“The former American chargé to Texas, Beaufort LeFevre, is coming here to work with the current chargé toward annexation. While LeFevre is in Texas, I want you to keep an eye on him. I want to know everyone he sees, everything he says.”
“How do you propose I accomplish that?”
Sir Giles smiled, exposing the gums above his teeth. “It’s quite simple, my boy. LeFevre will be staying with Rip Stewart. You will merely take your wife home for an extended visit with her father.”
Cruz couldn’t stop the sardonic twist of his lips. “I suppose I have no choice about this.”
“No, you don’t.”
“When is LeFevre coming?”
“We don’t know. When he does come, I’ll expect you to join him at Three Oaks.”
“Anything else?” Cruz asked.
“That is quite enough, don’t you think?”
Cruz didn’t bother to answer, just turned his back on Sir Giles and headed for the door. The Englishman’s voice stopped him before he could leave.
“Hawk . . .”
Cruz paused but didn’t turn around.
“You aren’t considering changing your allegiance at this late date, I hope. Because if you do, Alejandro has made it plain he would be willing to solve any unpleasant . . . complications that arise from such an unfortunate decision.”
Cruz angled his head briefly toward the shadows where Alejandro Sanchez sat. Then he left the Englishman’s room as quietly as he had entered. He had not mistaken the warning he had been given. From now on, he would watch his back.
When Cruz returned to his room he found Sloan in a considerably different state from the one in which he had left her.
In no way could the woman lying tangled in the sweat-soaked sheets of the four-poster be described as resting peacefully. She was curled in a fetal ball and gripping her belly. The groans coming from her throat seemed wrenched from deep within her.
Something was desperately wrong with his wife.
He lifted Sloan into his arms. “Cebellina, your skin is on fire. What is wrong? What has happened?”
“I hurt.”
“Where?”
“My stomach . . . my head . . . everywhere . . . all over,” Sloan gasped out.
Cruz felt fear such as he had never felt before. His heart pounded erratically; his palms were wet. He did not trust the Anglo doctors who healed through bloodletting and purge. Yet where else could he turn?
“I’m so thirsty,” she said.
He laid Sloan back down on the bed so he could get her some water. The pitcher that sat on the dry sink across from the bed was empty. He picked up the canteens they had brought with them from Dolorosa and realized that while his was nearly half full, hers was almost empty.
He brought both canteens with him to the bed. “How long have you felt sick?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did it start after we arrived?”
“No, earlier in the day. Sometime after we ate,” she confessed. “I thought it might be sunstroke.”
Cruz held up her nearly empty canteen. “If you’ve drunk this much water, how could it be sunstroke?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” Sloan mumbled. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe it was something you ate.”
“We ate the same things,” she said with a moan. “You would be sick, too.”
“Maybe the water in your canteen is tainted,” he suggested.
“If so, why aren’t you sick? We filled our canteens from the same well. It couldn’t be the water. Except . . . I did refill my canteen at the small pond where we stopped to eat. But I could have sworn it wasn’t brackish.”
Cruz poured a small amount of the water from her canteen into his hand. He sniffed at it, then touched the tip of his tongue to his palm. It tasted all right, but that was no guarantee it wasn’t bad. He stared at his wife, feeling the panic begin to rise. “I do not know, Cebellina. It might be anything. I just do not know!”
“Help me, Cruz,” Sloan cried. “It hurts!”
He stood helpless in the face of her pain. Suddenly, he realized he knew someone in San Antonio who might know where he could find a good doctor.
“Hang on, Cebellina,” he urged, kissing her feverish brow. “I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”
C
RUZ RETURNED A SHORT TIME LATER WITH A
distraught and concerned Luke. They had dragged along a thin, white-haired physician, who had obviously been rousted from his bed.
Cruz suffered along with Sloan through the agonies of the purging applied by the doctor as “the most efficacious remedy for any malady of the stomach.” But the white-haired doctor warned Cruz that if Sloan’s illness had been caused by something she had eaten or drunk, “It’s probably already worked its way well into her system.” He could only tell Cruz that her pain seemed to be in her stomach, and, “If she doesn’t die tonight, she’ll probably recover.”
Luke escorted the doctor out the door before Cruz had a chance to vent his frustration on the hapless man for such an unpromising prognosis.
As the evening wore on, Cruz was grateful that Luke had decided to stay. The night that followed was long and, in many ways, horrifying. He had to face the very real possibility that the woman he loved might die.
For hours, Sloan was delirious. Cruz began to get an inkling from the disjointed babble she spouted just how many demons she lived with.
“. . . Where’s my baby? . . . I can never love you . . .
Yes
, dammit! I’ll marry you! . . . fit like fur boots . . . Traitor? . . . No! He can’t be dead.
“. . . Three Oaks is mine! . . . Worms in the cotton? Plow it under and plant again . . . I need a
bath . . . never invited . . . too many calluses . . . betrayed again . . . Luke . . . Luke . . . a bastard
son . . .”
Cruz had never felt so helpless. He tenderly sponged Sloan’s forehead and dabbed at the perspiration on her upper lip, willing her pain away. But there was more.
“. . . blood . . . so much blood . . . Cisco is dead! I can’t bear the pain . . . not again . . . Doña Lucia is a witch . . . Tonio’s lips are so cold . . . no more . . . please, no more . . .
“. . . stupid bargain . . . beautiful Tomasita . . . please don’t touch me . . . It feels so good . . . It hurts, Cruz . . . Why does it hurt?”
Cruz covered his face with his hands to hide his red-rimmed eyes. Her pain unmanned him. Her revelations devastated him. It was like looking behind the walls she had erected to keep him out and seeing all the old wounds—hurt upon hurt upon hurt—that had caused her to build that wall in the first place. He could not bear to watch her suffering.
At long last, she slipped into an uneasy slumber.
Cruz rolled his head on his neck to ease the tension, then turned to Luke and said, “I feel so helpless. Is there nothing we can do?”
“We just have to wait.” Luke put a hand on Cruz’s shoulder and felt the other man flinch. “It isn’t long now until dawn. Remember, the doctor promised that if Sloan made it through the night, she’ll live.”
“She’s in so much pain!” Cruz said, the words wrenched from him.
Luke simply nodded. He had heard Sloan’s feverish murmurs and knew it wasn’t only Sloan’s physical pain that was worrying Cruz.
Cruz thrust both hands through his hair in agitation. “Oh God, she has to live!”
“What do you suppose made her so sick in the first place?” Luke asked, hoping to distract Cruz from his distressing thoughts.
“Maybe the water in her canteen—she filled it up when we stopped to eat. We will probably never know for sure.”
Luke rose from the chair beside Cruz and crossed to the foot of Sloan’s bed. He leaned against the bedstead of the four-poster and crossed his legs at the ankles. “Damn scary to think you could just get sick and die without ever knowing what hit you,” Luke mused. “Makes you think twice about all the things you’ve left undone . . . like maybe you should tie up all those loose strings before you lose your chance. You got any loose strings out there, Cruz?”
Cruz sighed and leaned forward in the chair beside Sloan’s bed, crossing his arms on top of the mattress. “One in particular.”
“What’s that?”
“You have met Tomasita Hidalgo, I believe.”
Luke was silent for a moment, and when Cruz turned to see why Luke hadn’t answered, he saw the Ranger’s cheeks were flushed. He watched Luke’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed uncomfortably.
“I’ve talked to her some,” Luke admitted at last.
Cruz smiled. “I think perhaps you find her attractive,” he teased gently.
“She’ll make someone a beautiful wife.”
Cruz rested his chin against his hands. “My father had plans that she would become
my
wife, plans that went astray because I married Sloan. I think Mamá still believes that if it were not for Sloan, I would take Tomasita for my wife.”
“Is she right?” Luke asked, an inexplicable tension in his shoulders.
Cruz shook his head. “There is only one woman for me. If I cannot have Sloan, I do not want another. But as for what I have left undone—I must find a husband for Tomasita. I have delayed too long already.”
Luke feigned disinterest, but his voice was rough when he asked, “Do you have anyone particular in mind?”
“Don Ambrosio, for one. He was known to dote on his first wife, and I trust him to be kind to Tomasita. Of course, he is a little older than I would like.”
“How old?”
“Forty-six, I think.”
“He’s old enough to be her father!”
“An older man would be able to teach her the way she should go.”
Luke made a disgusted face. “Who else do you have in mind?”
“Joaquín Carvajal is very wealthy, but he is almost too young, only twenty-two.”
“I’m twenty-three,” Luke said with asperity. “Are you saying I’d be too young a husband for her?”
“Are you asking my permission to court her?”
“And if I were?”
Cruz turned to face Luke, suddenly aware that the Ranger hadn’t asked the question idly. He frowned, unsure what to say. For any number of reasons, Luke Summers was not the sort of man he would have chosen as a husband for Tomasita Hidalgo. He liked Luke and he respected his abilities as a Ranger, but Luke had a rogue’s reputation.
“Do you think you could be satisfied with only one woman?” Cruz asked.
“What the hell kind of question is that?” Luke retorted.
“I would be lying if I said no Spanish gentleman ever had a mistress,” Cruz said. “But still, no Spanish gentlemen has ever had quite so many ladies as your reputation imputes to you. I would like to know whether you would be able to put Tomasita first, before the others.”
“There would be no others!”
Cruz raised a brow at the vehemence of Luke’s reply.
Realizing that he had nearly given himself away, Luke added, “That is, I’d surely devote myself to the woman I picked for my wife.”
“I see,” Cruz said. “And I would ask your plans for taking care of her.”
Luke grimaced. “A Texas Ranger doesn’t make the kind of money that can support a woman like Tomasita.”
“You are Rip Stewart’s son,” Cruz countered, “and heir to Three Oaks if you want it.”
“I don’t want anything from Rip.”
“Not even if it means you could marry Tomasita Hidalgo?”
Luke pursed his lips in thought. Finally, he said, “I’m not looking for a wife, Cruz. Not even one as beautiful as Tomasita Hidalgo.”
Cruz saw the distress in Luke’s eyes and wanted to ask what it was that had soured so young a man on marriage. But in this land, one man did not ask another about his past. He watched as Luke walked around to the other side of the bed and reached out to gently brush a lock of hair from Sloan’s face.
Cruz stared at the Ranger, wondering why a man who obviously loved women seemed so determined to deny himself a woman’s love.
“Guess there’s not much more I can do here,” Luke said, crossing to the door. “I’ll check back early tomorrow morning to see how Sloan’s doing.”
“I will see you then.
Vaya con Dios, mi amigo
.”
Cruz kept a vigil that lasted until dawn. He sponged Sloan’s brow to keep her cool and rearranged the covers when she kicked them off. He recognized the signs that told him the danger was finally past, but he was impatient for her to wake up and tell him she was all right. As the sun came up, he lowered his eyelids to protect his bloodshot eyes from the light. His head fell forward to rest on his arms on the bed and in the next instant he was asleep.
When Sloan awoke, her mouth felt like it was full of cotton. Her muscles ached, and she groaned as she turned from her back to her side. She slowly opened her eyes, trying to orient herself.
She saw a head of tousled black curls and a beard-stubbled face lying on a large sun-browned hand covered in a dusting of black hair. Cruz was sound asleep, his mouth open slightly. She smiled over the secret knowledge that Don Cruz Guerrero snored.
Everything came back to her. The dizziness, the nausea, and Cruz’s return with that odious doctor. She lifted her hand, surprised when it obeyed her command, and laid it gently on the crown of Cruz’s head, tunneling her fingers into his silky hair in what was undeniably a caress.
Why hadn’t she met him first, before Tonio, before everything had happened that made her afraid to love him back?
Her hand trailed down from his hair to his nape, and then around to his bristly jaw. The feel of a man’s jaw in the morning was an intimate thing she had only come to know since living with Cruz. She loved the feel of her smooth cheek against his rough one, and wished she felt well enough to lift her head from the pillow and lie next to him.
Her forefinger tracked the cleft in his chin, and she thought how distinctive it made him look. She marveled at the softness of his lips as she lightly traced them, while the feel of his breath on her fingertips caused a quiver of expectation deep inside her.
Cruz came awake to the languorous touch of his wife’s hands on his face. He held himself still, as though she were a curious kitten and he might frighten her away if he moved.
It was the first time she had made an overture to touch him on her own, and he was both delighted and confused. Surely this must mean she cared for him.
He groaned with pleasure as her fingertips soothed his brow, and she instantly removed her hand.