Page 31 of Midnight Rider

“Did you enjoy yourself, Father?”

He grimaced. “Sure and what a bunch of peacocks preening,” he muttered with a self-conscious glance at them. “I’ve never been so uncomfortable in me life. All that talk of golf and racehorses and tennis and fancy hotels! And such fine clothes and parlor manners, from men whose hands were as lily white as a rich woman’s!”

“Those people didn’t make their fortunes, they inherited them,” Bernadette pointed out.

“So I see.” He turned to her. “At least it wasn’t all for naught,” he added, glancing at Eduardo with a smile. “I get a fine son-in-law for my pains, and someone to inherit this place when I’m gone.”

“What about Albert?” Bernadette asked, surprised.

“Do you think he’d ever come back here to live?” he scoffed. “His father-in-law has given him a ship and he’s become a fisherman. Says he never loved anything so much. He’d sell this place and never grieve. Eduardo wouldn’t,” he added, his gaze going to the younger man standing beside Bernadette. “He loves the land. He’d make it pay, just as I have.”

“I might not succeed,” Eduardo told him. “But it wouldn’t be for lack of trying.” He looked down at Bernadette’s wan face. “This child needs her bed, and I have to return home. It was a fine party,” he told Colston.

“Indeed, Father, and it was kind of you to turn your ball into our engagement party,” Bernadette added.

Colston shrugged. “I feel a fool. I’ve never swallowed so much pride in me life. I’m for bed and a hot toddy. Is Maria still in the kitchen?”

“Yes,” Eduardo said, indicating the cup of black coffee Bernadette was sipping, which Maria had made for her.

Colston shifted restlessly. “You’ll need to watch her around flowers,” he told Eduardo with surprising concern. “She loves them and spends too much time puttering about them, mucking in the earth. She’ll pay for it with several days in bed.”

“I’ll take care of her.”

“I’ll take care of myself,” Bernadette told her fiancé. “I don’t want to spend my life fighting my lungs. I won’t be any trouble at all.”

Colston looked guilty. He murmured a polite good-night and left the two of them alone.

Eduardo looked down at her with some concern. “I’ll have Maria listen out for you tonight, just in case. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She smiled at him. “Yes.”

He bent swiftly and brushed a soft kiss across her forehead. “Sleep well, Bernadette.”

“You, too.”

He put a lean hand on her shoulder and squeezed it gently before he rose and followed her father to the kitchen. He was going to make sure before he left that Maria would take care of his intended. Despite Colston’s reassurances, he wasn’t convinced that the man had his daughter’s best interests at heart.

* * *

EDUARDO’SBEHAVIORATTHEBALLhad lightened Bernadette’s step and given her hope for their future. But only two days later, her world shattered. Eduardo came with a buggy to get her and take her to meet guests who had arrived far earlier than expected—just the day before.

“My grandmother is here,” he told Bernadette and her father. He was stiff and very formal, as if the atmosphere at Rancho Escondido had already changed drastically. “She would like to meet my intended bride. I have promised to fetch Bernadette.”

“Well, of course she wants to meet her,” Colston said. “Get your bonnet, girl, and go with Eduardo.”

Bernadette needed no prompting. She was eager to meet the grandmother of whom Eduardo had so often spoken. Not that she wasn’t a little intimidated by the prospect, especially since Eduardo already seemed different.

Eduardo’s ranch was far from the familiar dirt road, back in a box canyon where mesquite and willow trees provided shade for a large adobe structure with hanging baskets of flowers. It was elegant and grand, with imported wood for the doors and shutters, and a porch that Bernadette had always loved, the sort of house she wished her father had built, instead of the Victorian horror he liked so much.

Eduardo helped her out at the front steps and gave the horse-drawn buggy to a servant to put away. He escorted Bernadette onto the porch and hesitated just before they entered.

“She is Spanish to her very toes,” he told her in a brittle tone. “She may be a trial to you at first. Be patient.”

“Of course.”

She went inside with him, down the grand hall with its elegant mahogany staircase, into a large room with heavy rosewood furniture and silk draperies. There was a Persian rug on the spotless wood floor that was obviously imported and very expensive. And there, on the rose-pink silk couch was a tiny white-haired woman in a black silk dress, looking at Bernadette as if she’d like to take a fire poker to her.

“This is my grandmother, the Condessa Dolores Maria Cortes.Abuela,my intended, Bernadette Barron.”

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