Midnight Rider

He gave her a level look. “You haven’t,” he said. “Why does your father care so little about your happiness, Bernadette?”

She glanced away, her gaze resting on the river. “I thought you must have heard long ago. My mother died having me,” she said. “He’s blamed me ever since for killing her.”

He made a rough sound in his throat. “What nonsense! God decides matters of life and death.”

She turned her gaze back on him. “My father doesn’t believe in Him, either,” she said with resignation. “He lost his faith along with my mother. All he believes in now is making money and getting a title in the family.”

“What a desolate, bitter life.”

She nodded.

He thought she looked very neat in her riding habit. Her hair was carefully pinned so that the wind barely had disarranged it. He’d always liked the way she sat a horse, too. His late wife could ride sidesaddle, but she could barely stay on. Bernadette rode like a cowboy.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked suddenly.

A corner of his mouth turned up. “Looking for strays. I can’t afford the loss of a single calf in my present financial situation.”

She frowned slightly. “Your mother married a millionaire, didn’t she?”

His eyes flickered, and his face went taut. “I don’t discuss my mother.”

She held up a hand. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that I thought since she got the ranch into its present difficulties with her spending, she might be willing to make amends.”

He didn’t soften. “She wouldn’t lift a finger to save it, or me,” he said coldly. “She held my father in contempt because he wouldn’t let her give lavish parties and have a houseful of guests staying for the summer. She drove him to such despair that he died...of a broken heart, I think, but I was young, only eight,” he mused, a terrible look in his eyes as he remembered the scene all too vividly. “My mother was with her latest lover at the time, so I was sent to Spain to live with my grandmother in Granada. When I was old enough, I came back here to reclaim my father’s legacy.” He shook his head. “I had no idea what a struggle it was going to be. Not that knowing would have stopped me,” he added.

She was fascinated by this glimpse at something very personal in his life. “They say that your great-grandfather built the ranch on an old Spanish land grant.”

“So he did,” he replied.

“Did your mother love your father?”

He shrugged. “She loved jewelry and parties and scandal,” he said through his teeth. “Embarrassing my father was her greatest pleasure in life. She adored notoriety.” He stared at her. “Your father said that your elder sister, as well as your mother, died in childbirth.”

Uncomfortable, she averted her eyes. Her hands clenched on the mare’s bridle. “Yes.”

He moved closer. “He also said that you’re afraid of it.”

Her eyes closed. She laughed without mirth. “Afraid? I’m terrified. It’s why I don’t want to marry. I don’t want to die.” It was true. Even her daydreams about Eduardo always ended with a chaste kiss, nothing more. Oddly, it didn’t occur to her to wonder why her father should have told him such a personal thing about the family.

Eduardo was studying her. She was slight, yes, he thought, but she had wide hips and she was sturdy. Surely the asthma would be infinitely more dangerous than her build in the matter of childbirth.

“Not every woman has a hard time with childbirth,” he said. “My late wife was much thinner than you, Bernadette, and she had an easy labor.”

She didn’t like talking about his wife. Her hand let go of the bridle. “I’ll bet she didn’t have a mother and a sister who both died that way.”

“She was an only child. Her mother is still alive.”

She turned, glancing at him. “Do you ever see her?”

He shook his head curtly.

“But, why?”

He didn’t want to talk about this, but it was unavoidable. Bernadette drew information out of him that no one else could have. “She was...put away.”

Her eyes widened. “Put away?”

“Yes.” A terrible look came into his eyes. “She’s quite mad.”

Her intake of breath was audible. “Heavens!”

He looked down at her. “Go ahead. Ask me,” he challenged when he saw her hesitation. “Surely you don’t mean to stop before you find out if my wife was deranged, as well?”

Her gaze fell before the anger in his. “I’m sorry. I don’t have the right to ask you such a thing.”

“When has that ever held you back?”

She colored. “Sorry,” she murmured again, and moved to remount the mare.

His lean hand caught her just as she lifted her foot toward the stirrup. He turned her and then let his hand fall. His eyes searched hers. “Consuela was quiet and introspective and very dignified,” he said at last. “If there was madness in her, it only surfaced once. And about that, I never speak,” he added tersely.

“Did you love her?” she asked with soft, curious eyes.

“I married her because my grandmother chose her for me, Bernadette,” he replied. His chin went up. “It was to be a merging of fortunes, a family alliance. Sadly, I had little of my father’s fortune left, and none of my mother’s. Consuela’s family had suffered devastating losses at their vineyards because of drought and a disastrous fire that killed the vines. Both families saw in me a way to mend the old fortunes. But there was too much against me.”

She wanted to comfort him, but she couldn’t think of a dignified way to do it. “How...how awful,” she said. “I guess the ranch means a lot to you.”

“It’s all that I have left of my own.”

“You’d do anything to save it, wouldn’t you?” she asked in a subdued tone.

“Not anything,” he said, and realized that it was true. He wasn’t going to pretend to be in love with Bernadette to get her to marry him. “Although a good marriage would probably save me from bankruptcy,” he added with faint insinuation.

She touched the saddle with a nervous hand. “Do you have a candidate in mind?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. That, at least, was the truth. “Here, let me help you mount.”

He assisted her into the saddle and rested his hand just beside her thigh while he looked up at her thoughtfully.

“Don’t come here alone again,” he cautioned. “There are bad men in the world, and you aren’t strong.”

She lifted the reins in her gloved hand. “Teddy Roosevelt had asthma as a child, you know,” she said. “He went to Cuba with his own regiment and fought bravely, and now he’s governor of New York State.”

“You’re thinking of following in his footsteps?”

She glanced down at him and chuckled softly. “No, I didn’t mean that. I only meant that if he could overcome such an illness, perhaps I can, too.”

“Nothing mends weak lungs,” he said. “You must take care of yourself.”