Bride of Fortune (27 page)

      
Matter-of-factly and with amazing thoroughness, McQueen described Nicholas Fortune's life up until the time the spymaster had encountered him in Havana four years earlier. “Nick was working for the cane planters. Hired to suppress a local rebellion among the workers. He was supposed to lead a team of professional soldiers against a bunch of unarmed field hands, but he walked away from it.”

      
“So, the man has a conscience?” Juarez inquired skeptically.

      
McQueen's smile was thin. “It's possible, but frankly, I doubt it. The sugar interests in New York who had hired him underwent some severe financial setbacks. They couldn't pay him. He drifted into Saint Augustine, then hired on with his old employers, the French, to invade Mexico. Apparently he and old Don Anselmo's legitimate son stumbled across one another by accident.”

      
As McQueen described the circumstances under which Nicholas Fortune and Lucero Alvarado had exchanged places, Juarez was again amazed at the
Norte Americano's
incredible skills as an intelligence agent. He had been dispatched by President Lincoln to act in strictest secrecy as liaison to the government of the Mexican Republic. Over the past two years Juarez had found him to be completely dependable and utterly ruthless in pursuing the goals of his superiors in Washington. As a man of single-minded devotion to his own republic, the president of Mexico was just as happy he and Bart McQueen were on the same side.

      
“Essentially we have Fortune just where we want him,” McQueen concluded. “If he wants to continue masquerading as his half brother, he'll have to cooperate with us.”

      
“To be my eyes and ears in Sonora,” Juarez supplied.

      
“Especially with that coterie of
hacendados
surrounding our old friend Don Encarnación Vargas. I hear he's holding a large ball next month, to honor the visit of Prince Salm-Salm and his American wife who will be touring the northern states as special emissaries of the emperor.”

      
“Does anything go on in the capital to which you are not privy, Mr. McQueen?” Juarez asked with a slight smile on his austere features.

      
“Very little, Mr. President. I have good sources—although yours are higher placed. Have you heard from Miguel Lopez lately?”

      
Juarez grimaced in distaste. “I dislike dealing with traitors such as Lopez. He would sell his own wife and children if it were politically advantageous. I suppose that's why I dislike using a man like Nicholas Fortune. He's spent his life for hire with no allegiances to any cause but his own.”

      
“But that very allegiance to himself will work for us. After a life of rootless wandering, he wants desperately to be
patrón
of Gran Sangre. The only way he can is if he helps us.” McQueen shrugged cynically. “And, who knows, our doubts notwithstanding, perhaps Fortune has developed a conscience.”

* * * *

      
Nicholas leaned up and propped his head on his hand, looking down into Mercedes’ face. His other hand brushed lightly across her breasts, causing the nipples to harden and distend. He had just finished making love to her for a protracted period of time, holding off his own climax, driving slowly and deeply into her body until at last he had been forced to give in to the shuddering ecstasy.

      
She could no longer be cool and unresponsive to him. At first she had been physically frightened of him, remembering her husband's roughness. Then she had grown wary of an even more frightening threat when she had found her body beginning to betray her. The natural hungers she had been unaware of and then suppressed were tearing at her now. Yet to give in to them was to give in to him and she was still afraid to trust him. Lucero had scarred her deeply in the first weeks of their marriage.

      
“Don't you ever feel as if you're missing something?” he asked softly, watching the bowstring tautness of her body, lying so still and silent beside him. “I know you ache...here”—he skimmed over her breasts again, before moving lower—“and here.” His palm flattened on the concave hollow of her belly. Then his fingers brushed the soft dark-gold curls at her mound. “Most of all, here.”

      
He massaged her pubic bone in a slow rotating circle, wanting to see if she could remain still. When her hips arched infinitesimally, he smiled.

      
Mercedes ground her teeth in frustration as tears stung her eyelids. Sweet Virgin, how she did ache! What was he doing to her? What did her body want—no, crave? Yet she knew that if she surrendered to his sensual torture she would lose her self-respect, her hard-won independence, perhaps her very soul.

      
“What we do is to create children. There's nothing more to it,” she replied with a tight finality, wishing desperately for him to pull the covers over her burning nakedness, roll over and go to sleep. But he did not. Instead his soft silky laughter, oddly sad, caressed her cheek.

      
“Spoken like a good little girl raised in a convent. But there is more, so very much more, Mercedes. Pleasure beyond imagining, even by that facile busy mind of yours. But only if you allow yourself to experience it. Do you dare?”

      
“I thought you wanted to do your duty for Gran Sangre, to get an heir on me. Do it and let me be gone from your bed.” She hated the ragged plea in her voice.

      
“Ah, so you admit it at last...a part of your fears, at least.”

      
“I know my duty. I have no fears about having children.”

      
“But you do fear I'll introduce you to passion—a passion I can fuel and assuage until you're breeding. Then I might leave you. Isn't that it, beloved?”

      
“You will leave me once I'm great with child. You'll have to seek your amusements elsewhere when I can no longer...” Her voice trailed away in embarrassed misery as she realized what she had just blurted out. She could feel his smile.

      
“Being great with child doesn't stop a woman from making love. Believe me, I saw enough soldiers' wives during the course of the war to know that for a fact,” he replied dryly.

      
“You don't like shapeless, ugly women, Lucero,” she accused. The more she said, the worse she sounded, like a jealous shrew, perfectly pitiful!

      
“What makes you think I'd find a woman carrying my child to be unattractive?” The question caught him by surprise. He had never looked at the
soldaderas'
swollen bellies with anything but pity for their harsh life.
Enciente
rich ladies did not even appear in public. Certainly he would never have felt inclined to dally with one even if the opportunity had presented itself.

      
In fact, his own illegitimacy and harsh childhood had made him exceedingly careful in the matter of contraception. He wanted no innocent children of his left behind to grow up despised and abused as he had been. But the idea of Mercedes—his wife—filled with his baby was suddenly immensely appealing. He was shocked at his reaction to the prospect.

      
For the first time Mercedes looked up into his eyes, sensing an undercurrent of uncertainty that emanated from him. “You obviously found Rosario's mother of less interest after she was breeding,” she snapped.

      
“Let me rephrase my question,” he said, again cursing Luce for this tangle. “What makes you think I'll find you unattractive when you're pregnant?”

      
“Perhaps I'm barren and we'll never know. Lord knows you've labored diligently enough with no result for the past months.”

      
“Would it bother you, not being able to bear my children?”

      
“It would mean an annulment. Freedom from you. Perhaps it would be worth it,” she replied, striving for a light tone of voice, not succeeding. Nicholas knew that she loved children, had been raised to believe that the main function of her life was to give a husband heirs. Rosario was a great joy to her. He knew how she would feel the pain of barrenness.

      
“Liar,” he whispered. “Anyway, I wouldn't give you up even if you were barren, which I very much doubt. A few months is far too short a time to prove your fertility. I have every confidence I'll be watching that little belly grow round within the year. Now as to laboring diligently, perhaps I ought to persevere...just to set your mind at rest about your infertility as quickly as possible.”

      
He lowered his mouth to take hers, ravaging it hungrily as he murmured against her lips, “You're my wife and I never give up what's mine.”

* * * *

      
Mercedes stood watching Lucero with his vaqueros in the dim light of dawn. He rode Peltre with the inbred grace of a
criollo
. Every move of his lean, elegant body was arrogant, powerful, completely self-assured as he issued crisp orders for the day's work. Even from the distance of the upstairs window, she could see that errant curl slip over his forehead when he removed his hat. She remembered what that lock of hair felt like when it brushed her skin as he kissed his way over her body. Just thinking of last night sent a hot, hard stab of pain deep in her belly.

      
Biting her lip in vexation, she turned from the window. Each night her struggle to lie passively beneath him grew increasingly more difficult. She wanted to know what she was missing, what made her ache, what drove him to that final apex of shuddering, explosive violence that ended their congress each time he took her.
It must be pleasure so intense as to almost shatter the soul
. Might it be the same for a woman as for a man? Surely not...yet why did some women tease their men and follow them adoringly with their eyes? She had seen such behavior between married couples on the
hacienda
, even between men and women of her class in Hermosillo.

      
The memories of her parents were hazy, yet she seemed to recall her mother's trilling laughter issuing from behind their bedroom door. But that was different. Her father and other men were not like Lucero Alvarado. He would use her, then discard her. Had he not done it once already?

      
Mercedes had tried every trick she could think of to keep herself from responding to his caresses, recalling his harsh words at their betrothal, his casual cruelty on their wedding night, even the lethal and bloody way he had dispatched that bandit with whom he had fought on the Hermosillo road. When all thoughts of him, especially those since his return, proved too dangerous, she resorted to mentally inventorying grain supplies, even counting chickens and sheep.

      
But nothing worked. She was so tense there were nights she feared she would shatter when he touched her. His possessive hungry words last night still haunted her. Had he meant them?
I wouldn't give you up even if you were barren...I never give up what's mine.

      
“He's so different now than he was before. He confuses me,” she murmured, rubbing her temple against the headache beginning to build. She bent over the basin of water on the oak table in her dressing room and splashed her face. There was simply too much work to be done for her to waste time indulging in self-pity. What would be, would be. A part of her prayed that she would conceive quickly so that he would leave her. Yet another part, not so deeply repressed as she would like, wondered if he would keep his word and continue lying with her after she began to increase. Did she hope he was telling the truth? That was insane, for all too soon she knew her resistance to his seductive lovemaking was going to crumble, leaving her defenseless.

      
As Mercedes performed her morning toilette, Nicholas rode to the east pastures where several small herds of beef still remained scattered in the foothills. His thoughts, too, were centered on the troubling relationship he and Mercedes shared. Then suddenly his reverie was interrupted by one of his vaqueros, calling out to him from the ridge directly ahead. He kneed Peltre into a canter.

      
“What is it, Gomez?”

      
The hard-eyed rider flipped the cigarette he had just finished smoking carelessly into the grass, then replied, “The men here caught a pair of trespassers. Peons from San Ramos. They've butchered a steer with the Gran Sangre brand on it.” His narrow dark face took on an expectant expression. “Do you want me to exact the usual punishment?” He reached for the whip coiled like a black serpent on the back of his saddle.

      
Fortune's stomach knotted but he gave no outward sign of his agitation. He knew the rules in this feudal country where any peon caught poaching livestock from a
hacendado
was subject to a severe lashing. And that was only the milder punishment. Maiming with a knife, even outright hanging of the miscreant was not unusual.

      
“I’ll deal with them,” Fortune said calmly, passing Gomez with a curt nod of dismissal.

      
Caesar Ortega stood frozen in horror as the arrogant-looking don rode up. Even though he was dressed in simple work clothes, any man in Mexico would have recognized him as an aristocrat, the finely chiseled features, the lean elegance of his body, the way he sat his mount as if born to command.