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“It’s all right. I’ll just wait here for Rafael to return.”
Daniel looked down, then back up. “He might be a while.”
He wasn’t the best liar. Still, she couldn’t work up a great deal of resentment because he was doing it for his brother, and she’d also been less than honest. That didn’t mean she would make it easy on him.
She shrugged. “I’ve nothing better to do. Your mother has made it clear she doesn’t want help in the kitchen and wouldn’t let me do the milking.”
He paused. The horse nudged him. “Do you know how to milk a cow?”
“I’ve done it a few times.” Actually, more than a few times. “Although it’s been a while, I can get back into practice. My family owned a cow—” She’d been about to say back in Ireland but stopped herself. She couldn’t allow herself to lower her guard so much around Daniel. She’d been careful to scrub the lilt of her native tongue from her voice, emulating Olivia’s and Selina’s speech patterns. But she didn’t need him wondering why she would have milked a cow when she’d claimed her family employed servants for those kinds of tasks. “Did you have success in finding the robbers today?”
“We didn’t find the robbers, but we found some tracks.” He looked toward the barn as if he was anxious to put up his horse.
“Two sets?” But not a body.
“Well, actually two sets until they went in a creek. Then we found a false trail. We never found where they both left the creek, but it does appear they were headed south.” Daniel watched her face. “I think you can rest easy.”
“Their getting away doesn’t make me feel better,” she replied.
“I meant about how badly you wounded the robber. They were taking considerable pains to avoid detection. If your shot had caused a bad wound, the unharmed one would have abandoned the other.”
“You think there is never any honor among thieves?”
Daniel smiled slowly. Her heart fluttered. She told it to stop.
“If he was badly wounded and his partner had any honor he would have been scrambling to get to help.” Daniel patted his horse. “Looks as though they rode through the night or we would have found signs of a camp. Not so sure a badly injured man could have managed that.”
He led his horse toward the outbuilding, and she was off the porch following him before she realized her intent.
“Wouldn’t there be three sets of horse tracks or more if the stagecoach robbers were the ones who stole your horses?” she asked.
He jerked, and the horse nickered. “You would think so,” he said in a measured tone. “But we didn’t find a third set of tracks. Based on the tracks he found in the hills, Rafael thinks one of the horses might have gotten away from them. Just is odd to have two crimes so close together unless it is one set of criminals.” He clamped his mouth shut and tightened his lips as if he suddenly thought he was saying too much.
“This whole thing doesn’t make sense to me,” she said.
Daniel paused in lifting the saddle from his horse. His dark eyes met hers, then slid away. “What doesn’t make sense?”
“If you think the horse thieves and the stagecoach robbers were one and the same, why didn’t Rafael just go with you to track them from the stagecoach holdup?”
“We weren’t certain until today,” muttered Daniel as he disappeared into the darkness with the saddle.
He returned with a blanket and started rubbing the horse.
“So, how far behind you was your brother?” she asked ever so casually.
“Not far, but now that it is dark, he won’t run the horse. He might not be home for an hour or more.”
He was watching her more than he was watching what he was doing with the horse. Awareness shivered through her.
Heat stole into her face. She told herself it was just nerves at what she was about to ask him. “Are you very certain your brother didn’t stay here all day?”
His hands stopped moving and clenched the blanket tightly. His voice was slightly wary as he said, “You don’t think that, do you?”
“I don’t know what to think, Mr. Werner. Your mother will not answer a straight question.”
“I’ve given up on trying to figure out my mother’s secrets,” he replied.
“And I know Juanita was dishing up four bowls for lunch, not three.”
He frowned and went back to wiping the horse. “Perhaps one of the hands came back early. I can assure you my brother isn’t home yet.”
She hesitated, almost ready to say she didn’t believe him, but she wasn’t certain enough. “Then what is it everyone is trying to hide from me?”
His expression went flat; then his eyes narrowed. He watched her so long she wanted to duck.
“The question is, what are you trying to hide, Miss O’Malley?”
Chapter Seven
We run a thousand head of cattle over nearly thirteen thousand acres. They often have to be escorted around the land to new grazing spots. They bawl in protest at the change, but we sing to them of highborn Spanish ladies and chivalrous romance until they are soothed. They soon grow content with new pastures.
“What are you talking about?” she sputtered. Her breath was gone. She’d been certain she was getting close to the truth, and Daniel had turned the tables on her.
“I mean all your letters said you came from a well-to-do family, but I see no evidence of that. Your petticoats are threadbare, your socks have holes or are darned and you only have two dresses to your name. You can milk, launder your own clothes and shoot. You are the furthest thing from any spoiled rich girl I’ve ever encountered.” He stepped closer to her, his dark eyes narrowed.
“I only have two good dresses,” she protested, wanting to back away. But the ground under her feet no longer felt solid, and she couldn’t look away from him. “I have others.”
He arched his brows and looked at her as if he could see straight through her clothes to her skin. The air grew thin.
“I can’t believe you inspected my laundry.” She lifted her chin, determined to brazen it out.
“I didn’t inspect it. I walked through it this morning.” His gaze dipped to her chest as if examining the stains she hadn’t been able to completely get out of the green silk.
Her heart pounded, and she had only moral mud under her feet if she continued to try and hide the truth about herself. “Very well, my family has fallen on hard times, but we were well-off once,” she said with a huff. She folded her arms across her oddly tingling chest.
He blinked a couple of times. “Is that so?”
“I suppose you will run straight to your brother and tell him.”
His jaw ticked.
Then he tilted his head to the side. “I should.” He sighed heavily as if she were a great bother. “But I don’t want to be the one to crush his dreams. And I’ve done more than enough riding today to go chasing him down.”
“Crush his dreams?” she echoed faintly. Oh, no, she couldn’t risk losing this marriage. Even if Rafael wasn’t everything she hoped for, he was to be her husband. He’d paid for her to travel from Connecticut, had picked her to be his bride. He owned land and a great deal of it. She had to marry him.
What choice did she have really? If she didn’t marry him, she wouldn’t have a home, a job or even any friends nearby to turn to outside of Selina, who was to be a newlywed herself. She’d likely have to become a housemaid for someone. And that was no kind of life.
“He still thinks you are the woman of his dreams, refined and elegant, an English-speaking lady from back east. That you could fire a gun was shocking enough to him. If he wanted a rough-and-tumble girl, he could have married a local one.” He glanced toward the house.
Her stomach turned sour. Confessing the truth had seemed like a good thing, but not if she lost Rafael because of it. Anna said faintly, “I didn’t think there were that many girls locally.”
“You’re right—there aren’t. But there are women much closer than Connecticut. He owns the largest spread around here.” Daniel waved his arms wide. “He could have had his pick from Mexico or from the territories, but he advertised for a wife more suited to what he wants.”
He ducked his head, but not before she’d seen the look in his eyes.
She worried her lip. What could she do now to make it better but come all the way clean? “I didn’t expect anything to come of my letter. When my friend Olivia first said we should answer advertisements, I just thought I’d write to the richest landowners in California as a lark. I never expected any to answer back.” Or pick her, not with her name.
“You sent a picture to Rafael.” Daniel winced. “Doesn’t seem like a person not serious would go to that expense.”
