by Jeanne Rose
Chaco turned his spooky gaze on Sam. "About time."
Adolpho merely frowned menacingly, though Sam could tell he was joking. "You are marrying this gringo, chica? He is scarred and looks dangerous. You must be very brave."
"Brave? She has the heart of a jaguar," said Sam with a huge grin.
And she would never be tamed. Which was exactly the way he wanted her.
Spellbound Book 3:
SHADOWS IN THE MIRROR
Paranormal Historical Romance
Patricia Rosemoor & Linda Marquis
Copyright © 2011 Patricia Rosemoor & Linda Marquis
SHADOWS IN THE MIRROR
was originally print-published by HarperCollins
under the pseudonym Roslynn Griffith
Book 1: THE WIND CASTS NO SHADOW
Book 2: HEART OF THE JAGUAR
SHADOWS IN THE MIRROR
PROLOGUE
West Texas, 1887
THE DARKNESS TREMBLED.
Frightened, Xosi Baca awoke to find herself thrown against hard, unyielding walls.
Walls? The space was narrow enough to be a coffin. She was cold enough to be in a grave. Was she dead? Xosi wondered, scrabbling at the surrounding barriers with desperate nails. Her actions were futile. The dark walls were impenetrable.
Then her enclosure shook again, harder, as if it were being moved by a terrible unseen force.
Memories stirred, slowly surfacing ...even as Xosi scraped and scratched. She remembered her raw fear as a snarling, horrible face loomed over her.
Fear that turned to terror.
That face had belonged to a man with a knife ...a primitive, sharp blade of obsidian polished to killing sharpness. The knife had been a tooth that ached for Xosi like a lover.
She flinched and screamed, "Ai-ee-ee!", reliving the moment the knife had descended, sheathing itself in her breast.
She was dead. Her beautiful body had been mutilated, her vibrant life stolen from her! And where was she now?
In hell?
Wailing, screeching, she flung herself from side to side. "El Diablo!" She challenged the devil himself. "Come for me! I will scratch your eyes out!"
She would not burn willingly!
"DAMN IT ALL anyway!" he hissed through his teeth, shaking the fingers that still burned.
Spooked, he stared down at the little silver mirror. First the thing had turned icy cold, then fiery hot. A shaft of moonlight seeping through the nearby open window made it glow like a little face in the dark.
He wanted no more part of the cursed thing, sent it skittering beneath a chair with a booted toe.
He'd only picked up the bauble -- some piece of Mexican work, a pendant in the shape of a hand mirror on a silver chain -- because he'd found nothing else of worth in Monte Ryerson's old rolltop desk.
When a floorboard in the hallway behind him squeaked, he tensed and glanced over his shoulder. Had his yelp awakened one of the sleepers in the ranchhouse?Like Monte Ryerson himself? He wanted no showdown with the owner of the spread, at least not now.
Stealthfully, he headed for the window and heaved himself up and over its deep sill.
He might not have accomplished what he'd come for this time.
But he'd be back with a vengeance.
CHAPTER ONE
Upstate New York
IPHIGENIA WENTWORTH reached for the hand mirror beside her bed and moaned at what she saw. Her skin was dead-white, her eyes sunken with fatigue, her masses of golden blonde hair as tangled as if a hurricane had roared through her Aunt Gertrude's twenty-room summer cottage in the Adirondacks.
With a shaky hand, Iphigenia placed the mirror back on the cherrywood nightstand and gazed about the guest bedroom, her prison the past four months. A breeze wafted through one shuttered tall window, fluttering lace curtains.
Light also crept into the room, though Iphigenia had no idea if it was morning or afternoon. With all the pain she'd suffered, she only remembered that night had been descending about the time the doctor had arrived the day before.
She'd thought she was going to die. In agony, she'd begged the man to shoot her. Obviously, he hadn't.
Gingerly, she stretched a little, to see if her body remained intact. Her limbs seemed to have survived, though she felt sore and weak, couldn't be certain of other parts of her anatomy.
Giving birth had been the worst experience in all her twenty-seven years.
She hardened her jaw. Damn Lamar Blake! Damn the day she'd been stupid enough to think having relations with a man would be enjoyable. What little pleasure she'd derived with the good-looking scoundrel had been cancelled by nine months of increasing discomfort, followed by fifteen ...twenty? ...hours of sheer, unadulterated hell.
When the door creaked open, Iphigenia started. "Aunt Gertrude?"
"It's me, Miss Wentworth." Mary Flannery, Gertrude's plump, good-natured Irish maid, stepped inside, carrying a bundle swathed in a blanket. Smiling, she headed for the bed. "I am thinking you might like to see your new baby girl."
"Baby girl?" Iphigenia wasn't ready to confront the small burden Mary placed in her arms.
But she looked anyway.
Huddled inside the blanket lay an infant with a wrinkly pink face and a few wisps of fine, pale hair lying across her bald pate. A tiny hand clutched at the edge of the blanket, four perfect miniature fingers and a thumb.
"Ah, and isn't she beautiful now?" cooed Mary.
To her surprise, Iphigenia answered, "Yes ...she is."
Furthermore, the weight of the baby in her arms felt ...natural somehow. Staring down at the tiny nose and soft cheeks in fascination, she forgot about the pain she'd gone through for the moment. Her feelings turned to awe as she realized this miraculous little creature had actually come from her own body.
She swallowed, running her fingers lightly over the baby's head. "What a wonder you are."
"Isn't she, Miss?" Then Mary sobered, clearing her throat. "Or beggin' your pardon, would you rather I called you Ma'am?"
The maid probably had a concern because Aunt Gertrude was such a stickler for covering unpleasantness with social niceties. Perhaps she thought Iphigenia was planning to pretend she'd been mysteriously married and widowed.
Iphigenia stated baldly, "Address me as Miss, please. I am not one to tip-toe around the truth."
Lamar Blake was long-gone, had returned to Georgia or Alabama, wherever the charming rogue had originally come from. He had disappeared from the New York society scene as soon as he realized Iphigenia was pregnant.
Mary leaned closer. "Baby's are always lovely. They are God's blessing and people's hope for the future."
The maid's tone and expression seemed so nostalgic, Iphigenia wondered if Mary had experienced motherhood herself. The maid claimed to be single, though that didn't mean
anything.
Mary straightened, obviously aware she was being scrutinized. "I should be drawing the curtains back." She moved away. "'Tis a fine, bright day outside."
Mary needn't have worried. Iphigenia hadn't planned to ask any leading questions. And she remained fascinated by the child she held, was content to let the world beyond them fade away.
"My hope for the future, hmm?" she said softly, examining each hand, each tiny finger.
Then she reached beneath the blanket to find matching toes. The baby stirred, making a soft noise. A smile trembled about Iphigenia's lips. She was a mother, though that had never been her ambition.
Her desire since she'd reached adulthood had been to live an independent life. When her attempts had been met with resistance from her difficult father, she'd become a rebel who drank and gambled more than a lady should, as well as smoked and said and did things that embarrassed the family.
Would she have felt differently, have considered an alternate course if her own mother were still alive?
Her memories of Dahlia Wentworth were few: a soothing voice, a loving touch, the comforting voluminous skirts that Iphigenia had clung to as a
toddler. But all that clinging hadn't stopped death from tearing her mother away. At five, Iphigenia had wept over her mother's grave. An only child, she'd grown up in a cold, darkly furnished house in New York City where servants and nannies had been her companions.
"At least you have me," Iphigenia told the baby, filled with unusual warm, expansive feelings. Now she was glad she hadn't died during labor. She was also alight with new determination. God willing, this child would always have her. Gingerly, she inhaled the baby's sweet scent. "I shall call you Hope." She told Mary, "Thanks to the sentiment you expressed."
The maid beamed.
"I shall have to decide where we will live, of course," Iphigenia mused. "I do not think New York would be the right place." Where she'd existed in mild disgrace long before the final, humiliating incident with Lamar Blake. "The continent will be better." Europeans were more open-minded as long as one had money, she had learned from traveling. "Perhaps Paris or a villa in Florence."
Surely her father would turn over her trust fund now. Surely he realized she would never marry.
Iphigenia glanced up when the bedroom door suddenly opened again, admitting Gertrude Wentworth Cummings. Her silver hair crimped back from her austere face like wings, her patrician nose raised in the air, her spine straight inside her tightly-laced corset, the older woman looked every inch the confident society hostess she was.
Iphigenia had never liked her paternal aunt very much, though the woman had been fairly civil during her months of confinement.
Aunt Gertrude spied the baby and raised elegant brows over steely eyes. "What do you think you are doing?"
"Mary brought me my daughter Hope to see --"
"You have named the thing?"
Iphigenia bristled. "How dare you call my child a thing."
But the older woman paid no attention, had switched her attention to the maid. "I should dismiss you. Get out of this room immediately."
Looking frightened, Mary obeyed.
Iphigenia remained angry. "That was cruel. I will employ Mary myself if you don't want her."
"You are not employing anyone. Your father controls your money."
"I believe he will be quite happy to turn over my trust fund if it means getting me and my disgrace out of his hair. I plan to go to Europe --"
"Europe?" her aunt cut her off. "You have no right to make plans, especially pleasant scenarios wherein you enjoy yourself. You need to be punished." Then she approached the bed and reached for Hope.
Appalled, Iphigenia turned on her side, clutching the baby. "Leave her alone! You have no right to touch her."
"You are the one with no rights." Aunt Gertrude sniffed. "A soiled woman. You have disgraced us enough and will be lucky to find some toothless, dim-witted widower who can be tricked into marrying you." She added, "And that will only come about because of your father's influence."
Before Iphigenia could react, Aunt Gertrude lunged for the baby, easily pulling her from Iphigenia's weak arms.
"No!" Iphigenia tried to rise.
But her aunt was already hastening away, long black skirts rustling.
"Where are you going?" Iphigenia cried, still struggling to get out of bed. A sharp pain shot across her abdomen. "I want my baby!"
Hand on the doorknob, her aunt turned. "It is not your baby. It is a bastard with no parents at all. Too bad you had to see it before --"
"Before what?"
Gertrude Wentworth Cummings didn't answer. Exiting quickly, she slammed the door behind her. The baby started to wail.
The sound cut though Iphigenia like a knife.
Moaning anew, she got to her feet, imagining all sorts of desperate scenarios, such as drowning her little girl in a well. Surely her aunt could never do such a thing. That would be murder.
Panicked, cursing at her unaccustomed feebleness, she dragged herself toward the door, clutching at the carved wooden bedposts, then an upholstered chair.
"Hope isn't an it! She's my daughter!"
But there was no one to hear. And as Iphigenia finally grasped the doorknob, she glanced down to see fresh blood staining her nightgown. Then she collapsed, sliding down to the floor.
Perhaps she would die after all.
West Texas
DEATH HAUNTED HIM.
Monte Ryerson tossed and turned in his brass bed. Though a chill gust blew through the ranchhouse, he was sweating. And along with the wind's rush came the soft sound of throaty female laughter.
Familiar laughter...as was the presence that rippled along with the breeze.
Xosi Baca.
Monte shuddered, once more reliving the way Xosi had died. His standing there watching, rifle in hand, unable to lift a finger to stop her mad killer. He watched the knife rise, quiver, descend in a lethal arc ...
He groaned. Xosi hadn't deserved to die, especially not in the full bloom of life.
Monte ...
He started, thinking the voice actually sounded real.
Monte ...
And seemed to be coming closer.
Monte, my beautiful man.
Although hollow, the voice seemed to be near.
He opened his eyes to a shimmering vision, hardly able to believe that Xosi Baca stood before him. He heard her throaty laugh again as she slipped her camisa over her head. Then she let her skirt drop to the floor before sitting down beside him. Voluptuous, she had full breasts, a small waist and lush hips and thighs. Her long mahogany hair coiled about her back and shoulders.
A dream? A frightening vision? For he was frightened.
Monte, she whispered again, amber eyes glowing with warmth. She reached over to caress his chest. He had to be dreaming, so why did her cold touch feel so real?
"W-what do you want?" he managed to choke out.
You, querido. She slid farther into the bed and draped herself over him. You know I have always wanted you.
"But you're dead!" The accusation came out a strangled whisper.
He lay there stunned as she rubbed against him like a cat, her flesh cold as ice. Then she angled her mouth over his, kissing him with frozen lips as she reached beneath the sheet for his manhood.
"No-o!" He winced, trying to draw away.
Yes-s-s! she hissed, attempting to anchor him. You are mine!
"No!" he yelled again, horrified that he was being aroused by a nightmare. With every ounce of strength, he pushed her away.
Once again, she stood beside the bed, this time glaring with anger, disappointment ...and more.
Do not send me away, querido, she said softly, yet with underlying threat. You will be sorry.
Still he dared, drawing the sheet about him as if it were a shield. "Go!"
She seemed ready to fight with him, but her anger faded even as did her image. He lay back against the mattress, eyes squinched tight, breath labored, heart pounding, waiting to hear her voice calling his name.
The moment never came.
Opening his eyes, Monte stared into the darkness of his empty bedroom, then swore he heard light footsteps pad down the corridor outside. His worries over what he might see warring with his concern that some noise had awakened his kids, he rose and went to the door. But no one traversed the long hallway that connected the haphazardly connected rooms of the sprawling adobe ranchhouse. Though Monte swore that the scent of a woman lingered in the air. The hair on the back of his neck rose to attention. His flesh crawled.
A ghost rather than a dream?
His Comanche heritage allowed him to believe in such beings.
Though how Xosi Baca could have followed him to his abode he didn't know. Backing into his room, he lit the kerosene lantern beside the bed and checked the shadows as he pulled on a pair of denim pants.
Then he went through the house, peering at shadows, staring into corners. Everything seemed quiet. A dim moon and a skyful of stars shone outside. An open window let in a gust of cool spring wind.
Cool, but not cold. Not freezing.
Thinking of Xosi's chilly
lips, Monte shivered.
Had he actually seen a ghost?
Or was the guilt that already haunted him taking a new form?
He guessed he'd prefer thinking it was guilt, he decided, heading back for bed. Though the black moods that had possessed him the past winter were almost as bad as ghosts. He had to do something about the situation. Guilt was rotting his insides and, worse, pushing away his children.
He didn't want to destroy their lives, too.
"PA IS LONELY, that's what's wrong with him," thirteen-year old Cassie Ryerson told her brother Stephen as they rode toward Pine Bluff to pick up supplies and the mail.
"It's more than that," said Stephen, reining in his sorrel to keep pace with her smaller paint. The horses clopped through the brown dust side by side. "He's got a lot on his mind. For one, he's worried about making a living." He assumed his wiser, older brother expression, though there were only three years between them. "There's too many ranchers now -- cattle prices have been forced down. Pa's probably afraid we might go broke."
"We aren't going to go broke," Cassie asserted, trying to be positive. "And Pa wouldn't think so either if he had someone really nice to talk to." Remembering something she'd read in one of the many newspapers her father subscribed to, she quoted, "He needs 'a soft hand to soothe his fevered brow, a sweet bosom on which to rest his head.'"
Stephen made a face, narrowing his eyes. "What in tarnation are you talking about? A woman?"
"Of course, she'd be a woman. A lady." That was especially important. "Pa needs a new wife." And she herself a new mother, Cassie had decided, though she thought it best not to admit so to her brother.
"Ma's only been dead for three years."
Three long years that had felt like a lifetime to Cassie. "I think Pa's mourned enough."
