Lone Star Loving

by Martha Hix

  The Keller ranch thrived. Uncle Adolf met and married a painted lady from New Orleans, Antoinette Harpe. And oh, how Uncle Adolf adored her! But she wasn’t satisfied with her limping, older husband. She turned her violet eyes to her stepson. In the aftershock Uncle Adolf had left for a self-imposed exile in San Antonio.

  Antoinette had left, too, and Charity didn’t give a darn about her destination.

  “Charity, are you all right?” Maria Sara asked, pulling her away from dark thoughts.

  “Of course.”

  She turned to the Mexicana. They stood on the front porch, Maisie and Jaime dozing in the wooden swing suspended from the ceiling. Karl had gone inside to collect a tray of refreshments.

  “I think I will join those two in a short nap.” Maria Sara, yawning and patting her mouth, glided to a divan that hugged the porch wall. “I stayed up too late last night.”

  “Only you?” Charity winked. “Or should you be adding Karl?”

  Maria Sara curled up on the sofa. “We stayed up too late last night. Chatting.”

  Humming a particular tune from Lohengrin, Charity cocked her head. She started to say, “I’m going to see what my cousin has to say about all this,” but saw that the blonde had fallen asleep. Charity entered the house and made her way to the kitchen. Burly and broad-shouldered, the blond giant was squeezing lemons into a glass pitcher.

  “You look right at home in the kitchen,” Charity teased and pulled out a chair to sit in it. Resting her elbows on the table and dropping her chin onto the backs of her braided fingers, she eyed the starched shirt and slicked-back hair. I’ll bet he’s wearing clean longjohns, too.

  “Since I know you like to spend Saturday mornings in town, playing checkers with those old goats who hang around the poolroom, and since I know you hate anything that smacks of domestic skills, I’d say you’re going to a few pains to impress Maria Sara.”

  “Nosy.” Laughing, he lifted the lemon, squeezed, and shot juice onto Charity’s nose.

  As she batted at it, she gave a fleeting thought to the last time she had seen lemonade. How were Norman and Eleanor Narramore? When they had said their goodbyes, just before noon on the day Charity and Maisie had departed from Uvalde, the Narramores had wished her all the best, and Eleanor had said, “If you need help, please don’t hesitate to let us know. We’ll be at the Dollar Five Ranch in Kerrville.”

  Charity decided that as soon as she reached home, she would write to them, let them know she remained free, and give the trial’s location. Maybe I’d better wait until I know the date.

  “Has the cat gotten your tongue, Cousin?” Karl leaned toward her.

  “Did you say something?”

  “I did. I was thanking you. For your responsibility in bringing Maria Sara to Fredericksburg.”

  “Think nothing of it.” Charity picked up a slice of discarded lemon, sprinkled salt on it, then sucked the last of the tart juice. Her mouth pursed, her eyes squinted, she said, “Like her a lot, do you?”

  “Ja. I do.”

  “What do you think of Jaime?”

  “Ah, he is a fine child.” Karl poured a cup of sugar atop the lemon juice. “Any man would be proud to claim him.” On a frown, he added, “I cannot understand why his father has not seen after the boy.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  Adding water to the mixture, Karl asked, “Do you know the man?”

  “No. Maria Sara never talks about him.”

  “I think she sees the boy’s father each time she looks at Jaime.”

  “Do you? I think Jaime looks just like his mother, what with his fair hair and blue eyes.”

  “Maybe his father is fair.”

  “I never thought about that. And I suppose it’s none of my business.”

  “Mine, either.”

  Huh. She glanced around the kitchen, then said, “This place could use a woman’s touch. Maria Sara is quite a homemaker. She’s clean as a pin, and you’ve seen how she sews for Maiz. You ought to taste her enchiladas. Mmm, mmm. Are they delicious.”

  “I have tasted her cooking. It is delicious.” He shook the spoon at Charity. “You needn’t make a list of her virtues. I don’t need a push in wooing Maria Sara.”

  Charity salted another discarded lemon, blurting, “Maria Sara thinks you’re a virgin.”

  Karl turned beet red. “You are as meddlesome as Oma.”

  Was she? Oh, dear. But . . . “You shouldn’t let Maria Sara hear about Antoinette from anyone but you.”

  Turning his back to get glasses from the cupboard, he replied, “I know.”

  “She’ll understand. I know she will.”

  “Will she?” Karl’s voice was low, agonized. “There are things . . . I am afraid she will not understand about me.”

  “Karl, you’re a grown man. She doesn’t expect you to be some sort of paragon.”

  “She is a lady. She’ll be shocked if she learns—” A glass dropped from his fingers, crashing to the drain board.

  “Learns what?” Charity asked as she gathered the glass shards and placed them in the waste can.

  “There are things you don’t understand about me.”

  “I might if you were straightforward.”

  Ducking his head and jamming his fingers through his hair, he replied, “You are an innocent girl. I cannot speak of . . .”

  “I’m not innocent. I’ve taken a lover. So, go on. Tell me.”

  “You? You’ve taken a lover?”

  “Well, don’t look so astonished. As Maiz always say, there’s someone for everyone. Even me.”

  “I didn’t mean that you cannot attract a man, Cousin. What I meant to say was, I thought you would stay pure for marriage.”

  “I didn’t. Now—tell me what you’re afraid of.”

  He sank to a chair and covered his face with a hand. Charity barely heard him say, “I am depraved.”

  Rocked from her moorings, Charity gripped the table edge. “Oh, dear.”

  “I enjoy copulation over-much,” Karl explained. “With Antoinette I learned this. And I am afraid I will shock Maria Sara.”

  Inside, Charity seethed against that Antoinette. What was wrong with Karl that he had been attracted to such a viper? “I guess that makes two of us, depraved. Must run in the family, or something.” Charity stood and put her arms around her cousin. “Karl, try to forget Antoinette. Go on with your life. Maria Sara needs you.”

  “That is my hope.”

  “I think that I should collect my great-grandmother and Jaime, and we should head back to the Four Aces. If you have any idea of making something permanent with Maria Sara, you two ought to have a good, honest talk.”

  Karl nodded. “You are right, Cousin.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Madre de Dios, what was on this man’s mind? For hours—it was now approaching sundown—Karl had sat beside Maria Sara on the creaking porch swing; he had said absolutely nothing to her, had simply gazed across his land, as if he were in a trance. Occasionally a blush colored his thick neck, as if his own thoughts embarrassed him.

  He’s found out about Pappagallo’s. He yearns to tell me he is not interested in seeing me again. And he’s too shy and sensitive to blurt it out.

  His shyness gave her pause. While Maria Sara was desperate for the security that a good marriage would assure her, it worried her that Karl might not have enough passion to quench her carnal thirsts.

  Perhaps she should give the gentle giant an avenue of escape. “Karl . . . I should be going home.”

  “Not just yet. Please.” Yearning eyes turned to her. “Would you like another glass of lemonade?”

  She glanced at the empty pitcher. “No, thank you. If I drink any more, I shall swim home.”

  “I . . . I want your home”—he swallowed—“to be with me.”

  “Oh, Karlito, mi querido . . .”

  She almost laughed at her words, thinking what people in Vera Cruz would say if they heard her call such a big man “Karlito.”<
br />
  He grasped her small hand in his big one. “I have money in the bank. Property. Cattle. And I am lonely. I want you to be my wife.”

  What more could she ask for—besides a voracious lover? “You don’t know me.”

  “Yes, I do. I know you are as lonely as I am. I know your smile makes the sun shine in my heart. I know you would like to have a home of your own.” He brought her fingers to his lips. Once more the flush crawled up his neck. “I know that I have a grand passion for you.”

  Grand passion? Indeed his eyes held the promise of it. She took a covert look at his masculine bulge; it showed promise.

  “You are a lady. And I am a man of vulgar needs. I hope I haven’t shocked you.”

  “You have not.” The sun began to shine in her heart as well, but Maria Sara cautioned herself against getting her hopes up. “There’s something I must tell you. This awful page from my past—”

  “If it’s about the boy, I have guessed that you weren’t married to his father. It matters not to me.”

  She angled toward him. “Karlito, are you certain?”

  He nodded. “I want to raise Jaime as my own.”

  But what about the brothel? “Your words please me. My heart pounds as I think of the life we could have together.”

  She left the swing and moved to one of the porch’s wooden support posts. She couldn’t face Karl, though she heard him stand and approach her.

  “Stay back,” she pleaded. “There are things that you must know.”

  A chicken ran across the yard, cackling as it headed for its roost.

  “What are these things?” Karl asked.

  “When I met the man who gave me Jaime, I was a respectable girl in Vera Cruz. My family has a sugar plantation there, understand, and the Montanas are held in high esteem, thanks to my father and his wealthy adoptive parents.

  “It was unthinkable for a young lady of my station even to be seen without a duenna, yet I fell victim to the advances of an adventurous young man from Laredo. He promised his love and all his wealth, though his fortune paled in comparison to that of my family. He said we would marry. But my father refused to grant permission.”

  “Go on.”

  But she couldn’t. Anger raged through her. She hated Ian Blyer! He’d offered Charity everything; he had made a fool of himself over her, more than once; he had even followed her to Uvalde. He had never followed Maria Sara Montana as far as el baño! But she would avenge her honor. Someway. Somehow.

  At last she spoke. “The sinvergüenza seduced me under a poinciana tree. I thought he was in love with me. But that was not his motive. He meant to impregnate me, then demand my hand as well as a portion of the Montana wealth. My father was unimpressed.”

  “He sounds as evil as the blackguard who pulled the wool over Charity’s eyes.”

  Maria Sara went still. “He is Ian Blyer.”

  “Gott in Himmel. I will snap Herr Blyer’s neck between my hands!”

  “No, no. You mustn’t.” Vengeance must be mine.

  “But your honor is at stake. And Charity’s.”

  “Karl, promise me you’ll say nothing to her.” Maria Sara had no wish to hurt Charity. By hurting Ianito, both women would triumph. “It would wound her, knowing the truth. It need never come out.”

  “You are right. And there is no reason for you to feel shame, Maria Sara.” He folded the small woman into his bearlike embrace. “I understand.”

  “But I haven’t finished my story.” Once more she pulled away from him, then hugged her arms as if a blue norther had suddenly swooped down. “I followed Ianito to Laredo. I pleaded with him to help me and our child. He refused. I had no money—my parents had disowned me. I made a pact with the devil. If el diablo would see me through the birth and give me a healthy child, I would do anything to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table.”

  “What did your predicament force you into?” Karl asked slowly.

  “I accepted employment in a brothel.”

  Karl slammed his eyes closed.

  “But I never sold my body,” she lied.

  “Explain how you worked in a whorehouse and didn’t sell your body.”

  “I sang. To entertain, I sang.”

  Doubt marked Karl’s square face. “I have never heard you sing.”

  “I will never sing again. It reminds me too much of that time. That place. Pappagallo’s.”

  Karl gasped. “Pappagallo’s?”

  “Yes. It is in the boys-town section of Nuevo Laredo. A wretched place filled with girls as desperate as I was. For a year and a half, I was the singer there. Until last month.”

  “That was you?”

  They stared at each other, both disbelieving. Both incredulous. Maria Sara blanched. Then she remembered where she’d seen him before!

  His lip quivered. “That was you at Pappagallo’s.”

  He tried to liken the whore from across the border with the regal lady before him. How ironic. That she—That he—Suddenly Karl threw back his head and roared with laughter. Once more he looked at Maria Sara, seeing her in a whole new light. Why she was as wicked as Antoinette!

  “I remember you. All painted up, wearing that see-through nightgown, sprawled against that battered old piano.”

  “I trust you enjoyed what you saw.”

  Karl gave another bellow of laughter. “What a Dummkopf I have been, not recognizing you. Of course, you aren’t wearing all that paint, and you’re buttoned to the chin. A year ago, I saw you. I offered the host—he was known as Senor Grande, I recall—fifty dollars for your favors. He demanded a hundred. And I only had fifty in my pocket.”

  “No one ever came up with the money Grande asked for me.”

  The memory of that night in Nuevo Laredo made him catch his breath. Feeling his lids half shutter his eyes, he relaxed against the porch wall. “Want to know the truth? I was demented for the want of you that night. I thought about going outside to knock some poor soul in the head to get another fifty dollars. But I could not bring myself to do it. So I settled for one of the fifty-cent girls. I don’t even recall her face, much less her name. When I had sex with her, I imagined she was you. All painted up and wearing that see-through gown.”

  Karl bent toward her, lifting her chin with the crook of his finger. “If you’ll have me, I still want you for my wife.”

  “Are you insane?” she asked, disbelieving.

  “That night in Mexico is all the more reason to want you.”

  “You cannot be serious. You . . . you are a decent, upstanding man, a pillar of society.”

  “My private life has nothing to do with that.” His hot lips covered her cold ones, his imagination running to what she could do between his legs. “At Pappagallo’s, after I finished with the whore, the host gave me the opportunity, for two dollars, to watch you with him and another man. You were chained to the better looking of the two to a contraption.”

  Maria Sara’s eyes rounded.

  Karl clasped her head, squeezing. “So don’t lie to me about not selling your body, not if you want to be my wife.”

  A corrupt laugh dispelling her gloom, Maria Sara arched against him. “I want to be your wife. And your whore. Like I was to El Aguila and that bastard Grande. If ...”

  “If?”

  “If you can prove to me that this”—she unbuttoned his fly and grabbed him—“will keep me pleasured.”

  Randy as a rutting boar at her lasciviousness, he ran his hand along Maria Sara’s hip. “Then we will be married.” He pulled her onto his lap. “Provided you’ll paint your face and wear nightgowns that I can see through.”

  “I would be willing to do that.”

  He fumbled with the buttons of her dress, then delved into her, biting an already erect nipple. Maria Sara’s mouth parted while a gasp of approval slipped past her lips. “But tonight . . . tonight we won’t be needing any clothes at all.”

  “You are right, querido Karlito.” She covered his hand, pressing him to her. “We
don’t need them tonight.”

  Getting to his feet, he carried her into the house.

  Ian Blyer stomped into the modest house that his father had rented in Austin. He pushed past the open-mouthed housekeeper. Charging into his father’s study, he demanded, “Father, why did you advise Jerome Hunt to drop the charges against Charity McLoughlin?”

  Campbell Blyer, seated at his desk, took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. “Because matters have gone far enough, and I am embarrassed at your behavior.”

  Ian balled his fists. There had been a time when he would have backed down when faced with his father’s displeasure. But too much was at stake, for Ian Blyer had not given up on exacting his punishment against the chit who had humiliated him. Charity McLoughlin had two choices. Become his wife. Or swing from a rope. In either case she would regret crossing him.

  And Campbell Blyer would help his son, or Ian would make him suffer too. “Do you think it matters to me that you’re embarrassed?”

  “It would be sensible if you’d give up this vendetta you have against the McLoughlin girl. I offered Jerome title to my property in Laredo, in exchange for his agreement to drop the charges.”

  “Next you’ll be hectoring me about finding a job.” Ian took a furious look at his father, and for the first time saw him for what he was. A shriveled old weasel. “You aren’t on my side.”

  “Ian, you’re making a fool of yourself, prancing around the capital, demanding retribution.”

  “The McLoughlins got to you, didn’t they?”

  “As I understand it, Senator McLoughlin has hired attorneys. The best in the business.”

  “Thank God Jerome Hunt didn’t listen to you.”

  “Be careful what you thank the Lord for, Ian. The truth may win out.” Campbell Blyer rose and approached his son. His eyes were moist. “Do you really want it known that your own father was a part of Gonzáles’s organization?”