Bride of Fortune (23 page)

      
Angelina's spoon clinked into the bean pot, then was quickly retrieved as the cook busied herself, hiding the sly smile she could not contain by turning her back on the red-faced
patrona
.

      
Ignoring the child's question and the cook's reaction, Mercedes said to Rosario, “From now on I promise never again to forego reading to you.” A
nd tomorrow I'll tell Father Salvador to begin your formal education,
she vowed to herself.

* * * *

      
Facing the stern old priest was a lot more difficult than making the promise to herself the night before. Mercedes had been raised to be devout by her parents and later by the kindly example of the Carmelite nuns who had taught her, yet she had felt intimidated by her mother-in-law's confessor from the first time she was introduced to him by Doña Sofia.

      
Mercedes had gone weekly to confession and mass and always observed fasts and holy days, but Father Salvador's icy blue eyes seemed to pierce her very soul, even through the grille of the confessional. When she had assumed the duties that should have belonged to the
patrón
, she had elicited the censure of Doña Sofia's priest.

      
At first Father Salvador had advised and cautioned sternly.

      
When she had ridden out with the vaqueros and worked beside the peons, he had been outraged. Then Colonel Rodriguez and his Imperial Lancers had ridden up to the great house, arrogantly assuming in the owner's absence that his woman would give over anything the soldiers wished. The colonel had cornered her in the wine cellar the second night of his “visit,” intent on raping her. She had faced him down with that old Walker Colt which she had been unable to use on Lucero.

      
After she had seen the French patrol on their way with her weapon cocked and aimed at Rodriguez's chest, Father Salvador had given her a fearful penance. Considering how killingly angry she had been and how greatly the sin of murder would have weighed on her conscience, Mercedes had accepted his pronouncements. But the course of their relationship thereafter had been tense and fraught with mutual mistrust. He did not understand a woman driven to assume a man's role. It was unnatural, against the will of God. But Mercedes had been unable to give up her new identity. So they had reached a stalemate.

      
At least since Lucero's return, the priest could no longer accuse her of usurping his role, and the animosity between Father Salvador and her husband was so intense her sins had paled by comparison. With that thought to fortify her, she knocked on the door of his study and entered when he called out for her to do so.

      
Father Salvador looked up from his breviary, his pale eyes fixed on her intently. “Good morning, Doña Mercedes. What may I do for you? Is there something special you wish to confess?”

      
“No, Father, I haven't come to make confession.”

      
“Well, what then? You've missed the mass I celebrated in Doña Sofia's room an hour ago. It would be of comfort to her if you would join her more often.”

      
Mercedes grimaced inwardly. The very last thing her mother-in-law wished was for her to be present each morning. She barely tolerated her son's wife on Sundays.
      
“I've come about Rosario, Father.”

      
“Rosario? You mean the child your husband brought here?” His pale face reddened.

      
“His daughter, yes.”

      
“But not yours,” he put in, studying her keenly.

      
“She is my husband's child, an innocent, beautiful little girl, and I'm concerned for her future.”

      
“Ah,” he interjected, walking around the desk to place a consoling hand on her shoulder.

      
It felt stiffly unnatural to Mercedes.

      
“It would be best if you had children of your own. In time the Lord in his mercy may provide. Perhaps if you prayed to Our Lady—”

      
Now it was her face with the heightened color. “No—that is, of course I want more children, but that has nothing to do with caring for Rosario.”

      
“I realize your husband's responsibility toward the girl, but it would have been far wiser if he had provided for her elsewhere than at Gran Sangre. Flaunting his infidelities has been a painful reminder to his mother of his and his father's shortcomings. I would think you, too—”

      
“Rosario is a little girl—not
a painful reminder
of anything,” she retorted angrily. “She is Doña Sofia's first grandchild.”

      
He shook his head, for once not at all the sternly self-assured naysayer, but an uncertain old man. “Yes, yes, I've thought of that...prayed on it a great deal. She understands the Alvarado family's responsibility for the little girl...but the child's mother was a mixed blood.”

      
“That makes Rosario none the less Lucero's daughter.” There was cold accusation in her voice.

      
He sighed. “No, it does not. I have tried to gain Doña Sofia's acceptance of that fact, but her son was never an easy child himself, always a trial to her as was his father. She finds it difficult to accept the idea of an illegitimate child living in the family quarters of the great house. She is old, used to the traditional ways.”

      
“And what about you, Father? Are you too old to change as well?” she asked, shifting the focus to him, for she sensed his guilt and confusion.
Let Sofia be damned for the hypocrite she is.

      
His chilly blue eyes softened the tiniest bit. “I am an old man who has spent his life attempting to guide the spiritual welfare of the Obregón and Alvarado families, two of the noblest houses in Mexico. Now it is nearing time for me to turn my attention to the younger generation. In my grief for your mother-in-law, I have not been as diligent a counselor for you as I should have been.”

      
“I'm not the one who needs your counsel now, Father,” Mercedes said, surprised by the old priest's startling revelation. “It's Rosario.”

      
He looked puzzled. “Surely she has received Holy Baptism with the Ursulines.”

      
“Yes, of course,” she replied, dismissing the mistaken idea and blurting out her request. “I want you to teach Rosario to read and write. I know you didn't teach Lucero, but we can't afford private tutors now.”

      
He considered, then walked toward the small window facing out to the mountains where Lucero had ridden. “Have you discussed this with your husband?”

      
“No, but he was reading to her the same as I—I know he will wish it, too.”

      
“I do not mean to sound callous, but it was a mistake, his bringing the child to Gran Sangre. The
hacendados
will never accept her. If she is educated, raised as a
criolla
, what will happen to her when she is of marriageable age? Her expectations may be beyond what our society permits.” The old man's concern seemed genuine.

      
Mercedes could not argue with his logic for she knew what he said was true, but still she heard the voice of a lonely little girl saying,
I only want to read
. “As she grows up, we'll deal with the situation. Lucero has chosen to bring her into our home and asked her to address him as Papa. She will be raised with all the advantages of the Alvarado name.”

      
“But she will not have it,” he gently chided.

      
“I have heard there are ways legitimacy can be arranged,” she said hopefully.

      
“For natural sons in the absence of legal heirs, perhaps, but for a girl, it would not be easy even in ordinary times, and these are not ordinary times in which we live, Doña Mercedes.”

      
Her eyes grew haunted, thinking of Lucero's oblique references to the horrors of his wartime experiences. Quashing that thought, she asked doggedly, “Will you teach her, Father?”

      
His shoulders sagged wearily. “Bring Rosario to me after she has broken her fast and we will begin. I only pray she will prove a more tractable pupil than her father.”

      
With a small smile of triumph, Mercedes went in search of Lucero's daughter.

* * * *

      
For the next several days after Mercedes went out to the fields in the morning, Lupe took Rosario to Father Salvador for her lessons. Then just before the noon hour, Mercedes would return to the house to share luncheon, and take Rosario back to the riverside where her men toiled on the irrigation project. Bufón, the child's ever constant companion, watched her zealously.

      
‘‘When will my papa be back? He told Angelina it would be yesterday, but he isn't here,” Rosario said plaintively early one afternoon at the riverside.

      
Wiping the rivulets of perspiration from her eyes, Mercedes replied, “I'm not certain. When the vaqueros have to ride out so far, it sometimes takes longer than they can predict. Remember, Gran Sangre has over four million acres of land.”

      
The little girl's eyes widened as she tried to imagine four million of anything, an impossible feat for a child not yet five years old. Then abruptly switching back to her own earlier query, she said, “I miss him. Do you miss him, too?”

      
Mercedes was unprepared for the question and quickly glanced about to see if anyone else had overheard it, knowing how the servants gossiped about the marital problems of their
patrón
and
patrona.
No one was within earshot as she replied equivocally, “I've been wondering when he'll return.”

      
In fact she had been losing considerable sleep over Lucero's homecoming, knowing he would by now expect her to come to his bed again. After all, they did have their duty to the vaunted Alvarado name. Gran Sangre must have an heir. And since his return from the war, her husband was amazingly attentive to his responsibilities.

      
She had heard the servants comment on the long grueling hours he put in on horseback and had seen firsthand how dust-covered and bone weary he was, had even seen the rope burns on his hands and bruises on his body from working with half-wild cattle left to roam free until they were rounded up and driven into safe hiding. If his plan succeeded, the
hacienda
would actually have preserved a good number of cattle and even some superb saddle mounts.

      
If only her own project were going half so well. Bleakly she surveyed the irrigation ditch through the withering heat. They had dug the main channel only thirty yards after all these days of backbreaking labor. The soil was hard and dry, but the men were strong and willing to dig. They would have moved three times the distance but for the dense chaparral and prickly pear cactus that grew across the only low-lying area between the river and the arable soil they had cultivated for crops. The sharp spines and dense root systems had to be hacked away with machetes, leaving the workers cut and scratched. The scent of their blood brought the torment of flies and there was the ever present danger of infection in the hot climate.

      
The crops will all die before we reach them with water,
she thought despairingly, looking up at the cloudless blinding azure of the noon sky. Then she felt the vibration of the horses' hooves before she spotted the dust cloud stirred up by the group of riders coming toward them.

      
“Don Lucero!” several of the men called out, recognizing the magnificent stallion her husband rode. Rosario joined the servants, who dropped their tools or paused from eating the last bites of their midday meal, to go greet the patrón. His wife alone held back, standing beneath the shade of the willow near the river, watching the joyous reunion.

      
Lucero picked up his daughter and spun her around to squeals of delight as Bufón whoofed loudly in welcome. She watched him wrestle affectionately with the big dog, wondering again what had wrought the mutual change in disposition between man and animal. Rosario clapped her hands and giggled at their antics, then joined in.

      
What a good father he 's proving to be
, she thought, amazed. Who would have imagined that Lucero Alvarado would ever even look at his children, especially a by-blow he need never acknowledge. He had even gone to his daughter's room at night and read to her. Mercedes found it too much to reconcile with the dangerously angry man who had broken down her door in a drunken fit.

      
Then her husband whispered something in Rosario's ear. The child and Bufón remained behind as he walked past the riders watering their horses at the river's edge. He approached her. His hair was matted with sweat and his clothes plastered to his skin. Several fresh cuts and bruises on his hands attested to long and difficult hours working stock. He had shed the bandoleers crisscrossing his chest and opened his shirt, revealing sun-bronzed skin furred with black hair. He studied her through eyes narrowed against the sun's glare, his flat crowned hat pushed rakishly back on his head after playing with Rosario and Bufón. His expression revealed nothing.