Once Cassidy had thought her aunt’s and uncle’s friends and acquaintances attending their frequent parties very splendid in their fancy storebought clothes. Cassidy had often watched those gatherings, to which she was never invited, through the windows of her uncle’s adobe hacienda, and envied the ricos inside. She knew that she, in her patched and dusty work clothes, would never be one of them.
The people here moved as if they wore such rich and gorgeous clothes every day, as if they’d never known the feel of dirt under their bare feet or mended a hole in a pair of stockings.
Not one of them was as magnificent as her gentleman.
He stepped out of his carriage and paused, head lifted, and she saw his face in lamplight.
He matched the promise of his scent in every way. His bearing was that of a king, his dark clothing perfectly tailored over a sleek, strong body.
His face was breathtakingly handsome. Under his hat a single lock of gray hair draped down across dark, imposing brows. His mouth was mobile, his nose long but not too big, his chin square and strong.
But it was his eyes that arrested her. They were green, the rich color of life like the desert after a good rain, slightly tilted above high cheekbones. They had the power to pierce the darkness, and if he were to turn and look her way…
“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,” she quoted silently. That was the image that came into her mind. He burned very bright indeed. His nostrils flared as if to scent the air, a hunter about to spring. Authority and power radiated from him like heat from desert earth, flowed like a spring that would never run dry—a spring with the gift to restore life at the end of a long and perilous search; a magical well that could answer all her questions.
In New Mexico, when the questions and unfulfilled needs had become almost too much to bear, she would run far out into the desert and stand under the moon and howl until her throat was raw. She felt like howling now, so she bit her lip and sank deeper into the shadows. But caution could not still the excitement that convinced her that she knew this stranger as well as herself—that if she dared walk into the light he would open his arms and carry her off to his magic kingdom…
He turned away from her, unseeing, and walked up the stairs of the house. He spoke to the costumed men, who bowed low and ushered him in. The remaining man looked right and left and followed, leaving the doorway deserted.
Cassidy knelt beside the scant cover of a low iron fence and glanced toward the street. There was a lull in the comings and goings of carriages and people; the guardians at the door were absent. She dashed up the steps, paused at the door, drew in a breath, and pulled it open.
The grand hallway she entered was empty, but she felt that was only a temporary condition. Those costumed men were sure to return. She could hear music plainly now, and many voices echoing down the wide staircase that rose to the second floor. It was obvious where her stranger had gone.
She couldn’t see any other way to follow but go up those same stairs. At least her shoes were new and wouldn’t dirty the polished perfection of the marble steps. Cassidy pressed herself to the banister and hurried up the stairs, listening for the shout that would bring her adventure to a humiliating stop.
But she made it to the top of the stairs unseen. She had a feeling that there should have been more people on the landing; a sense of anticipation hung in the air, and it came most of all from the open doorway across from the stairs. That was where the music and voices were loudest, and where the two costumed men lingered, looking into the room but not entering. A woman in a black dress and white cap joined them, whispering excitedly.
Something was about to happen. Cassidy abandoned caution and moved up behind the spectators in the doorway. The scents of close-packed bodies and perfumes and flowers were overpowering, yet she knew her stranger had passed this way only moments before. The woman with the cap glanced at her in surprise, but Cassidy smiled and met her gaze, and the woman’s attention slid away.