was dying inside. He was going to sell her, and she’d never see Eduardo again. Never, never...
“There is an alternative,” he said after a minute.
She looked up.
He studied his boots, caked with mud. “You might consider marrying Eduardo.”
Her heart went right up into her throat. She put a hand to it, to keep it from jumping out onto the floor. “Wh-what?”
“Eduardo!” He stared at her, planted with feet wide and both hands behind his back. “He’s a widower, and what polite society would call a half-breed, but he does have a title. His family is connected to European royalty.”
She laughed, almost choking in the process. “Eduardo wouldn’t want me,” she said bitterly. “He hates me.”
“He might be willing to marry you,” he continued, careful not to mention the conversation he’d had with the man. “Especially if you tried to improve yourself a little, if you dressed up and smiled at him once in a while. He’ll have competition at the ball. Two other men, both titled. It might make him sit up.” He looked away, so that she couldn’t see the unholy glee in his eyes. He’d frightened her enough that Eduardo now looked like salvation itself. He congratulated himself silently on his shrewdness. So much for her stubborn refusal to consider a match of his choosing. She could be won over, with the right words and strategies.
“He’s said that he doesn’t want to remarry,” she continued.
“He’s also said that he doesn’t want to lose his inheritance,” he reminded her. “If his past wasn’t so unpleasant, his old grandmother could help him make another match in Spain, as she did with his late wife. But his wife died under mysterious circumstances and his mother has become embroiled in some new scandal back East. She isn’t Spanish at all—his mother is a Texas heiress who comes from German and good Irish stock.”
“I know that. She lives in New York with her second husband. Eduardo hates her.”
He didn’t know how she knew that, but he didn’t push his luck. He folded his arms over his chest. “It’s because of what his mother’s done that his grandmother is determined to leave her wealth to his second cousin. Not only is he completely Spanish, but he has no scandal about him.”
“Eduardo told you that?”
He nodded. “Some time ago, of course,” he added evasively. “They say the old lady’s coming here to stay with him for the summer.”
“He’ll be glad, I imagine. He loves his grandmother.”
“Pity it isn’t mutual.” His small eyes riveted themselves to her face. “Well, what do you think of marrying Eduardo?”
She swallowed. “I would...be willing, I suppose,” she said with just the right touch of reluctance, “if it would save me from having to live in some foreign place.”
He felt like dancing a jig, but he didn’t dare let his stubborn daughter know how much her acceptance pleased him. Sometimes he even liked her for her spirit—so long as he didn’t remember what she’d cost him with her birth. Honest to God, she was almost a mirror image of him in temper. “Then suppose you go into town as I suggested and find a nice gown to wear to the ball?”
She drew in a long breath. “I suppose I could do that.”
“Go to Meriwether’s, where I have an account. Buy whatever you need.”
She stood up. “Eduardo’s title is only good in Europe,” she began.
He held up a hand. “It’s good anywhere,” he said stiffly. “Even in Texas. He’s only half Spanish, but most people will overlook that because of his European relations.” He gave her a long, unpleasant look. “Considering your lack of beauty and the state of your health, I really think it would be overly optimistic to think that a European would want you. We’ll be lucky indeed if Eduardo is willing to take you on.”
“I’m not so much a burden as you like to think, Father. I do earn my keep. I’m quite good with figures and budgets. Eduardo might even find me an asset, given his present circumstances.”
He shrugged. “You’re useful enough when you’re well. But you’re quite often sick, Bernadette.” He turned away heavily. “It’s the memories you bring back,” he said in a rare moment’s honesty. “I see her face as she died, hear her scream, feel my heart break and break inside my body.” He put a hand absently to his chest. “I loved her so!”
Bernadette actually felt the words. But before she could speak, he turned and went out the door, his footsteps loud and angry, as they always were when he had to confront something unpleasant or irritating.
She stared after him in misery. If he’d turned to her instead of away from her, how different her life might have been. He blamed her for his wife’s death, would always blame her. She could never hope for a close relationship with him, because he didn’t want one. All he wanted from his daughter was an advantageous marriage and her complete absence from his life. He didn’t say that, but he meant it.
She felt very old as she went to get her hat and gloves. She had few choices left now, but she was going to get out of her father’s life. She couldn’t bring herself to marry a European. She would love to marry Eduardo. But that, despite her father’s curious interest in the subject, was unlikely. Eduardo’s aversion to a second marriage was well-known to everyone. Her father would never persuade him to go through with such a venture, and certainly she wasn’t going to be able to seduce their neighbor into marriage with her pitiful assets.
Still, letting her father think it could happen might keep him from pressuring her about his other candidates.
For an instant, she let herself dream about how it would be to marry Eduardo and openly show her love for him, to be loved by him in return. She felt a powerful physical attraction to him that was profoundly augmented by the deep love she felt for him. He had no such interest in her, although he seemed to find her physically attractive.
She wondered if she could really heighten that interest. She knew very little of men, but she was a great reader of forbidden books, and she did know how to dress and behave in public. Some of the girls at her exclusive finishing school in New York had talked quite candidly about their relationships with men. But Bernadette, while spirited, was a novice. Eduardo could do anything to her, and she dared not lure him into a position where she might fall from grace.
But the mere thought that he might be willing to marry her was so intriguing a proposition that her heart was skipping beats. It was the first time she’d been able to see marriage as a real possibility in her life. Despite her father’s manipulations, she might permit herself to be convinced. If Eduardo was interested in marrying her at all, she might be the very person who could help him reorganize his ranch and make it show a profit. Her father didn’t like being reminded that she’d saved him from a drastic financial loss once, several years before when she first took over the enormous task of overseeing the accounts after the resignation of their bookkeeper. Her father had liked the idea of not paying an outsider, or allowing a stranger to see his assets. But whether Eduardo would want to marry her, even for her father’s money, remained to be seen. It also gave her hope that, if she had courage, her wildest dreams might come true.
CHAPTER THREE
BERNADETTE
