Page 53 of Midnight Rider

“But that was why it was so...exciting.”

He nodded. “For me, too,” he confessed. “It was the best lovemaking I ever had. But I should have been more careful with you. It was your first experience of a man.”

“It was all I hoped it would be,” she told him. “And very embarrassing! In the light, I mean!”

He sighed softly. “That was the only thing I did right,” he told her. “I loved you in the light, so that I saw your face at the moment you became my lover, my woman, my wife. I can hold that expression of awe and pleasure in my heart until I am a very old man. I would not have missed it for the world.”

She was surprised. Embarrassed, certainly, but pleased, as well. “I couldn’t see you at all,” she whispered. “Your face blurred. I felt as if I might die from the pleasure, it was so strong.”

He smiled. “You flatter me.”

“I wouldn’t know how.”

He chuckled. “You do now.” He leaned closer. “There are even more shocks in store for you, too, Señora Ramirez.”

She smiled self-consciously. “Are there, really?”

What he might have said then was a moot point, because her father and Maria came into the room each with a tray laden with coffee and cake.

“So much better!” Maria exclaimed when she saw the color in Bernadette’s face. “Praise the Virgin, what a miracleel condeworked!”

“A miracle, indeed,” Colston said with quiet gratitude. “You saved her life.”

“Appropriate,” he replied, watching Bernadette sip black coffee. “I think she saved mine, once.”

Bernadette frowned slightly. “I did?”

“Soon after the death of my wife and son,” he reminded her. “I got drunk and was waving a pistol around, have you forgotten?”

She shook her head. “I thought you might be thinking of shooting someone with it.”

“I was,” he said with grim humor. “Myself.”

“No!”

His broad shoulders rose and fell. “It was a difficult time for me. I found the child, you see, dead of...” He glanced up and saw Colston Barron hesitating, as if he were about to leave the room.

“Come and sit down, Colston,” Eduardo said heavily. “The two of you were the only champions I had during that terrible time. I never spoke of what happened. I think I should. I would like you both to know the truth.”

Colston still hesitated. “My boy, I know the memory must be painful.”

“It is. But I want to tell you.”

Colston gave in and took the other chair near Bernadette’s bed. Eduardo clasped her soft hand in his as he spoke.

“My wife’s mother was mad,” he said quietly. “I had no knowledge of it, nor did my grandmother, until the wedding was over. Consuela seemed to be perfectly normal, so I had no reason to suspect things were wrong with her mind. When I brought her here to the Rancho Escondido after our wedding in Madrid, the place was falling apart from my long absence during preparations for the ceremony in Spain. I had to work night and day to recoup my losses, to keep from losing the ranch entirely. She was alone too much and it worked on her, especially when she discovered she was pregnant, soon after our arrival.” His face tautened as the memories came back. “She hated the idea of the child almost as much as she came to hate me. When he was born, she ignored him totally. I had to find a wet nurse to tend him.” He stared down at Bernadette’s hand, felt its reassuring grasp. “I fell into debt quite heavily and had to go on a business trip to borrow more money. I tried to get Consuela to come with me, but she wouldn’t. She stayed behind with the baby, and I made certain that there would be plenty of servants to watch her and the child, because already I had misgivings about her sanity. When I came home, it was to find her alone in the house. She had dismissed the servants by telling them that she was going to take the baby and join me.”

Bernadette’s fingers nestled closer against his hand, because she could feel the effort it was taking him to say these things to her father.

He took a long breath. “She was doing needlepoint. She looked at me quite calmly and asked if my trip had been successful. I asked her about the baby, and she looked at me as if she didn’t understand what I meant. I went down the hall to the room where the child was kept. It was cold in the house, as it was winter, and a bad one. The fireplace had not been lit at all. The baby was lying in his bed, uncovered. He was emaciated and he had been dead for...several days, by the look of him,” he added between clenched teeth. “I buried him myself and told no one what had happened. Consuela seemed not to understand when I spoke to her gently about the baby. But that same afternoon, she loaded one of my pistols while I was giving instructions to my men about some things that urgently had to be done on the ranch. She walked up into the mountains behind here, in the freezing cold, without even a shawl.” He lowered his eyes to the white bedspread. “She was lying near some rocks when I finally found her, the pistol still clenched in her fingers, stone dead from a bullet to the brain.” He lifted his eyes to glance from Bernadette’s sympathetic face to her father’s. “The servants knew only what I told them, but people will gossip. It was said that she killed the baby and I killed her out of vengeance and tried to make it look like a suicide. That was not true. I knew she had a sickness of the mind. I loved my son, and I mourned him. But I would not have hurt her. She was too frail mentally for the responsibilities of marriage, and none of us knew it until it was too late.”

“I’m so sorry,” Bernadette said gently. “No wonder you were so upset.”

“We knew you didn’t hurt her, lad,” Colston added in a solemn tone. “I thank you for telling us the truth of it, but you were never the sort to hurt a woman and I knew it.” He smiled reassuringly. “The way you fought me over Bernadette only reinforced that attitude. I’ve been a pretty sorry father, you know. But this girl has a forgiving nature, and I’m learning to live in the present instead of the past.”

“We all have to learn that eventually,” Eduardo replied. “I want to take Bernadette back home, if she’ll go.”

“What about those women?” Colston asked warily.

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