Bride of Fortune (20 page)

      
Love was not a word in Nicholas Fortune's vocabulary. But what about his feelings for Rosario? For the children he and this woman would have together? Could he love them? Strange that he should feel such an immediate kinship with Luce's daughter, he who had never had any contact with other children, who grew up alone in a harsh world of uncaring adults. When he had come here, the prospect of providing heirs for Gran Sangre had been a daunting consideration that he had not wanted to dwell upon. But after his response to Rosario and hers to him, he felt reassured.

      
Maybe there is some shred of honest humanity in me after all,
he thought in surprise. Very carefully he placed the long golden glory of Mercedes’ hair on the pillow and slid his arm from around her shoulders. One milky breast peeped from beneath the covers; its pale pink nipple stiffened when the cool morning air touched it. The temptation to remain in bed and take her again was great, but he reminded himself of his responsibilities. The
patrón
of Gran Sangre had to ride out with his new men. As it was, Hilario and the other men were probably saddled up and ready to go.

      
Sighing, he slipped from the bed, then covered up Mercedes’ lovely nakedness once more. His riding gear had been laid out last night. On silent bare feet he walked across the frayed carpet and picked up the heavy broadcloth pants and pulled them on. Just as he was buttoning the fly, he sensed her eyes on him and turned.

      
The loss of his body heat had drawn her from sleep. Something was amiss, she thought as the room came slowly into focus. She could hear faint rustling noises and rolled over, only then realizing that her husband was no longer in bed. How quickly she had grown accustomed to sleeping with his lean, hard body curving protectively around hers. She looked across the room at his back, scarred and bronzed, the muscles moving with fluid, peculiarly male beauty. His head down, he turned partially, tugging on a pair of tight pants and fitting his sex carefully inside the fly. Heat colored her cheeks as she remembered how that now flaccid staff had pulsed with life, huge and rigid within her body.

      
Then he looked up and their eyes met. Instinctively she pulled the covers up to her chin, then felt foolish. He had seen all there was to see the last two times he had made love to her.

      
Made love.
The thought struck her oddly. Never had she felt Lucero made love to her during their first few weeks as husband and wife. Not wanting to consider the disturbing implications of her own thoughts, she blurted out the first thing she could think to say. “Where are you going? It's barely daylight.”

      
He raked her tousled hair and flushed face with hungry eyes, lifting one black eyebrow sardonically. “You tempt me to stay, my love, but Hilario awaits. We're going to begin rounding up whatever cattle and horses we can find running loose within a day's ride. I have several excellent hiding places where we can winter the best of them down on the Yaqui. After we clean out the immediate vicinity, we'll have to start ranging farther out, two, three days' ride, until we cover every quadrant of the range,” he explained.

      
She watched him don a blue cotton shirt, covering up that hard hairy chest with all its mysterious and sensual scars. A disturbing heat began to build deep in her belly. She struggled to concentrate on his words. “What time will you return tonight?”

      
“Not until dark, I expect. Have Angelina leave a plate for me on the kitchen hearth.”

      
“I'll be working with Juan Morales today.”

      
“The old gardener? What the devil for—we can't spare men for growing flowers.”

      
“Of course not,” she replied indignantly. “He and a dozen or so of the older servants are helping me with vegetable gardens. We've planted our own fields of corn as well as beans, chilies, tomatoes, yams—just about everything that can be dried or preserved for winter. Your father thought it demeaning that I muck in the mud with the peons, but we can't afford to buy staple foodstuffs even if they were readily available, which they are not.”

      
“If my father disapproved, I can imagine what my mother had to say,” he replied dryly, walking over to the bed and unclenching one of her hands from the cover. He held it, examining the calluses, then kissed them. His eyes met hers. “Don't work too hard while I'm away, Mercedes.”

      
At the tender gesture a shiver of warmth coursed through her. He replaced her hand on the cover, then walked over to where his weapons lay on the large dressing table beside the window. Strapping the knife to his thigh, he slung the gun belt over his shoulder, then picked up his Henry rifle and left the room as she sat bemused by their homey exchange of plans for the day.

* * * *

      
Mercedes spent the cool early morning hours out in the fields, weeding alongside the peons. Finally she leaned on her hoe and looked out at the green rows of young corn struggling to grow in the dry, hard soil. Wiping the perspiration from her brow, she grew pensive.

      
“The crops need water, Doña Mercedes,” Juan said as he, too, stopped his labors.

      
“I've been thinking about that. A branch of the Yaqui River flows past the fields to the east, on the higher ground.

If we could divert part of that, it would flow down to where most of the cleared fields are planted. I've read about such irrigation in books.”

      
Juan's expression remained respectfully impassive. “It has always been said that the Indians to the south in the great valleys of Mexico irrigated fields so vast the eye could not span them. They even built pipes of clay to carry the water for hundreds of leagues.”

      
“The aqueducts, yes,” she murmured, looking at the wizened little Indian in baggy white
calzones
. Fathomless black eyes were set deeply in a flat face that seemed somehow ancient yet ageless, the way she often thought of Mexico itself. Had he sprung from such illustrious ancestors as the fabled Aztecs? At times this harsh and beautiful land remained alien to her even though she had spent almost all of her life in it. She was a
gachupín
, born in Spain, in some ways still an outsider. But she loved the land, her land, with a passion born of hard labor and the struggle to survive the turbulent times in which they lived.

      
“Do you think we can dig so far, Dona?”

      
Mercedes stared out at the parched earth. “We'll have to, Juan. This afternoon we'll walk the banks of the tributary and decide the best place to start.”

      
By the time she returned to the house, the sun was high overhead. Rosario had most probably already eaten breakfast and been sent to play around the kitchen. She had given the child to Angelina and Lupe's charge, but both women had many chores. Perhaps it would be better to bring Rosario with her to the fields, but it was hot and dusty with scant shade close by.

      
A smile touched her lips as she thought of Father Salvador, who did little around the household after morning mass but pray and read religious tracts. She would have to discuss Rosario's tutoring with Lucero. The stern old priest had always intensely disliked her husband. Lucero might not want him teaching his daughter. Yet there was no one else unless she did it herself, a task she would ordinarily have relished if not for the heavy burden of responsibility she bore for running Gran Sangre.

      
Perhaps Lucero would really be able to make a difference now that he was home. She was not certain she wanted to give over her hard-won position of command to a man who came from a long line of wastrels. Yet he seemed to have been honed by war into a disciplined and mature man. Remembering his examination of her work-roughened hands earlier that morning, she felt her heart skip a beat.

      
After stopping outside the kitchen to wash the worst of the dust from her feet in a bucket of water kept just for that purpose, she started toward the kitchen. Suddenly a loud screech and a string of oaths rent the warm air, followed by furious barking. The hubbub was coming from the courtyard on the opposite side of the kitchen. Cutting through the big room, Mercedes saw Angelina in the doorway to the courtyard, yelling at someone.

      
“Stop this at once, Innocencia,” the old cook commanded.

      
“Look what the child and her cur have done! All my morning's work ruined! My hands are red as a fishwife's and for what?” She turned to Rosario. “You rotten little bastard!”

      
Mercedes flew past Angelina and crossed the flagstone patio in a trice. Rosario was huddled in the mud beside an overturned tub filled with white table linens, her eyes huge with fright, small hiccupping sobs rending her thin little chest. The big dog sat protectively by her side. Reaching down to the child, the
patrona
took her in her arms and glared at the murderous look in the slattern's black eyes. “Don't you ever speak that word aloud again in this house, or I will banish you forever!”

      
“You cannot banish me. Only Don Lucero may dismiss a servant and you know he will never let me go.” She smirked insolently at her mistress, then turned her wrath back at Rosario. “Look at the mess. She is the one who should go,” she said, pointing at the quivering child. “Her and that hound from hell you keep!”

      
“I did not mean to be bad,” Rosario choked out. “Please, neither did Bufón!”

      
“It's all right,” Mercedes said, stroking a lock of inky hair from Rosario's forehead. “Tell me what happened.”

      
“We...we were playing with Bufón's yarn ball, the big blue one,” the child began, pointing to the soggy blue wool toy that lay atop the spilled linens, its dye leaching a pale grayish stain onto a once snowy white tablecloth. “I threw the ball to him but…” Tears clogged her voice and she began to sob harder. “It landed in the laundry tub. I ran to pull it out...”

      
“But that big rascal beat you to it and overturned the tub in his eagerness to reclaim his prize,” Mercedes supplied for her.

      
“There is no real harm done,” Angelina said cheerfully, hefting the tub onto the high wooden bench as if the vat weighed nothing. “We will bleach out the dye with lemon juice in no time.” She turned to Innocencia. “You fetch the jug of lemon juice, then begin refilling the tub with clean water from the well. I will wring out the linens.”

      
Innocencia stamped her foot. “We'll be all afternoon redoing this wash—it was never my job to begin with. I am no washerwoman,” she said, daring the
patrona
to do anything about her defiance.

      
Bufón growled low in his throat and shook his head, spraying mud on the hem of her brightly colored skirts. Innocencia began another shrieking diatribe and jumped away, only to slip in the mud and fall on her amply padded backside. She struggled to scoot backward in the ooze, her earlier rage now transformed into fright.

      
Mercedes smothered a chuckle as she set Rosario down and commanded Bufón to be still, then turned her attention to the cowering tart. “You're right—you're not a washerwoman—or a cook or a maid. You're a harlot...an unemployed harlot; and if you say one more word to me or ever again threaten the
patrón's
daughter, you won't even have a roof over your head!”

      
Innocencia's dark complexion blanched. For the first time she really looked at the little girl, seeing the finely chiseled Alvarado features and signature black and silver eyes set in the swarthier face of an Indian mother. Realization of what she had done slammed into her. “I...I did not know she was his daughter. I only thought—”

      
“You thought she was one of the serving girls' children and could be bullied as you always try to bully people,” Mercedes cut in angrily. “Now get up and get to work. If I hear you speak one cross word to Angelina, I'll personally rip every hair out of your head, then let Bufón use you for his play ball. Is that clear?”

      
Nodding sullenly, Innocencia slipped and scrambled to her feet, then trudged over to the well and began to draw up water. Mercedes heard a soft giggle of laughter and looked down at Rosario, who was watching her nemesis wade like a duck through the muck.

      
“She looks like the brown milk cow Mother Superior had at the convent.”

      
A grin spread across Mercedes’ lips. “Yes, she rather does, doesn't she?”

      
While she and Lupe washed the mud from Rosario and then tackled Bufón—always a formidable task—Mercedes considered how her husband might feel about her threats to his old mistress. True, he had not bedded her since returning home. At least she had seen no evidence that he had done so. But she had usurped his authority in a manner that could displease him. Then thinking of the
puta's
cruel words to his daughter she reassured herself that he would never allow anyone, even his mistress, to abuse the child. Still, as the day wore on, she fretted about what Innocencia might do.