Page 49 of Midnight Rider
Thecondessa’sface went white. “No!”
“Yes,” he affirmed. “I came home and found him in his cradle. She had dismissed the servants. She was sitting in the parlor doing her needlepoint as if nothing in the world was wrong. When I told her about the child, she simply looked at me with a total lack of comprehension or guilt. Two days later, just after the funeral, she took one of my guns and walked up into the mountains behind the house. We found her hours later, with a bullet through her head.” His gaze fell to the floor. “There was much gossip afterward. At least a few people thought that I blamed her for the death of the child and killed her in revenge.” His head lifted proudly. “It was not the truth. In fact, Consuela went mad after the birth of the child and was no longer competent to be either wife or mother. I had servants with her all the time. But when I left that once, on a business trip, she dismissed them and there was no one to reason with her about the child. She hated me, she said, for the attention I paid the child. She made sure that I would never pay him attention again.”
Thecondessaput her face in her wrinkled old hands and wept.
Eduardo touched her shoulder lightly, his mind still locked into the pain of the past. “I drank to excess afterward, more for grief of the child than her. I would have died on one binge, I think, except that Bernadette braved the pistol in my hand and came and took it away from me. She brought me back to life again, made me see that I could not die with the child and Consuela. She saved me, in her ever so careful, subtle way. I never knew why.”
Thecondessadid, and it made her guilt all the more damning. She’d known none of these details. She looked up at her grandson through layers of guilt and regret and knew that nothing she did would make up for what she’d cost him.
Lupe, who’d been silent all this time, went forward to take the old woman’s hands and draw her up out of the chair. “You should rest,Tía,” she said gently. She glanced up at Eduardo’s hard face. Regret was in her eyes, too, along with a helpless attraction that all the long years hadn’t erased. She shrugged. “Perhaps we are both at fault for Bernadette’s flight,” she said. She stiffened her spine a little. “If you ask her to come back, she will not have cause for further complaint,” she added. “From me, or fromTía.I give you my word.”
Eduardo sighed. “I fear that it will take more than that to entice her here again,” he replied, thinking not of their behavior, but of his own. Bernadette would not easily forget how he had humbled her. And, too, there were possible consequences of that action that would terrify her. He grimaced as he remembered the death of her mother and her sister in childbirth. She would be frightened and her father would do nothing to comfort her. She would be alone, as she always had been, except when she’d been with him. He would give anything at that moment to go back to the days when she trusted him, when she cared for him. How she must hate him now!
He watched thecondessago along to the staircase with Lupe, and he thought how old she looked, how alone. She had no life of her own left. Her only pleasure was in manipulating the lives of the people around her. This arrogance had led to the greatest tragedy in his life, and she’d never known. Now that she did, perhaps her arrogance would fade away and she would become the kind and gentle woman of his childhood....
* * *
DESPITETHEEARLYHOUR,Eduardo saddled a horse and rode to the Barron ranch. He didn’t expect Bernadette to want to see him, but he had to make the attempt for the sake of his honor. He’d caused enough problems for this child-woman in his fashion. Now he had to try and make amends.
He rode up to the house, dismounted and tied the reins to the hitching post. Maria met him at the front door with a worried frown.
“Qué pasa?”he asked at once, because he knew from her expression that something was terribly wrong here.
“It is theseñorita...theseñora,” she corrected at once, then grimaced. “Perhaps it was the ride home in the wind and dust yesterday, who knows? She awoke the household last night, it was such a vicious attack of the lungs. She is very bad. The medicine has not worked. Señor Barron has sent for the doctor.” She shook her head and looked at him through tears. “We think...she may die,señor!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EDUARDOENTEREDBERNADETTE’Sroom with terror in his heart. He couldn’t remember feeling so afraid and miserable—except when he had found his young son dead.
Colston Barron was sitting beside the bed where a white, still Bernadette lay trying to get a breath. She was propped up, pale and sweating. Her breathing was audible, raspy...horrible.
Eduardo went close to the bed and looked down at her over the head of her father. “The medicine,” he said urgently. “Have you used the medicine?”
Colston looked at him blankly. “Coffee, sure,” he said dully, “and some of that herbal tea that Dr. Blakely gave her—”
“No!” he interrupted quickly. “The medicine she brought home from New York!”
Colston still didn’t quite grasp what the younger man was saying. “Oh, that. We couldn’t find it. It’s not in the bag she brought home.”
“Mother of God,” Eduardo said, shaken. “I’ll be back as soon as I possibly can!”
He rushed to the front of the house, untied his mount’s reins, leaped into the saddle and all but killed the horse getting back to Rancho Escondido. He vaulted out of the saddle at the front door, yelling for a stable boy to bring him a fresh horse.
Taking the steps two at a time, he refused to remember what he’d seen, lest the terror delay him even longer from his purpose. He went to the room Bernadette had occupied and began rummaging through her trunk until he found the precious vial of medicine.
“Eduardo,” Lupe exclaimed when he rushed past her in the hall. “What is wrong?”
“Bernadette is dying,” he said through his teeth, and kept going.
Lupe, startled, barely heard the exclamation from the tiny old woman standing just inside her own doorway.
“Dying, did he say?” thecondessaexclaimed.
“Her medicine,” Lupe murmured. “He must have come home for it. She left it behind.” She turned back to thecondessa.“She must not have been thinking clearly,” she said, unsettled.
Thecondessacrossed herself. “God forgive me,” she whispered and turned away.
Eduardo rode back the way he’d come, the medicine tight in one hand the entire ride.Dear God, please,he prayed,let me be in time!