Angel In The Rain (Western Historical Romance) (29 page)

Survival-honed instinct drove Rane. Plunge the blade to its hilt in the cowering bastard’s ribcage. Justice, for all the suffering Benito had caused. Yet in that crucial moment, the tattered memory of old friendship, of a woman with smiling dark eyes, stayed Rane’s hand. He couldn’t kill Benito, but he would instill the fear of the devil’s own damnation into his rotten soul.

He leaned in and pressed the blade’s razor sharp tip against the traitor’s throat. A drop of blood welled on the polished steel.

Benito’s eyes flew open. His panicky, stale-whiskey breath blasted Rane’s face.

Rane gave the knife a taunting twist. “Prepare to die,
puto
.”

“
Por favor
!” Benito cried, then immediately realized the peril the outburst presented to his jutting Adam’s apple. Speaking with care, he said, “Please, Señor. Do not kill me. I am nothing but a miserable cripple.”

“Your pity act doesn’t work on me.” Rane applied more pressure, until the expanding drop of blood broke and trailed an erratic course along the flat edge of the tempered steel. “Why did you do it? Why did you betray me?”

“Señor, I never—”

Cutting off the denial, Rane lowered the knife. He jerked Benito forward, and slammed him against the wall again.

“Don’t lie to me,
pendejo!
”

The bony knob in Benito’s throat bobbed as he swallowed convulsively. “I thought they would kill you!” he blurted. “I wanted you dead.”

The confession jolted Rane. For some time, resentment had been brewing between them, but he never would have guessed the little man’s bitterness had escalated to the point of murder. Why had he not seen it?

He pinned Benito with a narrow look of loathing. “Why?”

“I may be crippled, but I am not blind!” Benito spat. “Do you think I did not see the way Carmella smiled for you whenever you were there? The way her hips swayed for your eyes?”

Jealousy? Rane had never even suspected. “You dream this,” he said.

Benito shook his head. “No. After that night when we crossed the river together and she learns what I tell Lundy’s men, Carmella left me. She says she cannot live with what I did to you.”

“Drunken fool.” Rane released him so abruptly he flinched.

A broken sob escaped Benito’s throat. He clapped his hands over his face and slid down the wall like a dismembered puppet, landing in a loose heap at Rane’s feet.

Rane stepped back and squatted on his heels to bring himself down to eye-level with the weeping mass of misery before him. As he watched Benito’s bony shoulders heave, guilt dug relentless claws into his heart. This was
not
how he imagined the morning would play out. He clasped his hands between his knees and sighed.

“I don’t know what to do with you, Benito. You are one
loco borrachón
.”

Benito sobbed harder.

“Carmella didn’t leave you because of me. You drove her away with your lies and your treachery. I was your
patrón
. Your betrayal dishonored you, took away her dignity. It’s this she cannot live with.”

“
Basta
!” Benito cried.

Clenching his lips to stop the flow of battering words, Rane sat back on his heels and waited.

Through a hole in the roof, the steady plink of rainwater augmented the strained silence within the shack. Benito sat on the floor with his head hung low, his face hidden in his hands. Rane continued to hunker, waiting him out.

At last, Benito raised his head and expelled a long breath. He lifted his arm and scrubbed a dingy sleeve across his tear-streaked face. “I do not know what to do.” His voice still trembled. “To die now would be a relief. I am alone and it is too hard...”

He stretched his emaciated leg upon the floor and banged his fist against his thigh as if the injury he’d suffered was to blame for his misfortune. With each blow an anguished whimper escaped his lips.

Rane watched for several seconds, disgusted, but this wasn’t the first time he’d seen Benito vent his anger and frustration on his twisted leg. He clamped a hand around Benito’s wrist and stopped him.

“Perhaps it would be better if you beat your head against the floor,” he said.

Benito strained against Rane’s grip, trying to free his captured arm. “You do not know how it feels. The pain—”

“Is mostly in your mind now, I think. The doctor said your leg would get stronger when you used it. But you didn’t try. Instead of throwing away your crutch, you found more to lean on. Whiskey. Carmella.”

Benito hung his head once more. “If you are not going to kill me, then go away and leave me alone.”

Rane shook his head. “No, I’m not leaving you alone. Where is Carmella?”

Benito shrugged. “I do not know. She hides from me.”

In all honesty, Rane couldn’t blame her.

“You want her back?”

“
Sí
.”

“Then stop feeling sorry for yourself and do something about it.”

Rane released him and stood. Benito cradled his arm against his stomach and massaged his wrist. The man looked as weak as watered down tea.

The cast aside crutch caught Rane’s eye. “If you have belongings here, get them.”

Benito looked up, wide-eyed with new fear. “Why?”

“You’re going with me. Somewhere inside that miserable hide of yours there must be something left of the Benito I once knew. I intend to find him. Then,
he
is going to get your wife back.”

****

Angel’s hands fell idle in the pan of soapy dishwater. Outside the window above the dry sink, rain, slow and gray, continued to fall. The atmosphere inside the kitchen was dry and overly warm. A safe haven, but she no longer felt secure even here in her father’s house. The words Will had spoken earlier that morning clamored repeatedly in her mind.

At least all that high-flown schoolin’ ended up countin’ for somethin’.

Will couldn’t have been more wrong. Sure, she could carry off wearing an elegant gown and stylish coif, but those things were only trappings. Camouflage. Underneath her rebellious nature still thrived and perhaps grown even stronger. A true lady accepted her lot in life with grace. She remained chaste for her wedding night. After two years of intense coaching, she had ultimately failed all the tests. She would go down fighting like a mad harridan before she accepted what Will and her father had in mind for her.

A tap at the back door startled Angel from her guilty woolgathering. She frowned and pulled her hands from the water. Who bothered to knock anymore? Most everyone on the Flying C simply barged in unannounced. Snatching up her drying cloth, she hastily swiped it across her palms.

Angel opened the door and found a woman standing on the porch. Water dripped from her ankle length skirt and the black
rebozo
draped over her head. Mud caked the
guaraches
on her feet, even to the tan skin showing between the leather straps. Evidently, she’d walked quite a long distance.

When she lifted her dark, soulful gaze, Angel recognized her immediately.

“Carmella!”

“Señorita Clayton.” The words sighed out on a breath of relief.

“What are you doing here?” Angel blurted.

“I came to tell you, I am sorry.”

“For what?”

“All the bad things that happen to you and Señor Rane.”

“None of it was your fault.”

“Sí, it is my fault,” Carmella insisted. “Benito is my husband. His sins are mine. But no more.”

One day, she will leave him.

Angel recalled Rane’s prediction spoken with such certainty and remembered her own jealousy at hearing him say those words.

Almost dreading the answer, she asked, “Have you left your husband, Carmella?”

Carmella’s chin betrayed a quiver as she forced it higher. “Sí. I honor him no more after what he has done.”

Though Carmella tried to appear strong, her expression betrayed too much wretchedness. Belatedly remembering her manners, not to mention common decency, Angel held the door wider and moved aside.

“Please, come in. You’re trembling.”

Carmella hesitated another moment, then stepped across the threshold. Angel closed the door against the dank weather.

Drawn by the banked heat given off from the cook stove, Carmella crossed the room and crowded close to the warmth. She lifted the sodden
rebozo
from her head, revealing the damp and flattened mass of ravenesque hair hidden beneath.

Angel pulled a chair away from the table and slid it close to the stove. “Please, sit. You must be tired after walking.”

With a look of gratitude, Carmella lowered herself to the wooden seat and hugged her arms against her bosom. Spasms of shivers racked her shoulders.

Angel took the discarded scarf from her hands and hung it on a wall peg behind the stove. Turning, she took in the woman’s length, the faded dark skirt and too-thin peasant blouse, all soaking wet, and she remembered the kindness Carmella had shown her that night in Rane’s adobe across the border. “You need dry clothes. Let’s go upstairs—”

“No. I cannot stay.”

“Surely you didn’t walk all this way in the rain just to apologize.”

Carmella ducked her head.

The woman’s reticence warned Angel to proceed with caution. Pride was at work here. Or shame. And judging from Carmella’s bowed head, Angel guessed the latter. She decided it might be best to take a more circuitous path to try and get at the truth. She paced to the dry sink and propped a hip against the slatted cabinet.

“So where have you been staying since you left Benito?”

After several more seconds hesitation, Carmella lifted her head. “I have some family in the village. An elderly uncle. But I must always hide because Benito looks for me. So I leave now, so I make no trouble for Uncle Tomás.”

Angel waited, but Carmella didn’t elaborate.

“Is Benito still staying at the adobe?”

“Oh, no.” Carmella half turned on the chair to face her. “No one is there. Did you not know?

“Know what?”

“That night you and Señor Rane leave, Lundy’s men come soon after. They burn everything.”

Burned! Everything? Rane’s home. All his possessions. The place where they had made love the first time. Gone. Angel closed her eyes against the sudden ache that filled her heart. He hadn’t said a word.

“Now, I have no place left to go,” Carmella confessed. “And I need work.”

Heat flooded Angel’s face. How could she have been so dense? If all of Rane’s belongings were gone, it only stood to reason that Carmella had lost everything she owned as well. The adobe had been her home, too.

Angel opened her eyes and pulled in a deep, fortifying breath. She pushed away from the sink. “Well, it just so happens I need help right here with all the housework.”

Carmella’s eyes widened with hope. “You would let me work for you?”

Before Angel could answer, a heavy tread on the back stairs intruded. “My father,” she said.

Carmella started to rise from the chair, but Angel pressed an insistent hand against her shoulder. “It’ll be all right.”

She looked up and found Roy standing in the doorway, staring at the back of Carmella’s head.

“Who’ve we got here?” he asked.

Angel plastered a bright smile on her face. “This is Carmella Reyes, our new housekeeper.”

“Well, it’s about time you found somebody to help out around here.” He crossed the room and plucked a battered hat from the wall rack beside the door. “Damn rain’s settlin’ into my bones,” he muttered. He plopped the hat over his head and opened the door. When he stepped through and closed it again, Angel released the breath she’d been holding, thankful he’d not interfered for once.

Chapter Nineteen

When Rane heard about the gunfight being waged along the fence line separating the Flying C and the Hacienda, his gut warned him time was running out. He got on his horse and headed out that way. The sun was sinking low in the southwest by the time he picked up the first faint echo of gunfire in the distance. He halted the stallion and listened. The shots came in rapid, sporadic bursts. He was getting close.

He was still a quarter of a mile out when he spotted powder smoke lifting on the wind. He slowed to a walk and proceeded more cautiously. The land here was broken and rocky, treacherous footing. As he moved closer, the scene of the ongoing battle opened before him like a panoramic painting.

To the north, about a dozen or so of Clayton’s men were positioned belly-down along the crest of a low bluff. The lay of the land itself provided their only cover. Lundy’s men had taken refuge in the thick, tangled brush in the lower lying area to the south, hiding behind the plentiful rock formations the rough terrain provided. The disputed fence separated the two factions, that and the shallow creek that meandered among the lopsided fence posts.

Strangest of all was the sight of a group of spectators clustered just out of bullet range, from a pistol anyway, on an elevated patch of ground to the west. Small time ranchers and homesteaders from the look of them. They stood around talking, some with field glasses getting a bird’s eye view of the action. The fact that they’d brought along some of their women and children to watch the hostilities angered Rane.