Page 42 of Midnight Rider

There was a harsh sound. “I did not dishonor her!”

“She accused you of doing just that!” Lupe inserted. “She bragged about it to us just as a hussy would.”

“I would never have believed her capable of such a lie!” Eduardo said.

“She told everyone,” Lupe invented, almost purring. “I have learned that thevaquerosdid not spread the gossip—she spread it herself, to make sure that you would have to marry her.”

Bernadette felt her heart contract. That was a master stroke of Lupe’s, that lie. Eduardo would never believe now that Bernadette hadn’t started the gossip. And it told her one other thing; that he’d thought of asking her father to make him a loan without the condition of marriage.

She stood there devastated. He had said there were dark places in his soul, and now she understood for the first time that it was those places that his grandmother and Lupe were adept at reaching. She was so numb that she didn’t hear his footsteps moving toward the door until it was too late to escape.

He jerked the door open and saw Bernadette standing there. He didn’t know that she spoke any Spanish, so he wiped the accusation from his features and composed himself to look as normal as possible.

“Bernadette,” he greeted formally. “Shall we go downstairs?”

“Of course.” She knew her voice sounded odd. She felt odd. She’d just been assassinated verbally and she couldn’t do one thing about it. If Eduardo believed the lies of his grandmother and Lupe and did not even ask her for an explanation, what could she say that would sway him?

It was some sort of consolation that he didn’t know her facility for his language. He would never know that she’d overheard the conversation. She’d been dreaming that he was falling in love with her, that he felt more for her than just desire, and was happy—actually happy—to be married to her. Now he was incensed because he believed she’d started the gossip about them—and lied to him.

“Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” she muttered.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked politely.

She forced a smile to her lips. “Oh, nothing. I was only thinking out loud.”

His black eyes narrowed. “How are your lungs?”

“They’re fine.”

“Lupe was genuinely sorry about the perfume. She asked me to convey her apologies to you.”

She stopped and looked up at him. “The only regret Lupe has is that the perfume wasn’t strong enough to bring on an attack that would kill me,” she said, shocking him. “She and your grandmother hate me. They’ll say or do anything that will break up our marriage. If you don’t know that by now, you’ll find it out sooner or later. But it will be too late,” she added with quiet bitterness. “If I leave you, Eduardo, I won’t come back. Not ever.”

“This is an odd time to speak of leaving me, Señora Ramirez,” he said coldly, using her married name as Americans would use it. In Spain, a woman kept her own family name, although her husband’s was used in various ways.

“It’s the last time I intend to speak of it,” she replied. She searched his eyes, seeing not what she wanted to see, but what was really there—resentment, disillusionment. She sighed. “I really was blind, you know. I was building castles in wet sand all the time.” How could she have believed that the truce would last? There were those dark places in his soul; there was the fact that they had fought with each other for years.

He was scowling at her. “You make no sense.”

She smiled sadly. “I know.”

She followed his gaze as he looked around them, noticing that the guests were obviously waiting for the newlyweds to join the party in the reception room.

“Shall we go in?” Bernadette asked with forced gaiety. “I’ve tied my hair up so that it won’t impede the axe.”

“What?”

She didn’t reply. She walked ahead of him, smiling at everyone, the very picture of happiness.

It was much later when she said goodbye to her father and climbed into the carriage with Eduardo and the two hostile women, that she realized how she must act in the company of assassins.

She smoothed the skirt of her pretty dress and pulled her filmy shawl closer about her.

“It was a beautiful ceremony,” Lupe told Eduardo. “A little long, I believe. But my arrangements were adequate, don’t you think?”

“You did a wonderful job,” Eduardo replied. He glanced at his wife. “Don’t you agree, Bernadette?”

“Oh, everything was lovely,” she said brightly. “And I did appreciate the many vases of pink roses. Fortunately, I had enough medicine to counteract the effects of the pollen.”

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