Bride of Fortune (16 page)

      
Mercedes fished through her saddlebags for the small sack with emergency medical supplies she always carried when traveling. When she looked around for Lucero, he was nowhere near the campfire. She followed the low gurgling sound of the mineral pool and found him sitting on a rock at water's edge. Bright moonlight reflected on his bare upper body as he bathed the dried blood from his skin.

      
“Here, let me do that,” she said, approaching him and taking the compress which he had applied to a particularly nasty slash on his left shoulder.

      
He looked up at her, startled for an instant before the familiar mocking arrogance spread across his features. “After this afternoon, I thought you'd want to keep your distance.”

      
“I said your wounds should be tended.” Her hands were steady as she wrung out the cloth and reapplied it, feeling the heat of his body and the flexing of sleek satiny muscles beneath the skin.

      
“Always the dutiful wife, my darling,” he whispered. His whole body was on fire for her but he dared not touch her, his lady with her hair unbound, flowing over her shoulders like a glowing silvery curtain in the moonlight. He wanted to tangle his fists in that hair and crush her against him, to inhale her sweet feminine heat and plunge deep inside the velvet depths of her body, right here, right now.
In the mud.

      
He looked down at his blood-caked filthy pants and boots, knowing what he was, what she was, and how unworthy he was of a woman like her. He had tried to tell himself that he deserved her more than his brother did, that Luce cared nothing for her and had treated her abominably.
But I'm no better than him. I'm a killer, too.

      
She could sense the leashed tension in him. Stark lines of anguish were etched on his face. Moonlight shadowed the boldly handsome planes and angles, making his expression difficult to read. His hand began to tremble. “Are you in pain?” Why had she asked that?

      
He gave a shaky laugh. “Not the sort you imagine,” he replied grimly, taking the cloth from her. “The cuts are shallow. This water has healing properties in it. I'll be fine.” He started to stand up.

      
“I have salve and a clean shirt,” she volunteered quickly, too quickly.

      
He studied her, puzzled, then reached out and touched her cheek with his fingertips. “You were very brave today.”

      
“I was frightened to death.”

      
“You handled yourself very well.”

      
“So did you.” Her eyes dropped to the knife, then back to his face. She finished opening the ointment vial as the thought struck her. “You fought left-handed.”

      
Nicholas knew Hilario had noticed. He had hoped she would not, but should have realized she would. He shrugged. “Once, a couple of years ago, I took a fall from a horse and my right arm was broken. I had to learn to use my left.” A glib answer. Also a reasonable one, he hoped.

      
The war had changed them all so much, she thought. He had lived through so many campaigns in faraway places, journeyed all the way to Mexico City, even been presented at court. When his letters to Don Anselmo described that, she had been jealous, but now it seemed so long ago. Mercedes was not exactly certain why these things were important to her. “Is that also when you learned to speak English?”

      
“I found I possess a great many talents I never suspected I had.”

      
Mercedes studied him in the moonlight. Her throat was dry. She swallowed and wet her lips, wondering how to respond. She had witnessed him kill with such savage barbarity that it shocked her, yet still this enigmatic man, so changed by the war, drew her. She finished applying the ointment and handed him the shirt. He stood and slipped it on, then pulled her up to his side.

      
Wordlessly they walked back toward the flickering campfire.

Chapter Seven

      
As they rode through the broad fertile valley of the Sonora River, toward Hermosillo, Mercedes stared at Lucero from behind, watching the way he rode with the effortless grace of all Hidalgo horsemen. He sat the horse arrogantly, every inch the haughty aristocrat she had married over four years ago. Yet he was different. Her thoughts drifted to the way she awakened this morning, enfolded in his arms beneath the warmth of their heavy woolen blankets. She had seen the hardened brutal killer yesterday, a man of war whose touch she should have dreaded. But last night he had made no attempt to claim his rights.

      
Instead, he had quietly made up their bedroll in front of the fire, directly across from Hilario and the other men. When she slipped fully clothed beneath the scratchy covers, he did the same, protectively enfolding her against his chest. Then he slept. She had felt oddly pleased by the simple act, in no way embarrassed or demeaned in front of their servants. And she had awakened with a sense of security and warmth that extended far beyond the physical protection offered by his hard male body.

      
What was this man she had sworn to hold at bay doing to her? Already he had given her, in one brief night, a glimpse of passion, of the mysterious and sensual hunger between men and women. That was threat enough to her untutored young body. This new aura of protectiveness and security drew her into yet another level of emotional involvement. What power to wound he could have over her! If she allowed it. But she had sworn never to give in and must now summon the resolve to keep her vow, lest she end up a bitter husk of a woman like her mother-in-law.

      
Riders crested the hill, a long caravan of heavily laden pack mules accompanied by fat merchants and hard-eyed gunmen, bound for the port city of Guaymas to the south. After that they encountered more travelers as they neared their destination. Hermosillo was a large and beautiful old city situated in the lush Sonora River valley. The spires of its magnificent cathedral gleamed in the distance, their bells pealing out the call to worshippers. A series of fountains surrounded by long low benches were shaded by fragrant orange and lemon trees, offering a refuge from the sticky noontime heat. Here and there tall cottonwoods rustled softly in the breeze, casting majestic shadows across the rows of adobe buildings that lined the long narrow cobblestone streets.

      
The city was tense, occupied by a French garrison whose commander had forced the allegiance of the populace at bayonet point. Merchants and tradesmen were threatened with imprisonment and the confiscation of their property if they did not accept the authority of imperial officers and collect the emperor's taxes from their unhappy countrymen. Shops and market stalls were open, but few buyers examined merchandise or haggled over prices. Hard-eyed
pistoleros
lounged in the shadows, watching all the strangers who entered the city. Their eyes were speculative and cold, their hands resting casually on the gun belts strapped to their hips. The bright blue and white uniforms of French soldiers were everywhere in evidence. The lilting cadence of their language rang out from cantinas and public buildings. When laughter was heard, it was from French voices. Others on the streets were sullen and silent.

      
“I do not think you will have any trouble hiring vaqueros,
patrón
,” Hilario said to Nicholas as they rode past one particularly large cantina.

      
“There are many mercenaries available, but they're not the kind of men I'd prefer to hire.” He shrugged.

      
“Most would not work with livestock,” Hilario agreed. “But I could make inquiries for men who know the difference between longhorns and burros.”

      
“I'll pay fifty pesos a month. See who you can find. I'll meet you at the Snake and Cactus Cantina this evening. I need to get my wife and daughter settled first.”

      
Hilario nodded, signaling Tonio and the two boys to go with him.

      
After asking directions to the Ursuline Convent, Nicholas and Mercedes rode down a twisting side street. Rough wooden doors guarded the squat ugly building. A cross atop the small chapel was the only thing visible above its high and forbidding walls. Nicholas dismounted and rapped on the door. Finally, the small hole cut in its center creaked open and an austere face peered out, blinking in the bright afternoon sunlight.

      
“What do you want?” the nun asked timidly.

      
“I am Don Lucero Alvarado. I must speak with Mother Superior on a matter of some urgency.”

      
The little nun blinked again, then opened the door for them and stood to one side with an expression of prim dislike on her small bony features. He helped Mercedes from her horse and they entered the courtyard of the convent.

      
“Follow me,” the nun said officiously, then turned and began to walk stiffly down the dusty path that ran in a diagonal line toward the church. The courtyard was enclosed on all four sides by long low adobe rooms built along the walls of the convent. A narrow porch with a thatched roof fronted the rooms, affording meager shade from the sullen heat.

      
Mercedes saw the effects of the epidemic that had claimed Rosario's mother. Most of the rooms stood vacant, their doors ajar. What had once been a classroom had been turned into a makeshift hospital, the wooden benches shoved aside. Pallets lay in rows on the floor, most now ominously empty, but two patients still suffered the ghastly dehydration of the final stages of cholera, moaning in feverish pain.

      
Was this where Rosario's mother died?
Mercedes wondered. Did her husband think about his dead lover as they walked quickly past the infirmary? Were his feelings for her the reason he was willing to claim his child? The thought that she was jealous of a dead woman niggled uneasily at the periphery of her consciousness but she squashed it, turning her thoughts to Rosario.

      
There were no children in sight. Where was the little girl? How would the child feel about going on a long journey with two complete strangers? Mercedes could not imagine Lucero as a father.

      
Two more sisters dressed in frayed gray habits conversed in somber tones by the well in the center of the courtyard, their voices obscured by the creak of the crank and rope as they labored to pull the bucket up from below. The door keeper and her charges passed the well and headed to a room just off the left side of the church.

      
A sharp rap on the open door by the little nun brought a response in the deep, well-modulated voice of an older woman. “What is it, Sister Agnes?”

      
“Don Lucero has come about Rosario,” was the terse reply.

      
“Show him in.” The tall elderly woman stood up, her spare figure unbent by age as she studied the man and woman with shrewd brown eyes set in a long face with blunt mismatched features. Her bulbous nose, deep-set eyes and pronounced jaw gave her a look of intense tenacity. “I am Mother Superior Catherine, Don Lucero. I had not expected Rosario's father to come in person,” she added, tilting her head in Mercedes’ direction, waiting for him to introduce his companion.

      
Nicholas felt her cool assessment and read between the lines. She had sent the letter to his father, expecting Father Salvador or some servant would arrive with a small sack of coins, the child's entree to another orphanage. “I realize you did not know, but my father, Don Anselmo, is dead these past months. I was summoned home from the war to take over my responsibilities at Gran Sangre.”

      
At the mention of the old don's passing, the nun made the sign of the cross. “No, I did not. I will, of course, see that novenas are said for his soul.” Her tone of voice indicated that he was in considerable need of them.

      
“Our family will be most grateful, Mother Superior. May I present my wife, Doña Mercedes Sebastián de Alvarado.”

      
The nun's thin gray eyebrows raised a tiny fraction but her angular horse face remained otherwise expressionless. “It is my pleasure to welcome you to our humble convent, my lady.” She indicated the crude wooden stools. “Please be seated. I can offer little in the way of refreshment, I fear, but perhaps a bit of cool water?”

      
Thinking of the nuns laboring at the well, Nicholas replied, “We thank you but we have already quenched our thirst on the way to your convent. Could we see my daughter now?”

      
“I do not think that wise, Don Lucero. Rosario is still frightened by the death of her mother and will have a long journey to Guaymas with Sister Agnes. Introducing two strangers would only serve to upset her more. You may leave whatever you can spare to help her on her way.”

      
“You misunderstand, Mother Superior. I've come to take her home—to Gran Sangre with me,” Nicholas said, struggling to remain patient. The look of patent disbelief that washed across her features made it difficult.

      
The old nun turned to Mercedes. “And this is your wish as well, my lady?”