Bride of Fortune (5 page)

      
He winced. “I'm sorry you overheard that conversation. I had no idea, but it's over and done with now. You aren't pallid or scrawny anymore and you certainly aren't a virgin.” He let his eyes linger hungrily at the deep cleft between her breasts where the emerald pendant nestled.

      
“But I am a stranger to you and you to me,” she countered. “You can force yourself on me—claim your legal rights just as you did on our wedding night, but you won't find me so docile and accommodating now as I was then, I warn you.”

      
“After I claim my rights, what will you do, Mercedes? Slash my throat while I sleep—bash my brains in with one of Angelina's iron skillets? Or perhaps something more subtle like slipping bits of
torvache
in my wine to drive me mad?” He held out his brandy glass for a refill, a dare dancing in his black eyes.

      
“I would appeal to your conscience, if I believed you had one,” she said sourly, pouring him another generous slug of
aguardiente
. Perhaps she could get him too drunk to perform and win herself one night's reprieve—or drink herself into oblivion so he would leave her in disgust.

      
Divining her intent, he took one sip, then set his glass aside and reached for the decanter before she could pour herself another drink. “Is overindulging in spirits one of your new vices acquired in my absence?”

      
“Rather, one more appropriate for your unexpected return,” she muttered beneath her breath, emptying her glass with a delicate shudder. She set it down on the sideboard and turned to face him. “I want time, Lucero. Time for us to become acquainted, time for me to get used to the idea of having a husband.”

      
“You never expected me to return, did you?”

      
His bald accusation startled her, but why lie? He seemed to have developed an unsettling knack of seeing through her. “Frankly, no. The war has claimed many casualties. I know life with the
contre-guerrilla
bands is far more dangerous than with the regular army. Even if you weren't killed, I never thought you cared enough about Gran Sangre to come back for it even in the unlikely event Father Salvador's last letter reached you.”

      
“And you, Mercedes? Do you care so much about Gran Sangre?”

      
“It's my home now and its people are my family. I've had neither since my parents died. Being a diplomat, my father was required to travel from country to country throughout my childhood, taking my mother and me with him. The convent my guardian placed me in was merely temporary until a marriage could be arranged. I had thought to spend the rest of my life caring for this place.”

      
“So this is the ‘foolish notion’ my mother spoke of. Have you told her of your feelings about our marriage?”

      
“Speak of such an intimate matter with Doña Sofia?” She looked at him as if he'd lost his wits. “No. For her my folly lies in striving to hold this place together on my own. Women aren't supposed to do more than embroider and pray—and bear children, of course,” she added angrily.

      
“And you want none of that. No husband? No children? A desolate choice for a beautiful young woman…being alone.”

      
“Being alone doesn't mean one is always lonely, but you've returned to your birthright. All I ask is that you give me—give us—time...before...”

      
He watched her falter, choking on the final words. Although the audacity of such a request stunned him, he could not help but admire the courage of the woman who had been left to struggle and survive, holding together a crumbling land grant in the midst of a war. “Before I invade your bed and force my husbandly attentions on you?” he finished for her. “Father Salvador would give you a stern lecture for such an impudent suggestion.”

      
“He has already given me too many to count. One more shall scarcely matter.”

      
“Very well, I'll grant you a stay of execution for tonight, Mercedes. Truthfully, I'm exhausted. Maybe I'm even feeling a bit benevolent,” he added with a wicked smile.

      
The look she gave him indicated how much she believed that notion. Suddenly she was exhausted herself, all the fight gone out of her after wresting such a small victory from him. Fighting her own tightly strung nerves during the hours since he had ridden back into her life had left her utterly spent.

      
“I'll wish you a good night's rest, then.” She wanted nothing more than to run down the hall and bar her bedroom door against him, but steeled herself to deliberately walk past him.

      
He let her pass, watching in silent amusement as she turned to leave. At the last second an impulse overtook him as her lavender fragrance teased his nostrils. He swept out one arm, pulling her against his chest. His other hand lifted her chin to meet his lips as they descended to claim hers. A soft mewling protest formed deep in her throat but was swiftly muffled by his hot and seeking mouth.

      
She felt his tongue brush deftly along the seam of her lips, slipping inside when she gasped in surprise, then retreating. Just as quickly as he had seized her, he released her and leaned back against the heavy sideboard with casual arrogance, his arms crossed over his chest. Those dark wolf's eyes studied her reaction, sensing her confusion.

      
“Sweet dreams, Mercedes,” he whispered, watching her eyes darken from amber gold to the color of hot molasses. Her fingers curled up and bit into her palms. He knew she itched to slap his face but feared he might renege on his reprieve if she provoked him.

      
“Good night, Lucero,” she said coldly, turning her back on him and walking slowly from the room, regal as a queen dismissing a courtier.

      
The walk down the hall to her quarters had never seemed so long. She could sense his eyes on her, dark and fathomless as a starless desert night. Granting her this night was only a whim. She had been a fool to try reasoning with him. Lucero had always been a gamester. This was merely another of his cat and mouse ploys, something to amuse himself with until he tired of seeing her jump this way and that in the futile hope of staving off his attentions in bed.

      
Perhaps it would have been better to let him come. The sooner he did his duty and planted his seed, the sooner he would tire of her and seek out other women.
      
Innocencia's coarse earthy beauty flashed into her mind, the dark sensuous serving wench entwined in a passionate embrace with Lucero, digging her blunt strong fingers into his curly hair and pulling him down to her in a devouring kiss. Mercedes had caught them in this very hallway a week after her marriage. They had been so wrapped up in each other, they never even noticed her. She had run crying to her
dueña
. The dour old widow had explained that most men were at heart base, immoral creatures and that she should consider it a blessing if Don Lucero spent his amorous attentions elsewhere.

      
Mercedes’ youthful pride had been shattered; but in light of how much she detested the methodical disinterest with which he had despoiled her of her innocence, she should have been happy that he did not desire her. Conjugal duty was painful and degrading, yet when she thought of the avaricious hunger in Innocencia's eyes, Mercedes could not help but wonder if her own untutored young body was missing something.

      
Lucero had frightened and fascinated her as a girl, then he had left her. Now all the fears and humiliations of girlhood were behind her. She had built a rich satisfying life in spite of the hardships she had endured. He should not have returned to spoil everything. If only he would accept what she had tried to explain, realize that she was a different person now.

      
And do what? Court her as if he were a youthful swain? That was absurd. He would never understand who she was or what she felt. Why did she want him to?

      
He desires you now.
Yes, she could see that in those night-dark eyes. She had learned to recognize male hunger over the past years, even learned how to manipulate it to her own advantage. It had been that or give over Gran Sangre to soldiers, merchants, whatever men threatened to despoil it. Sensing that hunger in him had soothed her wounded pride, she assured herself, nothing more. Surely nothing more, for he was a ruthless war-hardened soldier. He was danger personified. Yes, he desired her. But did she desire him in return?

      
Trembling, she closed the door to her room and leaned against it in the darkness. After gathering her wits, she walked over to where a fat tallow candle sat on her dressing table. She struck a match and lit it, then sank down on the velvet cushioned chair in front of the mirror to stare into the haunted golden eyes of a stranger.

of Gran Sangre dismissed Baltazar for the night, after the servant laid out a maroon brocade robe. He quickly shed his formal clothes and slipped it on, then rolled a cigarette and lit it. The tart sweet smoke seared his lungs like a lover's scouring nails, the pleasure familiar and reassuring amid so much that was changed.
      
Next door in the master suite, the master

      
Mercedes had certainly undergone a striking metamorphosis. He could still picture her standing before him in the big dining hall, so small and delicate for all her sweetly filled-out curves, announcing to him that she was a different woman. He took another pull on the tobacco and laughed aloud at the irony of the whole situation. His eyes shifted from the starlit Sonoran skies outside his bedroom window to the door separating his suite from hers.

      
“Yes, you're not the woman Lucero Alvarado married, beautiful Mercedes, but that's only fair, since I'm not Lucero Alvarado.”

      
He flicked the cigarette out into the darkness of the courtyard, tossed his robe onto the floor and sank naked into the soft feather mattress, where he lay staring at the ceiling as his mind moved back through time.

Chapter Three

      
What a bizarre twist of fate had brought him to this Sonoran stronghold. He grinned into the darkness, whispering, “The fortunes of war.”

      
He was Lottie Fortune's boy Nicholas, the illegitimate son of a New Orleans whore. Hell, Fortune was just a stage name the would-be actress made up, but Nicholas chose to keep it rather than use her real one. His mother had died when he was eleven. Then the madam had sent him to live with Lottie’s pappy Hezakiah Benson. The brutal fire-and-brimstone-breathing old Bible thumper had made his life a misery on that hardscrabble west Texas farm. He had run away to war, thinking it would be glamorous.

      
Glamour! His expression grew grim as he thought of all the vile sinkholes he had fought in since becoming a mercenary at the age of fifteen. There had been so many he'd lost count: the Crimea, the Austro-Italian border, North Africa...but none could compare to Mexico for utter savagery. He had sailed into Vera Cruz back in January of 1862 with the French invaders, full of absurd notions about getting rich on Hapsburg gold and retiring to live in luxury in a tropical paradise. One look at the bleak pestilent harbor, its beaches blackened by carrion-eating vultures, had immediately disabused him of that pipe dream. But then the French columns had moved inland. Orange, lemon and fig trees grew in the lush green highlands where poplars towered over sparkling streams and brilliantly colored birds sang.

      
The wealthy
hacendados
welcomed their imperialist saviors into homes that were virtual palaces, furnished with every luxury and staffed by hordes of Indian servants. As they drew near to Puebla, the small villages were picturesque and lovely with ornate churches and riotous banks of purple bougainvillea growing in the central plazas. The cantinas had decent whiskey for soldiers to slake their thirst and voluptuous sloe-eyed women to appease their lust.

      
Then came Puebla and the Cinco de Mayo. The republican victory against crack French troops had been an omen of things to come, even though the imperialist forces eventually carried the day, marching the next year all the way to Mexico City. But every inch of twisting mountain and jungle terrain, so lushly beautiful, was ever so deceptively treacherous. Without warning, Juarista guerrillas swarmed from behind rocks and trees. With guns and machetes they attacked the invaders in swift deadly forays, then melted away as quickly as they had come.

      
The money had been good at first. It still was when the imperial treasury was moved to shake loose some of its hoard of silver, but far in the hinterlands pay periods were as irregular as the soldiers. Most of the troops lived off the land, which was well and good when they chanced upon a wealthy
hacendado
with a corral full of blooded horses and a cellar full of
aguardiente
which they could liberate at point of bayonet. After all, it was at the request of just such pro-monarchist conservatives that the invaders had come to establish Maximilian on his throne. But in recent months the army had encountered only republicans, small farmers and villagers with little to give. Some
contre-guerrillas
looted the churches. Even though he was not religious, Nick had refused to do that. He had a small cache of money hidden away in Tampico as a hedge against the future. He bided his time, waiting to see what would develop.