Silver Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Two

by Vivian Vaughan

  His hair was tangled from sleep, and his chest was bare. Her hands roamed freely, tracing the edge of his long johns. When her fingers slipped beneath the band, he moaned, lifted his lips, and winked.

  “You mean to hold me to it, don’t you?” He cupped her face, kissed her, then let his hands slip down her neck, across her chest, drawing the blouse along with them.

  It was the same type of garment she had worn in the cave, a simple length of white cloth gathered in a ruffle about her neck. When he wriggled it down across her arms, exposing her breasts, his hands stopped. His fingers clamped like a vise around her forearms.

  She watched him stare at her, suddenly wanting him so badly she could hardly stand it. She grasped his head, pulling his face to her breast. When his lips covered her nipple, she inhaled deeply, drawing him closer.

  His hands slipped to her waist, over her hips. He crumpled her skirt in his hands and beneath it clutched her bare buttocks in his palms. He pulled her to him, groaning.

  “When you set out to seduce a man, angel, you don’t stop halfway.”

  She grinned, nodding, too weak to answer. Against her abdomen, she felt the full force of his own desire. She pressed herself against him.

  “Not this morning, though. There isn’t time.” His voice rasped from his throat. One hand slipped around her hips, between her legs.

  She stared at him, trembling, wanting him so badly.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he whispered. “Santos is coming. We’re going to the mine.”

  “When?”

  “Early.” His fingers slipped inside her, moving in a steady simulation of her pulsating heart, only slower, ever so much slower. She moved against him in agony.

  “Slow, angel.”

  “Love me, Carson,” she begged. “Please love me.”

  He kissed her, then spoke with their lips almost touching. His eyes held hers, echoing the begging he saw on her face.

  “I do, angel. That’s the hell of it. I do love you.”

  He withdrew his fingers, lowered her skirt, lifted her blouse, studiously putting her back together while she stood scarcely breathing.

  It was what she had wanted—his profession of love. What she had come to hear. Yet it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough.

  “I want you to make love to me,” she whispered.

  She watched his throat quiver when he inhaled. “I want it, too. As badly as you, believe me.” He grinned then, glancing down inadvertently at his protruding long johns. She followed his gaze.

  “With Santos taking his brotherly responsibilities so seriously, that’s enough evidence to get me shot.”

  “No,” she objected.

  He kissed her again while she clung to him, pressing her body shamelessly against his. Her physical yearning had grown so intense, she had trouble thinking clearly.

  A knock at the door rasped through her senses.

  Very gently, Carson eased Aurelia away from the door and turned her around, glancing toward the wardrobe.

  “Jarrett,” Santos’s voice called. The doorknob rattled.

  She shook her head. Brushing him a kiss, she headed for the door that led to an adjoining bedroom.

  “Coming,” Carson returned. He struggled into his pants, watching Aurelia close the door behind her. Only then did he unlock the door leading to the hallway.

  He ran a hand through his hair, turned to button his breeches.

  Santos stepped into the room.

  Carson watched him inspect the premises—the untouched tray, the bed, then Carson himself. His eyes riveted on Carson’s crotch. Carson shrugged.

  “Sonofabitch, can’t a man even dream in this house?”

  “That had better have come from dreaming.” Santos flipped the covers back, then opened the wardrobe door.

  Carson downed the orange juice, watching his friend with an easy grin. “Know what I like about our friendship?” He slipped into a clean white shirt. “Trust,” he answered himself. “Complete and total, out-and-out trust.”

  Santos crossed the room, opened the door to the other bedroom, stepped inside, looked around, then returned.

  “Sorry, Jarrett. You know how it is.”

  “Can’t say that I do, partner. But you’re free to watch over me. Likely you’ll keep me from making the biggest mistake of my life.”

  “That’s the way I see it, compadre.”

  They rode the same horses to the mine as they had ridden into town the day before. Carson stroked the mane of the dappled gray Andalusian.

  “Think there’s any chance I could get Sunfisher back from the Federales or whoever has charge of him?”

  “You mean that pet horse of yours?” Santos questioned.

  Carson grinned. “Yeah.”

  “What’s that you told Relie about being anxious to ride our horses?” Santos teased.

  “No offense, but when a man’s been afoot four days out in those mountains, he isn’t all that particular. If we have trouble ahead, I’d as soon face it on my own mount.”

  “I’ll give it some thought,” Santos agreed.

  “Don’t go telling her,” Carson requested. “Wouldn’t want her to think I wasn’t grateful.”

  Santos pierced his friend with a friendly warning. “Long as that’s all you want her to think—that you are grateful for the loan of a horse.”

  They rode in companionable silence, and by the time they approached the Mina Mazón, Carson figured he had worked through the trials of the morning. Lordy, how he had wanted to make love to Aurelia. Still did, for that matter. Wanted it more than he could recall wanting anything before in his life.

  But he was not going to fall for another of her wiles. Not that he thought Aurelia insincere. She wanted him to love her, the same way she wanted to escape Catorce.

  And if he had learned anything, it was that Aurelia Mazón was a girl who always got what she wanted. By one scheme or another.

  Not that she was deceitful. She wasn’t. Nor had he been. When he told her she was a woman, he meant it. She was a woman in ways that would haunt him to the grave.

  But she was a child, too. She wanted him to love her. Yet she had never said a thing about loving him in return.

  Not that she realized what she was doing. He was certain she wasn’t deliberately leading him on. And therein lay the enigma that was Aurelia Mazón. Loving and generous and fanciful. Beautiful and courageous and daring. Would he lose his soul to this ethereal creature before the month was out?

  Even her protective brother likely wouldn’t be able to prevent that. He shrugged, figuring it might be well worth the risk, as long as he didn’t endanger Aurelia’s soul, too.

  Santos might posture as her protector, but he, Carson Jarrett, was. She belonged to him. He would love and protect her as long as he was here, then he would leave.

  She would follow her dreams to a life of high society, and he would return to chasing bandits and outlaws. And in the long cold nights under the stars, her memory would keep him warm—her memory and the sure knowledge that she belonged to him. Wherever she might be, whatever she might be doing, whomever she might marry, she belonged to him.

  They hitched their mounts and headed for the mine. “Depending on what we find down here,” Santos told him, “I figure Relie and I will pull out first thing in the morning.”

  Carson missed a step, caught up, then calmed himself before replying. “Pull out for where?”

  “Guanajuato. You heard me say I have to take some bulls to the feria.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “While I’m gone you can nose around, try to figure out what’s going on.” Santos eyed his friend skeptically. “Don’t figure you’ll mind staying behind, since you seem to have hit it off with a certain female.”

  “She’s a certain female now?”

  “You and Zita.”

  Carson stared at him, wondering how this friend could be so smart about some things and so damned ignorant about others.

  Santos co
ntinued. “Zita’s a nice girl. Our families have known each other a long time. I’m sure her father will give you permission to call. I’ll speak to him.”

  Carson put a hand on Santos’s shoulder, stopping him in mid stride. “Let’s get something straight right now.”

  Santos looked down at Carson.

  “I speak for myself.”

  Santos cocked his head.

  “No one, not even you, speaks for me. Not where women are concerned.”

  “I only thought to—”

  “No one, damnit. I mean it. I’m riding out of here at the end of the month.” He shrugged off the pall that statement cast over him. “Figure any woman I meet between now and then will be just that—a woman, an acquaintance.”

  Santos grinned. “Sure. I understand. A charmer like yourself can’t go leaving broken hearts strung across two countries.”

  Carson nodded, and the two men continued to the mine entrance, where Santos introduced Carson to the guard.

  They were handed hard hats, which Carson inspected before replacing his Stetson with it. It looked like an oversized cap that had been soaked in oil.

  “You probably have a woman pining for you back in Texas, anyhow,” Santos mused.

  Carson put the hat on his head and patted it, considering his friend’s unmistakable effort to keep him away from his sister. “Bunches of ’em, partner.” He followed Santos into the mine office.

  His first sight of Nuncio Quiroz shot white-hot rage spiraling through him with the shock of a bolt of lightning. He turned his head and studied a map tacked to the wall, forcing himself to concentrate on the tunnels and shaft of the Mina Mazón until he could bring his anger under control. He must not let the man know he recognized him. He must not.

  Aurelia’s life depended on Quiroz not recognizing him as the prisoner he had allowed to escape for a tryst in the chapel.

  He must not give himself away. Yet, all he wanted to do, all he could think of, was to kill this varmint with his bare hands.

  Quiroz wasn’t an ugly man, yet to Carson he resembled no one more than the devil himself. Almost as large as Santos, he towered above Carson by half a foot. His muscles were obviously earned with a single-jack hammer and a double-jack.

  Santos introduced Carson to Quiroz as he had to others—his friend from Texas who would serve as best man at his wedding, adding, “He came early to learn something about mining.”

  “You a miner?” Quiroz questioned. His eyes roamed Carson in a manner that suggested he found him familiar.

  “No,” Carson replied.

  “He wants to become one,” Santos said.

  “It’s hard work, mining.”

  Carson shrugged, not trusting his voice.

  “The business end,” Santos explained. “He wants to learn the business end. He will need-experience working the mine, too, but he is mainly interested in how we conduct our business.”

  Quiroz turned his head, aimed at a spittoon, and spat tobacco in that direction. Mostly, he missed.

  Carson noticed his teeth, stained and rotted. The idea of that mouth on Aurelia’s…

  Furiously, he turned away, gripping his emotions.

  “Since we’re here,” Santos was saying, “we might as well look around.”

  Quiroz stepped aside for them to pass. Once inside the tunnel and away from the man, Carson’s anger eased off, but he still had trouble concentrating on the mine tour.

  Always good-natured and outgoing, Santos greeted the men they met in the tunnel the same way he had greeted those they encountered outside: with handshakes, slaps on the back, words of encouragement. His genuine interest showed clearly in the questions he asked each man about his work, how the mine was doing, about his family.

  At a fork in the tunnel, Santos led the way down the truncated branch. “This blue stuff is the silver,” he pointed out. “The vein is rich in this direction. We look for it to be a real bonanza when we open it up.”

  “Why aren’t you mining it now?” Carson asked, while visions of what he would like to do to Quiroz’s face danced in his brain.

  “We’re saving it. The vein running off the main tunnel provides more ore than Casa de Moneda can handle at the moment.”

  Santos introduced Carson at each stop, explaining his interest in mining, and the miners agreed to help all they could.

  Afterwards they toured the yard—patios, Santos called them—where the noises were thunderous.

  “Off over there,” Santos shouted above the din, “is where we bring the stuff that’s rich enough to be sorted by hand.”

  Carson followed his friend’s pointing arm to an area where boys no older than ten or twelve squatted on haunches, working over mountains of broken rock with short-handled picks.

  “And here,” Santos continued to walk through the various yards, greeting each worker by name, as before, “this is the grinding patio—for ore that is harder to get to.”

  The area toward which Santos pointed this time contained huge rock crushers, which were only partially visible through the thick dust raised by the crushing of rock hauled to the yard by stoop-backed workers pushing wheelbarrows.

  Following Santos fifty meters to the other side of the mine property, Carson stopped beside a rail fence that separated the walkways from a stone-paved patio where a couple of hundred mules tromped.

  “They are mixing the amalgam,” Santos explained. “Ore mud with copperas and quicksilver.”

  Carson pointed toward a row of railcars sitting on a track in the distance. “Those the cars you use to haul it to the mint?”

  Santos nodded. “Not this stuff, though.” He indicated an area to the rear of the complex, where smoke rose in thick billows along a line a good fifty meters in length. “Those are the furnace beds. After the amalgam is purified in those beds, we cast it into bars over there.” He pointed through the smoke to a row of low flat-roofed buildings, which were barely visible through the haze.

  “So it’s the bars that have been disappearing on the way to the mint?” Carson reasoned.

  Santos nodded. “You can see how isolated we are up here. Thefts were common when we hauled bars to Potosí by rail. That’s the reason the mint was supposed to have put a stop to our thefts.”

  Carson turned a full circle, inspecting the view. Real de Catorce sat on top of a mountain surrounded by deep arroyos, beyond which were more mountains. Rugged, difficult terrain. “The bars they are stealing now would have to be carried out by pack mules.”

  “Which everyone in town would notice,” Santos added, leading the way back to the mine office.

  “Catorce means fourteen,” Carson mused. “Fourteen what?”

  “Depends on who tells the tale,” Santos laughed. “Some say the town is named for the fourteen hills surrounding us, others say fourteen soldiers were ambushed by Indians, still others argue it was fourteen thieves.”

  Carson laughed. “Maybe it’s thieves and one of them is still around.”

  “In that case, you’re hunting a ghost, compadre. The town was named a good three hundred years ago.”

  When they reached the office, Nuncio Quiroz was leaving for lunch.

  “Go ahead,” Santos told him. “We’ll lock up. I want to make some notes for Jarrett.”

  For the first time that morning Quiroz hesitated before answering. He agreed, of course. What choice did he have? Santos was the owner’s son, would likely be his boss one day—saying the surly superintendent survived that long, Carson thought.

  Leaving his hard hat on a peg, Quiroz turned at the door. Again he examined Carson with a harsh perusal. “Have we met before today, señor?”

  Carson returned his stare, knowing he had best keep a steady eye. This man might look inept, but he was likely shrewd as the day was long. “Not to my knowledge,” Carson replied in clipped tones.

  He watched the man disappear beyond the mine entrance. Forcing his attention back to the difficulties at hand, he peered over Santos’s shoulder at the open ledger. “W
hat do you know about Enrique Villasur?”

  Santos glanced up. “He’s president of the mint.”

  “I know that. And I know your father has him picked out for Aurelia. Whether she’ll have him is another matter. But what do you know about the man? Is he from Catorce?”

  “No.” Santos scanned a page, then turned to the next. “That isn’t Relie’s objection. Don’t worry about her, Jarrett.”

  “It isn’t Aurelia I’m worried about. It’s your mine. How long has Enrique been with the company?”

  Santos shrugged. “Couple of years. Since right before we opened the mint. He came highly recommended by Tío Luís.”

  “Your uncle in Guanajuato?”

  Santos looked up from the books again. “I hope this thing you have for Relie won’t interfere with your investigation.”

  “This thing, as you call it, is irrelevant to the investigation. I never mix work and…ah…friendship. You know me better than that.”

  “Sí, but I have never watched you fall in love before.”

  “Then stop watching. It’s making you cantankerous.”

  “You’re the cantankerous one, Jarrett. Your problem with Enrique is jealousy, pure and simple. Don’t let it bother you. She isn’t going to marry him.”

  “I know that. Answer my damned question. Does Enrique look like the president of a mint?”

  “Looks have nothing to do with it.”

  “Does he sound like one?”

  Santos snapped the books closed and rose. Ushering his friend out the door, he locked it with a key he took from his pocket, then handed to Carson. “You might need this. But don’t tell anyone you have it.”

  Carson turned the key over in his hand.

  “Enrique sounds like a moonstruck calf,” Santos admitted. “Even mint presidents fall in love.” He grinned down at his friend. “That affliction is not limited to Texas Rangers.”

  “Speaking of love, partner, appears to me you’ve been neglecting yours.”

  “So she tells me.”

  Their return to the house was prolonged by Santos’s penchant for greeting every man, woman, and child they met on the street.

  “Never knew you for the politician,” Carson mused. “You would have made a good president for Casa de Moneda.”