The Diamond of the Rockies [03] The Tender Vine (37 page)

He watched Flavio draw the laughter of the men and wave it off as his due. Oh, to be so confident of approval. Had he won his way back into Carina’s heart? He’d possessed the better part of an evening to do it; the Garibaldi House had been loud with frolicking well into the night.

That thought hurt more than it should. But Carina was the sweetest grace he had experienced; her love had brought him from bitter solitude to joy. He couldn’t keep his thoughts there or he would break down. He forced a subjective observation of Flavio, the disarming features seductive in their beauty. Flavio looked like a work of Italian artistry, a Greco-Roman hero. Not Herculean—perhaps more like Narcissus.

After some banter, of which Quillan could only catch the cadence since he was too far to decipher any of the words he had learned, Flavio drew one man away from the others. They talked together with much nodding and gesturing, then gripped each others’ shoulders briefly and parted.

Before striding away, Flavio sent a pointed glance his direction. Quillan stiffened, surprised. Flavio knew he was there? And now he noted a distinct tightness in Flavio’s gait, like a dueler stepping out his paces. Unconsciously, Quillan’s hand dropped to his hip. No Colt. But neither was Flavio armed, as far as he could tell. Quillan slid his palm to his thigh.

The man slowly turned on his heel and sauntered away. Quillan wrapped up the rest of his cheese. He was no longer hungry. The men were openly studying him, discussing him, too, no doubt. What did Flavio want? Why had he come there? To sow more discord?

Was it some sort of challenge? A flame flickered inside—Quillan’s natural instinct. If he knew he was supposed to fight for Carina, nothing would stop him, not the whole mass of them together. But he was no longer sure she wanted that. Her face had been pained when she begged him not to endanger Flavio’s life. By now that concern for the man she had once loved could have been stoked into the passion Quillan knew too well.

Walled in by her family and fed a diet of Flavio’s attention, why would she think twice about the rogue she once deigned to love? The pain was like a living being in his heart, draining him of hope. How must Jesus have felt when all those who loved him turned away? Quillan brought out his journal and lost himself in words. It was the best way he could think to keep the pain at bay.

Flavio left the rock yard with the strain once again reaching intensity. He had spent the night in a storm, gusts of regret for his violence sliced by bolts of fascination and a rumbling confusion. He had lain still and thought of his father. He didn’t know much, only the sensation of the man’s virility, his energy, and a vague sense of equally potent rage and gloom. Probably akin to Flavio’s own.

His papa had been a republican—less kindly, a troublemaker. That trouble had cost him his life. Flavio had never discussed it with Dottore DiGratia, but it stood between them in spite of the kindness, the acceptance he’d found from the man. Once his misplaced hatred had faded, Flavio had gravitated to Angelo DiGratia like a bee to nectar, seeking sustenance of a kind he found nowhere else.

He had thought for a time to learn the man’s skill, to become a doctor himself. But the tedium of the scientific study in which Dottore DiGratia excelled was too much for Flavio. He could not sit still behind a microscope, could not still his hands long enough to mend torn flesh and damaged tissue. His mind flew from the task at hand to other thoughts more commanding, more creative.

The doctor wanted to mend, but Flavio wanted to make. The arts— they were his passion. In pictures and in music he spent his soul. No, he was not meant to follow the doctor. But that did not mean he loved him less.

Dottore DiGratia had become the father he lost. Signore Lanza was all right; Flavio had nothing against him. The man had fed and clothed him and allowed him his way. But Angelo DiGratia had taken him to his heart. Was it because he had failed to save his father?

Flavio wondered if the doctor carried that guilt or if it was just part of his profession. What was monumental in Flavio’s life might well have been forgotten in Dottore DiGratia’s. Except that sometimes he caught on the doctor’s face a look of regret and . . . shame. He felt a stirring of power and remembered one of the few things his papa had told him.
“When you see a man’s weakness, use it.”
Flavio had not understood the words as a child of six, but he did now.

Flavio thought with pride of the doctor’s protection of his contract with Carina, in spite of his indiscretion—which the doctor may or may not know about. Either way, Dottore DiGratia did not accept Quillan Shepard’s claim. Yet the man would not give up. Surely that justified the possibilities he had just set in motion. Quillan was a threat to the DiGratias, a threat to him, and most of all, a threat to Carina. If an accident should occur . . .

He reached his stallion and mounted. Flavio had not brought the animal into the quarry where the shards of rock could damage its hooves. He brought the animal around, remembering Carina’s trick when she had sent him sprawling and galloped off on his horse. He’d been torn by fury but also moved to ecstasy at her spirit. She was the only woman who matched his passion.

But she was too softhearted, too easily won, her love given irrepressibly. She could be deeply hurt. He knew now how deeply, and he cursed his foolish liaison with Divina. For that moment’s conquest, he’d lost Carina. For a time. But not forever. As long as Dottore DiGratia upheld his contract, he had a chance of redeeming it.

Maybe Carina would not marry him willingly, but once Quillan Shepard was removed, then carefully, so carefully, he would win her heart again. He knew the words she liked to hear, and he was a proficient lover, though at the moment she did not appreciate his experience.

He frowned. If only she hadn’t walked in on them. How stupid to use the doctor’s barn. Divina had not been worth it. He thought now of Nicolo, sick with love for Divina. Did Nicolo appreciate the seed Flavio had started that made her willing at last? Flavio felt a twinge. Was he a monster not to care that his child would be raised as another man’s?

Was there something wrong with him that he cared so little for Divina’s distress? When she came to him, sobbing her news, he had felt nothing. Surely there should have been something? Maybe it was walled off in that place inside where he stood sometimes, wanting to go in, but unable to. In there was the child whose papa lay dying, whose mamma gave her life for his, whose family discarded him.

But he couldn’t go in. And what, he suspected, might make him human, stayed safely buried. His emotions stormed around it, but like the eye of a hurricane, that part remained still and untouched.

Anyone hearing his thoughts would be amazed. Flavio without feeling? Flavio, whose feelings were always evident—his love, his passion, his choler. But they were all on the outside. It had begun on the ship, when his dismay and terror made him savage and he learned what power such emotions could have on people. Had Signore Lanza once taken a belt to him? Never.

But Flavio knew he gained more through benevolence than rage. Oh, how he melted Signora Lanza. She was butter in his hands. And as soon as his body came to manhood, so were the girls. Flavio turned into the lane to the DiGratias. Yes, he would win back Carina’s love. He had been a fool to wait. He should have shown her what a husband he would be.

The gates were closed, but he opened them with a sense of authority.

He crossed the courtyard, seeing no one and expecting no one. They would be in the fields ripping out the vines, the unproductive struggling grapes that could no longer yield a productive harvest. Just so would he yank Quillan Shepard and replace him with a hearty root stock.

He knocked on the door, then entered. “Dottore?” Flavio walked toward the study where the doctor researched and read, adjoining the treatment room where he saw the patients who came to him. “Ti’Angelo, are you—”

The doctor emerged from the treatment room. His face was stern.

Flavio stopped. “Are you seeing someone, Dottore?”

Angelo DiGratia closed the door behind him. “Come with me, Flavio.” He led him to the study with its walls lined with books, the sort Flavio shuddered to read. Nothing beautiful—only facts, details, theories.

“What is it, Tio?” Flavio read his concern, his consternation.

“Is it true you struck a man yesterday with bocce balls?”

Flavio felt a flush of shame. His sons had told him? “I lost my temper. The old Chinaman . . .” He spread his hands. His excuse sounded churlish. “I was infuriated by . . . by the things that are torturing me. It had nothing to do with the Chinaman.”

“Nothing to do with him, yet he’s in my treatment room.” Angelo DiGratia indicated the door separating the rooms.

Flavio stared at the closed door. “Is he hurt badly?”

“He is old. His bones are brittle.”

Flavio shuddered. “I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

“The concussion is hard to gauge since I cannot employ him in discussion. I don’t even know if he has family to care for him. He is in and out of consciousness.”

Flavio knew better than to say it was only a Chinaman. And again, he was deeply ashamed of his outburst and violence, the sort of violence that had killed his papa. What must Angelo DiGratia think of him now?

“I’m sorry. What can I do?”

“Do, Flavio? You think you are a doctor now?” Angelo’s expression cut him. “I’m ashamed of you, to injure an old man.”

Inside Flavio quailed. To have earned the doctor’s disdain . . . “I’m ashamed of myself. But I’m so angry, Tio. It—” he spread his hands—“it’s tearing me apart. I thought nothing could be worse than when Carina left. But worse by far is her coming back with this, this—”

“I am taking care of that. I’ve spoken with Father Esser.”

“Father Esser is building a new church. What time does he have—”

“He will consider the validity of Carina’s marriage. He gave me his word to look into it immediately.”

“What if he finds it valid?” Flavio burst out with the words before he could stop them.

Angelo DiGratia looked at him with gentle concern. “We will consider that if we must. But until then I’m trusting the wisdom of the church.”

Flavio could not bring himself to do the same. Ever since he decided the healing Gesù was nothing but a myth, he’d had little concern for the church. Angelo might put his trust in black-robed fathers, but Flavio would see for himself that Carina’s marriage was ended.

He dared not even show a flicker of that thought, which he both hated and clung to. If the doctor’s concern was so deep for a worthless Chinaman, how would he consider the new plans in Flavio’s mind? Flavio trembled. He had felt brash and defiant an hour ago. Now . . .

“Flavio.” Angelo’s voice was soft, gentle. “I know you love my daughter. I watched you grow up together. You are like one of my sons.”

Flavio drank it in.

“But listen to me now.” His thin brows drew together. “You cannot be at the mercy of your temper. Your father . . .”

Flavio tensed. The doctor had never mentioned him.

“Your father was unwise in his moods. I don’t want your death on my hands.”

He didn’t say
too
. Flavio waited, but he didn’t acknowledge that his father’s death was already on his hands. Could the doctor have saved him? Had he tried? What judge was a frightened six-year-old? Just the same, Flavio imagined he knew the moment when Dottore DiGratia had decided either that he wouldn’t or couldn’t save his papa. He had seen a shadow pass over the man’s face, a shadow of death like a dark wing.

“If you do something rash, you will pay the price.” The doctor turned to the room behind him. “If that old man dies . . .”

“You won’t let him.” Flavio’s voice betrayed his desperation.

Angelo looked back at him. “I’m not God.”

Flavio’s chest tightened. “I thought you were once. When they brought you to the house to save my papa. I thought you had Gesù’s healing hands.”

“Ah, Flavio.” The doctor spread his fingers before him. “My hands are human, but sometimes God heals through them.”

And sometimes He doesn’t. Flavio stared at the delicate fingers outstretched from Dottore DiGratia’s fine hands. Then he looked into the man’s face, saw pain and fear there mingled.

“Flavio, don’t do something you’ll pay for more dearly than you can afford.”

Had he read his thoughts? Flavio spread his hands. “Do what?”

“You and Quillan Shepard both want Carina. Let God decide between you.”

Flavio stared at him. Something opened, some small painful part.

“The God who took my mother? My father, too?”

Angelo’s face turned gray. He leaned slightly against the desk, his hands dropping to his sides. “Don’t lay your father’s death on God.”

Now it would come. Flavio felt his breathing suspend. Now he would know once for all if that early hatred had been deserved.

But the doctor said, “Men killed your father, not God.” His voice shook, and he folded his fingers together at his chest.

“And that makes it all right?”

“No, Flavio. Nothing condones that.”

Flavio felt cheated. Men killed his father? Men including the doctor?
Tell me the truth!

And now Angelo’s voice strengthened. “Neither does that condone your own violence.”

Flavio felt the sap leave his limbs, despondence descending like a parasite, sucking him dry. In his hurt, he searched the doctor’s face. “I will do what I must.”

“You do it without my consent.” Angelo’s face was both stern and entreating.

Flavio’s hands clenched at his sides. “Would you take Carina from me?”

He didn’t answer for a long moment. Then, “I want what you want. But I will submit to God.”

“Then you don’t want what I want.” Flavio turned.

Angelo caught his arm. “Flavio. Beware your nature.”

Flavio exploded. “My nature! My papa’s nature? Is it so dangerous?

Is that why your hands could not heal? Or was it your will?” He was shocked to have said it aloud.

The doctor looked stunned. Then he drew himself up. “Your father was gravely wounded, battered and crushed and cut. What do you think I could do?”