Return to Paradise (Torres Family Saga) Read Free

The hard-looking Spaniards parted as the Argonese led the physician inside.
           Benjamin let his eyes adjust to the dim light as he heard fluent cursing in Castilian. Recalling some of his father's more remarkable oaths, he decided the commander must be a native of Seville to have acquired the same unique idiom. “Bring a lighted torch,” Benjamin ordered. “I can see naught.” As he approached the low pallet he saw the man lying on it, a large red ooze soaking through his heavy tunic. His armor had been removed and the injury bound crudely. The man lay still, his breathing labored, his face turned away from Benjamin.
           Some subconscious instinct made Torres pause before he opened his bag with a loud click of the latch. The man was swarthy as the Argonese, perhaps more so, yet his features—slim, straight nose, high forehead and bold jawline—were classically chiseled. And disturbingly familiar.
           The Argonese, who obviously had never before seen Pescara's favorite young officer, now stared in gape-jawed amazement, first down at the wounded soldier, then up at the physician kneeling over him. Just then the wounded man let out another oath and his eyes snapped open.
           Two identical pairs of brilliant blue eyes fastened each on the other. “Like unto a mirror held up to me, bathed in light...while I am caste in darkness,” Rodrigo said in a rasping voice.
           The man lying before Benjamin had his face, the full arched eyebrows and wide sensuous lips, the square jaw with its cleft chin, but above all the eyes, bright blue Torres eyes!
           “You are golden and I am black. Think you it signifies our morals...or our fates?” Rigo asked, stifling a wince of pain as Benjamin began to remove the bloody bandage with trembling hands.
           “I know not your morals nor can I read our fates, but I do know your name.” Benjamin felt the injured man tense as those unsettling light eyes in that dark face searched his own expression silently. “You are Navaro Torres, my brother!”

 
     
    Chapter One
     
     
           The wounded man let out an oath and grabbed Benjamin's jerkin with surprising strength. “Navaro?” he rasped. “Why do you call me that?”
           “Twas the name your mother gave you,” Benjamin replied.
           “I can scarce believe our sire would speak of his by-blows to his lady wife or legitimate son.”
           “You are wrong,” Benjamin said as calmly as he could, sensing the bitterness in the half-caste mercenary whose hold on him loosened involuntarily when the physician began to probe his wound. It was a long, ugly tear, doubtless from the jagged scrap metals used by the French artillery. Please, God, do not let him die ere Papa can be reunited with him, he prayed silently.
           As he rummaged through his bag for clean linen, the physician continued, “Our father searched for you from the day you vanished from Española. We always believed you were sent to a far away Taino village. Your uncle Guacanagari sent emissaries across the island, even to Cuba and all the lesser outlying islands as well.”
           Benjamin could see the cynical disbelief etched on his brother's face in spite of the ravaging pain Navaro endured so stoically. He probed the wound, extracting a small piece of iron.
           “You called me Navaro. Is that my savage name? Tis not Castilian.”
           “It is the Taino name given you by your mother—and Taino people are not savages. They possess more honor and dignity than most Castilian gentlemen I have met,” Benjamin replied, taking another jagged bit of metal from the open wound. “You withstand pain as if well used to such. How long have you been a soldier?”
           “I was first blooded in my eleventh year,” he replied with an oath as Benjamin probed further. Dismissing the pain he continued, “You speak of these Indians as if