Authors: Shirl Henke
She could read the unspoken question in his eyes. “I didn't let him touch me.” She turned away then and paced across the cell, stopping in the narrow shaft of sunlight, which gilded her hair with burnished fire. “He...he tried but I kept the Sharps pistol you gave me in my room. I would have shot him. I think he knew it. He never bothered me after that first night,” she said, daring to turn and meet his eyes again. “I love you, Nicholas. You are my husband. I don't give a damn about your politics, what you did before we met, nothing else!”
The cold, hard knot deep in his gut dissolved as she spoke. He could breathe again and his heart soared. She had forgiven him the deception and she still loved him in spite of the strictures of her religion, society, everything she had been taught since infancy. He crossed the cell this time and pulled her into a fierce embrace, enfolding her in his arms, burying his face in her silky hair.
“Mercedes, Mercedes, my love, my darling. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me. I've been so afraid that when you finally learned the truth, you'd hate me.”
“I could never hate you...and I've known you weren't Lucero from the beginning. That first night you took me to your bed, it was nothing like it had been with him. I knew...but I couldn't admit it to myself.”
“I wasn't certain when you knew for sure, but I lived in terror of losing you. Ah, Mercedes, I came to Gran Sangre for the land. I never expected to fall in love. But you were nothing like Luce described you.” He stroked her hair away from her cheek and cradled her face in his hand tenderly.
She kissed his hand, then pressed it against her face once more. “Gregorio has gone after Lucero. The republican alcalde in San Ramos has sent word through their network of spies, trying to locate this Bart McQueen, but I don't know if they can. Hilario fears he may have left Mexico now that the empire is finished.”
“You have to go home to Gran Sangre right now. You'll be safe there. Hilario and the others will see that Luce doesn't harm you. If I can, I'll come to you, but if not—”
“No! Don't even think it! I won't leave you alone in this awful place. I'm going to talk to the commandant. If I tell him you aren't Lucero Alvarado, he'll have to believe me.”
“You can't do that.” His voice was flat and firm. He could see the startled look in her eyes; but before she could say anything further, he implored her, “Think, Mercedes, even if the authorities here in Durango believed you—which is highly unlikely—what would it mean for you and our child? You'd be branded an adulteress guilty of incest and our baby would be born a bastard. No. I will not bring that disgrace down on you and our child. If McQueen can't get me quietly off, it's better that I die as Luce.”
“I don't care about disgrace! About dishonor, about anything but seeing that my baby's father is alive and able to be there when he's born!”
“Don't talk crazy, Mercedes. You don't know what the men in charge of prisons can be like, what they're capable of. Believe me, I do,” he said grimly. “If they think you are already...‘blemished’...” His voice faded away as he blocked out the horror. “It was madness to come here alone. I want you safely out of harm's way and back at Gran Sangre to await the birthing.”
A mulishly stubborn expression came over her face. Her jaw clamped and her eyes sparked. “I won't do it, Nicholas. You can't stop me from seeing the commandant and telling him the truth.”
He took her by her shoulders, his fingers digging into the soft flesh with bruising force. “I forbid it, Mercedes.”
She could hear the guard unlocking the outer door, then shambling up to Nicholas’ cell. “You can do nothing to stop me—until you're free. And then it won't matter.”
“It will matter if everyone learns what we've done,” he called out as she twisted away from him and slipped through the door the grizzled guard held open. “Mercedes, I forbid it,” he ground out.
She turned, looking at him with anguish. “You cannot, Nicholas, for legally you aren't my husband.”
The heavy iron bars clanged shut in his face. She fled up the narrow stone steps followed by the jailer. “Mercedes, wait!”
But she did not. He was left alone in the gloom once more. The only evidence that she had not been a figment of his imagination was the lingering essence of lavender that hung sweetly in the damp air.
* * * *
The office of Commandant Morales was small and tidy, as neatly organized as the short slender man facing her across his scarred pine desk. “I regret the circumstances under which we meet, Madam Alvarado,” he said courteously, offering her a seat. “However, there is nothing that I can do. The military tribunal will make the decision as to whether Lucero Alvarado lives or dies.”
“But the man in that cell is not Lucero Alvarado. He's Nicholas Fortune, an American. He isn't
El Diablo
.”
Morales looked at her as if she had grown a second head—and had not a brain between the two. “I realize this is most difficult for a gently raised lady, but—”
“I'm not having a case of the vapors, Commandant. Nor am I making up a story to save the father of my child,” she replied, struggling to remain outwardly calm.
“You're saying...” His eyes darted involuntarily to her belly. Then his thin face turned a distinctive shade of fuchsia as he immediately looked back at her face. “That is, ahem—”
“Yes, that is what I'm saying. Nicholas Fortune is my child's father, but he's not my husband. They're half brothers who both bear such a remarkable resemblance to old Don Anselmo that no one can tell the difference...at first.”
Morales began to shuffle papers from one neat stack to another, methodically evening the edges with his small stubby fingers. “This is most irregular, but even if what you say is true, I have no authority to release him.”
“When does the tribunal meet?”
He tugged at the neck band of his crisp blue uniform.
“Tomorrow. At ten.”
“I will be here precisely at ten.” She rose and nodded politely.
The officer scrambled to his feet and rounded the desk to see her to the door. Bowing stiffly he said, “I doubt if you can do much good, Madam Alvarado. There are several witnesses. One is a...er, a young woman who was raped by
El Diablo
.”
Mercedes paled, but thrust out her chin determinedly. “Then she should see that Nicholas has a scar on his left cheek. Lucero has not a mark on him.”
She knew he did not believe her. God and all His Saints, what if the tribunal did not either? If only those witnesses could discern the difference between Lucero and Nicholas—but when one was missing, the other could so easily pass. Many of the people at Gran Sangre did not notice the absence of Nicholas’ scar when Lucero had returned.
People see what they choose to see. Just as you chose to do for so long.
The scar! Dear God, what if Lucero wore a beard when he was riding with the
contre-guerrillas
! No, when he rode back to Gran Sangre, he had been clean shaven. But now Nicholas was not. Here in prison he had been forced to let his beard grow.
At daybreak the next morning, Nicholas was awakened when his cell door screeched open. He sat up groggily, wondering what was happening. Mercedes walked briskly into the small cell, followed by a fat, balding little man with a leather satchel and a burly soldier who carried a heavy iron tub which he set down on the floor with a loud thunk.
Fortune combed his hair out of his eyes with his fingers and looked at Mercedes. “What in hell is going on?”
“I found that in prisons, like in most other places, pullets do not roost so high that they won't come down for corn. I bribed the jailer to arrange for your toilette before you appear at the tribunal.”
She gestured at another soldier, who trailed them into the cell, struggling with two steaming buckets of water. As he dumped them into the tub and left to get more, the bald man extracted the tools of his trade from the satchel, barber's scissors and a razor.
Suddenly Nicholas and Mercedes’ eyes met. Both remembered the time she had attempted to shave him in the bathing room at Gran Sangre. Their expressions betrayed the heated longing the memories evoked. Her cheeks flushed as she placed her reticule on the floor and began to roll up the sleeves of her simple pink muslin day dress. He looked at the way the sheer folds of fabric gathered below her breasts, falling softly around the swell of her belly. His body grew rigid with desire.
It was as if she could read his thoughts. When her eyes met his again, the aching sweetness of passion infused her cheeks and deepened her eyes to the color of warm molasses. She watched as the barber shaved her love's face and trimmed his hair while the soldiers finished filling the tub with warm water. As the razor glided across his cheek with soft rasping strokes, her fingers curled at her sides. She trembled with wanting to touch him.
Only wait until they've gone.
As soon as the barber finished, she paid him and the water carriers. All three men left with the jailer. She smiled. “Now, strip off those filthy rags and let me bathe you. I've brought you clean clothes from Gran Sangre.”
He watched, amused, as she took one of Luce's best black wool suits from the small trunk that one of the soldiers had carried in. “I had your shirt pressed. Hurry now, before the guards return.”
He grinned rakishly in spite of his grave misgivings about her being in this hole. “If you're considering an assignation, I ought to warn you about the rats around my pallet.”
A brief look of alarm swept across her face, then vanished. She concentrated on him as he pulled his filthy shirt over his head and tossed it onto the floor. A new angry red scar was forming on his right side. “What happened?” she asked as he favored the wound, wincing as he turned back to her.
At once she rushed over to him, running cool soft hands over his heated flesh, walking around him to examine the entry wound where Hernan Ruiz's bullet had lodged. “You've been shot again!”
“Souvenir of my little expedition to stop Mariano Vargas and his friends from killing the president,” he said wryly. “The doctor thought I was lucky to be alive,” he added with a mirthless chuckle as he began to unfasten the fly of his breeches.
Her mouth went dry, partially from fear that he had almost died in another battle, yet more because of the way his trousers slipped down his long hard legs, revealing his aroused sex, which stood up proudly as if begging for her touch. “Nicholas,” she whispered, unable to stop his name from escaping her lips.
His eyes narrowed, burning deeply into hers. “I love the sound of my name on your lips. How often I wanted to hear it when I came into you and you cried out.”
He spoke low and rapidly, as if he, too, could not stop the words from slipping out. In an instant Mercedes was in his arms, her hands clasped about his neck, pulling his mouth down to meet hers. “Nicholas, Nicholas,” she breathed against his lips.
Then he claimed her in a sweet, savage kiss, holding her tightly to him as his mouth ground down on hers. She opened for his tongue, tasting him eagerly, glorying in his stamp of possession on her as he plunged inside, mimicking that deeper, most intimate possession of all, which had created the life growing inside her.
Nicholas felt his ardor spinning out of control and knew he had to stop before he did take her in the crude filthy cell. Breaking off the kiss and holding her at arm's length, he struggled to regain his composure. “I wasn't exaggerating about the rats,” he said raggedly. “I'm stinking filthy and this is no place for a lady like you.”
“You can be such a fool at times.” Her voice was breathlessly impassioned, but there was an underlying stubbornness in her stance as she gestured to the tub. “Climb in and you won't be filthy any longer.”
“You're an amazing woman,” he said with a grin, doing as she bid him.
Mercedes took the soap from the trunk and knelt at the side of the tub. She wet her hands and worked up a rich lather, then set to work, beginning with his freshly barbered hair. He leaned back under the able ministration of her deft fingers.
After she had finished sudsing right down to his scalp, she said, “Sit up and close your eyes so I can rinse.” He leaned forward and she dumped a small bucket of water over his head.