Chapter Thirteen #2
Hearing those words, a tiny ray of hope began to glow inside her, a spark that had been all but snuffed out.
Perhaps she could learn to please him, somehow win his love.
The hope continued to grow, brightening a little every day.
Surprisingly, it strengthened when his aunt and mother returned, amazed to find Ramon had gone.
“He—he had to leave on business,” Carly stammered, the color high in her cheeks. “I’m certain he’ll be back as soon as he can.”
His mother frowned, but his frail maiden aunt smiled brightly. “Do not worry, nina. My nephew is new at being a husband. He chafes a little at the bit, but in time, he will come around.”
Carly’s heart swelled with gratitude at the older woman’s kind words.
Over the next few days, they spoke often, though his mother practically ignored her.
Tia Teresa had a way of sweeping aside the barriers between them.
She reminded Carly of her grandmother, an Irish woman who had lived with the McConnell family in the mine patch, a woman of courage and warmth.
Carly had loved everything about her, the stories she told of the grueling journey from her homeland, the feel of her gnarled old hands as they gently braided her hair, even the hint of Irish whiskey that occasionally clung to her breath.
Granny McConnell was gone now, but in a few short days she felt nearly that close to Tia Teresa, a closeness she hadn’t shared with a woman since her mother died.
“Are you busy, Tia?” Carly approached the frail old woman late one evening, after Mother de la Guerra had gone to bed.
The older woman was sitting in the sala embroidering, her veined hands working with a skill that denied her years.
Carly had come in from outside in the kitchen, where she’d been helping Blue with the supper dishes.
She didn’t have to help. In fact, Ramon’s mother frowned at the notion of a de la Guerra woman doing such menial tasks, but Blue was old, and Carly didn’t mind. Keeping busy helped distract her.
Tia Teresa set aside her embroidery, resting it carefully beside her on the couch. “What is it, nina? You are worried about Ramon, no?”
“Yes, I suppose I am.” She worried about him every day, prayed that he and his men hadn’t gone off on some dangerous mission. “But that isn’t what I wanted to ask you about.”
“No? Then what is it?”
A spot of warmth crept into her cheeks. “It’s about the night we were married.
I-It’s rather embarrassing, but I…” She took a breath to fortify her courage.
“You see I didn’t know exactly what to do.
Ramon was…” magnificent, incredible, wonderful.
“At any rate, I think I might have done something wrong, something to displease him.”
“You believe that is the reason he left?”
“Yes.…”
“It is the man’s place to know these things. What could you possibly have done to displease him?”
“I don’t know. I-I was wondering … how would a Spanish lady behave on her wedding night?”
The old woman smiled, making her wrinkled face look less brittle. “I can only tell you what my mother once told me, and what other women have said. I cannot speak for myself.”
“I know.” Ramon’s aunt had mentioned her novio, a young man named Esteban.
She said that he had been killed, and that she had never married.
It was obvious that even after a lifetime without him, Tia Teresa still grieved.
In a way, Carly envied her. How fierce their love must have been to survive after all these years.
The old woman picked up her embroidery, her bony fingers moving in rhythm, the needle skimming through the fabric without conscious thought.
“When a Spanish man and woman marry, there is always a grand fiesta. The music and dancing begin right after the wedding, and the feasting goes on all night, sometimes as long as a week. Often the bride and groom do not consummate the marriage for several days.”
Carly hated to ask such an intimate question, but there was no one else who could help her. “And when that time finally comes?”
Tia glanced up from her work. “The bride is very nervous, and of course very shy. She awaits her husband in their bed and when he finally joins her, she allows him the husbandly rights she has agreed to by the marriage contract.”
“How … how does that happen?”
The old woman rolled her eyes as if she wondered at the endless naiveté of the young, then she smiled. “She will snuff out the candle beside the bed, lift her nightgown, and allow her husband’s body to come inside her.”
“H-her nightgown? She goes to bed in her nightgown?”
“Si. Usually it is cotton but I thought the silk would be prettier. Ramon has always liked pretty things.”
“It—it’s lovely.” But she hadn’t kept it on.
Vaguely she remembered Ramon’s hands sliding it off her shoulders, but perhaps that was only because she hadn’t been waiting for him in bed.
Maybe he would have simply raised it to her waist. She couldn’t imagine it, not after the things he had done.
She couldn’t imagine anything between them but hot, sweat-slick skin and moist, fiery kisses.
An odd memory struck her. Carly suddenly straightened, the awful thought nearly sending her to her knees.
Dear God! She leaned forward in the chair across from Tia Teresa.
“In the morning, when I was”—stripping the feather mattress to launder the blood from the sheets—“making the bed, I-I noticed the oddest thing. There was a hole in the sheet on top. It was embroidered in the prettiest white thread, a lovely bouquet of flowers that formed a wreath around the hole. I’d forgotten all about it until now. Surely…”
Carly nervously wet her lips, praying she was wrong. “Surely the woman doesn’t lie beneath the … surely the man doesn’t…” But when she looked at Tia Teresa, bright spots of color tinted the old woman’s cheeks.
She nodded sagely. “It has long been used to protect the woman’s modesty. Surely my nephew … showed you how it is done?”
Carly’s face felt on fire. “I think we accomplished the same thing, Tia, but not exactly in that way.”
Tia Teresa reached over and patted her hand. “I am certain you did just fine. Besides, a man should understand if you are shy your very first time.”
Shy? The flush in her face suffused her whole body. A memory arose of her begging Ramon not to stop, of her body arching beneath him, of her nails digging into his hard-muscled shoulders.
Her stomach began a nervous roll. Obviously wearing a white lace mantilla wasn’t enough to make her a real Spanish lady.
If she wanted to please Ramon, if she wanted to keep him out of the arms of his beautiful mistress, she would have to learn to behave like the kind of woman he had wanted to marry.
“You must not worry, nina. It is not so difficult a thing to endure. You must simply lie there and let him have his way. It is a burden the woman must carry. When I imagine such a thing with my Esteban, I know that I wouldn’t have minded it so much.”
Carly’s head began to pound with an agonizing beat.
Minded? She had craved Ramon’s touch, burned for it, not simply endured it.
Her body had been on fire for him; it was even now, whenever she thought of the way he had made her feel.
What kind of a woman behaved that way? Obviously not a woman of pure Spanish blood.
Dear God, no wonder he had ridden away.
“Thank you, Tia,” Carly finally said, her voice a little strained. “I’m sorry to bother you about such things, but there was no one else I could ask.”
The old woman waved her hand as if it didn’t matter in the least. “I am glad to be of help.” She smiled. “Ramon will return soon, and this time, you will know what he expects.”
“Yes.…” Carly glanced away, fighting a fresh tide of embarrassment. Until this moment, she hadn’t been the least embarrassed about what had happened between them. She had only prayed it would happen again.
Now that she realized how brazenly she had acted, she was appalled by her behavior. Dear God, how would she ever be able to face him?
“It’s getting late.” Carly stood up from the chair. “I think I’ll be going to bed.”
Tia Teresa just nodded. “It is time I went to bed, too.”
They left the room together, then parted and went to their own separate quarters along the corridor around the patio. All Carly could think of was the embroidered hole in the sheets Ramon was supposed to use when they made love.
She hated herself for a tingle of disappointment that if he made love to her again, she wouldn’t feel the heat of his smooth dark skin against her naked body.
* * *
Ten days had passed. Ramon urged the tall bay stallion down the hill toward Rancho Las Almas. He was eager to be home. Eager to see his bride. Eager to return to her bed.
In the days since his wedding, he had come to terms with his feelings for her.
His vow had been broken, but he was as much at fault as she was, and there was no sense in regret.
The truth was he had wanted Carly McConnell from the start.
Now she was his wife and though he had never intended to marry her, he couldn’t really say he was sorry.
Fletcher Austin posed a problem, and the fact that Ramon was just as determined as ever to get back his land.
But now that Andreas was gone, perhaps the raiding they’d been part of could eventually come to an end.
From the beginning, Ramon had argued to find a legal remedy for their troubles, but Andreas had refused to listen.
He was blind with rage at his father’s needless death and the loss of the de la Guerra lands.
By the time Ramon had arrived from Spain, El Dragón was already raiding. He felt obliged to assist his brother’s campaign. Andreas had, after all, assumed the responsibility of protecting the family—Ramon’s responsibility—while he had been lounging unawares in a villa in Seville.