The Beloved Woman

  “Am I shot?” she asked fervently, beginning to care now that she knew he was safe.

  “No, but you’ll have to fix your sleeve.”

  She yelped in giddy amazement when she saw the ragged hole Salazar’s pistol had put there. “What happened?”

  “I shot him about a gnat’s breath before he fired at you.”

  She put her arms around his neck. Holding each other, they looked around warily. Two vaqueros were hauling Salazar’s lifeless body from the stream.

  “I shot him in the back,” Justis murmured. “Wasn’t time for anything more gentlemanly. I didn’t care. Still don’t. It saved your life.”

  Crying, she kissed his battered face. “He didn’t deserve better.”

  “Katherine!” a woman called. Adela climbed down from the sidesaddle of a prancing white horse and waded toward them with her arms outstretched. “I did not know, my friend! Forgive me, I did not know what he was doing!” She knelt in the stream, hugged Katherine tearfully, and looked at Justis wide-eyed. “Not dead in a mining accident?”

  “No.” He smiled gingerly, his face a terrible, beautiful sight, Katherine thought.

  Adela crossed herself. “Did Vittorio let his men do that to you?”

  “ ’Fraid so, Señora.”

  The three of them looked toward the far bank. Vittorio’s men were standing around his body, talking quietly but gesturing in a way that suggested disagreement. Katherine stared at the bloody corpse but could barely believe he was dead.

  Very dead—knifed and shot. By Americans. She touched Adela’s shoulder. “What now? Will we be tried for murder?”

  Adela nodded, her mouth a firm line. “Yes. In accepted California style. Vittorio would approve, I am sure.” She stood up, regal despite her short and wiry stature, and the fact that she was immersed to her knees in the stream. She called Salazar’s men over and asked them terse questions in Spanish. Then she called her men over, including Diego, and asked him questions while everyone listened. At last she raised her hands and announced the verdict. Looking relieved, Salazar’s men nodded and walked away.

  “Innocent guilty, or what?” Justis asked Katherine, swaying a little.

  She touched his face and found the skin cold with sweat. Suddenly she realized he had been strong only by necessity and was now on the verge of collapse. He needed doctoring, rest, food, and all the restraint her stunned willpower could muster. His words came back to her.

  Don’t ever doubt that I fell in love with you.

  “We are innocent, dear man,” she whispered. “And free.”

  He thought for a moment, then smiled crookedly. “And married,” he insisted, and passed out in her arms.

  CHAPTER 20

  THEIR room at the Mendez rancho was a pleasant, simple place of whitewashed adobe walls and a gently creaking plank floor covered with colorful rugs. A crucifix hung over the bed where Justis lay sleeping. Katherine’s gaze moved from him to it. Thank you for watching over him.

  She rose from her chair by a shuttered window and straightened the blanket he had bunched around his waist. Yesterday and last night he had slept soundly, but this morning he shifted often, frowning and wincing as his painfully abused body began to wake up.

  She scooped a dollop of salve from a pottery jar on the table beside the bed, then brushed it over the stitches she had placed in a particularly bad cut along his jaw. She eased the blanket down and smoothed more salve on the deep furrow Vittorio’s pistol shot had left in the skin on his right side.

  Tenderness welled in her throat. She bent over and kissed his mustache, which was possibly the only uninjured spot on his face. It wouldn’t do to disturb his rest. There would be time enough for that after he felt better. What she had to say to him would certainly be a shock.

  Pensively she walked back to the window, opened one side of the shutters, and propped her elbows on the adobe sill. Gazing out into a sunshine-filled courtyard, she remembered what he had told her. I’ve loved you more every day.

  Even now those words sent a shiver down her spine. Had they merely been the gallant offering of a man who thought he was about to die? Thinking back on all their months together, she knew that the differences in their backgrounds and her determined independence would never have made it easy for him to admit loving her any more than her doubts and rigid pride had made it possible for her to admit that she loved him.

  But if he were telling the truth, why had he married Amarintha, taken her to bed, and fathered her child? Was his definition of love so practical that he could put it aside to promote his standing with his own people?

  Katherine folded her arms and rested her chin on them. Regardless of all her questions, certain facts were clear—he wanted her back, he had risked his life to protect her, and if they conceived other children together, he would cherish them. She shut her eyes. There was one other fact, the most important. She loved him more than her own life and would give up everything—even pride—to be with him.

  “Hey. Com’ere.”

  She pivoted at the deep, rumbling sound of his sleepy voice. He surveyed her through half-shut eyes and curled a brawny hand, beckoning her. Despite the swelling and bruises, his face held a distinctly jaunty expression.

  “You arrogant, lazy oaf,” she said softly, smiling as she crossed the small room to him. She took his hand and sat down on the bed. “How do you feel?”

  “Like all my bones were put together with rusty nails. My face feels like it’s been twisted inside out.”

  “Looks that way, too, I’m afraid.” She feathered a fingertip across one bruised cheek and added, “But all the pretty blues and purples complement the green of your eyes.” She kissed the tip of his nose and stroked his hair. “What would you like first? Something to eat? To drink?”

  “I’d like to talk. I promised you the truth about Amarintha.”

  Katherine inhaled sharply. “Maybe you’d like me to bring you the chamber pot. Or give you a back rub. Or—”

  “Don’t you want to hear why I married her?”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Yes. I might as well get it over with.”

  He cupped her face between his swollen hands. “I never deserted you. I married Amarintha for show, nothing else. Not one damned thing passed between us except hate and blackmail. She sent you that god-awful newspaper clipping out of spite because she wanted me to stay in Gold Ridge another few months—make the marriage look good n’ solid—but I was determined to head back to New York.”

  “Blackmail?” Katherine murmured.

  She listened in growing distress as he explained how he’d secured the Blue Song land for her. She was crying by the time he finished. “You tied yourself to Amarintha so you could protect my land? That’s the only reason?”

  Justis nodded. He stroked her face with quick, loving caresses. “I could have given up my businesses without a backward look—plus saved Sam and Rebecca’s share of the profits somehow—but I couldn’t win a court fight over your land. So I married Amarintha and built her a big house and set up a grand bank account for her. That was all she wanted from me.”

  “But … Amarintha’s babe. If it’s not yours, whose is it?”

  “The judge’s.”

  Katherine gaped at him. “That’s impossible. He’s Amarintha’s own father.”

  “Impossible?” He gave her a gently rebuking look. “Doc, I thought you were a little more worldly.”

  “But why would a father take his own daughter—” She nearly gagged. “Oh, God, but then, why would Vittorio take pleasure from pain? I ought not to be surprised by anything anymore.” She frowned, trying to picture Amarintha and the judge together. “That would explain so much about Amarintha, why she acted so oddly at times. She must have been carrying an awful torture in her heart.”

  “He’d branded her,” Justis said in a low, soft voice.

  Horrified, she stared at him. “Do you mean actually—”

  “Yeah. On one shoulder blade. I came back to the house earl
y one evening and surprised her washin’ herself over a bucket in the kitchen. She had her clothes down around her waist. She screamed at me and damn near clubbed me with a fryin’ pan. Said she wouldn’t have any man starin’ at her again. I cornered her and told her I wasn’t leavin’ the room till I got a close look at the mark on her shoulder.”

  Justis shook his head and his eyes darkened with regret. “It nearly broke her spirit. She crumpled up in a ball like a scared kid and made terrible little noises. For a minute or two she thought she was a kid again, and I was the judge.”

  He exhaled, looking a little sick. “She made me promise not to hurt her ever again. I asked her how I’d hurt her already. The things she told me would make a devil cry, gal. I’ve never heard anything so awful. And the worst of it for me was the brand. The judge has a big ol’ fancy ring with some sort of Parnell family crest on it. As best I can figure from what she told me, when she was real little he heated that ring on the stove and burned her with it. Put his mark on her forever, he said, so she couldn’t ever show herself to a man without shame.”

  Katherine leaned forward and rested her head on his shoulder. “I can’t hate her,” she told him simply.

  He stroked her hair. “Can you forgive me for marryin’ her? I know I did a god-awful thing to you—to us—but she’ll never be anything but a wife in name only, and we’ll never cross paths with her. And if it makes you feel any better, I told Sam and Rebecca the truth about everything. They know that you and me are married and why I had to marry Amarintha too. They know that I left Gold Ridge to go back to you, and they don’t expect to see me again.”

  “Amarintha. Poor Amarintha. She deserves to find a little happiness. Do you think she has?”

  “Yeah. Now that she’s got her escape from the judge she’ll be all right. Not like other folks, but happy in her own way. She wanted the babe, and I suspect she’ll dote on it.”

  Katherine gently slipped her arms under him. She hugged him and turned to lay her head against his shoulder. So this was the worst of it—she would have to live with the fact that she would always share Justis with Amarintha, though only in name.

  “Do you believe everything I just told you?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I love you,” he murmured. “I know you don’t want to hear that a second time, but you might as well. I figure that it’s gotten pretty obvious to you, anyway.”

  Her throat closed with tears. She swallowed hard, trying to put together the perfect words to tell him that it was exactly what she wanted to hear, had always wanted to hear. Someone knocked on the door.

  Rubbing her forehead in frustration, Katherine went to open it. Adela peered around her at Justis. “He is better?”

  “He is awake and more or less aware of the world, I think.”

  “Can I speak with you both for a moment?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Thank you, Señora, for all your hospitality,” Justis told her as she pulled a chair up to the bedside. “You’re a true friend.”

  She scrutinized him, intrigued, as Katherine sat down by his legs. “You have changed,” she said finally, nodding. “There is something, perhaps a kind of satisfaction, in your eyes.”

  “My wife’s safe from Salazar. That’s a load off my mind.” He hesitated, thinking. “Arid I feel like a part of my life has come to an end.”

  “Oh? You are happy to see your life change?”

  His eyes met Katherine’s for a moment. “I don’t know yet. I’ve got to ask some questions first.”

  “Ah.” Adela cleared her throat. “I will say what I came to say and leave quickly so that you can talk with Katherine. You will have even more to discuss.” She looked at Katherine. “Your missionary companions? They are moving north. They say California has too many Catholics and not enough heathens.” She smiled wryly. “Although I think they are not sure which they want to convert most. But they are going. Good.”

  “Good,” Katherine murmured. “They saw this beautiful land only as something to tame.”

  “Do you love that wild valley they left behind? The Valley of the Sun?”

  Katherine nodded and avoided looking at Justis.

  “It is yours if you want it,” Adela said softly. She glanced at Justis. “For both of you.”

  “How can that be?” Justis asked in amazement.

  “A land grant from the governor will be easy to arrange for a nominal price.” She laughed merrily. “His pen will sign the deed pronto for five hundred of those Yankee gold pieces Katherine brought with her. My husband has already sent men to retrieve all her money from Vittorio’s safe.”

  Katherine’s pulse was thready with both exhilaration and despair. She could have a home, a home of her own choosing, in a place where she would be respected! But it was not Justis’s plan to stay in this remote part of the world, and she had already made up her mind to go wherever he asked.

  She hid her troubled thoughts by idly studying a loose thread on the blue skirt she wore. “How much land?”

  “How much do you want? My husband can ride the width of our land in three days. Would a rancho that size be enough for you?”

  “Three days?” Justis repeated slowly.

  “Well, yes, but that is riding from dawn to dusk,” Adela explained in a sheepish tone. “I did not mean to make ours sound like the grandest rancho in California.” She stood up, placed a hand on Katherine’s shoulder, and squeezed affectionately. “My husband and I would love to have the Gallatins for neighbors. You will let me know your decision soon, yes?”

  “Yes,” Katherine answered, trying to sound neutral. “Thank you, dear friend.”

  “Gracias,” Justis added, his southern drawl lending a honeyed slur to the words. “Mucho gracias, Señora.”

  Adela applauded. “We will make you a Californio, I bet!”

  Katherine followed her to the door and hugged her tightly. After Adela left she pretended to fiddle with the latch, thinking about what she was about to say.

  “You want to stay here,” Justis said wearily. “I can see that. It’s the home you’ve been craving. It’s almost like an omen. You came from the Sun Land, so it seems right that you’d find the Valley of the Sun. You don’t need anything or anybody else. God, I wish you could love me the way I love you.”

  Her restraint shattered. With a soft, garbled cry, she ran to the bed and knelt on the floor near his side.

  “What the—” he began, startled.

  She grasped his hand and kissed his battered knuckles, then rested her cheek against them. She looked up at him with all the devotion in her soul. “I’ll make a home wherever you want. I’ll go wherever you ask me to go. I’ll be the best wife you could dream of, and I’ll raise your children proudly. I’ve always wanted to have them—half-breeds though they will be. If we teach them to be strong, they’ll do well in the world regardless.”

  He shoved himself upright, his pain momentarily forgotten, a stunned look on his face. He grasped her shoulders and made her sit on the bed beside him. “What are you tellin’ me, Katie?”

  “That I love you. That I always have. I knew it that day in Gold Ridge when you gave me a scalpel to cut you with. You told me to take out my grief and hatred on you. I cried because I knew I’d never find another man as special as you, but I thought we had no future together.”

  “You love me?” he repeated, shaking her a little. “Do you know what you’re sayin’?”

  She nodded. “I’ve had more than two years to decide for certain, haven’t I? But the hard part was that I knew for certain right away, and nothing could change it. Even when you were ashamed of me—remember back in Gold Ridge when you decided you couldn’t be seen with me in public?—even when I was mad and humiliated I couldn’t stop loving you. Don’t you see? For all my pride, I was a hopeless wreck.”

  He gripped her shoulders fiercely. “I was never ashamed of you. I had a deal with Amarintha. She used her influence with Captain Taylor to get you into the stockade
to doctor folks. In return I had to agree to act ‘respectable’ accordin’ to her rules. All those weeks of not seein’ you nearly killed me.”

  Katherine made a sound of sorrow. “So many things came between us.”

  “But … you love me?” He still looked incredulous.

  “I don’t just love you. I love you desperately, completely, and, at times during the past months when I thought you’d deserted me for good, to such a miserable degree that I wished I could cut my heart out and feel nothing.”

  He gazed deeply into her eyes. “Say it again.”

  “I love you.” Half crying, half laughing, she ran a hand over his chestnut hair. “You shaggy, badly mauled hellion, I love you dearly and want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  He brought her to him and kissed her as best he could. She licked his mouth and made mewling sounds of pleasure. “We’ll go back to New York and start anew—”

  “No. I’ll never belong there, Katie. I’ll never be civilized or respectable. I’m sorry, gal, I really am. It’s time I admitted the truth. I’m a wild Irishman, and I’m proud of it.”

  She smiled at him. “I don’t mind your change of heart a bit. I’ve long suspected that you’d always be a wild Irishman. But where do you want to go if not New York?”

  “Could you teach a wild Irishman to speak Spanish?”

  The breath stopped in her throat. “You mean—and stay here?”

  “Yeah. I thought … How would it be with you if we built a house near Mary?”

  “You should know her real name.” Katherine leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “Dahlonega. It’s the Cherokee word for gold. I wanted to honor her past—and her father’s past.”

  He slid his arms around her. A quiver ran through his body. “Thank you.”

  She placed loving kisses on the side of his neck. “Her real name is a secret between you and me. We are the only ones who know it. Yes, yes, let’s build a house near her.”

  “Do you really want more younguns?”

  “Yes. Do you?” she asked anxiously.

  He chuckled. “As many wild little Gallatins as you can bear and I can manage.”