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“Oh, but I’m sure Lucas is by no means bewitched! He doesn’t like me any more than I like him. But I do feel grateful toward him. I must have seemed ungrateful, I’m afraid. He hurt me, and at the time I did not realize that he did what he had to for my own good. I’m sure you understand how uncomfortable it makes me feel?”
She bent down to me, touching my hand lightly. “How much you remind me of myself, when I was younger! I always thought I wanted what I could not have. If Guy had been more like you… who knows? Everything might have been so different! But if it is Lucas you want to see, I will send him to you, at the risk of making my other sons angry.”
“You’re very sure of him, aren’t you?”
I couldn’t resist the question. Her smile put me in my place. “Why shouldn’t I be? I think you understand that already. But as I have said before, you have a choice. Marry Julio, and you will be his second wife, accepting the Apache way of life. Marry Ramon, and you will have a husband you can control. You may marry Lucas, who knows? I think your open dislike of him intrigues him, for the moment. But if you are clever enough to maneuver such a thing, you will share him with me, and I will always have the greater share. No, I do not think you will be like my poor, pretty little Luz, who waits—and hopes. Like me, you will want to make things happen. So we will see, and I will tell Lucas you wish to speak with him.”
“How good it is to feel indulged—and understood!”
My smile was just as deliberate as hers had been, and I thought her slight nod was an acknowledgment.
I lay back after she had left and closed my eyes. The throbbing in my hand was already less painful, and the broth I had drunk made me feel drowsy in spite of myself.
Why had I insisted that I must see Lucas? Until I had seen Elena, and watched her smile, there had been nothing further from my mind. But now it had become a challenge between us. I did not doubt that she would send him to me, and I would send him back, hating me more than ever. Or would I? As I had done so often before, I thought of a chess game. The black queen and the white. Who were the pawns? Or the kings, for that matter? Chess was a game of powerful women, and I would match Elena for the sake of matching her, if I had to.
I must have dozed off. The sound of the door banging back upon its hinges awakened me, and I could not help wincing. “Must you always be so noisy?”
“What in hell do you have to say to me that you haven’t said before?”
“Your sense of—duty cannot fail to amaze me,” I murmured in an exaggeratedly pained voice, and caught the wicked green gleam of his eyes through my shuttered lashes. I thought he controlled his anger with an effort, and it pleased me.
“Elena said you wanted to talk to me. Why me?”
“Elena said she’d send you to me. Why? Because I felt I had to thank you for your presence of mind, of course. That is what I told her, and she chose to believe me, I think. And I was rude. I must apologize for that too.”
“You might fool me if the look in your eyes matched the words you say.”
“I had no idea that my eyes betrayed me so.”
Lucas stalked angrily past my bed to the window, and stood looking out.
“You want to play games, try Ramon. Maybe even Julio. That how you got even Shannon eatin’ out of your hand?”
There was contempt in the look he turned on me then, but I faced it without flinching.
“Why do you so despise the same traits in me that you obviously admire in your—in Elena?”
He noticed my studied pause, as I had meant him to, and his eyes squinted at me dangerously.
“Why don’t you come right out an’ say whatever it was that was so urgent you couldn’t rest?” His voice was carefully controlled, but the huskiness in it was even more apparent than usual, and I could sense his eagerness to leave. It made me even more determined to keep him here longer—long enough, perhaps, for Elena to wonder.
I made my voice deliberately innocent. “But I have already told you. I wanted to thank you. I must have seemed very ungracious, and I know now that you only did what needed to be done. I am not often so clumsy, and you know you do have a way of rubbing me the wrong way!”
“I can say the same thing about you, an’ that’s for sure!” Lucas said grimly, but I thought he gave me a rather puzzled, wary look, as if he wondered what I was up to this time.
I said softly, “I wanted to ask you not to be angry with Luz. It wasn’t her fault. I
insisted that she should have the chance to go riding… she’s young and so pretty, it isn’t fair that she should have to spend most of her time slaving in the kitchen!”
I thought I saw him flush with anger. “Luz is not a slave here! No one treats her as one. She does not think so.”
“But then what is her position here? Mine is clear enough of course, but Luz? I understood at first that she was your… how do you say it in Spanish?… Yes, your novia. And she’s in love with you—the poor child can hardly hide it. Are you going to marry her, Lucas? Or are you going to live this way forever, torn between your lust for Elena and your guilt because she was your father’s wife?”
He looked as if I had struck him. His face whitened, and for an instant there was almost a stunned look in his eyes, as if he could not believe that I had said the words out loud.
“Christ!” he said at last, and his voice shook with the effort of controlling his anger. “This time you’ve damn well gone too far, you meddling…”
“Too far, you say? Because I’ve been honest enough to speak the truth? Don’t you see that it needed to be said, just as what you did for me this afternoon, when you cauterized my knife cuts, needed to be done? Or are you such a coward that you will not even admit the facts to yourself?”
