Chapter 6

The tall rancher smashed his way through the French door nearest the step down into the large room knowing Jelly was right, furious that Jelly was right.

Murdoch Lancer had to wait.

He paused only a moment before he focused on the drink table, taking determined steps to lay his hand on a bottle of scotch. The one for visitors. He wanted his throat to burn. He slammed the liquid into his mouth and the glass upon the table before a minute had passed. His fist rounded the neck of the bottle for a second time before he stopped, his breathing heavy, his jaw clenched. His aggravation was about to interfere with his need to remain alert.

With a heavy tread, he found himself in the kitchen scooping beans ground into flakes from the container Maria left on the counter. He tossed them into the pot he had filled with water and set it back on the stove top. He had rekindled and lit the fire box with the wood stored in the metal grate near the wall during his earlier pacing. Although he knew to stay out of the way of the woman who ran the kitchen of his hacienda, he always believed a man needed to know how to brew his own coffee. He returned to counting steps as he crossed from one side of the room to the other waiting for the brew to boil. His impatience took him out of the kitchen, and he returned to The Great Room, the room where he was laird.

Idle thoughts suggested he should wash up if he wasn't going back to sleep and he had no designs on that. He wore the same shirt and trousers from yesterday and the smell of sweat permeated the fabric. The thought went adrift as he stared at the longcase clock ticking near the far wall. His hands balled into fists as if striking the golden face could make the hands turn faster. He intended to be ready before dawn, rousting the men assigned to the search, a search taking men away from the work of the ranch. The pinch at the sacrifice made him skip a step and a questioning scowl to mar his features. A search to find my sons, his jaw tightened with the admonition and his stern visage returned.

A lengthy list of dirty chores began to tick through his mind which he would enforce if he discovered the cougar hunt had turned into an excuse for those boys of his to lollygag. It wouldn't be the first time Scott and Johnny tempted one another into brotherly shenanigans when they needed to be focused on the needs of the ranch. May have even gone back into town to continue their individual conquests of Jenny Wainwright. He would have to send someone he trusted not to gossip about his sons' peccadilloes…Old Gus maybe…into town to check.

He jerked away and threw his attention in a more comforting direction. He picked at items on his desk while considering if he should spend time on the ledgers, but his mind drifted again, and he thought of Johnny toying with these same objects as his son moved restlessly around his father. Never really at ease. And the father making no effort to settle the boy. Murdoch set the polished paperweight down. Catherine had purchased that. Maybe he should have told Scott. Scott might want to know that story about his mother. He really should tell Scott…when the time is right. Catherine found it in a tiny curio shop. In Sacramento. While they were in negotiations to buy this land.

"You will have use for this, Murdoch."

"Whatever for?"

"Your desk."

"I don't own a desk, my love."

"Ah, but you will. I shall place this first item upon it, and you will remember that you needed it."

And need it he did. When they first laid eyes on this adobe home, the hacienda and all the structures attached had worn down like a pair of good boots—well used but buckling with age. His eyes had lit with the potential the land offered despite the growing unrest in Mexico, the push west by the Americanos, and the increasing instability of both governments as men of power sought to tighten their grips. He and Catherine had to confess their sins and meld into the Catholic church and swear allegiance to the current rulers of Spain and the Mexican territory, but he was able to make the initial purchase with little debt.

The purchase was within his means but the loans that followed were needed for basic repairs to make the hacienda livable, the barns and corrals usable, the supplies available, and to procure breedable stock. Quick acquisition of more land followed as the unstable climate deteriorated and many of the powerful land grant holders withdrew to safer locales. It was a risky dance, but necessary, to ensure access to water, rich grazing land, to the few roads that existed, and only then was he able to fully seduce the existing vaqueros to remain and new hands to sign on. Days were hard and long, but his cherished Catherine set aside her Boston Brahmin background learning to scrub, churn, cook, sew, and build a home for the two of them. With the promise of a third.

Murdoch blinked. Without the benefit of the photograph tucked in a small frame in a drawer of that desk she promised, he had trouble seeing her. A snatch of blonde hair, a glimpse of her blue eyes, a hint of her smile. He had stepped away from the gaping hole left by her death but was startled each time he found himself staring into that abyss.

Grief turned to anger turned to hate and toward the defeat and destruction of Judd Haney who he blamed for her flight away from their home where she died as a result of complications of their child's birth. And the boy, the boy he didn't see for years after his birth—well, the bairn was better off in Boston where Catherine's father had the means to hire a wet nurse, a nanny, provide a secure upbringing while his father fought the battles for his land. He convinced himself of that for several years.

During that turbulent time, Murdoch wasn't even aware that Catherine had moved into the shadows as the ranch grew. A shade brushing against him in the night when he sat alone by the fire in his Great Room, a drained glass of whatever whiskey he could afford clutched in his hand.

His pacing paused as he threw logs into the hearth beneath the large Lancer brand that decorated the masonry above his mantle. He slowly turned to cast his eyes across the room. How little had changed since Catherine established the look. His fists settled against his hips, his focus stopping at the longcase clock that seemed to defy him with hands that barely twitched. Maria did try. Minor touches marked her passing. Most now moved to the attic.

Maria. The woman—young, yes, but one could hardly call her a girl. He found her while he pursued Haney as a deputy under Joe Barker. Gave him much needed cash as well as a purpose, if revenge could truly be called a purpose. A reason to go on maybe.

They met. They loved. They conceived. They married.

When he brought Maria to Lancer, the hacienda remained in disrepair except for the few rooms on the lower floor renewed by his first wife, and on the second floor, the bedroom he shared with Catherine across from the unused nursery. After Catherine died and he lost Scott to his grandfather in Boston, Murdoch had no use for anything in the hacienda but a table to eat on, his bed to sleep in, his desk to work at in the room his dead wife had decorated.

Maria stood aghast. That she expected to walk into the home of a hacendado was obvious. Murdoch admitted to himself, never to her, that he told Maria about the estância of his dreams, the one yet to be, not the one learning to stand and walk on its own. He never doubted that she would want to be a part of that growth. He had fallen hard for the enchantress, and with her claim of devotion to him, her willingness to muck through the slag to create his vision was a given.

"We will build, mi esposo. We will make a jewel from this…shanty." She had said the words as she hugged him, but it now rang empty in Murdoch's mind. The doubt that gnawed at him from the day she disappeared raised a familiar finger waggling at him as if making a point: Did she love you? Ever? Or did she fall in love with your boasts of a rich land full of promise.

He couldn't say his young wife did nothing toward the success of the budding ranchero, but she was with child in a difficult pregnancy. Guest rooms were reappointed, and a few items added to the nursery but otherwise, the work of the ranch took priority. And, if he were honest, many of the changes Maria attempted, he prevented. He blamed money. She blamed the espectro of a dead woman. Neither were wrong.

Murdoch burned his fingers on the coffee pot as he lifted it from the stovetop. He had forgotten he had put it on to boil until the chimes alerted him that nearly a half hour had passed. His eyes wandered up the back stairs to where his bed—and those of his sons—lay empty, then over to the old but sturdy table that filled the kitchen. The burn in his cheeks came from a long-forgotten past.

Despite the game she played, Maria was hardly a virgin when they wed, but for Murdoch, there was no one between Catherine and Maria. He saw the woman dance and desire overcame reason. The sensations exploded. Lust became wrapped in the guise of love as he drew her to him, held her, became one with her.

Ugly rumors suggested that she had used him to secure a future, and perhaps she had, but he knew, he knew, he used her, too. The passion of their relationship was palpable. She brought life into the dead space that had crowded out the joy that tragedy—with Judd Haney and Harlan Garrett at the helm—had stolen away. The demands of the ranch had reinserted itself once they settled back into the hacienda walls, but Maria and the child she carried brought renewed determination that his land would become a beacon of strength that he ruled as a true laird from the old country. The Patrón. It was what they both wanted.

He rubbed his fingertips along the edge of the kitchen table. Maria. Although his tightly kept secret, he privately acknowledged that he did not always initiate their intimacy. The self-righteous yentas already called her a whore. He would never reveal that she called him like a siren demanding her own satisfaction. He ceded that control into her talented hands, and in return, his Maria took him into physical experiences he had never dreamed possible. He knew he was not her first and with the lessons she had learned, she brought sensuous techniques beyond his grasp to their bed. It was those memories that stirred, much to his embarrassment although he was alone. His hips swayed to settle the unintentional tightening below his waist.

Catherine's ghost remained in every room of the house. Objects of every design, both practical and frivolous, whispered of her passing through these rooms. What lingered of Maria was the feel of her fingers, her mouth and tongue tasting all parts of his flesh, even the nip of her teeth at his ears, his nipples. His hand rubbed just below his belt as the sensations continued to open.

Beautiful.

He knew she was beautiful for all eyes followed her—some with envy, some with spite, some with lust. But the look of her was lost. The way he felt when she looked at him was not. Until the sense of anger and betrayal returned in force. Then he wanted to obliterate her memory. Oh, he chased after her. For years. Sometimes he tried to remember if he was honest about what he wanted when he found her. To bring her home? To retrieve his son? To punish her for the damage to his pride? To stand before her then walk away proclaiming his decision to end their marriage, making it his choice, not hers?

His fist pounded against the table when the dastardly thing named recall reminded him that though she had seduced him there first, the last intimate act between them occurred when he had thrown her upon this table to remind her that she was his wife. He was the husband. He was the master of the house. The patrón. The maker of rules and caller of tunes. Why? She had dared to suggest that she had given him a fine heir and the other should remain in that faraway place, a remnant of the past best left a world away from this demanding Mistress called Lancer. The money he needed to build his ranchero could be better spent on the future held in his hands rather than the seeds tossed in the past.

He left for Boston the next day. And returned months later to an empty marriage. A few months after that, the house was empty, too. Murdoch pressed his palm against the cool surface of the wood, head bowed, eyes closed. He steadied his breathing, allowing the past to fade.

Tilting his head toward the short hallway leading to the large room, he held his place in the stillness, listening. A soft serration carried through the corridor, a rhythmic shuffle followed by a soft tapping. Yanked by the memory of his dream, Murdoch stormed back to the Great Room prepared to confront whatever demon stalked his domain.

His vacant seat at the long table awaited him. He remained alone.

Murdoch growled his frustration and once again he roamed the Great Room, listening to the taunting of the time. The night refused to give way and the dawn expressed no need to hurry its arrival. Murdoch Lancer was still required to wait.

After Maria left, it was Paul O'Brien who prodded him. "Ya wanna be a name in these parts, ya gotta sell more than beef, Murr-doch." The rancher rubbed at his eyes thinking of the way the Irishman rolled his Rs when he said his name, one of the few remaining traces of his heritage. "Ya gotta sell an image an' a once fine house fallin' in 'round yer ears ain't the picture ya want. Ya wanna be a leader? Ya gotta shake hands and feed 'em. When they drive their buggies onto these grounds, they gotta see stability. Strength. Prestige. Power."

And Murdoch listened, hardening his resolve to triumphant over every opponent seeking to bring him down. And so, he built. He made sure the Lancer name was a force in the San Joaquin. He was a force. And in his mind's eye, his ranch achieved vivid colors beyond the ability of nature. The dream blossomed with the beauty of a rose and the thorns to hold on to it.

He stared out his huge window, yet nothing was visible but the streaks of water running along the glass. Only the edges of the bushes touching the glass lit by the lamp on his desk spoke of the great expanse of his land.

I love this ground more than anything God ever created.

Murdoch felt a stab in his gut when he had to close his eyes to see his sons, their faces lost in the darkness. The slim hand of a five-year-old extended toward him, curious eyes wide. He shook his head at the twenty-year old fragment. He heard a peel of laughter and spun seeing for a fleeting second a bare-bottomed toddler with a wild mop of black hair tear in his direction, blue eyes dancing as he squealed but then faded even as his arms opened up to greet him. The room was empty save for the sound of the rain.

And the emptiness almost crushed him.