brought in a bucket of water and doused him with some of it, then thoughtfully set the bucket across the shed where he could stare at it all day without any hope of getting a drink. His pain-racked senses had only managed to note that Katie had walked voluntarily into Vittorio’s fancy hacienda.

  What was her game? Why had she acted afraid of Vittorio, then gone to him gladly? What had he done to her that made him claim her as his mistress? She wouldn’t enjoy being beaten like some pitiful whore. Justis groaned. Or would she?

  He wasn’t sure how much time passed, but when he heard a lock rattling on the shed door, the sunlight had faded from the cracks in the shed’s walls. The door creaked open and Salazar stepped in, looking immaculate and very much the Spanish nobleman in a pleated white shirt, short black jacket, and the black trousers that flared from the knees down. Heavy silver spurs jingled on his black boots.

  He stood to one side, bowed, and waved for someone to enter. Katie came in wearing an ornate white dress with matching sli
ppers. Her gleaming onyx hair was pulled up artfully, so that it was easy to imagine it still hung to her heels when undone. A blue lace mantilla cascaded from a tall comb worked into the hair at her crown.

  She was so lovely, Justis wanted to hate her. She gazed down at him with a stoic, unfathomable blankness in her dark eyes and clasped her hands in front of her.

  “I want you to see how happy your wife is with me,” Salazar said cheerfully as he shut the shed’s door. “And I want you to see why she and I are so perfect together.”

  In a few short, utterly obscene words, Justis gave him an opinion. The whole time he stared up into Katie’s eyes, trying desperately to decide if what he saw there was acceptance, apathy, or disgust. It was as if she had frozen every thought and feeling behind black ice.

  “Do what we discussed, Catalina,” Salazar told her. “The trunk is over there, in the corner.”

  She nodded and walked gracefully to a plain wooden box. She knelt down, opened the lid, and retrieved something from inside. As she carried the items to Salazar, Justis stared at them in sick horror. Manacles and a short thick rawhide whip.

  “As we discussed, Catalina,” Salazar murmured.

  She nodded, knelt down on the straw, then stretched out on her stomach and put her hands near one of the posts. Salazar hummed a merry fandango as he squatted beside her and chained her wrists to an eyelet at the post’s bottom. Almost gently he pushed the trailing mantilla to one side.

  “Do you like this?” Justis asked her, his voice so strained, it was barely audible.

  “Yes,” she murmured, her face turned away from him. “Don’t say anything. Just watch.”

  “It is very entertaining,” Salazar said, smiling. He snatched at the line of pearl buttons all the way down the back of the dress and impatiently wrenched the material apart, his hands quivering with excitement. She wore nothing underneath, and the gaping dress bared smooth cinnamon skin from her neck to the rise of her hips.

  Justis shut his eyes and struggled for breath. He would never believe this, that the woman he had known for more than two years, the proud, dignified woman with whom he had shared so much grief and passion, could be such a stranger to him.

  When he looked again Salazar was watching him with a pleased expression. He dangled the end of the whip on her back, as if he wanted to tickle her. “You hate your wife for her infidelity, Señor?”

  If it were true, he could hate her. But a deep part of his soul could not comprehend it, and something in Salazar’s careful scrutiny struck a warning chord. “No, I don’t hate her,” he said casually. “I’d have to love her to care what she does. I don’t love her. Never have.”

  From the corner of his eye he saw the slow tightening of her hands on the chain of the manacles. Then they relaxed, but as if with great effort. When Justis glanced at Salazar, the ranchero seemed disgruntled by his lack of response.

  Salazar sighed. “I understand. You cannot love a lady who has given herself to another in such unique ways.” He continued in a low, conversational tone, stroking the whip up and down her spine as he explained the things he had done to her before she left with the missionaries.

  Justis shrugged, while his hatred for Salazar evolved into something so black and vicious, pinpoints of light danced in front of his eyes. “I hope she enjoyed herself,” he told Salazar finally.

  The ranchero cursed sarcastically and jerked her dress open even farther. “Let me see what you think of this, then.”

  Justis couldn’t help his swift, agonized groan as Salazar cocked his arm and brought the whip down on her back. She never moved or made a sound. Salazar looked at Justis quickly. “You are not as strong as she is.” He swung the whip again. Again she was completely still; not even her fingers twitched.

  “What you’re doin’ doesn’t bother me,” Justis assured him. He pulled against his own manacles so hard that his hands went numb. “I think I even see why you enjoy it. She’s a challenge, I reckon. That’s what makes her so special?”

  “Indeed.” Salazar nodded. “She doesn’t feel pain the way a Mexican or white woman does.” He sneered. “You lie—you do not enjoy watching. You are a crude, insensitive man who cannot comprehend the beauty of her devotion to me. I will prove it to you. Tonight I will beat her until she bleeds.”

  He pulled the whip back farther, his face contorted with the strain of concentration, but paused at the sound of hurried footsteps outside the shed door. “Don Salazar!” someone called politely. Justis didn’t understand anything else the servant said except the word visitador, for visitor.

  Salazar answered tersely, tossed the whip down, and reluctantly unlocked the manacles on Katie’s wrists. “Later, querida. You stay here.”

  He left, and the servant fastened the shed door again. An emotion-laden silence settled on them. His throat raw, Justis stared at Katie. She slowly pushed herself upright, sitting straight and proper in the straw even though her dress hung open and two red welts crossed her back.

  She tugged her mantilla off and reached behind her to fumble with her buttons. They were hopelessly out of reach. Her hands moved slowly to her lap, and she simply sat.

  “Katie?” he finally managed to whisper. “Tell me the truth about what just happened.”

  She got up and went to the water bucket. He glimpsed her face in profile and found the expression completely shuttered, her mouth a tight line. She carried the bucket over to him and sat down, then tore a strip from the soft cotton underlining of her skirt.

  “I will clean your face for you,” she said crisply.

  He nearly exploded with frustration. He struggled against the manacles for a few seconds before he slumped wearily, panting. “You cold bitch! Tell me the truth! Do you love him? Do you love bein’ beaten?”

  She dropped the cloth into the bucket and turned away from him. “I don’t like it. No.”

  “Then you love him so much that you put up with it?”

  “N-no.”

  “Then why? Why?” His voice was harsh. “He must be right. That tough hide of yours doesn’t feel a damned thing!”

  In the space of a breath her strength crumpled. Burying her face in her knees, she sobbed like a broken-hearted child, making desperate little noises and trembling all over. “It hurt. It hurt so much.”

  Justis groaned loudly. “Oh, God, Katie, Katie. I can’t come to you, gal. You come to me. Please come here. Please.”

  She turned just enough to hide her face against his shoulder and slip one arm around his waist. He kissed her hair frantically as she muffled racking sobs on his bloodstained shirt. “It w-would have been worse if I had acted the way he wanted,” she whispered. “He g-gets tired sooner this way.”

  “I’ll kill him. I swear.”

  “He wanted you to b-be horrified. He would have hit me more, not less, if you had been.”

  “I got that idea, but I wasn’t sure. It nearly choked me to watch and pretend I didn’t care.” He rubbed his cheek against her hair, caressing her the only way he could. “What power has he got over you? Why didn’t you go to Adela for help after he hurt you the first time?”

  “I didn’t know if Adela would believe me. If she didn’t, I would have had no one else to turn to.” Her shoulders shook. “And I couldn’t risk fighting him as long as I had Mary to think of. When the missionaries came through I escaped with them.”

  “But why let him hurt you today? What can he threaten you with now?”

  Her arm tightened around his waist. “Did you think I wouldn’t try to help you? If Vittorio is satisfied that you are no rival, he may let you go. So I’ll do whatever it takes to make him forget his jealousy.”

  “You’ll let him beat you, and act like you like it, for my sake?”

  “You—you have rescued me more than once. Now I can try to return the kindness.” She raised her head from his shoulder. Her eyes were steeped in sorrow. “When he comes back you must act as you did before. No matter what he does to me, you must act unconcerned.”
>
  Justis shook his head. “He’s not goin’ to let me go. He’d be a fool to do it, and he knows that. All I hope is that you can get free of him somehow.”

  She laid a hand along his face. Her gaze held so much tenderness, it made him feel better. Remembering the look in her eyes would help him endure whatever Salazar had planned.

  “Don’t worry,” she urged him. “You and I have survived too much together to let a petty tyrant rule us now.” She cleared her throat brusquely and studied his bloody, battered face. “Look at you. I’ve never seen such a messy a-Yu-ne-ga.”

  Her hands very gentle, she cleaned him up using the torn strip from her dress as a washcloth. She cupped water to his swollen mouth so that he could drink and made a cushion of straw between his lower back and the post. He watched her in silent adoration while she rubbed his shoulders and arms, trying to ease the muscles cramped from the manacles’ confinement.

  “Last night at the church,” he asked at last, “did you think it was Salazar comin’ to get you? Was it him that you wanted to kill so bad?”

  She nodded wearily. “After Mary died my whole aim in life was to have revenge on Vittorio. Now my whole aim is to get you away from here safely. I think I can convince him to put you on a ship bound for the Sandwich Islands or the Orient—someplace he won’t expect you to return from. Then I’ll—”

  “No. You and I go together, or not at all.” He lifted his head and eyed her as sternly as he could. “You still have to learn me what I want to know about manners and shit like that.”

  She laughed, a gentle, tragic sound, and kissed his bruised mouth with great care. “Teach you,” she whispered, as he had known she would.

  He rested his forehead against hers. “We may not have much time,” he told her gruffly. “Sit closer to me and put your head on my shoulder.”