Silver Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Two

by Vivian Vaughan

  When Santos continued to stare past him, Carson turned to see Aurelia gripping the pommel of her saddle.

  “What is it, angel? Are you all right?”

  She nodded. Loose strands of hair fell around her face. Confused, he reached to brush them back.

  “Is it what I said? I didn’t mean to offend you. I mean, about your father’s mine and…”

  “She’s all right,” Santos interrupted.

  Carson turned to find Santos’s eyes dancing with amusement.

  “Don’t worry about her,” Santos repeated. “She just discovered she may have to accept my help after all.”

  Aurelia shot him a spiteful glance that further confused Carson. “Don’t listen to my brother,” she replied dismally.

  When they reached the gates leading into the Mazón stable yard, Santos again broached the subject of the mine.

  “Think we should ride over there after we drop Relie off? Since we’re mounted and all?”

  “No!” The word erupted in chorus from Carson and Aurelia.

  “Hey!” Santos held up both hands. “Don’t jump on me. What did I do?”

  “You cannot go to the mine before you see Pia,” Aurelia informed him.

  “She’s right,” Carson added. “For a man about to get himself hitched, you don’t act very anxious to…ah…”

  “I get the message, compadre. No need to draw me a picture.”

  Carson and Aurelia laughed, and when they drew their mounts to a stop inside the stable yard, Carson came around and lifted her from the saddle.

  His hands, warm and sensuous, spanned her waist, bringing a surge of memories and dreams.

  She lifted her lips to the brush of his own, savoring the brief contact, desiring so much more, filled with alarm at what lay ahead for them.

  Not in the distant future, however. Their future would work itself out once the difficulties at the mine were settled. She knew that. Even if Carson decided against running the mint and mine.

  Through the years, she, Pia, and Zita had often held deep though unschooled discourses on the meaning of dreams and whether they were forecasters of one’s future.

  Aurelia recalled her dream about the horses and herself and Carson and their children on the Texas prairie. She wouldn’t mind that. With Carson beside her, not even the Texas prairie would be lonesome.

  Thoroughly chastised by his longtime partner and his sister, Santos considered himself fortunate that they gave him a chance to grab a bite to eat before hurrying him off to see his fiancée.

  “It isn’t that I’m not eager to see her,” he assured Aurelia. “But when I get headed in one direction on a difficulty, I like to finish the thing.”

  Aurelia hugged him. “I understand you, Santos. Pia does, too. But you have to consider her before anything else now.”

  He laughed. “My little sister, teaching me about love.”

  “Who better?” she challenged. “I’m an expert.”

  “As of when?”

  She smiled sweetly, kissed him on the cheek, and sent him on his way. “Tell her I’m home, and since I am no longer quarantined, I will be over to see her.”

  To which she promptly received another lecture from Carson.

  “I won’t have you running around town alone. If you want to go somewhere, ask Santos or me. We will take you.”

  She tilted her chin in mock defiance. “Or Enrique?”

  Pia must have seen him ride up, Santos suspected, for no sooner had he tied his horse at the hitching rail and approached the entrance to the Leal mansion, than the outside gates burst open and she leaped into his arms.

  Lifting her off her feet in one swoop, he held her close and kissed her eagerly. Her warm body wriggled against his, enticing, exciting him.

  Suddenly, he felt the fool for Relie and Carson having to prod him to come to Pia. He set her gingerly on her feet, held her face in his hands, and let the light in her eyes infuse him with happiness. It was a light he recognized.

  “I don’t know how I made it through these last days without you, little one.”

  In response she pulled his lips to hers, and once more he enfolded her in his arms. Her lips were small, delicate, and the eagerness with which she responded set his body aflame.

  Suddenly, a voice called from inside the courtyard. “Pia, who is there?”

  Quickly, he released her. Pia frowned and he mimicked it. “It’s Santos, Mamá.”

  “Santos.” Señora Leal burst through the gate. “What a relief that you have returned. When will the charros arrive? In time for rehearsal next week, I hope. What about that young man from Texas…what is his name? Has he returned as well?”

  “Mamá,” Pia scolded. “Do not drive him away before the wedding.”

  Santos laughed good-naturedly. “Everything is taken care of, señora. The charros will begin arriving tomorrow and our family from Guanajuato by the end of the week. Jarrett, my friend from Texas, returned with Relie and me.”

  “Oh, praise the Holy Mother, Relie has returned, too. I have been so worried. Pia, have you told him about the charriada?”

  Without waiting for her daughter to reply, the señora rushed ahead. “We have decided on a dinner and baile instead of the charriada. Decorators are coming from Potosí to turn our ballroom into a—”

  “Mamá, it is to be a surprise,” Pia interrupted. “Surely we can let Santos catch his breath before we overwhelm him with wedding preparations.”

  Señora Leal stared from one to the other, as though Pia’s suggestion were unheard of. “I suppose—”

  Pia interrupted again. “If you don’t object, we will walk a while in the garden.”

  Señora Leal’s expression resembled a dervish, Santos thought. He wondered at the chaos inside her head. At Pia’s request, her eyes narrowed on Santos.

  “If you promise not to cause a stir.”

  In your garden? he wondered. “Certainly, señora.”

  “I shall never live down that little scheme involving Padre Bucareli. He called no conference.”

  Santos’s eyes widened. He remembered all too well the day Padre Bucareli called no conference. “I am sorry, señora.”

  “Go ahead.” She shooed them off. “Walk in the garden a bit, then Pia must help me with wedding preparations.”

  “So Relie returned,” Pia mused after they reached the edge of the hillside behind the Leal compound.

  “Relie, Jarrett, and I arrived not an hour ago.”

  “How is she? Did she hate coming back?”

  Santos squeezed her hand, which lay in the crook of his arm. His body stirred at the touch of it. “She didn’t mind returning at all. I doubt we could have forced her to stay behind, even without…” His words drifted off. “She’s fine, although she might expire from finding herself head over heels in love.”

  “In love? With Carson Jarrett?”

  He nodded.

  “Then it’s true,” Pia mused. “Oh, I’m delighted. I know you don’t think they are right for each other, but—”

  “I’ve changed my mind. Reluctantly, I admit. But seeing them together…” He shook his head at the image, then looked lovingly into Pia’s eyes. “They are like us,” he whispered. “The looks they exchange, the light that fires their eyes every time one or the other enters the room. I tell you Pia, watching them together left me weak with wanting you.”

  She giggled, snuggled closer to him, then cast a wistful glance toward the house.

  “Relie has changed, too,” he went on. “She’s different…more mature.” He recalled the harrowing afternoon when he was forced to wait with Tío Luís for the two of them to return. “In some respects,” he added.

  “She probably isn’t much different than she was a month ago, or two months. You see her in a different light now—as a woman, not just your little sister.”

  “You could be right.” He told her about the episode in Guanajuato. “That wasn’t responsible thinking on either of their parts.”

  “Oh, Sa
ntos, don’t you understand how desperate they were?”

  When he looked into her uplifted face, flushed with wanting him, he almost gave in and kissed her right there in her own backyard. “Sí.” He cleared his voice to get past the huskiness. “Never more than at this moment.”

  Santos arrived back at his own house in a querulous mood. “What do you mean Jarrett went ahead to the mine?”

  He had found Aurelia in the library with their mother, who was engaged in balancing the household books.

  “I tried to persuade him to wait for you,” Aurelia admitted. “But he said not to worry, that the mine is full of people.”

  Doña Bella glanced up from the desk. “Why shouldn’t it be full of people? This is a workday.”

  “No reason,” Santos assured her. “I wanted to accompany him…”

  “Señor Jarrett is perfectly capable of taking care of himself, although Relie doesn’t seem to agree. I have never seen such carrying on. As if the man couldn’t find his way to the mine, when he spent a week or more working there before he left for Guanajuato.”

  “I’ll go fetch him, Mamá,” Santos mumbled, kissing her cheek. “We won’t return in time for luncheon, but we’ll be here for dinner.”

  “I should hope so. Enrique and the girls will be here.”

  When Aurelia shot him a signal of distress, he chuckled, then kissed her on the cheek, too. “Ready for some help with your life, little sister?”

  At her grimace, he turned sober. “Careful, Relie,” he whispered with his mouth close to her cheek. “Trust him.” He winked. “Trust both of us.”

  “What was that all about?” Doña Bella questioned after her son left for the mine. “If I didn’t know better, I would suspect you two of being up to your old childhood pranks. What are you quarreling about?”

  Aurelia laughed. “Nothing, Mamá. You know how fond Santos is of taunting me when he thinks I might need his help to get out of a…difficulty.”

  “What kind of difficulty, dear?”

  “Nothing,” she repeated. Crossing to her mother’s side, she peered over her shoulder, watching Doña Bella add a column of figures. “You kept books for the mine before Enrique came, didn’t you?”

  “For years, dear.”

  “Would you teach me?”

  Doña Bella laughed in a placating sort of way. “Whatever for, Relie? You won’t need such skills. Enrique will continue to keep the books after you are married. He has a brilliant financial mind, you know.”

  Aurelia groaned before she could stop herself.

  Doña Bella eyed her daughter. “What does that mean?”

  “I’m a little tired of hearing Enrique’s virtues expounded. Tío Luís spoke of nothing else.”

  “He is fond of the young man, isn’t he?”

  Aurelia grimaced. Por Santa Cecilia! Let this ordeal be over soon. Suddenly, she leaned down and touched her lips to her mother’s cheek.

  “What was that for?” Doña Bella asked, surprised. “You haven’t been one to show affection for years.”

  “Maybe I have changed,” Aurelia mused.

  Doña Bella studied her a moment. “It’s Pia’s wedding. A best friend marrying does things to a girl. Sentimental things.”

  Aurelia shook her head. “I learned something in Guanajuato.”

  “What, dear?”

  “That I owe you an apology. I haven’t appreciated you like I should have.”

  Flustered, Doña Bella started to object.

  “It’s true,” Aurelia went on. “I wanted to be like Tía Guadalupe, because she lives such a glamorous life—always going to parties and wearing the latest European fashions.”

  She gazed into her mother’s startled eyes. “I missed the meaning of your life, Mamá…all the good you do here in Catorce. The way you help the miners’ families, the way you work at the church and with the convent school. I should have been patterning myself after you. You are the kind of mother I want to be to my children.”

  At the sight of moisture brimming in Doña Bella’s eyes, Aurelia threw her arms around her neck, a thing she hadn’t done since she was a child.

  Finally, Doña Bella withdrew a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed her eyes. “Are you saying your stay in Guanajuato was not all you expected?”

  “I’ve changed my mind about wanting to live there.”

  “Oh, child, your Papá was right. He knew you wouldn’t mind living in Catorce.”

  “It isn’t the place I live that will determine my happiness,” Aurelia agreed. “Only I can do that. And my husband.”

  Doña Bella fairly glowed. “Enrique will be so happy.”

  Aurelia turned away, careful this time not to betray herself to her mother. How she wished she could tell her the truth. But she had promised.

  “We should have sent you to Guanajuato long ago, then it would have all been settled.”

  “No, Mamá. I could not have learned the truth any earlier.”

  Carson didn’t know what to expect at the mine. He wasn’t even sure why he felt the urge to go ahead without waiting for Santos. He told himself that Santos might not return from seeing Pia before the mine closed for the day, but he knew better. Santos was as anxious as he and Aurelia to have this matter settled.

  If he had feared Nuncio Quiroz, his worries would have been for naught, he discovered upon entering the mine office, for the only trouble Quiroz offered was a hard look. And it was hard, no doubt about that. But the man went about his business, leaving Carson to himself in the office.

  By the time Santos arrived, he had succeeded only in confirming a fact he had already known: Without more information than they presently possessed, they weren’t going to learn very much.

  “We need something to compare these figures with. Dates and facts that aren’t in the ledgers, when the goods were discovered missing, things like that.”

  Santos pulled up a chair and studied the neatly entered figures. “His penmanship is without peer.”

  Carson chuckled. “His penmanship is without peer? Where in hell did you learn such gibberish?”

  “From those books you Rangers carry in your saddlebags, compadre. Shakespeare, Donne, Pope. You think I didn’t learn anything on the frontier except how to herd longhorns and catch badmen?”

  “It’s the badmen we’re after now, case you forgot.” Carson eyed his friend from top to toe. “That little gal got to you, huh?”

  Santos grinned. “Sí. Don’t know why I needed you and Relie to tell me how the cow ate the cabbage.”

  Carson nodded sagely.

  “Especially not after I spent the last week watching the two of you moon over each other like a pair of lovesick calves.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Sí. Reckon you’ll be able to hide it from the family until we settle this matter?”

  “Aurelia can; she’s good at disguises. I’m not sure about myself.” Carson shrugged, grinning. “Hell, I’ve never been in love before.”

  “It becomes you, compadre,” Santos teased.

  “And yourself, partner. Now, let’s get to work.”

  Santos glanced out the office door. “Seen our friend Quiroz?”

  “Once, when I first arrived. He’s made himself scarce since then.”

  “Good. Then he won’t see us carry these ledgers out of here.”

  “What do you figure to do? Burn ’em?”

  “Mamá kept these books for years. Maybe she can tell us what we are overlooking.” He scooped up the ledgers. “Come on before we get caught stealing from our own mine.”

  “Your mine, partner. It’s none of my own.”

  Santos grinned. “So you think. Remember back on the road when you spouted off about how much you hate this mine?”

  “I didn’t say I hate it.”

  “Might as well have,” Santos replied in a jovial tone. “You saw Relie’s reaction?”

  Carson felt something turn sour inside him. “So?”

  “So you spoiled her plans for
your future.”

  “Back up a minute. My future?”

  “None other. She has the two of you living here in Catorce, you running the mint and mine.”

  For a moment Carson felt as if the wind had been knocked from his lungs. He walked out of the mine beside Santos, his mind awhirl with nothing but air. No pictures. No thoughts. No solutions.

  Santos slapped him on the shoulder. “Cheer up, compadre. All is not lost.”

  “No? I thought you were on our side?”

  “I am.”

  “Then why is it you always seem happiest when things sour between us?”

  True to Santos’s word, he and Carson did not return by lunchtime, and Aurelia was forced to endure the entire meal with Enrique fawning over her return, her father despairing over the disappearance of Santos when his son knew he demanded an immediate report on the showing of their bulls in Guanajuato, and Doña Bella bouncing around like a school girl, eager to tell the news that her daughter had explicitly forbade her to reveal, namely that Relie would be content to live in Catorce.

  It was the embellishment Aurelia did not want to hear, their expectation that she would live here with Enrique Villasur, which she had no intention of doing.

  Fortunately, siesta called. Enrique bid her adiós, saying he would see her at dinner. Her mother and father retired to their chamber, leaving Aurelia alone. Suddenly, she could bear it no longer. She must see Pia and share some—not all, certainly—of her newfound happiness.

  She felt herself blush, thinking how naive she had been in urging Pia to seduce Santos. She must apologize for the boldness of it, the gall. Now that she knew what a private, beautiful experience it was to love a man, she was ashamed she had taken it so lightly.

  Draping a shawl about her head, she slipped out the door. The Leal mansion was a kilometer or so from her own, but she took her time. Since no one would be out during siesta, she felt safe, knowing she could enjoy the walk in solitude. For the first time she could remember, she looked to the hills with wonder instead of repugnance, with anticipation instead of dread.

  By the time she had gone a mere three blocks, she found herself breathing hard. The streets were no more steep here than in Guanajuato, but the air was thinner.