by Laura Parker
“Tell us, caboclo!” came the gruff command. “Where have you hidden the Blue Madonna’s treasure?”
“I cannot! I’ve sworn an oath!”
“Then watch your son die.”
Eduardo choked on his tears. His mother was dead! These men, these bandeirantes with their fancy silver buckles and spurs, they had killed her!
“Please! Torture me! The child is innocent!”
“Then save him! Tell us where to find the jewels! It is said that the Madonna’s rubies are the color of your son’s blood. That her emeralds are as big as hens’ eggs. And the blue topaz, the one said to be formed in her image, it is as large as a melon. Show it to us!”
“I can’t. I’ve sworn to the Blessed Mother to protect her shrine.”
“Then watch, believer, as your son dies and know that you could have bought his life for a handful of the jewels which your Blessed Mother is too selfish to spare!”
Eduardo awoke with a start, automatically rubbing the aching in his wrists. When the phantom pain subsided, he lay with his arms by his sides and very deliberately sought out the remainder of the dream. Yet, he didn’t dream it this time. He stared at the dark ceiling until the memory came stealing back, knowing that only when all was recalled would he be able to sleep untroubled.
Amid the ashes of his family’s burned-out home, he lay on his stomach on a straw mat beneath the stars. His head was cradled in the lap of his aunt Mehia. His breaths came fast and shallow because it hurt too much to breathe deeply. His aunt said he would live but he had seen the dark fright behind her kind eyes. The curandeira had come and smeared his back and wrists with noxious herbs but then gone away quickly, less she, too, succumbed to the devils who infested the Tavares’s home.
The whole village was whispering about it. They knew what his father had done. The bandeirantes had gone, taking the sacred jewel of the Blue Madonna, which his father had given them. In return they’d spared Eduardo’s life—but taken his father’s.
Some said his family’s downfall was the work of a quebranto, that someone jealous of the Tavares’s wealth and position in the village had cursed them. Others said it was pride that brought about Joao Tavares’s downfall, that he whom the villagers had entrusted with the care of the wealth of the sacred Blue Madonna was, after all, only a selfish old man who could not bear to part with his only son.
But Eduardo knew they were wrong. The blame was not his father’s. If he’d been braver, his father’s courage would not have faltered. And so he wept, ashamed to be alive when his parents were dead.
Through the next few weeks of fever and pain, when all despaired of his life, Eduardo knew he would not die. He knew that the reason he had been left alive was to be the instrument of retribution upon those who had stolen the Blue Madonna and her treasure, and murdered his parents. He would live to see the act of vengeance done. This time he would not fail, no matter how awful the torture he must endure, no matter how painful the price. He would not turn back or look back until he had avenged them all.
Eduardo sighed in resignation as the memory receded. He had kept the pledge made fourteen years ago. He had hunted down the bandeirantes, though it had taken more than three years, and killed each of them. Before the last man died, he had learned from him that the theft of the Blue Madonna was no random act. Adventurers, American men of some wealth and influence, had paid handsomely for anyone willing to bring them the sacred treasure. It was they who had been to blame for the desecration and the deaths. From that moment on, he had amended his oath to include their destruction. Rage drove him another eleven years, crowding out every other consideration and human emotion.
But now the rage was gone. He was empty, and weary, and sick to death of loneliness. His wealth, accumulated through the years by luck and shrewd calculation to usurp the gains of his enemies, meant little to him. Wealth had been a means to an end, a means to gain power, nothing more. What had been missing from his life all these years was what he ached for now. Love.
He sat up, his face tight with the agony of his physical need. The comfort he so desperately needed waited for him in the far wing of the house; comfort, and love, and an end to his loneliness. He had lied to her earlier and to himself. He could no more keep away from her than he could stop his beating heart. Only she could end this deep abiding ache. The pain would give him no peace until he saw her again, touched her again.
Philadelphia awakened to the sensation of uneasiness. It wasn’t a totally new experience. Sleeping in strange beds in unfamiliar surroundings, she had awakened often in the weeks since she had left her home in Chicago, not knowing precisely where she was or why. Then gradually, memory would assert itself and she would remember with a pang of regret. Yet this time, the feeling of unease didn’t recede. It sharpened into the pricking sensation of not being alone.
She sat up, a spurt of panic injecting its toxin into her veins. “Who is there?”
She didn’t know if he moved or if her eyes only adjusted in that moment but suddenly she was aware of a man’s silhouette in her room, standing by the open window. He was braced by a hand along either side of the window frame. His shirt had been pulled out of his trousers and hung open. The moon had risen during the night and she saw clearly the sensually modeled profile of Eduardo Tavares.
The passion that she thought had been drowned in the watershed of tears she had spilled before falling asleep sprung instantly back to life. But she was wary now of the pain that lurked in that wanting.
He turned from the window, as though he had known she would awaken sooner or later. “I couldn’t stay away.”
She clutched at the muslin sheet fallen to her waist but she didn’t lift it to shield herself. “You should be in bed.”
“I should be in your bed.”
Too raw and achy with need, she didn’t answer that.
He turned fully toward her and came slowly forward. There was nothing predatory in his stride, nothing urgent or eager. He came gently to the edge of her bed and stood a moment staring down at her. In the moonlight her face was like a porcelain mask, the only color in her bluish-red lips and the delicate purplish sockets about her eyes. He reached out to stroke her cheek with the back of his hand and felt the stiffness of dried tears. He had wanted to make her happy. He had made her cry.
“Let me sit here beside you, just a little while,” he said quietly. He bent a knee on the bed and, framing her shoulders, pressed her back onto her pillows. “Do not be afraid, menina. I only want to be with you. I need you near me tonight.”
He released her at once and sat back on his bent knee. Then he spread the wrinkles from her sheet, careful not to touch her.
He looked older in the moonlight, she thought. The joyous man of a few hours earlier had disappeared. There were never-before-seen lines in his handsome face and a sharp set to his sensual mouth. It struck her with force. He was in pain.
She reached out to where his hand lay dark and sinewy upon the pale sheet and touched his thumb with her forefinger. “What troubles you?”
“Old dreams.”
“Will you tell them to me?”
He jerked his hand an inch away from her touch. “You’re the one who tells stories, menina. Tell me a story that will give me peace and then, perhaps, I will be able to sleep.”
When she didn’t immediately answer, he turned an angry face to her. “I heard you the day of the auction. That day you spent your passion for stories freely on strangers. Why do you deny me?” His voice was harsh and accusatory.
Deny him? What she had done on the terrace, is that what he meant?
Not knowing how else to comfort him, she stretched out her hand again and with the smallest of touches stroked the back of his. “If I have no stories for you, perhaps it’s because there is nothing of which I need to convince you.”
He turned his head slightly, looked down at where her hand moved lightly on his. “Because I already love you.”
He sa
id it simply yet the words did not fall simply on her ears. They struck like the collapse of the walls about her head. It came before she was ready. Feelings often came too quickly whenever he was near. They rushed at her like blasts from an angry wind. How was she to know those feelings by name?
“Love takes time,” she said slowly, turning to craven retreat in the face of overawed sensation. “It’s fragile and cannot be rushed or mistreated.”
“Lies!” His voice was low but cutting. “Love is not timid and fragile. Love burns and lays waste to its victims. It’s rude and presumptuous. It will betray your most preciously held secrets in search of itself. Love takes you hostage and if you’re strong enough to recognize it, you’ll gladly throw away the key to your soul for it!”
He lunged forward, bracing himself with a hand on either side of her head. “Do I frighten you? I frighten myself. And still there is this … wanting.”
The last word was choked out of him, and she saw him shut his eyes against it. He was in torment and she was the cause. The thought appalled her. He was the joyous free spirit, the gorgeous man with the sinfully beautiful smile. He was desire itself when he sang and played the guitar and danced. He dropped jewels in her lap with careless ease. Suddenly she was ashamed of her cowardice. She had thought she only hurt herself, but now she knew that she had hurt him as well.
She reached up and slipped a hand behind his neck where his skin was scalding hot. With her other she touched his cheek, smoothing away the tense lines of pain. “Love me, Eduardo.”
She thought he would never reply. The silence seemed to stretch until even the sound of their breathing was an intrusion. She felt her heartbeat as a hollow achy pulse and wondered if she’d waited too late to be brave.
When at last he did speak, she started because his voice was so different from what she dreaded. It was tender and persuasive, and enigmatic. “I do love you, menina. That may not be enough, but it’s what I have to offer.”
He leaned forward and with the gentlest of kisses touched his lips to her brow, her eyes, her cheeks, and finally her mouth.
Tears of relief sprang into her eyes but she held them, giving him back kiss for kiss, and trembling as he eased his upper body down on top of hers and the reality of him enveloped her in sharply etched desire.
Eduardo buried his head in the hollow of her neck and shoulder and brushed his lips against the fragrant skin there. He was supremely confident in his ability to please her, but was humble and as grateful as he’d ever been in his life for the opportunity to so do. He wanted more than to please her, he wanted to absorb a little of her into himself so that he would never again be without her.
Philadelphia caressed the firm column of his neck as he rested quietly against her, and waited. When he lifted his head, she found the courage to look up into his face and hold the weight of his passionate gaze. When he kissed her she held her breath. There was a question in his kiss. Fear, delicious and sharp as cat claws lightly raked her spine. But this time, she answered it honestly. She pushed her fingers through the heavy silk of his hair and brought his head down hard to meet her kiss.
She heard him moan as his kiss deepened, and then she tasted the dark jungle and ferocious, wild, untamed land that had given birth to him. He was still a stranger in many ways, but he would be less so by morning, and she wanted very badly for it to be so.
His kisses bore revelations of delight. Wherever he touched her, she learned new things about herself. How firm were the bones of her face into which he pressed hard kisses. How splendid was the curve of her collarbone which he licked from end to end. How cool was the skin of her thighs when his warm hand reached down to skim up her nightgown. And how marvelously sensitive were her breasts. At first he scarcely touched them yet the brush of his lips over each soft nipple sent rippling shivers down over her stomach into the juncture between her thighs.
Then his fingers followed his lips, those clever learned fingers that had brought forth such beautiful music. Now they stroked so lightly up and down her breasts and stomach. She moved to the rhythm of his touch, wanting it, needing the fiercely gentle glory of it and hoping it would never stop. He strummed desire through her, and deep inside where the vibrations gathered she hummed with pleasure.
When he opened his lips over a breast and drew her into his hot mouth, she softly crooned this pleasure too great to hold. She cradled his head to hold him there, but he turned and laved the other nipple until she arched against the thready aching there that only his hands or mouth could soothe. He seemed to understand for his hands came up to cup each fullness and hold them for his kisses and the lap of his tongue and the graze of his teeth.
When she was near weeping he moved lower to scatter hot open kisses on the plane of her stomach, in the hollows beside the jut of her hipbones and lastly to push his tongue into the apex of her thighs. She couldn’t explain the utterly new sensation of the sweet honey running inside her but she writhed under his mouth with little whimpers of helpless need. When he suddenly lifted himself from her she caught him by the wrist in panic. “Please!”
“Gently, menina,” he said in the tender voice she was growing accustomed to. “I wouldn’t leave you now for God or devil.” He bent and offered her a slow tongue-stroking kiss that left her in acquiescence.
He stripped off his shirt, and she knew then why he’d risen. His chest was sleek in the moonlight and, just as she remembered, strongly muscled. He pulled off his boots and then unbuckled his belt, his eyes never leaving her face. And then he stepped out of his trousers and stood before her. Nothing she had ever known before quite prepared her for this moment. His thighs gleamed hard as marble in the moonlight, the turn of muscle and striation of sinews clearly marked in the silver light. And then she saw the place where his passion bloomed full, proudly arched and magnificent. She remembered riding the hard pressure of his thigh and understood a little more. And then he was moving toward her.
She pressed both hands against his chest, the virginal instinct for preservation resurfacing to override the heavy opiate of desire. But he dipped his head and kissed her mouth and then each breast and then cupped her face in his hands. “Trust me.”
And she knew then how simple it was. “I do.”
He stretched out on her, his warm hard longer length completely covering her, protecting her from the night, and the moonlight, and every other thing in the world. He came into her slowly, murmuring tender words of encouragement and hushing every fear with the warm liquid flavor of Portuguese spoken into her mouth until she relaxed under him. He flowed into her, higher and deeper with each surge of his body. He found and fitted into every contour of hers until she scarcely knew where she ended and he began.
Then came the moment when there was no longer any separation at all, when the tempo of blood guided their bodies in the primal dance of desire. Together they rode the undulations of pleasure until she wept at the summit of joy, and he gasped in rough convulsions of ecstasy.
12
Eduardo stood watching the pale streaks of sunrise infuse the sky, but the beauty of dawn was lost on him as he gazed unseeingly out the window. He shut his eyes. Not now! Not after this night. Mae de Deus! How was he to leave Philadelphia after this night and what had passed between them?
Awakened by the insistent call of nature, he’d slipped from Philadelphia’s bed to relieve himself. Upon his return, the first rays of the dawn were pinkening the sky. Whim had made him glance at her desk as he moved back to the bed, yet why had he moved closer to look at the letters lying there? Jealousy! He was afraid that she had been writing to Wharton. Had he been wiser, he would have gone back to where she lay naked beneath the sheets and made love to her to convince himself that Wharton was no threat. Instead, he’d scanned the first letter and, amazed, had read all three.
MacCloud! MacCloud lived!
Somewhere in the unseen distance a cowbell rang dully as a herd moved out to pasture in the river-misted grass. In the
amethyst sky above a swallow sailed by. The river, dark as oil in the dawn, slipped silently past in this gentle American setting. The morning was new but old debts and old vows were stirring again inside him. Three men. Three acts of vengeance. Lancaster. Hunt. MacCloud. Only MacCloud had gotten away, thought to have died during the Civil War. But just now he’d seen proof that MacCloud lived, in a letter written only a year ago. Postmarked New Orleans. Right under Tyrone’s nose!
Eduardo smiled grimly. Tyrone would be the first to appreciate the irony of it. And the last to forgive if Eduardo did not inform him of the fact. He would tell Tyrone. There was no question of doing anything else. They were bound by a blood oath older than his love for a woman.
And what of this woman whose bed he’d shared? How did she come into the possession of these letters? Did she know about the association of these men? No, more likely she had stumbled upon those letters, not knowing that they contained in them the power to destroy her. If MacCloud were to learn of the existence of the letters, proving that he still lived, her life would be in danger. From the beginning he had wanted to spare her the pain in learning the truth about her father. Now it was essential.
He loved her! And she, even if she hadn’t yet said the words, loved him back. He had felt it in her kiss and the willing way she’d given of herself. She had been shy yet touchingly eager to please him. Long after she had fallen asleep in his arms, exhausted by their lovemaking, he had lain awake and savored his newfound contentment. No moment in his life had ever seemed so full of promise, of purpose, of peace and harmony.
