by Jeanne Rose
"Open invitation."
"I mean in the Santa Fe area."
"Looking for something I lost."
Her? "Or threw away."
"I never meant to." He stepped forward, his very closeness smothering her. And before she knew what he was about, he had her in his arms and back on the dance floor where the band played A Bird in a Gilded Cage. "Sometimes circumstances interfere with a man's intentions."
Unsuccessfully trying to ignore the familiar physical sensations speeding through her as they waltzed together, she asked, "What were your intentions, Sam?"
"To come back for you someday."
"Hah!" Too bad he'd given her no reason to believe him. "You didn't even write." And she was pleased when he shifted guiltily and gripped her waist tighter. "Someday is here, and I don't want you," she told him, caught somewhere between the truth and a lie.
"I already showed you otherwise."
"An aberration, nothing more."
"Shall I prove differently?"
Furious at the reminder of the way he'd kissed her – of the way she'd responded – she gave him fair warning. "You do and I'll have you drawn and quartered!"
"Ah, the Comanche blood in you getting all stirred up?" Louisa felt the color start to drain from her face until he added, "That's what I always loved about you – your wild nature."
Then warmth and a confusion she didn't want to feel threatened to consume her. "You never loved me."
Ignoring her protest, he went on heatedly. "But aren't you going a little far to prove how brave you are these days? What the hell did you think you were doing riding in that paseo de la muerte, anyway?
Her anger renewed that she'd almost made a fool of herself over him, of all people, she asked, "You mean when you made me lose my seat?"
"I mean your participating in such a damn fool stunt in the first place."
Louisa stared at him open-mouthed and stopped moving her feet to the music. How dare he think he could walk into her life after six years and tell her what to do?
When she could find her voice, she nearly shouted, "You don't give me orders!"
Glowering over her, Sam yelled back. "Looks like someone should!"
"You've been in the military too long!"
"Maybe I have, but that's about to change."
"You're quitting?"
That gave her pause. What did he intend to do with the rest of his life...and where did he intend to spend it?
In Santa Fe?
Little thrills shot through her.
"I'm turning in my uniform after I execute one last assignment," Sam was saying. "I'm riding to West Texas to meet with a man named Ryerson. We're going after a madman who's been killing people."
Her stomach knotted at the thought of Sam putting himself in such danger. As if he hadn't survived every danger fate had thrown his way for seven years. Not that he'd survived them well, she thought, remembering how she'd hardly recognized him all liquored up.
Something truly horrible must have happened to make him want to resign his commission.
Hardly realizing she was dancing whether she would or no, she muttered, "A murderer."
"Served as an officer with the Confederacy, but he cracked on the battlefield. He was locked up tight in an asylum until recently. Seems he's been gathering followers, an army of sorts. It's my job to stop Beaufort Montgomery before he gives us a real problem."
"Beaufort Montgomery," she echoed.
Louisa was sidetracked from other questions when a sun-bronzed hand clamped down on Sam's shoulder, stopping them from dancing once more.
A deep, smooth, voice, lightly accented, said, "I would like to dance with the lady."
Louisa was startled. It was the stranger in the faena suit who'd been watching her so intently. He had to be a Mexican, yet he was taller than most and, though lean, obviously very strong. He resembled an ancient warrior, Louisa thought. His amber eyes glittered as he stared down his hawk nose at Sam.
"Sorry, mister." Sam's unfriendly tone belied the pretty apology. "She's already spoken for."
"I can speak for myself, thank you so much," Louisa groused as she tried one last time to wrench herself free from his persistent grip.
About to accept the handsome stranger's invitation if for no better reason than to aggravate her current partner, her intentions were foiled when Sam twirled her back into his arms and strutted to the music, out-of-sync with the waltz until he'd put some distance between them and the dark-haired man who stared after him with an unnerving expression. Then Sam smoothly glided back into the proper rhythm.
Realizing he'd forced her to continue partnering him despite what she'd decided were her wishes to do otherwise, Louisa demanded, "How dare you!"
"I would dare anything for you."
And damn the thrill shooting through her at his statement that sounded so sincere. She laughed harshly. "That's why you left."
"I had no choice. My commanding officer had me transferred."
She glared into the blue-green eyes that were too beautiful to belong to a man. "And was it his fault you stayed away for six years?"
"I was doing my duty."
"By not contacting me?"
"In defending my country."
"By dragging Indians off the land that has been theirs to roam for centuries, herding them onto reservations, then shooting them if they dared to leave without permission of the commanding Bluecoat?"
With each word, Sam withdrew further and further, not only physically, but emotionally, as well. That haunted look wasn't always confined to his eyes, Louisa learned. Now it seemed to engulf every fiber of his being. He let go of her and gave her a polite bow.
"Sorry to have troubled you," he said stiffly, then spun on his heel and stalked off.
Leaving Louisa outraged, not to mention frustrated. How dare he leave her in the middle of the dance floor so people could gawk at her?
How dare he not finish this fight?
How dare he not tell her what made him appear burdened with a guilt greater than any one man should have to shoulder alone?
And how could she be so stupid as to even care?
Determined to do something about that, she made her way back through the crowd, to where the stranger still stood, arms crossed in front of his broad chest. His expression shifted subtly when she approached him. He looked hungry. And not for food.
Too late to change her mind, Louisa said, "Sorry my partner was so rude...to both of us." She glanced back but couldn't catch hide nor hair of Sam Strong. Giving the stranger a winsome smile, she asked, "Have you got a name?"
"Tezco."
"Well, Tezco, if you're still looking for a partner, I accept. Name's Louisa Janks." She took the hand he offered her, then furtively scanned the crowd for Sam.
Wherever he'd disappeared to, she hoped he had a good view of the dance floor.
BACK IN THE SHADOWS beyond the festivities, Sam looked down to the dancers and saw Louisa smiling up into the stranger's face as they began a traditional Spanish number, a slow decorous dance in which the men carried lit candles.
At least the usurper couldn't get both hands on Louisa, Sam thought, even as his mood darkened further.
His gut tore at him, and he could hardly keep himself from doing something about it. Rushing down there and telling Louisa he still loved her. Still wanted her. Wanted her for his wife.
But he couldn't.
He shouldn't.
Her crude stabs at his official duties of the past years had been too close to the truth. In ten seconds, she had reminded him of why he never should have stirred up old feelings in the first place. Louisa Janks was a half-breed, and while she lived the life of the White Eyes, the Comanche remained strong in her heart.
Therefore, he never could be.
He couldn't imagine detailing for her the horrors he'd witnessed during the last couple of years. Certainly not those in which he'd participated. She thought she knew. She was an innocent. Had no idea of the reality...<
br />
Had no way of knowing what he had done.
If he wanted to be with Louisa, Sam knew he would have to be honest with her. Impossible, for the hatred and condemnation he would see in her beautiful dark eyes would surely kill him.
CHAPTER SIX
"I COULD KILL SAM STRONG with my bare hands!" Louisa ranted to Francis a few days later. "I could absolutely wring his neck like I would a plucked chicken!"
Actually she'd rarely harmed a living creature in her life – not even a chicken – but Frances was kind enough to refrain from pointing that out.
Louisa felt all wound up. She went on, "He's the most conceited, aggravating...sad man I've ever met in my life."
Frances raised her brows. "Sad?"
Louisa nodded morosely and fell into a nearby chair. "Something terrible has happened to change him. He was always a little stiff and full of spit and polish. His West Point training, I suppose. Now, he seems...tormented. I can't think of a better way of putting it."
They were about to take tea in Frances's dayroom, a chamber that was filled with perfect golden light...and sturdy furniture made from the soft, easily worked pines of the region. The house's interior appeared to be more Spanish/Indian than Anglo, correlating with the local architecture. Unlike the heavy dark pieces imported from the East, the Jones's furniture was carved with gracious Spanish designs and brightened with bold mineral paints introduced by the Indians.
"You sound like you care," Frances stated.
"Just making an observation."
"Liar." She hesitated only a moment before volunteering her real opinion, "I think Sam Strong still loves you, too, or he wouldn't have come back."
Despite her morose mood, Louisa felt her pulse pick up. "He told me you two talked after our...adventure in the desert. And I never said I loved him."
"You didn't have to. And yes, we talked. He was concerned about you."
"You mean he was afraid I might be pregnant."
Frances took some linen napkins from a trastero – a massive painted pine cupboard that could be used to store everything from jewelry to clothing to dishes depending on where it had been placed. "That Sam was concerned at all should tell you how he felt about you, Louisa."
"Or how seriously he took his duties."
"I don't think you were a duty to him then. And you certainly aren't one now."
Louisa thought her friend was acting like she'd talked to the man recently. "Did you run into Sam at the fiesta?"
"We had a few words."
Louisa flushed. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I've been waiting for you to cool down."
"What did he say?"
"That drifting back to Santa Fe was no accident. He came for you, Louisa."
But Frances wanted everyone she cared about to be as happy as she was. Louisa wasn't sure she could trust that her friend was telling the whole truth.
"I think you should give him another chance," Frances continued. "Unless you're more interested in that stranger I saw you dancing with."
"Tezco? He is attractive. Some would even say sensual," Louisa admitted. "But I didn't pay him much mind. I was...distracted."
With thoughts of Sam, whether she liked it or not. She watched Frances place the napkins on the small round table set in front of the windows.
"Louisa, promise me you'll be careful. Since before the fiesta, Chaco's been having a strong foreboding of something being wrong...and it involves you."
Louisa started, then tried to cover. Chaco's intuition was nothing to ignore. "Maybe he's picking up on my anger with Sam."
"Maybe." Though Frances didn't look like she believed that anymore than Louisa did.
Balancing a tray holding a porcelain service from the East that Frances treasured, the housekeeper's daughter arrived. "Senora Jones, your tea."
"Put it on the table." When she noticed Marta's concerned frown, Frances asked, "Is something wrong?"
"I did not want to upset you, but Phillip is not feeling well. His forehead is warm. I made him go to his room to rest."
Tea forgotten, Frances rushed to the door. "I'll be right back, Louisa."
"Don't be silly. I'm coming with you."
Frances became terribly anxious each time one of the children got sick. Doctors were scarce in his part of the country, and the medicines used back East were scarcer. Everyone relied on local native remedies. If necessary, Chaco could even summon an Apache medicine man.
Entering Phillip's bedroom, Louisa close behind her, Frances sat on the bed next to him. The boy was flushed and when he coughed, the sound was deep and harsh.
"He could use some Yerba Mansa root," said Louisa.
"Good idea." Frances turned to Marta, who waited in the doorway. "Would you fetch some, along with a rag and a bowl of cool water?"
The anxious young woman ducked her head and darted down the hall. Then Frances focused her entire attention on her son.
"Phillip, how are you feeling, baby?" she asked, putting a gentle hand on his forehead. "Oh, dear. You're so hot."
"Not a baby!" He tried sitting up to prove it, but the movement only provoked another coughing fit. "Gotta go...take care of Spangles..."
"Spangles will miss you," Louisa assured him from the foot of the bed, "but I promise I'll take good care of him for you until you're feeling better, and I'll tell him you'll be well soon."
Frances gave her a grateful smile. Phillip needed to rest, not to worry about responsibilities that were too much for a sick five year old.
Marta returned a few moments later with a portion of the wild plant. "I am sorry, Senora Jones. This is all that is left. And we are low on Silktassel, also."
While the Yerba Mansa root was good for coughs, the bark and leaves of the Silktassel bush were brewed, the ensuing liquid used for the relief of fever.
"Here, Phillip, chew on this."
He made a face and avoided the root in his mother's hand. "Don't like it."
"But it'll make you feel better," Frances coaxed.
"Sure will," Louisa added. "I don't like the taste either." Which was peppery and astringent. "But I take it when I have to. It works."
She was relieved when, after grimacing, Phillip took the root and chewed without making a fuss, something he was wont to do more now that he thought of himself as "grown up." A series of illnesses around the ranch the past few weeks – no doubt the way Phillip had come by this one – was the reason their supply of natives medicines was depleted, though she hadn't realized to what extent.
Frances murmured, "I'll have to send one of the servants to get more herbs and such."
"I can do it," Louisa volunteered. "I was going into town to visit Ma, anyway. I wouldn't mind stopping to see Magdalena out at the pueblo."
Formerly one of Belle's girls at The Gentlemen's Club, Magdalena had bragged about being a bruja or white witch. And much to Frances's satisfaction, who'd taken it upon herself to find new "jobs" for all the girls, Magdalena had chosen to turn her talents to healing and had moved back to her native pueblo. She'd been teaching both Louisa and Frances about native healing methods and supplying them with the necessary herbs and roots for several years.
"You'll be back by nightfall?"
Louisa nodded. "Is that too late?"
"It sounds fine. Thank you."
"Hey, I love your kids almost as much as you do."
Even if she might never have any of her own, Louisa thought sadly, heading for the door. Damn Sam anyhow. His sudden appearance had just made her feel worse about the situation.
And she continued to brood about him all the way out to the pueblo. Only after she'd arrived, dismounted and gone inside Magdalena's home, did she manage to push the man out of her mind.
"You look worried," Louisa said, noting the bruja seemed disturbed about something.
Sorting through her remedies, which she kept in an interior room of her quarters, Magdalena chose the herbs and roots that Frances would need and stuffed them into small leather pouches. P
art Spanish but mostly Pueblo Indian, she was a small woman in her mid-thirties, attractive despite her rather flat face. Huge silver and turquoise earrings were prominent against the coarse black hair she always wore braided and pinned to her head.
"Some people are missing," she finally said, hands hovering over her supplies.
"Missing?" Louisa echoed uneasily. "How many? When?"
"Two men. They've been gone since the day following the big fiesta on the estancia."
"Could they be in Santa Fe for some reason? Or visiting another pueblo?" she asked, thinking of other Indian towns with a concentration of attached living quarters gathered around a central plaza not unlike, if smaller than, the city of Santa Fe.
"Their wives say not. They were to be home the night they disappeared..."
A chill shot up Louisa's spine. She remembered the last time men started mysteriously disappearing only to turn up dead with their throats torn out. A diablera, or evil witch, had been responsible then. Louisa had been blamed by some and had almost paid for those lives with her own. The diablera was long dead and could hurt no one, she reminded herself.
But Chaco was having premonitions of some kind and they had to do with her. Now this.
Could there be a connection?
"Is there reason to believe the men are dead?" she asked, a catch in her breath.
Placing the remaining leather pouches in the saddlebags, Magdalena shook her head. "This I did not see."
"You have searched for answers then." Louisa meant as a wise woman. She had great respect for the mysticism that was an integral part of Indian life.
The Pueblo tilted her head back and closed her eyes. "I looked into a bowl of water stirred with an eagle feather."
"And?"
"I saw a snarling face with lightning and snakes shooting from the head."
Louisa hugged her arms tightly around her middle. "What's it mean?"
Magdalena's eyes opened and her troubled gaze met Louisa's. "I am uncertain." She secured the leather straps on the full saddlebags and handed them to Louisa. "Perhaps I saw an angry god."
"One of your gods?"
"One with whom I am unfamiliar."
Magdalena led the way into the outer room that was simply furnished with clay pots, baskets, sleeping blankets and a grinding stone where she cooked, slept and took shelter on inclement days. Built of stone and adobe, the thick walls of the pueblo buildings absorbed heat during the day and released it slowly, keeping the rooms warm even during cold winter nights.
