way. It was obvious even to him forces were at work to drive them off their land. Land that one day would be his. Land was everything. It spoke to him with a passion. There was an explanation for what was happening.
The Morelands.
“They’re determined to ruin us!” He wasn’t sure how he was going to achieve revenge—strip a powerful man of at least some of his prestige—but he was hoping ways and means would present themselves as he was drawn deeper and deeper into their world. He had achieved his prime objective of working his way in with little difficulty. It had turned out to be so easy he could scarcely believe it. He had the motivation, now he needed the necessary guile. There would be opportunities. This family, like all families, had secrets. Dark, damning secrets that needed to be exposed to the light of day and public censure. Since he’d been a boy he had dreamed of striking a blow at the family responsible for his own family’s long years of suffering and exile: the Morelands, with their powerful army of sympathizers and supporters.
His mother had found peace in her second marriage, giving birth to Francisco, his stepfather Ramon’s heir, then two years later, little Ramona. His own father, who had been enticed to Argentina to play polo and was later employed by Ramon to help breed his polo ponies, was long dead, dying in hospital a few days after taking a bad fall at a home match. He would have survived the fall, only it was his blighted destiny to be trampled by his agitated pony. Polo, the way the gauchos played it, was dangerously fast in what was the fastest game in the world. What had happened to his father should have put him off playing polo for life, but he, too, thrived on the element of danger. Horsemanship was in his blood. He had inherited his father’s speed and finesse and his near-complete range of strokes. Unlike his father when he played it was with one objective in mind: to win. He knew Joel Moreland had been a fine, enthusiastic player. He knew his son Jared rode as hard and fearlessly as the best. He knew a great deal about Jared Moreland, the predator, canonized in death.
What he hadn’t anticipated was meeting this beautiful creature, Jared Moreland’s niece. She couldn’t be allowed to get in his way. Then again, he knew he had her at his mercy. If he could only bring himself to be so ruthless, she could play a big part in showing the all-powerful Morelands what it was like to suffer. He relived the moment he’d looked up to see her standing above him on the central balcony of the mansion. She had appeared in her wedding finery like some splendid apparition or a beautiful illustration out of one of Ramona’s golden books of fairy tales. Her gown was a lustrous silver. She wore a crown of flowers on her head. That first sight of her might well haunt him the rest of his life, he thought bleakly. Just the sight of her had made him think for the first time he should be building his own life, not forever seeking revenge for a past that was gone. Were the vows he had made eternally binding? Why had she made him feel they no longer meant anything?
For long moments he’d been a stranger to himself. She hadn’t been aware of him, so he continued to stare with this queer hunger, as a man might stare at the unattainable. She shone in her bridesmaid’s gown. Her skin gave off a lovely, luminous glow. Her effect on him was unprecedented in his experience, when his family’s adopted Argentina was full of beautiful women, his for the asking. He had not dreamed of this, when it was essential he remain true to himself.
She had turned her head; stared down at him, her beautiful face unsmiling. Impossible to smile at that moment. He remembered he’d saluted her in some way. She had acknowledged him, regal as a princess. He’d wanted to climb up to her, using the thick, flowering trumpet vine that wreathed the white pillars as purchase for his eager feet. He was a passionate slave to beauty in all its forms, but for no woman had he been aflame with a terrible desire. It was unimaginable she should be a Moreland.
He had known that at once. She was Cecile Moreland, very much her grandfather’s princess and heiress. She was far more beautiful in the flesh than in her photos in newspapers and the social pages of magazines, arresting as they were. He’d made it his business to find out everything there was to be learned about the Morelands. He already knew much, since he had lived with that hated name since his childhood. He had started his updated research with the Man with the Midas Touch, Joel Moreland. He now knew where every member of the entire clan lived, what they did for a living, the circles they moved in, their particular friends, their habits. He might have been commissioned to write an unauthorized book on the family, entitled A Study of the Morelands. Joel Moreland, the patriarch, father of the dead Jared, was way up there with the richest men in the country. His interests were vast. He doted on the young woman who now sat at the piano, her raven head bent over the keys.
She could complicate things drastically if he allowed it. Or she could become the all-powerful pawn. He had no stomach for causing grief to a woman—certainly not one who had so easily ensnared him—but he couldn’t forget how much the women of his family had suffered. His grandmother, his mother, his aunts. The entire family had been forced off the land as his grandfather went deeper and deeper into debt. Land that one day his grandfather had promised would be his. Land was everything. Only, his grandfather had gone bankrupt. His creditors had moved in and they had moved out. Exile was like an amputation. There was an explanation for it all, the never-ending problems and misfortune. The way the family was ostracized.
Moreland wrath.
“They’re determined to ruin us, boy!” his grandfather had said, shaking an impotent fist at the clear blue sky. The memory would always remain with him: the boy and the old man. The boy’s face hot and flushed with tears, his heart as heavy as his grandfather’s. What was to be his was no more. His inheritance, his future hopes had been swept away on a wind straight from hell.
Even in the middle of his tortured thoughts, Raul had sensed Cecile was under some strain, as intensely nervous as he was intensely on edge. He’d been observing her closely all through dinner even with her charming but frivolous friend’s voice buzzing like a bee in his ear. He rose when Tara began to giggle softly, walked to the piano knowing intuitively he could restore her nervous energy. It was all part of their subterranean communication.
The instant Cecile’s hands touched the keys, the magic of the wonderful opening bars put his somber thoughts to rest. He sat back simply to listen, to absorb the music and the spectacle of her beauty as she sat at the grand piano in her lovely chiffon dress. The color put him in mind of the jacarandas, native to the high deserts of adjoining Brazil. They grew everywhere in Argentina and in flower lit up the Montalvan estancia. He knew they flourished, too, in many parts of temperate and subtropical Australia.
She played beautifully, powerfully. More important, she had mastered to perfection the particular rhythms of Spanish music. His stepsister, Ramona, was an accomplished pianist, but nothing like this. He knew the piece she was playing. He knew practically every piano piece the composer had written, the Iberia suite well, although Ramona always said the “Malaga” was too hard for her. Ramona had played the “Suite Espanola” so often over the years he could have whistled every note. In fact, he did whistle the catchy melodies as he rode the pampas. Ramon had been the kindest and most generous of stepfathers, adopting him and lending him his name. But Ramon had his heir, Francisco, who would soon turn twenty-one. Stepbrothers, they had never grown close. There was the big difference in age. He was nearly eleven years older, and Francisco was burdened by an intensely jealous nature that came much between them. With him out of the way, perhaps Francisco could find himself and become a better man.
AS IT WAS A WEEKDAY, all the guests were ready to take their leave not long after midnight. The senator as he was leaving complimented Cecile on “a wonderful performance.” The other guests, too, as they moved out the front door expressed their enjoyment. Tara, who had come with her parents, grasped Cecile’s arm rather painfully, drawing her swiftly aside.
“He’s not married, is he?” she asked excitedly, color in her creamy cheeks.
“You mean Raul?”
“What’s
