Carly smiled and shrugged her shoulders, then turned toward the door as if to leave. “Well, if you don’t mind sharing him…”
“If you were to go, Ramon would not be safe. You would turn him over to the authorities.”
Carly turned to face her, leaned forward and rested her palms on the battered wooden table. “Not if we were to strike a bargain. Give me your word you’ll help me escape and I’ll give you mine not to turn Ramon in.”
“You are agringa.How could I trust you?”
“You’re the don’s woman. How could I trust you? You might send me in the wrong direction. You might have someone lying in wait to murder me on the trail. We will have to trust each other if we are to succeed.”
Miranda chewed her lip and Carly’s heart began to throb with hope inside her chest. Both of them would be taking a risk. Would the woman keep her word? The dangers Carly hadmentioned were more than real. She would have to be careful, find some way to protect herself, once she was safely away.
As for herself, she would say anything to escape this place. She refused to consider whether or not she would keep her silence once she reached her home.
“I will let you know tonight,” Miranda said. “Leave your window open. At midnight, I will tell you what I have decided.”
Carly left the cabin afraid to hope, yet feeling for the first time as if there might be a chance. The woman clearly despised her, but Carly didn’t believe she was capable of murder. She might send her off the wrong way, hoping Carly would die in the mountains, but most likely she would simply say no.
Miranda was worried for Ramon and rightly so. Carly thought that if she were his woman, she would do anything to protect him. Then again, if he really belonged to her, she might do anything to keep him from turning to another woman.
That thought was disturbing. Ramon de la Guerra was an outlaw, perhaps even a murderer as her uncle had said. She would have to turn him in—wouldn’t she? She felt uneasy to think of breaking her word.
Pleading a headache, Carly ate with Pedro and Florentia then went to her bedroom early, only to wind up pacing the floor of her small room. At midnight, just as Miranda had promised, soft feminine footfalls sounded in the dirt beneath her bedroom window.
“Senorita McConnell?”
“I’m here, Miranda.” She stood beside the open portal, but didn’t pull back the thin muslin curtains.
“Tomorrow at dawn, there is a wagon leaving to pick up supplies in San Juan Bautista. A vaquero named Francisco Villegas will be driving. He will do anything for a little bit of gold. I have paid him to take you down the mountain. When he nears your uncle’s ranch, he will show you which way to go.”
Carly closed her eyes, excitement racing through her. “I understand.”
“You must be in the back of the wagon before the sun comes up. It will be sitting not far from this window.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Do I have your word Ramon will be safe?”
Carly took a deep steadying breath. “You have my word.”
“If you are lying, if you tell anyone it was I who helped you, I promise I will kill you. Do you hear me?”
Carly wet her lips. “Yes.”
Gravel crunched beneath the window as the woman walked away, and Carly released a slow breath of air. She had no idea what would happen, nor what she would do once she escaped the compound. But events were set in motion. She meant to see them through.
Hours passed. Pulling the blankets off her bed, she fashioned a makeshift bedroll, stuffing the shawl the don had given her inside along with a second skirt and blouse Florentia had provided and a partially burned white tallow candle. The two-foot-long candleholder was made of heavy wrought iron. It would serve well as a weapon. She’d been hoarding food for the past two days. She rolled it up in the coarse linen towel beside the water pitcher on the dresser and tucked it in with the rest of the supplies.
Plaiting her hair into a single thick braid, she tied it with a piece of string and lay down on the bed to sleep. Instead she tossed and turned and stared up at the ceiling, praying she was doing the right thing.
At four o’clock, she gave up. She scribbled a note to Florentia, telling her not to make breakfast, that she had left at dawn with some of the women to bathe and wash her clothes in the stream. She would eat something later with Tomasina.
Anything to delay them.
It was colder than she had imagined so she took out the shawl and wrapped it around her shoulders, then pulled on her sandals and climbed out the window, makeshift bedroll in hand.
There was no one near the wagon. She climbed in the back and pulled the canvas tarpaulin over her head. Every minute dragged, turned into long, nerve-wracking hours. Finally she heard voices and the jangling of harnesses as a team of horses was hitched into their traces. The wagon creaked beneath the heavy weight of the man who climbed up on the rough wooden seat. Francisco Villegas, Miranda had said.
It was still cold outside, but a trickle of perspiration ran between her breasts. Her palms were damp, and her heart beat fiercely. As the wagon picked up speed, she slid the long wrought-iron candle stand out from inside the bedroll and hid it beneath the bundle. Then she waited, ignoring the pounding her bones were taking against the hard rough wood as they bumped along the dusty road.
