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“I am not too old to play the gallant yet, I hope! Come, señorita Rowena. To bed with you, and Luz will come with us to take care of the properties, eh?”
I could almost imagine that Lucas had whispered, his voice husky and tired, “Stay here, Ro…” but perhaps that was only because I wanted to hear him say it, as he had that night when we had shared a blanket for the first time.
Whatever he had said, or meant to say, it was too late. Montoya had already picked me up into his arms, firmly and purposefully, and I was taken upstairs like an errant child, to be laid gently in bed while Luz began to strip me of my borrowed garments, exclaiming at bruises and scrapes I had forgotten.
“You should have a nice warm bath. You’re shivering!” And then, as I shook my head wearily, “You could very easily have been killed, you know! As it is, Ramon…” and then she compressed her lip as if she had said too much. “I’ll fetch some hot water, and sponge you down. And a hot drink. Please do not try to get up.”
“Ramon?” I remembered suddenly that he hadn’t been downstairs to meet us. “Luz—what did you mean about Ramon?”
I had sat up in bed, and she turned at the door, her face suddenly carefully without expression.
“He went looking for you. There was guilt in him, I suppose. None of us knew, until the next day… oh, that was a terrible night, I can tell you! And the next day and night even worse. Elena was like a madwoman. She thought…”
“Luz!”
But I knew. “He had tried to cross the creek—you know how shallow and pretty it is. But Chato says it must have been a wall of water that came rushing down from the barracks—or perhaps a limb from the tree we found struck by lightning. I am sorry, Rowena, that I said anything. As usual, my tongue runs away with me. But I…”
She turned abruptly and went out of the room and I lay there, drained. Would Lucas blame me? And Elena—how could she have pretended so well? There had been no trace of grief in her face or her manner to betray the fact that she had lost a son, or did her love for Lucas, and her relief at finding him alive, blind her to everything else?
Suddenly I wanted to find Lucas again, to feel his arms close around me, and I half-sat up, then fell back again. Suppose his eyes looked at me in the same way Luz’s had done? Suppose he had already begun to hate me? Elena would be with him, bending over him, and I felt I couldn’t bear to see it. Perhaps his arms were around her at this very moment, comforting her, taking her back into that place in his mind that would always be hers. I was torturing myself, and I knew it. Oh, God, why had he brought me back here?
And then Luz was back, bearing a tray with a steaming hot mug of chocolate, her eyes still deliberately averted from mine.
“Drink this first, it will keep away a chill. I put some whiskey in it.”
The whiskey made the chocolate taste bitter, but it was warming, spreading a burning glow all the way down to my stomach. I drank it down as quickly as I could, not caring if I burned my lips and tongue. I lay down again, suddenly feeling bone-weary.
“There, that’s good. And now I will sponge you, and you will try not to think. Don’t worry.”
In spite of the almost impersonal kindness of her voice, Luz’s hands were gentle. She was right, of course, I thought. Thinking, tormenting myself about something that had happened and could not be changed, would do me no good.
Tomorrow I would see Lucas again, and force an answer from him. I had been letting my imagination run riot. He cared for me; hadn’t he shown me that much? Tomorrow, I thought, and then found myself too tired even to think.
Thirty-One
I slept haunted by one nightmare after the other. There was sound and motion and the orange glow of fire in my dreams. I felt myself picked up and held fast in the claws by a gigantic bird, then I was falling, from a tremendous distance, watching, paralyzed and powerless as the ground came up to meet me. For a while, there was nothing—a terrible, choking darkness—first heat, and then cold. And I was in a tumbril, being taken to the guillotine. I heard the creaking, felt the jolting—looked up to see the executioner waiting on the edge of the platform. Slowly, menacingly, he removed his mask, and the face was Ramon’s. I heard myself scream, and someone held a cup of blood to my lips. “Drink…” they said, “drink! It will help you…”
And then, suddenly, I was awake again. I knew it, and yet my eyelids felt leaden, too heavy to open. I was still in the tumbril, the death cart, and my head ached with every jolt. I remember thinking that I must be dead, and I moved my hand to touch my neck. No, I was alive. I felt a breeze on my face, and motion under me—and then, with an effort, I forced my eyes open, and my nightmares had spilled over into reality.
“I am sorry, truly sorry it had to be this way.” Luz’s voice was small and hesitant with guilt, and her face looked drawn and pale. “But do you not see that it is only for the best? You would have become hysterical perhaps, you would not have understood.”
“And so you drugged me.” My voice sounded thick, and my head still ached, but I was beginning to think again, even though I did not want to.
“It was the only way!” Luz said again. “You have always been so sensible, surely you can understand? Did you want to be a prisoner forever in the valley? With Ramon gone…”
I interrupted her, my voice heavy and harsh.
“Does Lucas know?”
“Lucas? It was Lucas who suggested it.”
I turned my face away from her and closed my eyes again, taking refuge in the headache that threatened to split my head in two. Not Lucas, not Lucas, my mind cried out, and then I remembered how adamant he had been. But without talking to me first? Without even telling me good-bye? Or had it been that as soon as he set eyes on Elena again he had known where his heart lay, and was anxious to put me out of his life?
Later, when the effects of the drug they had given me had completely worn off, some of the self-possession I had once prided myself upon came back to me, and I found myself thinking more rationally. That night Lucas had been close to unconsciousness himself. Suppose the drugged chocolate and my virtual abduction had all been Elena’s idea? She had begun to hate me; she was jealous of me. Perhaps, after all, she was no longer as certain of Lucas’s wholehearted adoration as she had appeared to be. Grasping at straws or not, I hugged that thought to me as I waited for Jesus Montoya to give me an answer to the questions that still remained to be answered.
The cart which I had imagined to be a tumbril was a small, crudely constructed, canvas-covered wagon. I learned that Luz slept beside me, and that I had been kept unconscious for two whole days. Luz seemed relieved that I hadn’t tried to make a fuss, and appeared so calm.
“Jesus had to carry you most of the way. When we had to leave the valley he put the rope around his waist, and kept you in his arms. I was almost jealous, for a while!”
