Bride of Fortune (33 page)

      
She could feel his weight pressing her hard against the rocky ground. The surreal haze of pleasure was gradually replaced by an awareness of their vulnerability. The wetness of his blood began to soak through her clothes.

      
“Lucero?” She struggled to roll him off of her. Finally he seemed to regain consciousness, shaking his head to clear it, then raising up enough to kneel between her legs and pull up his pants. She scrambled up beside him, tugging her torn clothes into the barest semblance of order before she turned to him. He swayed on his knees, then started to collapse into her arms.

      
“Careful, my darling, don't fall,” she murmured, lowering his big body to lean against an outcropping of shale. Dear God, now she could see that he was losing blood at a terrible rate. She needed something for bandages—her heavy riding skirts. The stiff twill would not give when she tried to tear it by hand.

      
“You need...my knife,” Nicholas said, as consciousness ebbed and flowed from him in giddy lightheaded surges.

      
At once she scrambled over to the dead cat and pulled the blade from its gristly mooring. Ignoring the gore encrusted on it, she began to hack methodically at her skirts until she had torn free a long strip of the heavy cloth.

      
He could feel her hands tremble as she wound the makeshift bandages around his arm. A jagged bolt of agony restored his fading consciousness when she tightened the cloth against the lacerations. He swore an oath. “Don't panic now or you'll finish what the cat began.”

      
“You were crazy, trying to kill a puma with a knife,” she retorted, frantic over the amount of blood he was losing.

      
“I didn't try—I succeeded, at that and other things,” he said, reaching up to caress her cheek. “If I hadn't fought the cat you would’ve shot Bufón, a poor reward for saving your life.”

      
At the mention of his name, the shaggy dog raised his head and whimpered.

      
“At least he says thank you,” Nicholas added, grinning at her through pain-glazed eyes. God, how pale and distraught her face was. Her eyes glowed like molten amber as she studied him, angry and frightened over the way he had risked his life.

      
“Lie still so the bleeding eases,” she whispered.

      
“No need for such wifely concern. I've been cut up a lot worse than this and survived.”

      
“I've seen the scars, Lucero,” she said with a quiet shudder.

      
The two of them sat on the hard dusty earth, huddled together, staring deeply into one another's eyes, each reading more than the other intended to reveal.

      
“You must be in terrible pain,” she said.

      
“It never hurts much at first. Shock, I suppose,” he replied as his teeth began to chatter. “Always gets damned cold though.”

      
With nothing to warm him but her body, Mercedes leaned closer and put her arms around him, trying not to cause him further hurt. He could feel her soft sweet breath against his throat and smell the lavender scent of her hair. He reached up with his good arm and caressed the silky curtain that spilled around her shoulders.

      
The gentle caress caused her to shiver along with him, but she was not cold, not cold at all. “Thank you for Bufón,” she murmured.

      
“I only hope he makes it,” Nicholas replied.

      
“He will. You both will,” she answered, stroking his forehead, which had suddenly become clammy in the afternoon heat.

      
“
Patrona
!” Hilario's voice echoed over the clopping of hoof beats as he and Gregorio rode toward her. “We found your horse at the mouth of the arroyo and knew something terrible had happened. I sent Ramon after help.”

      
Weak with relief, Mercedes raised her head. “The
patrón
has been injured. Can you move him without reopening the wounds?”

      
“I can ride,” Nicholas said doggedly, trying to sit up. The earth spun crazily and he collapsed back into Mercedes’ arms.

      
I’ll rig a litter,” Gregorio said. He dismounted and began to unfasten the bedroll on his saddle.

      
In a matter of minutes several more riders arrived. They carried their now-unconscious
 
and the big dog back to the house where Angelina was waiting with Rosario.

      
Rosario ran out to greet them, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Is my papa going to be all right? And Bufón?”

      
“Yes, child, but you must go upstairs and wait in your room while we tend them,” Angelina said calmly, then issued instructions for the men to carry the
 
upstairs and the dog into the kitchen.

      
“Hilario, send a rider for the doctor in San Ramos,” Mercedes ordered, then turned to the cook. “Set water to boil and tend to Bufón as best you can. When the water's ready, send it upstairs to me. Have Lupe fetch clean linens for bandages and bring them at once.”

      
She turned and followed the litter with Lucero's unconscious body on it. She could still feel the sweet frisson of heat his touch had brought when they held each other amid the bloody carnage, but forced away thoughts of the savage passion that had preceded the tenderness. That she would examine later, when there was time...when she dared.

      
Don't you dare die, husband
, she admonished silently. He was truly her husband, the man who had risked his life for her and her beloved pet. He was her protector, her lover. She could never let him die!

* * * *

      
Mercedes leaned against the high back of the wooden chair and ran her forearm across her brow, wiping perspiration and a stray lock of hair from her face. All the while her eyes never left the unconscious form of her husband lying so still on the bed. She had needed every nursing skill she had learned from the sisters and from hard experience the past years as
patrona
of an isolated
hacienda
. The slashes across his left shoulder were deep and required many stitches.

      
She smiled grimly, thinking about the fine embroidery skills her
dueña
had drilled into her. The old woman would have been horrified to think a proper lady could actually sew up a man's flesh! But what would any
dueña
think of a woman who writhed in ecstasy beneath a man out in the open without even the dignity of nightfall to cloak them?

      
Turning back to the matter at hand, she forced herself to evaluate the extent of his injuries. The wounds had been raw and ragged but open enough to be cleaned with contra yerba, an ointment made of the leaves and roots of thistle for disinfection. Then she had covered his injuries with a thick paste of yarrow to clot any further seepage of blood. What really worried her were the deep fang punctures in his right arm. If the red streaking poison set in he would lose the arm, perhaps even his life, for few survived the ordeal of amputation, even with laudanum or ether to dull the pain during the horrendous procedure.

      
“You would hate being deformed, wouldn't you?” she asked softly in the silence. His perfect male beauty had been marred by numerous scars but his body was whole and strong. He was a horseman, who could outride any of his vaqueros, a man to whom the loss of a limb would be unmanning. She knew that, foolishly, he would rather die. She also knew that she would never let him die.

      
He stirred restlessly and she rose quickly, checking the drains she had placed in the wounds on his arm.

      
“Do you think the reeds will work?” Angelina asked. She stood in the doorway, a worried frown creasing her normally smiling face.

      
Mercedes had inserted small lengths of hollow reed in each of the punctures, hoping to let the poison drain out before the outer skin healed over. “I have read that doctors employed the practice on battlefield injuries with some success. If a bullet hole can be made to drain, why not the piercing from an animal's teeth?” She wrung her hands, then turned from Angelina back to Lucero, feeling his forehead for the heat of fever.

      
“I've steeped cherry bark. As soon as he awakens, we can spoon it down his throat. Let us hope it will prevent the fever.”

      
“Thank you, Angelina,” Mercedes replied softly. She then added, “Where is Rosario? Is she all right?”

      
“Since you would not allow her in here, she has remained by Bufón's side. Her presence seems to calm him. It's amazing that he is alive, but I have stopped the bleeding with yarrow and laid spider webs on his wounds. I think he will live.”

      
“He saved my life. If I'd blundered onto that cat's lair in such close quarters, he would probably have killed me before I could’ve done anything.”
But much as I love my pet, I'd give his life and my own for yours.
The thought sprang suddenly into her mind as she gazed down at the pale, still form of her husband.

      
“You are exhausted,” Angelina said. “I'm going to draw a hot bath and dish up a bowl of hearty lamb stew for you. Then you must rest. Lupe and Baltazar can take turns watching over the master.”

      
Mercedes shook her head. “I'll stay with him through the night. If the fever rises, he must be cooled at once.”

      
“At least let me bring you food. You will do the
 
no good if you fall into a faint from hunger,” the old cook admonished. Without waiting for a reply she turned to the door, adding, “I will send Baltazar up with a tray. You will eat.”

      
Mercedes watched through the night, dozing on the large cushioned chair beside the bed. Near dawn she awakened to the sounds of moaning. He tossed restlessly in short jerky motions beneath the sheets, then called out her name. His voice was low, raspy and hoarse. She placed her hand on his forehead and found it burning hot.

      
The fever had begun.

      
Summoning Baltazar, she sent the elderly servant to fetch buckets of cool water from the well. Then she unfolded several large white bed sheets to use as soaking cloths. Through the day and into the following night Baltazar and Angelina assisted her in placing the sopping wet cool sheets across her husband's long body, covering him from neck to feet, holding him down when he thrashed in feverish delirium.

      
He spoke in brief disjointed phrases about the ghastly brutality of war which he had lived through, interspersed with bits about a woman named Lottie that made no sense at all. He also called for someone else—Luz, a Mexican woman's name, she was certain. Mostly he called for Mercedes. His voice was so weak and breathless that much of what he said was too garbled to be intelligible. The old cook and valet said nothing to the
patrona
about the fact that he spoke in a polyglot of languages—English and French as well as Spanish.

      
Mercedes was the only one who recognized all three but even she could make little of his fevered cries, other than to recognize how often he invoked her name. He never mentioned Innocencia. But who were Lottie and Luz? Probably some
soldaderas
he had taken up with when he rode with the
contre-guerrillas
. Still, some sixth sense, some repressed fear of what he might reveal caused her to dismiss the servants once the ravings began to grow stronger.

      
“
Patrona
, you cannot hold him down. He will lash out unaware and injure you,” Baltazar protested, his austerely lined face haggard from lack of sleep.

      
“We have bound his wrists and ankles. The linen ties will hold,” she said stubbornly, pushing them from the room. “Fetch more cool water and bring it to me. That is all I need.” Her voice was firm, set. They obeyed. She closed the door, then collapsed against it for a moment, more frightened than she had ever before been. Could Lucero have become so used to speaking English and French during the past four years that he would lapse into it this way? Or had she made that savage surrender on the ground to a total stranger?

      
All the little things, the inconsistencies in his behavior during the past months surfaced again, nagging at her. He liked honey on fry bread when he had always hated it in the past; he read in Anselmo's library late in the evenings when before he had boasted never to have opened a book since leaving his tutors; his responses in church were careful, not repeated with the careless rote boredom he had formerly exhibited, even during their nuptial mass. And what of his hands, those marvelously skillful ambidextrous hands? He could employ left or right with equal ease in a myriad of small tasks.

      
Lucero had returned to her a better man than when he left, one who worked hard, cared for his daughter and was benevolent to starving peons. She and everyone else had come to accept that. But in the privacy of the bedroom, he was different. Mercedes blushed to remember her response to his touch. He had employed slow patience to win her surrender when she would not give it. After months of self-denial, she had finally surrendered. Was it because he was not the Lucero she had wed?