The Horseman

by Margaret Way

  “Sit down, Cecile,” he responded quietly, but there was a flash in his gold-flecked eyes.

  She remained standing as though she intended to have her say as quickly as possible, then leave. “What is your state of mind? Do you hate us so much?”

  “What is it you know or think you know?” he countered, steeling himself against hearing her grandfather had had him investigated. Like Cecile, Joel Moreland had gotten under his guard.

  “I received this in the mail today.” She opened her handbag and withdrew a long, thickly padded envelope. “It’s from my ex-fiancé, Stuart Carlson, God bless him. I’m sure it gave him a lot of pleasure seeing it all compiled.”

  “May I?” He held out his hand.

  She gave a slight elegant shrug. “Why not? It’s all about you, anyway. Your entire background, I would say.”

  “Then I am who I claim to be—Raul Montalvan,” he returned curtly, stung by her tone. “In Argentina Rolfe somehow became Raul. So you might apologize for having said I deceived you. I just didn’t give you the full story.”

  “But it’s all about the full story, isn’t it, Rolfe? Tell me, is the fascinating accent assumed?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” he said shortly, opening out the pages.

  She visibly trembled and he relented. “Are you cold?” It was eighty degrees outside, but the air-conditioning was set at seventy.

  “I’m frozen,” she said. “With shock.”

  Her wonderful eyes surveyed him the way he imagined a woman might look on a hero found to be badly flawed.

  “Sit down,” he repeated. “You’re not getting out of here before we talk.”

  “Is that a threat?” she asked quietly.

  “Take it any way you like,” he clipped off. “But you know you’re in no danger.” He waited until she sank gracefully into an armchair, then he bent to reading Stuart Carlson’s vitriolic covering page. Apparently simple decency in dealing with his ex-fiancée was beyond the man.

  “I was always suspicious of you, Rolfe,” she murmured, even though she knew he was too engrossed in what he was reading to focus on what she was saying.

  “Well, they certainly amassed a great deal of information!” Rolfe observed dryly some moments later. He refolded the pages and put them back into the envelope, laying it down on the coffee table in front of her.

  “Was everything just for revenge?” she asked. “Did you have any real feeling for me, or was that only an elaborate pretense? Perhaps you despise me. Perhaps your plan was to make me fall in love with you, then publicly reject me. Anything’s possible.” Only her pride saved her from breaking down.

  “I’m not going to deny I thought about it,” he said, his expression dark and brooding. “For about two minutes, maybe ten. I’ve lived with the hated name of Moreland for most of my life, Cecile. Can you understand that?”

  “But what did we do?” she cried in bewilderment.

  His anger exploded, made all the more potent because he felt he had disgraced himself in her eyes. “You ruined my entire family,” he rasped. “My grandparents were forced off their land. Land they had worked for five generations. My grandfather—I was named for him—had a massive heart attack not long after. My grandmother exiled herself to New Zealand just as my mother and father took refuge in Argentina. All of us exiles. Do you know what that means? It’s like having an arm cut off. My father died there in a strange land.”

  “Yes, and I’m so sorry.” Tears sprang to her eyes.

  “Spare me the tears,” he said harshly, even as his heart twisted. “I don’t doubt you’re sorry, but Moreland sympathy has come too late. It’s my uncle Benjie’s treatment at Moreland hands I most deeply hold against you. He was hounded to his death.”

  “But he was killed in a bar fight. Surely that’s right.” She had read it in the report.

  “Provoked into a fight, I’m certain. There was far more to your uncle Jared’s death than you’ve been led to believe, Cecile. I know you grew up thinking it was a tragedy caused by his heroic response to a young fool’s reckless stupidity.”

  “And wasn’t it?” She had always looked on her uncle as a hero who had given his life to save another’s.

  Rolfe’s mouth, generous in its lines, tightened. “There’s some evidence Ben was pushed off that fence by a man called Grover, Frank Grover. He was a stockman on Malagari.”

  Cecile was beginning to feel quite ill. “You can’t be serious!” she gasped. “I’ve never heard such a thing. Why would anyone want to harm my uncle, anyway?”

  His tone was quiet but it commanded attention. “Crimes of passion happen all the time. Grover was in love with the same young woman, the housemaid Johanna Muir, who was to bear Jared’s child. I was told there was bad blood between your uncle and Grover.”

  Cecile looked as shaken and baffled as she felt. “I know absolutely nothing of this.”

  “You don’t want to know anything,” he countered, between clenched teeth. “You fear the truth.”

  Cecile jumped up from her chair. “I don’t! Stop it, Raul….. Rolfe!” she cried, wondering if there was anything straight forward in life. “I can’t listen. I’m going.”

  “That’s right, run,” he challenged, his expression conveying he thought her response cowardly. “You all ran from the truth. Because of that my entire family suffered. My grandfather was hounded off the family land. All right, it was no Malagari, but it had been in the family for five generations. I lost my inheritance. Nothing to you, I dare say, but everything then to me. My uncle Benjie, an innocent young man lost all direction and eventually died at an attacker’s hands.”

  Cecile saw the burning anger in his eyes. “You hate us, don’t you? You really hate us.” Would she ever recover from it?

  “I hate your grandmother,” he said. “I doubt Daniel thinks very kindly of her, either. She was a cruel, ruthless woman.”

  “But what has my grandmother got to do with this?” Cecile was so shocked she could scarcely draw breath. “She was kindness itself to me.”

  “You didn’t threaten her, Cecile.” The word was bitterly emphasized.

  “There’s no peace anywhere, is there?” Cecile’s face was as white as her dress. “It’s not safe to trust anyone.”

  That was the worst of it. She had lost all trust in him. He made an attempt to explain. “I couldn’t have shown my hand too early. I had to get to know you.”

  “You mean you had to infiltrate the family.” Cecile struggled to keep her voice steady. “You had to become the spy among us. Learn our secrets.”

  “Of course,” he admitted grimly. “I knew most of them already but I had to be in a position to turn your dire secrets against you.”

  “So that’s all it was, seeking revenge?” She was certain that was so.

  “All?” he asked harshly. “My family was publicly condemned. I had to set the record straight. I needed to show you up to yourselves. At the beginning, anyway.”

  “So What changed?” she asked contemptuously.

  “You. You turned my head. And my heart.”

  Abruptly she swung away, the hem of her skirt flaring around her slender legs. “I’m not taken in by what you say,” she said bitterly. “From the moment you laid eyes on me you saw how I could be used in your little game.”

  “No game, I assure you.”

  Cecile spun back to face him, seeing his brow furrowed with strain. “How could you dream of making a fool of my grandfather, of all people?” she asked bleakly.

  Rolfe shrugged. “I hardly think I did. Or could. It wasn’t Joel who victimized my family and Daniel’s hapless mother, as I believed. It was Joel’s wife, Frances, your grandmother. She behaved in a manner I believe your grandfather never could. The female is often deadlier than the male.”

  Cecile made a huge effort to remain calm, although she was dreadfully upset. “I repeat, I know nothing of this,” she protested. “You’re a man driven by the demon of revenge, yet you were only a child at the time. It
would have been impossible for you to form an adult opinion. Too much was put on your shoulders. You accepted whatever was told to you. Small wonder you’ve become so embittered. So your family’s lives were smashed? Did that mean ours has to be smashed, too? Your accounts settled?”

  “There are consequences to our actions, Cecile,” he said with the gravity of a judge. “Unfortunately for me most of the people involved in that terrible saga are dead. The truth, the real truth, may never be known. It appears to have gone to the grave with them.”

  Although she was appalled by his words, she steeled herself against him. “If they did wrong, they don’t go free,” she said. “Don’t you believe in God?”

  “Maybe not.” He shrugged. “If there is a God, He wants none of what’s going on down here in this deeply troubled world. Did no one know your grandmother was so deeply implicated in my family’s ruin?”

  Her hackles rose again. “Where’s your evidence?” she challenged him. “Have you got a scrap of this so-called evidence to show me?”

  “I’ve spoken to your own people,” he retorted. “People in a position to know some of it. You know that. What I have is a good deal of hearsay, I admit, but I’m certain if I dig deep enough, I can get all the evidence I need. I’m not trying to prove anything in a court of law, Cecile. I’m not trying to sue the mighty Morelands for stacks of money. I simply want acknowledgment of a terrible miscarriage of justice. I want to remove the slur from my uncle’s name. I believe him to have been the victim of another man’s sinister plot. That was Grover. But Grover’s dead—a crocodile beat me to him. Your grandmother is no longer alive. What did she die of?”

  Cecile was wrenched by painful memories. “Something horrible,” she said. “Does that appease you? It was stomach cancer.”

  “I’m sorry.” Hurting Cecile was hardly what he wanted. “You loved her.”

  “Yes, I did. I can’t believe all this…business you’re telling me,” she said vehemently.

  “When you already know she turned her back on her own grandson, Daniel?”

  Cecile stumbled into a chair, burying her face in her hands. “Who told you? I can’t believe Granddad spoke of it.”

  “He didn’t, but whoever told me had no love or even liking for your grandmother. And wasn’t that the action of a ruthless, heartless woman, Cecile?” He kept up the challenge. “Turning the penniless, pregnant mother of her own grandchild out of the house with nowhere else to go to.”

  “She gave her money,” Cecile said, deeply distressed. “At least she did that. She wasn’t a bad woman. Bad things happened around her. I know that what my grandmother did to Daniel and his mother was unforgivable, but I believe she paid for it. Guilt gnawed away at her health, her strength and her mind. There was such an air of desolation about her at different times, especially in those final days. Even you would have felt sorry for her. Now you want to heap more sins on her head?”

  “It’s the role I was handed, Cecile. The badness arose out of your grandmother’s obsessive love of her son. You’re the psychologist. You would have read widely on such things. Your grandmother wasn’t getting the love and attention she craved from her husband, so she moved on to the son. You can relate to controlling parents. Forgive me, but you must have discovered that in your own mother. Your grandmother carried her obsessive love to extremes. She wanted to be in control at all stages of her son’s life. He certainly wasn’t going to be allowed to further his relationship with a housemaid. A suitable young woman had already been picked out for him. Doesn’t it all sound familiar?”

  “Controlling parents are common,” she said bleakly. “You haven”t been free of parental conflicts. They must have been forced on you from childhood.”

  “Never forced,” he said angrily. “I saw with my own eyes how the women of my family suffered. I had to listen helplessly while my mother cried.”

  “So you lived with a lot of unhappiness and a lot of rage. You lost your father at a significant stage of your development. Not only that, you lost your mother in a sense when she married another man. There must have been a lot of conflict there.”

  “My stepfather is a good man,” he answered repressively. “It’s not my life we’re examining.”

  “Yet it explains this drive for revenge. Great stress was put on you, Rolfe. Stress that no child or adolescent should have to bear. I can’t believe you didn’t clash with your stepfather in the early days, though I accept your saying he’s a good man. I expect your mother talked about the past to you from time to time. The past was never allowed to die.”

  “Especially as it’s true the past never does die.”

  “So your goal has always been revenge? It must be very painful, then, to have that goal dashed.”

  “Who says it is?” He gave a harsh laugh.

  Cecile found herself wringing her hands. “It couldn’t have been as you’ve said. You didn’t know my grandmother.”

  “From all accounts she ignored her daughter, your mother.”

  Cecile couldn’t return his searing gaze. “You’re making it sound worse than it was.”

  His gaze was unwavering. “You weren’t there.”

  “Neither were you!” she shouted, losing all control. She loved this man, yes, loved him. Betrayal and all. She would have given herself to him in a minute, offered up her heart and her mind and her body, but every step he had taken was carefully planned to bring her down. He meant to use her, then reject her. Revulsion for her own colossal stupidity, her weakness, made her rush to the door where she paused, her back to it. “There’s no point in talking about this anymore. I have no intention of letting my grandfather see the letter. I love him too much, though I haven’t the slightest doubt Stuart will do as much damage as he can.”

  “Then shouldn’t you tell your grandfather even if it’s only to stop Carlson?” Rolfe suggested harshly, moving toward her as though she were a magnet. “I’m sure he could. A word in someone’s ear should do it. The senior partner in Carlson’s law firm. One would have to be a fool to cross Joel Moreland.”

  “You’re admitting you’re exactly that, a fool?” A nonviolent person—violence shocked her—Cecile found herself wanting to push him hard, to pound him, to hurt him as he was hurting her. Naked hostility made her eyes blaze like diamonds. “Worse, you’re a—”

  She got no further.

  Rolfe snapped. He hauled her into his arms, the fire of aggression crackling along his veins. It was impossible to have her so near to him yet so far away. She struggled wildly, but no woman was a match for his strength. She was unable to prevent his mouth coming down crushingly on hers.

  Cecile couldn’t draw breath. Her blood was seething. It was brutal. It was devastating. It was deranged, because at his first touch, she longed for it. Yes, longed for it. She couldn’t get enough of him. Nor he of her. She had the sense of being caught up in a great electrical storm. Energy was sizzling all around them, coming off his body, galvanizing her. The sheer force of the sexual attraction swept her off her feet. She could only follow where he led. He was muttering something into her open mouth—she didn’t know what, English, Spanish—but she knew what it meant. He wanted her. Whatever his initial scheme had been, he was hoist by his own petard. That gave her a sick satisfaction.

  “I hate you,” she muttered desperately, as they wrestled and weaved across the room. She was shocked by the sound of her own voice. The weight of passion in it.

  “Don’t say that.” Rolfe tried to subdue her without hurting her. “You have to try to understand.”

  “Well, I can’t!”

  “Won’t! Won’t is more like it. You’re a coward.”

  “You should talk!” She was frantic as his hand moved to her breast. He cupped it with his hand, a strangely adoring gesture that further incited her passion.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he groaned, “even when you’re fiercely hating me.”

  They were moving, half stumbling, half staggering toward the master bedroom, the tw
o of them breathing as heavily as though they were involved in a marathon. The tears were spilling down her cheeks. “What are you going to do, Rolfe? Rape me?”

  Instantly he backed off, his handsome features drawn so incredibly taut for an instant his face looked like a dark golden mask. “No, no, never. Just stay with me a while.” He was begging, resting his head against hers in a way that conveyed to her how genuinely desperate he was. No way could she mistake those feelings. They were her own.

  She could feel herself melting, her limbs giving way. She could despise herself later, but for now her driving needs were too powerful to subdue. She wanted him with an urgency that could not be denied. If this were the only time she was going to experience sex on the scale of grand opera, she was prepared to do it. She didn’t love him any longer, she told herself. She didn’t, yet he pulled her like the moon pulls the tides.

  Her hands were fumbling at the buttons of his shirt. She loved the smell of him, the clean male fragrance of his skin that always lingered in her nostrils. Physically he was perfect to her. She slipped her hand inside his shirt, letting her fingers range over the width of his chest, her nails digging into the golden bronze mat of hair.

  “I can’t stop now. You know I can’t!” His mouth slid across her face, wet with tears.

  “All this will stop tomorrow,” she warned, doing what she had never done before, or even imagined doing—tearing at a man’s clothes. “I’m not worried. It’s safe. You can’t trap me that way.”

  Now they were inside his bedroom and she was pulling off her beautiful white silk dress, throwing it so wildly it was a wonder it landed over a chair and not on the floor. Her sandals came next. She was straightening to start on her slip, only he stood her back against the wall, lifting her arms high above her head.

  “You’re as frantic as I am, aren’t you? Go on, say it,” he mocked her, leaning over her, his body pressing into her thighs, drawing the tip of his tongue across her mouth.