Bride of Fortune (58 page)

      
When he flung his head back, his hair sprayed water around the cell, splashing her with droplets. “Now, you're wet, too,” he said.

      
His double meaning was not lost on her. She held the soap clutched in both hands, billowing white lather foaming between her fingers as her tongue darted out and quickly ringed her lips, moistening them so they glistened softly, invitingly.

      
“You'd better put that soap to use before it all foams away,” he said in a hoarse voice.

      
Mercedes reached out and began to work the lather into his skin, beginning with his shoulders and moving down his arms and chest. The slickness of her soapy hands contrasted with the light hair on his forearms and the thick pelt on his chest. Hard ridges of muscle tensed as she touched him, massaging in the soap, then using the abrasion of a washcloth to scrub weeks of prison grime from his body.

      
She moved to his back, careful of the fresh scar, then scrubbed his long legs one at a time. When all that was left was what lay beneath the water, she paused. Nicholas chuckled, a rich low baritone that filled the stark cold cell with warmth. “You know what to do,” he teased languidly.

      
“Yes, I certainly do,” she replied in an equally sensuous voice, leaning down and letting her hands glide beneath the surface of the water.

      
When she found him, hard and aching, he considered for one fleeting moment letting her give him his release that way. It might well be the last pleasure he would have in this life, but he could not allow that any more than he could take her in this vile, unholy place. What they had shared was sacred to him. He could never defile it this way.

      
“Give me the rag,” he said abruptly, removing her hands from the water and commencing to finish the bath himself.

      
He would carry the memory of their lovemaking at Gran Sangre with him to his grave.

Chapter Twenty Five

      
The tribunal was composed of three judges, two of whom were soldiers and the third an official in the Durango state government. All were seasoned veterans who had seen the ugliest sides of this protracted and savage conflict. They sat at a heavy pine table with sheaves of papers dealing with the various cases they were hearing while this special court sat today in Durango. Then they would move on to the next state capital to make similar judgments. The law of the republic was already exercising its jurisdiction, even before the nation was wholly pacified.

      
Nicholas had been given an attorney of record, a local lawyer whose private practice in the city of Durango had fallen on evil days during the upheavals of the war. Alfredo Naya was elderly, taciturn and smelled of
pulque
when he arrived at Fortune's cell a few moments before they were due in court. Naya asked no questions, only identified himself and inquired if Nicholas was ready to face the tribunal. Fortune held few illusions that the lawyer would do more than stand beside him when the judges passed sentence.

      
When he was led into the courtroom, Nicholas was glad that Mercedes had arranged for him to make a presentable appearance. He had little doubt of the outcome, but at least he would face the death sentence with dignity, as befitted an Alvarado, not filthy and disreputable as the New Orleans gutter from which he had fled. If only she were not there to witness this. But Mercedes had insisted upon accompanying him, and since the court believed her to be his legal wife, they had allowed it.

      
My wife
. She was, in truth, the wife of his heart and always would be, just as he was the husband of hers. This would be horrible for her. Having lived for so long as a soldier, he well understood how the military dispensed justice in wartime. Swift and merciless. If she pleaded that he was not her husband and revealed that she had betrayed her marriage vows with an impostor and carried his child, what might that priggish little commandant—or even these stern-faced judges—think of her? Do to her? A handful of his vaqueros had accompanied her to Durango, but they would be powerless to help her if she was assaulted while inside the great stone hulk of the government building.

      
When she was escorted into the courtroom by a young soldier, Nicholas again exchanged glances with her, silently pleading that she hold her peace, but he knew from the golden fire in her eyes and the mulish tilt of her jaw that she would not do it.

      
A number of other people filed into the room and took seats on the crude wooden benches lining the walls, facing the judges. Two were well-dressed merchants, a third a village curate and the rest clad in simple, loose-fitting cotton clothes were obviously
campacinos
. Witnesses to Luce's crimes? Nicholas could only speculate.

      
One young girl, no more than sixteen or seventeen, was voluptuously endowed, exactly the type that would appeal to his brother. Her waist-length tangle of ebony hair spilled out from beneath a frayed blue
rebozo
as she stared at him with sullen black eyes that made him feel she was already walking on his grave.
Damn you, Luce!

      
The judge seated in the center rapped a crude wooden gavel and surveyed the room with glittering black eyes. His face was fleshy, yet saved from being soft-looking by a great beak of a nose and a bulldog jaw of granite-hewn proportions. When he spoke, his voice filled the room.

      
“The accused will stand.” His eyes bored into Nicholas, who stood facing the panel of judges. Naya stood somewhat unsteadily beside him. “You, Lucero Alvarado, otherwise known as
El Diablo
, are charged with committing rape, murder and common brigandry over the past year in the states of Durango, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí and Aguas Calientes. How do you plead?”

      
The gray-haired lawyer looked at Fortune with doleful eyes, then turned to face the court, but before he could say anything, Nicholas replied, “Guilty as charged. Why don't you save the republic's money and pronounce sentence right now?”

      
“No! You cannot!” Mercedes burst out before the startled judge could respond to the prisoner's remarkable statement. She stood up and walked toward the bench. “He isn't guilty. He isn't even Lucero Alvarado!”

      
“And how, madam, would you know this?” the judge with a drooping handlebar mustache and heavy-lidded eyes asked.

      
“I am Lucero Alvarado's wife, Mercedes Sebastián de Alvarado, and this man is
not
my husband.”

      
The people lining the benches began to murmur excitedly among themselves, all but the young girl with the venomous dark eyes. The principal judge called for silence in his stentorian voice and the room quieted as all eyes fastened on Mercedes. The third judge said to her, “Please be seated, Madam Alvarado. You will be allowed your turn to speak—at the appropriate time.”

      
With a look of pleading at Nicholas, Mercedes returned to her seat. The accused and his attorney were also seated and a series of witnesses was called to testify. Each in turn took an oath and told a similar tale, shopkeepers and tradesmen, farmers and merchants, all of whom stood by as
El Diablo
had shot innocent civilians before their eyes, looted their towns and villages, and put their homes to the torch. One of the last to testify was a village priest who described how the infamous raider had ridden his great black stallion into the sanctuary of his church, where he instructed his men to strip the altar of its golden vessels.

      
Fortune's lawyer made no attempt to question the witnesses. Neither did the accused indicate that the stories were anything but the truth. Mercedes sat on the hard wooden bench, her spine stiff and straight although her back ached abominably. She tried to remain calm and impassive but the lace handkerchief in her hands was shredded before the testimony was done.

      
Then Margarita Olividad was summoned. The sullen-faced young woman stood up and swished her ankle-length skirts angrily as she approached the judges. She paused beside Nicholas and gave him an insultingly contemptuous inspection, then continued up to the table to be sworn in.

      
Like the others, she accused
El Diablo
of cold-blooded murder and theft; but in addition, she also described the brutal manner in which he raped her. Then, with her black eyes blazing with hatred, she stood and pointed at Nicholas. “He has done this dishonor to me! Now he must die for it!”

      
When Naya made no attempt to refute her testimony, Mercedes could sit still no longer. “Please, your honors, if I might address the court, I think I could show that she is accusing the wrong man.”

      
One of the military judges leaned backward with an impatient scoff, stroking his handlebar mustache while the judge wielding the gavel sat impassively, regarding her with an unreadable stare. Only the civilian judge appeared ready to consider her plea. The three men conferred briefly among themselves in terse murmurs, then regarded Mercedes.

      
“You may step forward and give your evidence at this time,” the center judge intoned, then turned to dismiss the Olividad girl.

      
“No, please, your honors. Let her remain. I have some questions to ask her.”

      
As she walked to the front of the courtroom, Nicholas watched, overcome with dread for the possible harm she might be doing herself and their child. She had changed from the simple cotton day dress into an elegant, deep-green linen suit trimmed with black braid. Her hair was bound up in heavy coils high atop her head and she wore a small black hat with a matching green plume. She looked every inch a
criolla
,
patrona
of a great
hacienda
, and Alvarado's lady.

      
Swallowing for courage, Mercedes approached Margarita Olividad. “I know you went through a terrible ordeal and were very frightened,” she began slowly. “I, too, lived in an isolated place where soldiers and
contre-guerrillas
came to rob me...and worse. I was frightened also, but I was very fortunate to have a gun when a French officer trapped me alone in my home.”

      
Margarita's eyes widened in surprise, but she said nothing, just watched the beautiful lady in her elegant clothes.

      
“I will never forget his face.” Mercedes shuddered but went on. “And I'm certain you won't ever forget
El Diablo
's face either.”

      
“He is the one,” the girl said with a mulish toss of her head, glaring at Nicholas. “I will never forget those horrible eyes, black as hell but glowing like...yes, like silver!”

      
“Yes, this man has the same eyes as Lucero Alvarado...because he is Lucero's brother.” Another outburst of murmurs rose. “Nicholas Fortune is the illegitimate son of my father-in-law, but in spite of the similarities to Lucero, they are two different men. Nicholas has been a soldier all his life. He carries many scars—scars which Lucero does not have—look at the scar marring Nicholas’ left cheek.” She gestured to Fortune, but Margarita was having none of it.

      
“You say the French soldiers came to your great
hacienda
,” she sneered. “But you are a lady.” She said the word as if it were a malediction. “If you had been so cursed as to have a man rip off your clothes and rut over you, you would never forget his face. Never!”

      
“Then you must remember that
El Diablo
had no scar,” Mercedes said desperately.

      
“I saw his face.” Margarita pointed to Nicholas again. “Him! Do you think the matter of one little white line”—she made a slashing motion with her finger across her left cheek—“is what I would remember when those devil's eyes were boring into me! You have not been raped. You could never understand.”

      
Mercedes felt her heart hammer, then her chest squeezed so tightly that she feared her heart would explode. She fought back the dizziness that surged over her as the judge dismissed Margarita Olividad. “Please, your honor, she all but admitted that she did not notice whether or not her attacker had that scar which Nicholas Fortune bears.”

      
“How is it, Doña Mercedes, that you came to know this man—Nicholas Fortune I believe you call him—if he is not your husband?” the presiding judge asked while his two companions looked at her with a mixture of pity and impatience.

      
“No, Mercedes. Don't—” A loud banging of the gavel silenced Nicholas’ outburst.

      
Her eyes pleaded for his understanding. A look of such intense love and pain filled them that he sat down, defeated, unable to stop her from doing what she felt she must do. And her disgrace would be in vain.

      
“Nicholas Fortune is his name,” she said, turning her gaze from her love and back to the judges. “He rode up to Gran Sangre last year, pretending to be Lucero Alvarado returned from the war. As Lucero's wife, I welcomed him, but I sensed that he was not the husband I had known so briefly four years earlier. As time passed, I became certain he was not Lucero.