Bride of Fortune (2 page)

      
“I could never take Don Anselmo's place, Mamacita.” She stiffened at the mocking endearment, just as he knew she would.

      
“You could far outstrip your father in debauchery by now, I'd warrant, after the years of war, living with the kind of riffraff who are paid to fight that foreigner's battles.”

      
His eyebrows rose in surprise. “Would you rather see that Indian peasant Juarez rule Mexico than the Emperor Maximilian?”

      
“Do not be absurd. You know I despise that godless despoiler of Holy Mother Church.” Her bony fingers fiercely clutched a rosary of lapis lazuli and diamonds.

      
“We have no other choice but Juarez or Maximilian.”

      
She sighed wearily. “I no longer care for politics. God and his saints will preserve the holy faith. Your duty no longer lies in fighting for the emperor.”

      
“I know my duty to the House of Alvarado,” he said with stiff formality.

      
She tried to give a snort of disgust but her lungs were so weak that it came out a wheezing of breath. “Neither you nor your sire have ever given evidence of knowing your duty before this.”

      
“Must the sins of the father always be visited upon the sons?” he asked bitterly.

      
“You've sins enough of your own to answer for and well you know it,” she snapped. “Leaving your bride's bed to cavort with harlots, then riding away a scant few weeks after your marriage.”

      
“Well, I've answered Father Salvador's summons now,” he replied tersely.

      
“It took your father's death to bring you to heel. Even he was displeased when you left without planting your seed in Mercedes’ belly.”

      
The image of shimmering dark gold hair and luminous amber eyes flashed into his mind. A slumberous expression came over his face, but it did not soften the harsh beauty of his features. “She's matured into a very beautiful woman. Providing an heir for Gran Sangre won't exactly be an onerous task.”

      
“She may think otherwise. The girl has nurtured some foolish notions in your absence. You should never have left her alone all these years.”

      
His expression became wary. “What do you mean?”

      
“You will see soon enough. But I don't fear your failure to bend her to your will—you were ever your father's son,” she said with bitter irony.

      
His body stiffened in outrage, but he bowed formally to her. A long-buried anger resurrected, churning his guts. “I'll do my duty.”

      
“A pleasing promise to your father could he hear it. Hateful news to your wife when she does,” Sofia said smugly.

      
A chill settled over him as he studied her in silence. She seemed amused by some secret jest. Without replying to her cryptic remark, he turned and strode through the heavy oak door, slamming it as he departed.

      
The room was once more as dark and quiet as a sepulcher, the silence broken only by the soft clacking of beads as Doña Sofia resumed her rote prayers.

      
He stormed down the hallway headed in the direction of the master suite when a slight figure with a halo of white hair materialized from a side door and stood directly in his way. The snowy brilliance of his shoulder-length hair contrasted with the heavy black cassock he wore.

      
“Father Salvador. I should’ve expected you to be hovering somewhere nearby, like a vulture circling, waiting for the death throes. Have you given her last rites yet, or are you saving that for a special treat?”

      
Ice-blue eyes set narrowly in a deceptively frail-looking face fixed on him with fierce intensity. “I might have known your years away from home would change nothing. You are as unfeeling and irreverent as ever, Lucero Alvarado.”

      
“God, I certainly hope so,” he replied with a grim laugh.

      
“Your father has passed to his just reward. Now your mother will soon ascend to hers.” Father Salvador's expression left no doubt of his certainty that Lucero's parents would not end up in the same place. “The least you could do is show a shred of compassion for her while she still lives.”

      
“Why? She never showed any for me, not even when I was a small child.”

      
“I remember that small child. He stole communion wine from the sacristy and came to my classroom reeling drunk.”

      
“I'd forgotten that,” he replied in amusement. “I threw up all over my catechism.”

      
“And my cassock.” The priest's voice held no levity.

      
“Only because you grabbed me by the neck and caned me.”

      
“You also stole coins from the poor box.”

      
“Just as the emperor steals from his subjects.”

      
Father Salvador stiffened in outrage. “You fought for the emperor!”

      
“So I did. After all, the Juaristas don't pay as well,” he replied lightly, enjoying baiting the priest.

      
Realizing the game Lucero played, Father Salvador bit back his acerbic reply. “You are the
patrón
of Gran Sangre. Your irresponsible behavior should be in the past. You have a duty to perform,
Don
Lucero.” He stressed the title.

      
“So I've been reminded once or twice. But that matter is for me and my wife to settle.”

      
“And best you do so quickly. Doña Mercedes has far exceeded her station. She is merely a woman, the weaker vessel meant to rear children and oversee the great house, not the
patrón
to ride out with coarse vaqueros, hobnob with common merchants in Hermosillo—even defy the army.”

      
His eyebrows rose. “Meek little Mercedes? My little mouse?” He chuckled wryly. “She has certainly changed, but then since my father's death, I imagine a great deal has fallen on her shoulders.”

      
“Long before your father's death. I do not entirely blame her, although her behavior has been most unseemly,” the priest added righteously. “Even when he was alive and well, Don Anselmo attended to matters of running Gran Sangre most indifferently. He was always off pursuing carnal pleasures.”

      
“There is much to be said for carnal pleasures, Father Salvador. And surely they make confessions ever so much more interesting, don't they?” There was a silky insult lurking beneath the words.

      
The priest stiffened. It was apparent he wished Lucero a small boy once more so that he might give him another good caning. He swallowed his bile and crossed himself, offering up a small prayer for patience. “Gran Sangre is doomed if the Alvarados must depend on you to preserve their heritage.”

      
“Perhaps I may just surprise you all.”

* * * *

      
As he sat soaking in a tub of steamy water, his eyes drifted closed while he remembered his long journey to Sonora. Riding northeast from Tamaulipas he had seen so much senseless destruction of a land once rich and beautiful that it made his stomach turn. The thick adobe walls of pueblo churches were scorched black and desolate, lesser buildings reduced to utter rubble. Dry ocotillo grew in clumps up and down streets where once small gardens had been lovingly tended.

      
Wherever the Emperor Maximilian's armies rode, they exacted a terrible vengeance on the populace who overwhelmingly supported President Benito Juarez and his republic. Imperial forces burned out rebel villages and poisoned the water supplies so no one could inhabit an area. After they departed, the peons returned, grimly struggling to reclaim a meager existence amid ruins.

      
The most brutal of all Maximilian's soldiers were the
contre-guerrillas
, small bands composed mainly of foreign mercenaries along with a smattering of Mexican imperialists. He was all too familiar with the way the
contre-guerrillas
did their work. He had ridden with them until the summons arrived and his days as a soldier had come to an end.

      
As he had ridden toward Gran Sangre, he had wondered what he would find at journey's end. The vast
hacienda
was a feudal kingdom carved out of the splendid isolation of southern Sonora, four million acres of prime grazing and timberlands. Five generations of Alvarados had been the
patróns
of noble blood for which it was named. That noble blood of royal Spain flowed in their veins...in his veins.

      
The Alvarado
hacienda
was a land that had first belonged to deer and wolves, panthers and jaguars. It was wild and mountainous, grooved with lush valley meadows that gave way to slopes studded with deep stands of walnuts, sycamores and pine. Fierce Mayo Indians roamed the interior, raiding the outlying herds of cattle and more especially the blooded horses raised by the wealthy
hacendados
. But nothing the Indians could do equaled the destructive fury of the civil war.

      
Twilight had approached when the great house finally lay spread before him, gilded by the last rays from the setting sun. It stood, still intact, an immense adobe structure two stories high, hundreds of feet across with a large courtyard in the center. A silvery arc of water from the fountain sparkled in the dying light. Elaborate wrought-iron grillwork covered large, high windows, softening the fortress like effect of the thick outer walls.

      
He had guided his great pewter stallion Peltre down the twisting rocky trail to the valley floor where a tough-looking old half-caste Indian herded three milk cows toward a long, low stable on the west side of the big house.

      
Hearing the approach of a horse, the man had raised his head and peered from beneath the wide floppy brim of his straw sombrero. His normally impassive face became awestruck. “Don Lucero, is it truly you?” He quickly removed the hat in a gesture that was oddly awkward yet courtly.

      
“Hilario? The years have not dulled your eyesight, old man. How is it my father's finest horsebreaker is reduced to herding milk cows?”

      
Hilario's gray head bowed and he shrugged with disgust at the cattle, using his hat to swat them along the path to the stables. “Since the imperials came and took the best horses in the stable, I have been afoot. We have hidden the few that remain. Both sides need horses to ride and cattle to eat. These old bags of bones are of no use to them else we'd do without milk, too. I am very sorry for the
patrón's
death,” he said, making the sign of the cross. “It is good you have returned home, Don Lucero.”

      
“It has been a hard time since my father died, then?”

      
“Yes.”

      
Before he could question the old man further, a squeal of delight echoed across the grassy pasture. A young girl, fourteen or fifteen years of age, stared at him for a moment, then turned and raced for the house, calling for the
patrona
.

      
A smile etched his wide, beautifully chiseled lips. “It seems my wife awaits me. He had nodded to Hilario and urged Peltre into a trot toward the front gate. Servants emerged from various outbuildings along his route, crowding around the big stallion, their bronzed faces mirroring their excitement at the return of the
hacienda
's only heir.

      
He greeted several by name. A tall, buxom woman of middle years with iron gray hair plaited in two thick braids that hung down her back inspected him from the stone steps of the smokehouse. She stood clutching a ham in her large capable hands. Her shrewd dark eyes measured the dusty young
patrón
as he smiled.

      
“Angelina. You never change. Will you cook a feast tonight for the prodigal's arrival?”

      
“But of course, Don Lucero. I will roast this fine ham in your honor. Your lady will be most surprised to see you returned without any word.”

      
“There is little chance to write during a war and even less likelihood that letters will be delivered.” He shrugged and turned away from her intent gaze, noting that most of the servants were old and infirm men with a number of women and young children scattered among them.

      
The war had reached with greedy hands this far into the northern wilderness to pluck the youths in their prime. How many had he seen die, cannon fodder before modern French weapons? Or, impressed into the imperial army and killed in guerrilla skirmishes by their own kind. Yet as he had ridden closer to the front steps of the Alvarado ancestral home, the tragedies of war had fled his mind. The great sprawling
hacienda
was his!

      
Shaking his head to clear away the dreamy reverie, he shifted in the tub and surveyed the master suite in which he was now ensconced. The massive darkly stained oak furniture had been brought over from Spain in the eighteenth century. Nicks and scratches marred it and a fresh coating of dust covered the intricately carved surfaces. The heavy dark blue draperies were liberally coated as well, the silk frayed and dull with age. The Tabriz carpets had once cost a grandee's ransom, but now they were stained and threadbare. The room reeked of age and neglect.