Bride of Thunder (7 page)

“
Gracias,
” Mercy told her, helping the woman place it back over her head. Zane murmured something, seemed at a loss, and then produced from his pocket a small packet that he persuaded their benefactor to take.

“There go your black coral earrings,” he told Mercy as they climbed into the carriage. “I couldn't offer her money.”

“I'm glad she has them,” Mercy said. She felt a bit depressed from her glimpse at an important part of this world she could not enter, and it must have come through in her voice.

“Don't mourn for them,” he said coldly. “If baubles are that important, I'll find you another pair.”

“It's not the earrings,” Mercy retorted. “The cathedral—all those women—made me realize how out of place I am.”

Zane shot her a surprised stare, frowned, then gestured at a house where men and women were crowding into a hall through which could be glimpsed tables and benches packed tight with Indians, mestizos, and whites bent over squares of paper. Above a buzzing hum of voices rose a screeching singsong.

“I doubt the lottery would make you feel comfortable, either,” Zane remarked. “Will it make your seizure of homesickness better or worse to remind you that my hacienda will not be the least like Mérida? There's a chapel and store and we hold fiestas, but it's a poor country cousin compared to this.”

When Mercy didn't answer, he said stiffly, “You have till morning to change your mind, but where will you find a home? In the defeated South, to which your husband will probably drift back? Mexico City, with the empire crumbling?”

“You … you're cruel!”

“So is life.”

The carriage halted in front of an elaborate portal. Zane paid the driver and lifted Mercy down. They entered with a flurry of guests arriving on foot and moved with them up a flight of steps leading to the second story. All the furniture in the large room had been moved to the walls and several rows of chairs ran the length of two sides of the room. The orchestra was seated on a platform at the far end.

A diminutive, ripely plump lady in orchid silk embraced the woman in front of Mercy, exchanged a few laughing comments, and then turned, her beautiful dark eyes widening before she smiled, and took Mercy's hands.

“Welcome,” she said in heavily accented English, kissing Mercy on the cheek. “You are Zane's kinswoman, come to help him with the small Jolie. How brave you are!” She twinkled at Zane with arched eyebrows. “And how fortunate you are, no?”

He introduced them while Doña Elena looked with approving wistfulness at the gown Mercy wore. “That becomes you well, Doña Mercy. I hope you will keep it, for never on this earth shall I squeeze into it again. Perhaps in heaven I can beg a paradisiacal figure from the good God.”

“Nonsense, Doña Elena!” laughed a deep voice behind them. “Every year finds you lovelier, and since I've known you most of my life, that makes you preeminently beautiful.”

“Eric, you wicked flatterer!” Doña Elena seemed a trifle flustered as a man so big that he almost made Zane seem, of average size bowed over her hand. “I'm glad you stayed for my dance. I was afraid you might need to start back to Belize. With the
indios bravos
repulsed at Tihosuco, they may press to the south.”

“Oh, they're always trying to get guns and recapture those of their number who're weary of the wars of the Talking Cross,” said the stranger carelessly. “Hundreds of former Cruzob have settled in British territory and are trying to grow their corn in peace. Some even work at my hacienda. But our biggest headaches are with the Pacificos or Icaiche Mayas, who've been driven from their old homes by the Cruzob for not joining them.”

“I thought the Pacificos were supposed to harass the Cruzob and keep them off us,” protested Doña Elena.

“That was certainly the devout hope,” shrugged the huge man. “But they find it healthier to raid Belize.”

He reminded Mercy of an archetypal Viking. His fair hair gleamed silver with a sheen of gold, his strong, hawklike face was tanned, and his eyes were the color of ice reflecting a winter sky. When they touched Mercy, she felt seared, as if by freezing iron.

“Doña Mercy, allow me to present Señor Kensington, my nephew by marriage,” said their hostess. “Zane, perhaps you know Eric? Eric, meet Zane Falconer. Doña Mercy is his kinswoman, newly arrived in Mérida.”

Zane must have been four inches shorter than the towering blond man, but, with some primordial female instinct, Mercy sensed their antagonism and knew that if they ever fought, size wouldn't determine the winner.

“I've heard of Señor Kensington, of course.” Zane's tone and face were carefully expressionless. They moved forward as Doña Elena left them to greet other guests. “Selling guns to the Cruzob must be a very profitable business.”

“It is,” said Kensington good-naturedly. “As a British subject, I take no sides in these Yucatecan uproars. My factor in Belize will sell you or anyone all the guns you can pay for.”

“It takes courage—or gall—for you to show yourself in Mérida,” Zane said. “If the Cruzob had taken Tihosuco, Doña Elena's hospitality might not have protected you.”

“She” wouldn't have had a party,” said the Englishman, grinning. “Besides, most of these charming people know me as her kinsman by marriage and as the owner of a large sugar plantation. I didn't know my other interests were common knowledge.”

“Those of us who live on the frontier have a lively concern with the source of Cruzob supplies.”

“Understandable.” Kensington stifled a yawn behind a ruffled cuff. He half-turned his back on Zane, and Mercy again felt as a physical impact the frozen blue flame of his eyes. “But I haven't properly acknowledged my introduction to this lady.”

He bent over her hand. His lips shocked her like an extreme of heat or cold. Sheer physical energy seemed to radiate from him. He would consume a woman who was with him much, Mercy thought, and though he smiled at her beguilingly as he straightened up, she feared him.

“I am enchanted, Doña Mercy. Have you formed an impression of Mérida?”

“It's very different.”

“From where?”

“The eastern bayou country of Texas.”

“I would have guessed the Garden of the Hesperides … or at least Avalon.” He smiled slowly, deliberately, at Zane, whose face was a taut mask. “May I felicitate you, Falconer, on possessing such a beautiful relative?”

Was there an emphasis on possessing?

“Pure luck.” There was an ironic twist to the edge of Zane's mouth. “If you returned to England, Kensington, you might learn you're similarly blessed.”

“Alas, if I have a fair cousin, she'll have to find me,” said the Englishman, shrugging. “I hope you will be generous and share yours to the extent of granting me this waltz with her.”

“Doña Mercy may accept a later invitation if she chooses to, but she's promised me the first dance.”

Frost-colored eyes swept from Zane to Mercy, obviously noticing her surprise. “Ah, later, then.” With a flamboyant, almost mocking, bow, the large man gave Mercy a last smiling appraisal before he moved on to the loveliest of the dark beauties at the chairs.

Zane moved Mercy into the lilt of the slow, dreamy music. She hadn't danced since the early months of the war, because after that, except for soldiers home on leave, there were virtually no men. The waltz had been considered rather gauche, but she'd loved its intoxicating dips and glides, especially with a strong partner who could sweep her gracefully about. Zane was strong enough, but his dancing was vigorous, rather than polished.

He trod twice on her toes and she caught him staring at Eric Kensington, who was whirling his parter with remarkable smoothness. “Confound this rotten tune!” Zane burst out. “I'm not a dancer, as you've learned, but I'd be shot before I'd let that swaggering Britisher have the first number.” He grinned ruefully. “But you wish I had!”

“He's Doña Elena's nephew?”

“The nephew of her husband who was a retired British diplomat. He was much older, but even though he died ten years ago, Doña Elena has not wished for another husband.” His voice deepened with mockery. “She should be in a museum as the only one of her kind.”

Mercy suddenly wondered what had happened to Zane's wife. She'd assumed the lady was dead, but his bitterness was like a revealing flash of lightning.

When the waltz ended, he escorted Mercy to a chair, said he saw an old friend he should greet, and made his way through the now crowded room to the men who were standing near the windows at the end.

Mercy felt very much on display. She smiled at the young women on either side. They smiled back. One ventured some soft Spanish.

“
No hablo español
,” Mercy said regretfully. That was one thing she was going to have to change! It made her feel lost, almost frightened, not to understand what people were saying.

A quadrille formed next and then came a spirited contredanse, with couples facing each other in rows. Zane was one of a knot of men involved in deep conversation, and Eric Kensington's shining head was nowhere to be seen till the musicians slipped into another waltz and he loomed abruptly before her.

“Though you couldn't save your first dance for me, I think our first one together will be memorable,” he said.

Drawing her up as if there were no chance of her refusing, he swept her into the circling mass of flower-tinted gowns and black tailcoats. He was strong and he could dance, his rhythm dominating Mercy till she felt without a will or body of her own, a part of the music.

“You're being admired,” he told her. “Men are calling you the Quetzal Lady because your gown shines like the plumage of that sacred bird. The Mayas never killed quetzals, but trapped them for their four magnificent tail feathers, which could only be used by royalty. I have quetzals in my garden, but they are not so beautiful as you.”

Mercy could think of no reply. She was both pleased and dismayed that she was being especially noticed. Pray heaven no rumor circulated yet about a man who'd gambled his wife away to Zane Falconer!

“Look at me,” Kensington said softly. “Your downcast eyes are charmingly like wings, but I can't guess what you're thinking.”

She glanced up, but something in those burningly cold eyes made her swiftly avert her own. “I've made inquiries about your kinsman, Doña Mercy. It's fortunate for him that you're willing to live at a hacienda on the frontier, but not, I should think, so fortunate for you.”

“I've little choice.”

“Let me give you one, then. Marry me.”

That brought her head up. His lips were smiling, though his eyes were as remote as ever. “An ungallant joke, sir!” she rebuked.

“Consent and you'll find it's not.”

“We don't know each other!”

“My dear young lady!” He laughed so uproariously that those around them looked and Mercy was gripped with embarrassment. Where was Zane? Why didn't he rescue her? Sobering, Kensington spoke as if she were a not-very-bright child. “The surest cure for the madness called love is to know the other fully. The very essence of romantic love is illusion, mystery …”

“Ignorance?” Mercy supplied.

“Exactly.”

Mercy wanted to make some scathing retort, but, thinking back to her infatuation for Philip, she had to admit that the better she came to know him, the less she found to love.

“That's not the way it should be,” she murmured, more to her thoughts than to Kensington.

“How should it be?” His tone was an amused caress.

Reflections, feelings, warnings, and imperatives thronged her mind, etched with the hurt and bitterness of Philip's betrayal. But in spite of that, she was sure some men and women did love each other truly and well, that they endured and cherished and made of their communion something marvelous, more than either could be alone. Mercy longed for that, though it seemed unlikely she'd ever find it, buried in the wilds of Yucatán with a man who'd made it clear he wouldn't marry her.

Kensington offered marriage, but in a way that was as insulting as Zane's rejection of it. “Well?” he prompted. “How should it be?”

He'd think her ideas romantic, silly, and female, but that made it all the more important to assert them. Meeting his gaze, Mercy said firmly, “Love is when you
do
know each other and still value and care. It's strong enough to hold while illusions and mysteries vanish, but when phantasms go, then people can love in truth.”

“You sound so positive, Doña Mercy. Have you loved like that?”

“No. But I want to.”

He lifted his massive shoulders and she felt the powerful beat of his heart next to her face. “Possibly this steady endurance you admire is love, Doña Mercy, but it sounds fit only for the tired or sick or cowards who call themselves realists because they don't dare expect much. What I call love has nothing to do with time and patience and high moral qualities. It's the wild, delicious golden fire that burns when a man and woman desire each other and take their joys.”

Some of that fire flickered between them, but Mercy was more wary than ever. A man who didn't even pretend there was more to love than passion! What could a woman hope for from him when she was heavy with child or sick or fading?

“Why do you hold yourself so sternly?” he whispered. “If you left your body soft and natural, would it lead into my kind of love?”

“Love?”

“Desire, then. I want you. You respond to me now and I promise it's nothing compared to what you'll feel when we've learned how to please each other. I'll marry you according to any ceremony you wish.”

“I wouldn't dream of marrying in such a … a shameless way!”

He chuckled derisively. “Should I have lied? Said I'm ravished by your voice and eyes and crave only to hold your hand?” When she couldn't answer, he said briskly, “I should make it clear that I'm a very wealthy man. The House of Quetzals is fine enough for a duchess, but you needn't be there all the time. We could visit Mexico City, the United States, and Europe, too.”