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“I suppose she fainted. Good heavens, Lucas, when I first saw you, I thought—”
He cut her off, and I know it was because he knew I was listening, and understood how things stood between them. He hated me for it; I could feel the hate emanating from him like a physical, tangible thing, in the way he held me.
“I am going to put her in her room, and then I will come back and tell you how it happened.”
“Lucas.”
I felt a kind of triumph when he walked past her without answering, but it did not last. I should not have said it—not yet. I should have had more sense than to blurt out aloud the thought that was uppermost in my mind, whether it was the truth or not.
He had pushed open the door to my room with a savage kick, and he roughly laid me down on my bed.
“Soon as Luz comes back, I’ll send her up to you. And you—you learn to keep your mouth shut, an’ to stop meddlin’ in my life, askin’ questions, or by God I’ll…”
“You’ll what? Kill me to get me out of the way? Sell me off to one of your friends as you did Flo? I said only what was true, and you know it! Why are you ashamed to admit it? You’re in love with Elena. Do you think I’m blind? Do you think they are all blind, just because no one else has had the courage to speak the words aloud as I did?”
He was staring down at me, and his face had gone white under the sunburned skin. There was hate in it, and pain, and—was there guilt as well?
“I should never have brought you here,” he said, in the same flat, cold voice he had used on me before, in the Apache camp. “Should have guessed after the first time I talked to you, what you’d be like.”
I tried to sit up, but fell back again against the thin pillow. “You know nothing of what I really am, or how I feel. And you don’t like the fact that I know you for what you are! Yes, you’re right, you shouldn’t have brought me here! I didn’t want to come!”
“Yeah, I remember that, all right.”
Suddenly, stupidly, I was staring at the closed door, feeling the reverberation of its slamming echoing in my ears. And for the second time in my life I felt the treacherous, hateful tears of sheer frustration and rage slipping down my face, until I turned it into the pillow.
I wanted to sleep, but pain kept me awake, and presently I heard the door open, and Luz was tiptoeing across the room to me, carrying a tray.
“Oh, Rowena! I am so sorry! And I have never seen Lucas so ornery, I think. Even Julio chooses to stay away from the house. Ramon wants to come up, but I told him to stay away until you feel better. Does it still hurt very much?”
I could hardly stand her kindness and her sympathy, nor the tenderness with which she untied the makeshift bandage that Lucas had put there before she began to place tiny poultices of some soothing, cooling stuff on my swollen, ugly-looking wounds.
“You might have bled to death, not knowing what to do to stop the bleeding, if Lucas had not come back.” There was an unconscious note of pride in her voice when she spoke of him. I must have made some involuntary movement, for she reminded me quickly that I must hold still.
“These herbs will prevent any infection, and take away the pain in a while. You will have some scars, of course, but they will not matter. You can wear gloves, if you do not like to look at them! And you must drink this broth—it will prevent fever, and help you to sleep. You are to rest… and I will never, never leave you alone in the kitchen again! It was all my fault.”
“Did he say that? It wasn’t your fault. It was hot, and I was careless—clumsy.”
I thought Luz’s voice sounded deliberately cheerful. “Well, in any case you are to rest, and I will be back again soon to see if you need anything.”
“I’m not an invalid! For heaven’s sake! All I did was cut my fingers! It’s no reason for my keeping to my bed.”
“But Lucas said you were to stay in bed. And if you were to get up, they would all be angry with me.”
“And I would be more angry than anyone!”
I had not heard Elena come in, but she was there, smiling at me, her expression impossible to read.
“Stay in bed—and rest. Later, if you feel up to it, you might want to come down to dinner. For the moment, in this heat, you might as well take a siesta.”
I didn’t know whether she was mocking me or commiserating with me, and it infuriated me.
Luz had left quietly, and I put on an innocent, rather confused tone of voice when I said: “I want to see Lucas. I did not thank him for what he did. I’m afraid I was rather rude.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Lucas? And not Ramon?”
I looked her in the eye. “Lucas. Ramon was not here when I was—so stupid as to let the knife slip.”
“And Julio had just left. You cannot imagine how concerned he is too. I think you have bewitched all three of my sons, Rowena.”
