Gallant Match (23 page)

“And where is that?” she asked in a tired whisper.

Or at least he thought she did. He could have been wrong.

Light bloomed from the direction of the house, becoming a bevy of lamps that dipped and swayed as they drew closer. It was, Kerr saw, a welcoming committee of sorts.

Four or five Indians carrying lanterns led the way, followed by a trio of buxom females in identical blue dresses and aprons. In their midst moved a majestic figure clad in a black silk gown that featured a bodice low enough to display breasts like a pair of white doves and a skirt formed of cascading ruffles. A lace scarf, covering glossy black hair that was held in place by an enormous comb, framed a face of surpassing beauty though no longer youthful.

“Good evening,” the lady said, speaking in the lisping accents of Castile. “I, Doña Francesca Isabella Cordilla y Urbana, welcome you to my home. Manuel, who ran ahead to warn of your coming, tells me you are victims of misfortune. Please to come inside and allow my people to serve your needs. You will rest and regain your
strength for a few days, yes? Or stay as long as you desire, for
mi casa es su casa.
”

“You are very kind,” Sonia began.

“
Parbleu,
you are French. How stupid of my man not to perceive it.” Doña Francesca switched at once into that language, her manner pleasant but alive with curiosity. “How long it is since I last heard it spoken. You are doubly welcome for the opportunity. Come, now,
madame,
you and your magnificently huge and so handsome husband. Come inside at once.”

Aristocrat called to aristocrat, Kerr thought in sour recognition. It might have been his own fault for standing like a stump, but he resented being bypassed as if he wasn't there. Of course, it could be that Manuel, who had jogged off in advance of their arrival, had given their hostess to understand he had used sign language instead of Spanish, so she had assumed he had no French either. He had both, thank you, after traveling from pillar to post on Rouillard's trail.

Sonia understood the situation perfectly, of that he had no doubt. Yet she hadn't corrected the mistake that named him her husband. Now, why was that?

The home they entered was a combination house and fortress, a two-story dwelling built in a horseshoe shape around a courtyard that was enclosed on its fourth side by a tall, gated wall. The general aspect was in keeping with the houses of New Orleans in that its gate was of strong yet ornate wrought iron and galleries on both lower and upper floors looked out onto the courtyard.

This open space was shaded by palms and leafy trees,
and made cooler by the trickling sound of a fountain. Bougainvillea climbed the walls, dropping petals of garnet and ruby from massive bloom stalks to the stone floor below. Huge water ollas sat under the eaves, and a polished silver bell and doors carved with religious figures marked the entrance to a private chapel in one corner. Kitchen, laundry and servants' rooms where children played faced it across the way. A wide staircase of some exotic wood, located beneath the gallery directly facing the gate, mounted to the main living quarters.

Doña Francesca led the way upstairs, holding her wide skirts well above fine ankles, while Kerr stalked along behind her and Sonia. At the top, the lady directed them to a suite of rooms at the end of the gallery. Indicating that Manuel would arrange water for bathing and clothing for their needs, she bade them refresh themselves and rest until they were summoned to supper. Inclining her head in a regal nod, she left them.

Kerr scowled as he stood in the center of the bedchamber they had been given. It was all very well, this grand hospitality, but he would have preferred the offer of horses and directions to Vera Cruz.

Nagging unease gripped him. Staying in one place too long didn't seem a good idea. As soon as Sonia had rested and they found a little more decent covering, they would be on their way.

“What is it?” Sonia asked, turning from her inspection of the salon that led off the room where they stood. “Don't you like it here?”

“It's fine,” he said shortly. He glanced at the tester
bed with its white coverlet and mosquito netting then away again.

“But you would prefer another ruin.”

He set his fists on his hip bones, a belligerent gesture that suited him at the moment, suited also his spread-legged stance. “You could put it that way.”

“Why?”

“I don't care for being looked over like a prize bull, for one thing.”

Amusement and something more crept into her face and she put a hand to her mouth, probably to hide a grin. “You feel Doña Francesca may want to put a ring through your nose and shut you up in her pasture? Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

“Heaven forbid.” He barely suppressed a shudder.

“She was quite taken with your size.”

“Huge, she called me.” He grimaced.

“Yes. And handsome.”

“Do you think I'm huge?” The words popped out before he could bite them back.

She flushed a little. “I've had cause to be glad of it these past two days.” Her color deepened. “That is to say, a smaller man might not have made the swim to shore…”

“I know what you mean.” Obviously, she thought of him as overlarge in a number of ways. He hardly knew whether to be gratified or irritated.

“I fear it's unlikely there will be anything available in the way of clean clothing that may fit you. I'll repair your shirt so it may be washed. And if you'll take off your trousers—”

“I doubt that's a good idea,” he interrupted.

“But why—Oh.”

Her sudden comprehension was preceded by a glance at the front of said trousers.

“Oh, indeed. Not that anyone will be surprised if we spend our time in bed. Why didn't you tell Doña Francesca we aren't man and wife?”

“It seemed awkward, and I doubt we will ever see her again.”

“Awkward.”

“Explaining everything, you understand. She might feel that our state of undress and the night spent alone together would mean I have been hopelessly compromised. You did see the chapel attached to the house?”

“She can't force us to marry.”

“No, but refusing would be—”

“Awkward. I see.”

“Especially if she has her own confessor here. Because of the chapel, I mean.”

He hadn't considered that possibility, didn't particularly like thinking of it now. “The plain fact is,” he said slowly, “that you
have
been compromised.”

“Surely being shipwrecked will serve as an excuse.”

“There are those who would deny it.”

She lifted a brow. “But you don't feel that way?”

“And if I did?” Why he was pushing it, Kerr hardly knew. It wasn't as if he wanted to be held responsible. Was it?

“I did release you from any obligation,” she said, turning away from him.

So she had.

He wished she hadn't. He really did.

Kerr fastened his gaze on the dark fall of her hair, the shifting thinness of her pantaloons that showed the color of her flesh through their fine batiste, at the back of his own shirt that covered the rest of her. His eyes burned and his stomach muscles cramped as he sought to imprint the image on his mind. This might be the last time he looked on such a sight.

Good Lord, he was as randy as a ram let loose in a pen of ewes. He wanted to lay her down on the Turkish carpet beneath their feet, to see her spread out under him with the vivid colors at her back, to discover just how long he could drive into her before the wool burn on his knees became unbearable. He wasn't sure he'd feel it at all.

A knock heralded the arrival of their bathwater. Kerr walked to a window and stood looking out while the parade of servants carrying brass pails marched back and forth, filling the tub that sat behind a screen in the dressing room off the bedchamber. He didn't move again until they were gone, until Sonia had availed herself of the warm water, until she called him to take his turn at washing their jungle idyll from his skin.

She lay in the middle of the great bed with its dark wood tester and filmy mosquito netting, when he stepped out of the dressing room. She was turned away from him with her hair spread out behind her to dry. A linen sheet edged with heavy lace covered her. She appeared naked beneath it, though a nightgown and wrapper draped the arm of a nearby slipper chair. He
moved toward the bed as if drawn by invisible chains. On the far side, he stopped.

She was asleep. Her lips were parted, her eyelids sealed, her shoulder that rose from under the sheet had a childlike smoothness yet carried an apricot tint of sunburn in spite of the shirt that had protected her. Signs of exhaustion were still there in her face: the under-eye circles, the paleness.

His chest filled and he felt an acid sting behind his eyes. He had pushed her so hard, too hard. He had taken so much from her, giving nothing in return that he was not obliged to by his agreement with her father.

Sacrifice.

He rubbed a hand across his face and down over the back of his head as the word echoed in his mind again.

What she required now was her aunt and the respectability that lady could provide. She didn't need to be escorted home after long days of being alone with him. That way lay ruin. She would be an outcast from polite society or else married off to a man she despised, namely him. Her father would demand it, and rightly so.

There had to be a way to make things right for her. All he had to do was find it.

In the meantime, he was more tired than he'd thought, and it seemed from the sounds coming from the courtyard that it might be some time yet before dinner was ready. Discarding the towel he wore around his waist, he brushed aside the netting, climbed onto the bed and lay down. He turned to Sonia, stretching an arm above her pillowed head, curling his body around her without
quite touching her. He watched her breathe for endless moments while inhaling the scent of soap and fragrant woman. A long while later, he finally closed his eyes.

 

Dinner was about as uncomfortable a meal as Kerr had ever endured in his life. For one thing, the dark suit he had been furnished was so tight in the shoulders that he couldn't take a deep breath for fear of splitting the seams, and the trousers so snug he needed an apron to preserve his modesty. The bones of his wrists protruded from the cuffs and he'd abandoned all hope of actually buttoning the waistcoat that went with the outfit, letting it hang open instead. More than that, the only shoes found to fit him were rough sandals of the kind worn by the house servants. All in all, he didn't cut a dashing figure.

Sonia, on the other hand, was elegance personified in sea-blue silk trimmed in lavender and with a black mantilla on her severely coiffed hair. The ensemble could never have looked so well on their hostess, in Kerr's considered opinion.

Doña Francesca was well enough, however, in brocade of such sumptuous heaviness that it looked as if it should be able to stand on its own. If it appeared too rich for a meal in the wilds of Mexico, rather than at some European state dinner, it was an observation he kept to himself. In the same way, he gave no sign that he considered more than peculiar the cheroot the lady smoked with delicate puffs of her full lips. He'd known mountain women who sometimes smoked or used snuff, but they were older and past caring what anyone thought of them.

Kerr sat at Doña Francesca's right hand while Sonia was farther down the table, sandwiched between the priest who had inevitably appeared, Father Tomas, and a man and his wife introduced as Doña Francesca's son and daughter-in-law. The son was upright, dapper and mustachioed, his wife thin and sallow. Neither appeared delighted to entertain guests.

Also at the table was an elderly gentleman with yellow features and a constant, vinegary frown. He turned out to be the father of the daughter-in-law. Next to him was a dumpy and chattering yet shrewd-eyed woman who seemed to be a poor cousin being provided with a home in typical Latin fashion.

Three children also graced the board. Though they were of an age to belong to the son of the house, it seemed they were Doña Francesca's children by a marriage that had occurred after the death of her second husband, her son Javier's father—her first husband having died mere weeks after the wedding. She had since been widowed and remarried for a fourth or maybe fifth time. It seemed the lady was most unlucky in the men she chose to marry. Or maybe lucky, if the size of her estate was any indication.

All that was, of course, if Kerr had understood the rambling story told of how she had come to be living in isolation at the jungle's edge. He was by no means sure, considering it had been given in volleys from everyone at the table, and in a bastard combination of Parisian French, Creole patois, Castilian Spanish and Mexican country dialect.

“In a few weeks or a month, when you are well rested,” Doña Francesca was saying, “you will like, perhaps, to go to Xalapa. This is the only village of size near to us, a lovely place with a nice mountain aspect. If it pleases you, you might take the air there for a few days. Then you may hire a litter to transport you to Vera Cruz. Though, truly, I can't imagine why you would wish to go there with the season of heat and storms upon us.”