“To me you are,” he whispered. “You are my guardian angel, and I didn’t take very good care of you.”
Their lips met by accident. Their heads had moved closer and closer, as if to rein in their sorrow, their need. She drew back at the touch; he looked startled.
Then he eased her face toward his and their lips made contact again. For one brief moment thoughts of that other, despicable mouth flitted through her brain, only to be chased away by a rush of glorious heat.
At first he kissed her gently, his lips tender, caressing. As excitement built inside her, she dropped the knife to the ground and wrapped her arms about his neck. He drew her closer, stroking his hands up and down her back, stroking her lips with his own.
Before she knew what she had done, she had opened her lips and received him with as much awe as a child brings to the sacrament. Shafts of light soared through her brain, invigorating her, renewing her senses, reviving her spirits.
She twined her fingers in his hair and marveled at the softness of it. He shifted her onto his lap and she felt comforted. His strong arms around her brought solace.
At length he drew her face back to look into her eyes. She returned his stare with one of wonderment. When she caught her breath, she whispered, “Thank you. That was very good.”
A wry smile creased his handsome face. Carefully, he smoothed the dingy ruffle about her shoulders. Then he favored her with a glint in his eye. “I’m glad you liked it, angel. I didn’t find it half bad myself.”
“I guess they’re right,” she mused. “About climbing back on a horse that throws you.”
His brown eyes widened. He drew her to his chest and knew he didn’t like being compared to a madman who raped women. He stroked her back, aggravated by her comparison. He thought about this beautiful but strange creature who had flown into his life as surely as though she were indeed his guardian angel. And if she had flown too close to danger for his sake and gotten her wings singed by some evil man then he must help her recover.
He held her close, felt her soft breasts nestle enticingly into his chest, her heart beat furiously against his. He grinned. She might think his kiss no more than an elixir, but her wildly thrashing heart said otherwise. She had liked it for what it was: a warm and sensual experience between a man and a woman. A man and a woman fate had thrown together.
He grinned again. Hell of a way to run into an angel.
Two days after the train holdup and Aurelia’s kidnapping, Santos Mazón rode into Real de Catorce in response to an emotional message from Pia:
Relie is in trouble. Come quick.
“Why the devil didn’t you talk some sense into her?” he demanded of Pia when they were finally alone.
No sooner had he arrived in town than Pia sent him to console his mother, who had taken to her bed over Aurelia’s kidnapping by the train robber.
“Come back after you have seen your parents,” Pia told him. “I will tell you everything. But first you must visit your mother.”
So he had visited his mother, conferred with his father, and confronted Nuncio Quiroz, who had been entrusted with getting the prisoner safely to the Federales Station in Matehuala, from whence the man was to have been transferred to San Luís Potosí, the state capital.
When Santos returned to the Leal mansion, Pia had suggested they ride to the hillside beyond the cathedral.
“Will you accompany us, Señora Leal?” Santos had dutifully inquired of Pia’s mother, since Pia’s old dueña was indisposed.
“No, no. Today you may take Pia out alone. Perhaps you can raise her spirits. I trust you to remain in full view of the townsfolk and ride with the carriage top down and on opposite sides.”
“Sí, señora,” Santos replied.
They walked now through the garden they had come to think of as their own special place, reaching the precipice that overlooked a great rugged canyon. It was a beautiful vista, which always filled Santos with the love of his native land. Today it evoked no such emotions. Today he could see only Relie, his little sister, who was somewhere out there in his beloved Sierra Madres, prisoner to an escaped train robber.
Pia clutched his hand in an improper fashion. “I must tell you how it really happened. I’m afraid it will…” She paused, sighed, then continued. “It is certain to shock you, Santos dear. You will surely be angry with me.”
Her voice faltered, and he struggled to grasp her meaning. “How it really happened?”
She led him out of sight of the cathedral, to the bench they had shared the night she’d tried unsuccessfully to seduce him.
At Relie’s suggestion. Once more Relie’s schemes had gotten them into a peck of trouble.
Santos stood, one foot propped on the bench beside where Pia sat, staring down at her. “My sister has done outrageous things for twenty-two years, Pia. I doubt anything you say will shock me.”
“This will. You see, we were not out for a midnight stroll like Zita and I claimed…”
His black eyes silently commanded her to continue.
She knew his parents had told him the story that was circulating Real de Catorce. At daybreak following the escape and kidnapping, she and Zita had confided to their own parents, who had rushed to the Mazón mansion bearing the dreadful news that the three of them had been out for a midnight stroll when the train robber overpowered his guards and escaped, taking Relie hostage.
It was the best story they could come up with without Relie’s imagination to guide them. Actually, it was Relie’s imagination that had gotten them into this mess, but the fear they had lived with since that night had stilled their tongues and kept them indoors. Pia had lived for one thing: Santos’s arrival. Santos could right the wrong and save Relie from the prisoner. She knew he could. Yet now she trembled at telling him the truth.
“We freed the prisoner.”
Santos’s mouth dropped open. He wiped a large hand over his face, blinked his eyes, then challenged his petite fiancée to repeat her last statement. “Despacio, por favor.”
She repeated her statement slowly, word by word, more from lack of breath than because he had directed her to do so. “We set out to free the prisoner. And we did.”
Santos tossed his chin up, inhaling. He always reminded Pia of Relie when he did that, and moisture brimmed in her eyes.
With great care he settled himself on the bench beside her, turned her to face him, and commanded in gentle tones, “I’m sure you—that is to say, my sister—had the best of reasons for freeing the train robber. Do you mind telling me what they were?”
Pia gripped her emotions. “You see, Santos dear, that man was not the train robber, but the townsfolk were up in arms and the Federales were bent on hanging him. We couldn’t let him hang for something we knew he did not do.”
The big man’s eyes widened. He sat deathly still while she spoke, staring at her. Finally, he loosened his grip on her shoulders and turned, burying his face in his hands, resting his elbows on his knees.
Pia sat quietly beside him. After a while he lifted two fingers and peered at her through the opening.
“We?” he questioned. “You are taking responsibility for this scheme, too?”
Pia sighed. “It’s true Relie planned it. But there was no other way. Zita and I agreed. It had to be done.”
“It had to be done?” Dropping his hands, he raised his shoulders, facing her again. “Let me get this straight: You helped the prisoner escape because he—the man the town wanted to lynch—was not really the train robber?”
She smiled, relieved that he understood. “Yes, dear Santos.”
“Would you mind filling in the blanks, Pia? How the devil did the three of you know he wasn’t the train robber? Who is he?”
Beside him, Pia tensed. “We don’t know who he is…I mean, maybe Relie does…now.”
He watched her clutch her hands in her lap, twisting her violet voile gown; he saw white knuckles sprout across her brown hands.
He lowered his voice. “If you d
idn’t know who he was, how did you know he wasn’t the train robber?”
“I…ah…I don’t think I should tell you that.”
Gently, he tipped her chin with a single finger. “The worst is over, little one. You stopped a train—Lord knows how—and helped a prisoner escape…a vicious criminal who has taken Relie hostage. That’s the worst. Now tell me how you knew he wasn’t the train robber.”
A tear slid from one of her eyes. “Because…because we…we were the train robbers.”
For a long moment he held her chin as if they were both set in stone. “Say that again.”
“It’s true. We—Relie, Zita, and I—we robbed the train. Both times.”
Santos dropped his hand and rose to his feet. Walking as though asleep, he crossed to the precipice and stared out, thumbs tucked in his waistband.
“My train? You robbed my train?” His words rasped from his throat. “I’m afraid to ask how…or why.”
Pia came up behind him. Defying propriety, she reached her arms about his waist, as far as they would stretch around his enormous girth, and laid her cheek on his back. “I told you how miserable she was here. Did you not understand? Did your parents not understand? Relie was determined to escape Real de Catorce. You know yourself, Santos, she isn’t one to stand by and meekly accept life on other people’s terms.”
Turning himself in her arms, he drew her close, consoling, consoled.
“You’re right about that. Relie has a mind of her own. What a mind! I always accused her of scheming even in her sleep. But what did she hope to gain by robbing our own train? She had everything money could buy.”
“Money can’t buy freedom, Santos.”
“Freedom?”
“Don’t you see? Relie thought she could persuade Don Domingo to let her leave Catorce by ‘hitting him where he was vulnerable,’ as she said.”
“That crazy girl.”
Pia shook her head. “It was working—until an innocent man got himself arrested for the robberies. After the first holdup, your father had promised to send Relie and your mother to Guanajuato if there was one more.”
“So you obliged him?”
She nodded meekly. “He intended to send them to live with your aunt and uncle the next day, except…except we couldn’t let that man hang for our offenses.”
“And now the madman has taken her hostage. I hope she lives long enough to learn—”
“She learned,” Pia told him. “At the last holdup, she learned.”
Santos tensed at the change in Pia’s voice. “What do you mean?”
“We hid in the tunnel chapel and…ah…someone accosted her in the dark.”
Santos’s black eyes turned hard as flintstone. “Who? What did he do?”
“Tore her clothing…kissed her. She stayed in bed the next day, weeping, distraught. She vowed to give up her foolishness. She swore she would never let a man touch her again.”
Santos’s eyes held Pia’s. Images of their own love engulfed them. He raised a hand to stroke her face. “You crazy, crazy girls. I will never understand either of you.” His voice broke. “But I love you both.” Gently, he kissed her lips, her eyes. “I may never let you out of my arms again, little one. I can’t bear to think someone might hurt you.”
They stood on the precipice, wrapped in an embrace that would have shamed them both had anyone seen, oblivious to it, uncaring at the moment, striving only to gain strength from each other, from their love.
Finally, Pia led Santos back to the bench, where they talked quietly. She told him how the scheme had worked, about the boys helping, even naming them when he asked, in hopes that Kino and Joaquín could help him locate Relie.
Gradually, the strength that had been sapped from him at Pia’s unexpected revelations returned, and with it the urgency to save his sister.
“And now she is hostage to a madman.”
“Not exactly hostage,” Pia replied.
“He took her from the scene of the crime, didn’t he?”
Pia nodded. “For her own protection. I think.”
Again Santos stared at his fiancée, startled by this new piece of information. “Explain that, Pia. And include everything you have left out. I’m too addled to ask any more questions.”
“The man who accosted her the first time was there.”
“Again?”
Pia sighed. “That’s how we arranged for the train to stop. We knew they wouldn’t stop for any other reason.”
“And?” he prompted when she drifted off.
“Relie sent the man a message, saying it was from the Indian girl he met in the chapel—that’s who he thought she was the first time—asking him to stop for a rendezvous.”
“Damnation! Does she not have any sense? Don’t any of you?”
“There was no other way, Santos.”
“You sound like Relie.”
“There wasn’t,” she insisted.
Santos heaved a heavy sigh. “Tell me the rest.”
“Well, the man wouldn’t…I mean, she had trouble getting away from him, and we were already in the stairwell behind the altar, and I—” Stopping, Pia brought her hands to her face, covering her distraught features. When she spoke, her words were muffled by her hands. “I called to her…called her Aurelia.”
She dropped her hands and stared at Santos, communicating all the horror in her small body. “I called out her name and he realized who she was, and he…he threatened to kill her. The prisoner heard, too. He sent Kino and Joaquín to escort Zita and me home.”
“The prisoner did?”
She nodded. “He went back for Relie. He said he would see her home, but—”
“Damnation!”
“We were so frightened, Santos, and he sounded sincere. He went back for her at great danger to himself. That man in the chapel threatened to kill Relie, and—”
“Who?” Santos demanded, his breath short. “Who was the bastard in the chapel?”
“Your father’s superintendent.”
Santos’s face tightened as the words registered in his brain. “Padre Quiroz?”
She nodded.
He lunged to his feet, rage growing inside him, building, escalating, exploding. He grabbed the thing closest to him, a wrought iron table, and threw it across the garden.
Pia ran to him, clinging to him.
“I’ll kill the bastard. I’ll kill him.”
She held him with all her might.
“Let me go, Pia. I’ll kill him.”
Later she wondered how one so small as she could have held back a raging bull like Santos. He had always reminded her of the magnificent fighting bulls his family raised at Rancho Mazón, but she had never seen him angry before. She clung to him, desperate to keep him from charging from the garden to find Nuncio Quiroz.
She used no words, only her two small arms and her face, which she pressed to his chest. He was so large her head barely reached his heart. She felt it pound against her temple.
When it was over, she knew it had been neither her strength nor her body that held him in the garden, but rather her love. Like a spider’s web, her love had surrounded him, snared him, held him, until at last he calmed enough so tears could flow from his eyes, releasing the rage that stemmed from his fear.
Fear that grew to hatred.
And when at length he returned her embrace, holding her close, he hid his face in the top of her head and cried until she felt his tears, hot and wet, on her scalp. She knew then she had won.
She drew him down beside her on the bench, and he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes and blew his nose.
“Quiroz will have to wait,” he said finally, his voice weak, listless. “I can’t go after him right away.”
She lifted his hand to her lips.
“Quiroz may be involved in the difficulties at the mine that I told you about,” he continued. “We don’t know for sure, but—Anyway, he isn’t a threat to Relie at the moment; the prisoner is.”
Pia fou
ght back tears.
“I’ll find her, Pia. And when I do, that man will wish he had been a train robber. A lynch mob will look good to him. He will wish he had never heard of Real de Catorce.”
She pressed his hand to her lips. He caught her shoulder and turned her to face him, kissing her gently. “Did you recognize him? Was he from around here?”
She shook her head. “It was dark in the chapel and stairwell, but when we came out on top of the hillside, I saw him in the moonlight. He looked dark for a gringo, but it might have been the darkness around us. He was tall, not as tall as you, but…” She paused, thinking. “He would probably come up to your nose. Relie said he had muscles like he worked hard, and that he was handsome.”
“Relie said? When did she tell you this?”
“After she saw him in the jailhouse.”
“Great God, Pia. I’m not sure I can take any more of this tale.”
“The rest isn’t so bad.” Pia filled him in on Relie’s visit to the jail. “She said he had brown hair and warm brown eyes, very warm, teasing. That for a man who faced hanging for a crime he didn’t commit, he joked a lot and sang. He spoke our language, but the song he sang was in English. She said it was a crazy song; she could tell that by the way his eyes danced when he sang.”
Suddenly, Santos listened closer. “A handsome gringo, about so high”—he held his hand up to his nose—“with brown hair and eyes…joked a lot and sang, even in jail?”
Pia nodded.
“What was he wearing?”
“I couldn’t see, not with the bandoleers of shells across his chest. He had a rifle, too, now that I think of it. He must have stolen them from the guards.”
Santos smiled for the first time since she began her strange tale. “He was a gringo? You are sure?”
“Relie said he was. And he looked like it…I guess. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a gringo.”
“Did he give a name?”
“No. He even refused to tell the jailers his name,” she answered.
Santos pulled her closer. “I know a man who fits that description. Worked with him in Texas. He’s a Ranger. First thing he would have done is grab a rifle and ammunition. The next thing would be to save a lady’s life.”
Silver Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Two Page 8
