Bride of Fortune (53 page)

      
“Get out!” She steadied the pistol and sighted in on his chest. “I'll shoot you where you stand before I ever again let you contaminate me.”

      
Her eyes blazed and her hand was steady in spite of the rosy flush staining her cheeks. She would do it. Luce had developed that sixth sense of survival, gauging whether or when an enemy would pull the trigger. And to Mercedes, he was the enemy, no doubt about that. And no doubt, too, she would pull the trigger. Lord, she had become a magnificent woman in his absence. Great masses of darkly burnished gold hair framed her face and tumbled around her shoulders. Her skin was like golden silk, not the insipid white of the court ladies. And the female form revealed beneath her sheer night clothes was lush and full with rounded hips and heavy ripe breasts.

      
Mercedes watched him hesitate. Half of her prayed he would back down, half that he would not. She steeled herself to shoot.

      
He muttered an obscenity. “You're still a cold little convent girl, not worth risking a bullet for.” With a mock salute, he turned back to his door, saying, “I'm going to look for Cenci. She'll welcome me to her bed with open arms—and legs.”

      
With that crude remark he slammed the door. Shaking violently now, Mercedes lowered the pistol and sank onto the chair beside her dressing table, clutching the weapon with both hands in a white-knuckled death grip.
A bastard's bastard. Incest.
The child of their love was conceived in incest. In the eyes of the Church a brother-in-law was the same as a brother.

      
Hadn't she guessed the truth months ago? The resemblance of both men to Anselmo in his youth was as unmistakable as a brand. “I must have known deep inside me. I just couldn't admit it to myself,” she whispered raggedly.

      
Numbly she set the gun on the dressing table, then took a sturdy chair over to the door and wedged it tightly beneath the knob so he could not open it without awakening her. The hall door had a stout iron latch secured across the inside which no key could open.

      
Nicholas had broken down the door and walked into her room. She had held a gun on him, too, that fateful night; but she had known then that she would never have been able to shoot him, just as surely as she knew now she would have killed Lucero.

      
God and all the angels, help me!
What was she to do? Even knowing who Nicholas Fortune was, she still loved him.

Chapter Twenty Three

      
“The vaqueros are celebrating Bazaine's withdrawal from Mexico City. Aren't you going to punish them?” Innocencia asked Lucero.

      
He raised his arms and clasped his hands behind his neck, reclining on his big bed in the
hacienda
. She sat up amid the rumpled covers, naked with her inky hair falling below her shoulders. The dark nipples of her heavy breasts peeped impudently through the tangled curtain. His mistress wanted something and it had nothing to do with politics. “Why should I care?” he asked, laughing at her pique.

      
“They are Juaristas! You have fought for four years for the emperor,” she replied indignantly. “You are Don Lucero, not that
gringo
impostor who spies for the enemies of the emperor!”

      
“The emperor who's now fled the capital and holed up at Querétaro, waiting like a dumb sheep for Escobedo's army to close in and slaughter him,” he said with a sneer. “Anyway, why do you give a damn what the peons do?”

      
“It's not those lowly farmers I speak of, but your own majordomo—old Hilario and his friend Gregorio. They are directly in touch with the rebels—they have all the news from the south before we do.”

      
“Even if I were inclined to bother with them, my pet, I could do nothing. Here on Gran Sangre, the only person loyal to the emperor is my beloved wife. If I attempted to disrupt the festivities, I would suffer the same fate as poor Maximilian. In case it has escaped your rather apolitical little mind, my dear, we have lost the war. It's all but over. I expect that accursed little Indian to ride back into the capital in a few months' time. Then the peons across Mexico will hold the very reins of government in their coarse, grubby hands,” he said in disgust.

      
Her eyes widened in amazement. Then her ripe lips set in a new pout. “Are you afraid of your own servants?”

      
His expression turned hard. “Don't push too far, Cenci,” he said softly. “I don't give a damn about the servants. Why should you?”

      
“I want Hilario and Gregorio whipped!” she blurted out, then quickly subsided, fidgeting with the bed linens which partially covered her nakedness. “I overheard them talking last night...about me and you...and the
patrona.
``

      
“I can imagine what they said about you replacing my wife in my bed these past weeks,” he replied dryly.

      
“They called me a cheap whore—and they said insulting things about you, too. About how much better Gran Sangre was when the
gringo
was in charge.”

      
He chuckled. “But aren't you glad he isn't any longer? My brother proved far more patriotic than ever I did.” His expression grew speculatively amused. “Imagine, Nick working for a cause—a Mexican patriot. Good lord! How ironic.”

      
“I am glad he is gone and you are back. He was crazy to prefer your skinny bitch of a wife to me!”

      
Lucero laughed mirthlessly. “She isn't so skinny anymore.” He could see Mercedes’ lush curves, sense the fire in her. How he had wanted to try her, but she was wary of him and allowed no opportunity for him to entrap her and force her to give him his husbandly rights. She was always armed and the servants were completely loyal to her. He had no doubt if she did not shoot him, almost any of them would do it for her.

      
What a splendid virago she had turned out to be! Luce tried not to dwell on regrets. Life was too short and Cenci too convenient. Yet the thought of Nick's baby growing in his wife's belly bothered him far more than he ever would have imagined—if he had bothered to think of the possibility when he gave her away, which he had not. His forehead creased in a frown. “I wonder how it would feel to bed my dear wife after all these years?”

      
Innocencia huffed. “You would not enjoy such a cold stick of a woman! Ignore her—just as you ignore all the servants.”

      
“All but you,” he replied lazily. “Did you know he wasn't me before you overheard him talking with that
gringo
in the stables?” he asked with amusement glittering in his eyes.

      
She studied him intently as he reclined on the big bed. His body was lean and hard yet virtually unblemished by scars, unlike his brother. Most of Fortune's scars were hidden, but one very obvious mark was missing on Lucero. “Of course I did,” she lied. “But I wonder why no one else has asked what happened to that small white mark—the one right here?” She raised her finger and traced the outline of Nicholas’ saber scar on Lucero's smooth cheek.

      
“People see what they expect to see,” he replied with indifference. In fact, he had been amazed at all the changes Nick had wrought at Gran Sangre in the months since he had become . Everyone had accepted his brother and now they accepted him, even though he knew they secretly wished for the return of his more benevolent sibling.

      
“You tried to seduce him and failed, didn't you?”

      
She dared not meet his eyes. He was playing games with her again, just as he used to do, but now there was an eerie frenetic edge to him that was far darker and more deadly than before he had gone to war. He had always been a little cruel, but now he frightened her at times. Still, he was her
criollo
lover, her passport away from the endless drudgery of being a kitchen maid on Gran Sangre for the rest of her life.

      
He reached up and yanked the sheet away from her, causing her to tumble forward against his bare chest. “I have better things to do than answer questions about the uncertain future, Cenci.” He rolled on top of her and knelt straddling her prone body, then grasped his rigid phallus in one hand and a fistful of her hair in the other, pulling her head roughly to him.

      
Soon it would be time to leave. Now that the French army had left the capital defenseless, he had only to wait until Marquez sent for him. They would rendezvous in Mexico City and ride away with millions in silver. Of course, Cenci was not included in those plans, but in the meanwhile, she was a lusty diversion. He gasped with pleasure as she took him in her mouth, then forgot about everything else but the moment's gratification.

* * * *

      
Doña Sofia lay propped up by a mountain of pillows. The candles at the small bedside altar gave off a sweet smoky odor, further impeding her labored breathing in the close confines of her room. She had been failing the past several months. The end was near now. She could not even roll over in bed without aid. Servant girls remained at her side nearly around the clock, and Father Salvador came in to watch and pray with her every few hours.

      
Even though her body was giving out, her mind remained amazingly keen. She could hear far better than she could see. By pretending to doze, she learned much from the gossiping servants who came and went, whispering behind their hands while they watched the embittered old
patrona
die.

      
She knew Anselmo's bastard had returned from his unexplained absence and that Mercedes was increasing. She had also heard some disturbing rumors in recent weeks, rumors about the
patrón
no longer sharing his wife's bed, instead taking up with that trollop Innocencia once more. This news was puzzling.

      
Maids always took vulgar delight in the sleeping arrangements of their betters. The fact disturbed her only because she had been so certain he was besotted with Lucero's wife. Perhaps now that Mercedes’ waistline thickened he was only showing his true selfish nature, much as all the Alvarado men before him had. Yet it nagged at her.

      
Mercedes did her Christian duty by paying brief visits to check on her every few days. As always, the exchanges were strained, even more so since their ugly encounter over Rosario. The bastard's bastard was growing visibly in the belly of her son's wife now. Perhaps that was why Mercedes seemed so listless and her eyes were haunted. Something was not right. Sofia could not die without learning what was going on in the
hacienda
that had been her prison for the past thirty-five years.

      
She reached up and pulled the bell cord. When Lupe appeared, she commanded the girl, “Send for Father Salvador.”

* * * *

      
Lucero had just returned from a cockfight in San Ramos, flushed with
pulque
and the pleasure of winning a modest purse betting on a big Shanghai Red that had fought with overpowering ferocity. Of course, the few measly pesos would pale by comparison with the fortune that would soon be his, but for now, it had been a pleasant afternoon's divertissement.

      
He sauntered into the entry hall of the big house, headed for the library and what remained of the
aguardiente
. After consuming it at a profligate rate the past month, he had almost finished the last of it. Grinning, he realized the timing was perfect. He would be ready to leave just about the time the liquor supply ran dry.

      
Father Salvador watched Lucero amble into the library, already affected by an excess of drink and in search of more. How had he made such a mistake in judgment as to believe this dissolute killer could be redeemed? When Lucero first returned home, he had seemed changed, as if the wartime horrors he had survived had purged the baser elements from his soul. Now the priest concluded he had been mistaken. Yet he did not choose to examine at all closely the reasons for his error in judgment, for the ultimate consequences of such a quandary would make him and Doña Mercedes both guilty of the most grievous sins.

      
Should he dare ask Lucero the boon Doña Sofia had requested of him? Sighing, he knew he must, no matter how dire the outcome. He had given his word to the dying old lady.

      
Lucero responded to the light rapping on the door with an expansive invitation to enter, then gaped in amazement when the priest stepped inside. “I'd offer you a drink, but there's precious little left to share—if I were inclined to share, which I'm not, especially with you.” He turned his back and poured a generous slug of amber liquid into a glass, then threw back his head and polished it off.

      
“I have come on a matter of some urgency, frankly against my better judgment,” the priest began carefully.

      
“Are you going to upbraid me for carousing with harlots? For profaning the sacrament of marriage with my adultery? Perhaps I'm not the only one guilty,” he said, turning to Father Salvador with an odd glitter in his eyes.
Did the priest know the truth about him and Nick?