AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This part of New Mexico reminded me of certain parts of India. It was not too hard to adjust myself all over again to hot days and cool nights, nor to the brilliant, blazing sunlight that assaulted my eyes when I stepped outdoors.
My father’s house was built from the earth, just as the houses of the old Spaniards who had first settled this land had been. Sun-browned adobe, whitewashed on the outside to reflect the rays of the sun, with great, massive beams to hold the structure together, and protruding out from the walls. There were two bedrooms, one leading out onto an enclosed courtyard. There I spent most of my time. My father had developed an irrigation system by channeling water from the stream that flowed down a steep canyon a few miles away. The water flowed through a crevice in one of the thick walls that enclosed my retreat, and formed a small, ornamental pool in the courtyard. It was shaded by two willow trees, vines sprawled over the walls on all sides, and in one corner there was a collection of miniature cacti.
If I tired of sunbathing in the patio there was always the flat roof, protected by a low wall about three feet high, and reached through a trapdoor in my bedroom.
Marta informed me, with an apologetic bob of her head, that she hoped I would not find the house too small. It was not even one-tenth the size of the palacio of the señor patron, but my father had wanted it so.
“It’s charming, and just right,” I assured her, and saw her anxious face break into a smile.
Marta was a brown-skinned mestiza, married to Jules, a black ex-cavalryman. Jules had been wounded during the war, and Marta had nursed him back to health. My father had hired them both when Jules found he could get no other work.
“Where would we go? My people
are just across the border. I visit them every year. Jules could not take me any other place, for ours would be considered a mixed marriage. And we both wanted to stay on here.”
It was clear that they had both been devoted to my father, and were prepared to become just as devoted to me when I assured them that I meant to make no changes except, perhaps, to hire a girl to help Marta in the kitchen, if she thought it necessary.
“Perhaps later on,” Marta smiled. Her eyes touched me shyly. “When the señorita feels like entertaining? There are bound to be many callers.”
I smiled back at her.
“We’ll see,” I said.
To tell the truth, I didn’t want to think too far into the future. It was such a new and delicious feeling to live entirely in the present, to exist like one of the lizards that sometimes sunned themselves on the patio walls.
I almost didn’t want to think, and it was for this reason that I had been slow in starting to read my father’s journals. Instead, I questioned Marta and Jules, gleaning some of their impressions of this land and the people I would have to deal with, and picked up the local Spanish dialect in the process. My precise Castilian Spanish would never do here, for hardly anybody would understand me! I don’t think they resented my questions. Jules was a quiet soft-spoken man with prematurely graying hair, but Marta, plump and smiling, enjoyed gossiping and would often stand in my room, flicking a dustcloth, while she chattered enthusiastically.
I had Marta make me some brightly patterned skirts and peasant blouses such as she wore and it was these garments I preferred to wear during the day, when I took the sun in the privacy of my patio.
“Ah, but the señorita must be careful of the sun!” Marta reproved. “It can be dangerous to have too much—and oh, what a pity, if the señorita’s lovely, milk-white skin should turn as brown as mine!”
“I wouldn’t mind that at all!” I laughed, but I was careful to expose myself fully to the sun only very early in the morning and late in the evening. ‘Mad dogs and Englishmen!’ I told myself as I became tanned in spite of all my precautions. Marta clucked and made me special lotions she concocted out of buttermilk, but my tan remained as a faint golden glow that seemed to underlie my usually pale skin.
How pleasant it was not to be bothered by anyone, or by anything that had to be done, I thought. I could go on like this forever! No one would miss me, nor I them.
Todd Shannon would certainly be relieved, and as nice as Mark appeared to be, I had even told him, quite firmly, that I needed time to be on my own.
“I won’t press you, of course,” he said gently, his eyes searching mine. “But I hope it will not be too long before you care to receive visitors. You cannot believe how boring it can be here, with nothing to exercise one’s mind!”
Poor young man. No doubt he missed Boston and its amusements. For no doubt that his uncle was a hard taskmaster. And maybe Flo Jeffords, who called him her cousin but was no blood relation at all, provided some stimulation for this very polite, proper-seeming young man. He seemed anxious to see me again, but how much of his anxiety was due to the fact that I was an heiress and part owner of the SD? No sooner had I thought this than I chided myself. Hadn’t I already vowed that I would no longer make snap judgments about people? No, I’d give poor Mark Shannon a chance. After all, his mother had been more than kind to me.
So, even as I continued to hibernate, I was more than half expecting Mark to call. I would not see him, of course. I had already given Marta instructions that any visitor except Mr. Bragg, whom I was expecting, was to be turned away. But what kind of man would Mark Shannon show himself to be if he did not at least make some token attempt to see me?
I had almost lost track of time. How long had it been, a week? Two, perhaps? My tan went from pale gold to a deeper shade, almost apricot, and I had taken to wearing my hair in two braids, like a Mexican peasant woman. What did I care what I looked like? There was no one here to see me.
And then one day, completely unexpectedly, there was.
It was late afternoon, and I had been reading one of my father’s journals, in which he described his early life and his first meeting with Todd Shannon. Somehow, I could not reconcile the virile, handsome young man he described with the boorish giant that I remembered, and I put the leather-bound book down with an annoyed exclamation. I would rather not spoil my evening by thinking of Shannon.
I had barely closed my eyes, lifting my face to the warmth of the sun, when I heard his voice. Loud, arrogant, angry—drowning out my poor Marta’s protests.
“Won’t see anyone, you say? Out of my way, woman, and stop your damned sniveling! She’ll see me, I tell you!”
Before I could say a word, or do anything but leap angrily to my feet, he had burst into the patio, filling it with his presence. And he had had the audacity to stride through my bedroom to get here!
“So there you are!” he said menacingly, but after one icy glance I looked beyond him at Marta, who was wringing her hands.
“It’s all right, Marta. You may go now. I will deal with this—this unwelcome intrusion.”
