Deep Purple (15 page)

Yet that night, as each previous night, her body betrayed her as he came to her, lying next to her. The pulse at her temples beat erratically, her breath ca
me in short shallow gasps, and she could only stifle the urge to turn to him, to ask him to kiss her.

CHAPTER 19

C
ivilization’s wagon road fell behind, and the sanctuary of canyon upon canyon loomed before the brigade, which had forsaken the pueblos and villas to follow the Rio San Miguel south to Ures. Catherine tried to estimate how many days the brigade had been on the march, how many days since a bath and a change of clothes, but she had lost all track of time. How ludicrous she must appear—the elegant riding habit and top hat, now more gray than black, hanging in tatters on her like castoffs on a scarecrow.

She let Sonora pick his way along the narrow path that skirted the outcrops of black rock while her thoughts dwelled on her predicament
—an American woman riding with a band of guerrillas on their way to battle a French army!

“
You’ll be left behind outside Ures with the other women,” Law had told her the night before as he lay next to her but not touching her. “You’ll be as safe there as anywhere. After the battle—if all goes well—it will be arranged for you to travel to Guaymas. If the American consul there hasn’t abandoned his post, he can see that you are safely put aboard an American vessel.”

He rolled over and looked down at her then. In
the darkness, the gold of his hair and mustache was the only light. “There is a derringer in my saddlebag, Cate. If we don’t return to camp, if we lose—you are to use it. Do you understand?”

At first she did not, and he caught her chin between thumb and f
orefinger. “I don’t think you are a weak woman, Cate. I think you will survive no matter what might be done to your honor. But the Yaquis, who ride with the French—they can make death most unpleasant. The weapon is to be used against yourself only as a last resort,” he said with a gentle sadness before releasing her.

She lifted her gaze now, trying to find among the line of soldiers ascending the trail into the mountain heights Law
’s lean figure. There was a strength about him that reassured her. She could not imagine that he would not return from the battle with the French.

The evening was already blanketing the land, more rapidly there in the mountains, and it was impossible now to separate Law from the line of soldiers that was only a snakelike shadow cra
wling up the narrow pass ahead. By the time camp was called, a blackness had settled on the mountains, and below the lights in the windows of Ures twinkled as if there were no thought of the French army that would soon descend on the capital of Sonora like Attila's hordes.

A solemn quiet hovered over the camp, as there were only a few hours left before the men were to move down into the pueblo at dawn. The soldiers talked lowly among themselves or with their women, who seemed to keep within a close perimete
r of their men while they moved about their chores. The specter of death circled over the camp like a vulture.

As Catherine helped Loco dice the chilies, the onions, and the dried beef, she waited to see what Filomena would do. When a little later the woma
n wiped her hands on her skirts and left the mess wagon, Catherine’s heart sank like a stone in water. She knew then that she wanted Law regardless of silly things like propriety and respectability. Perhaps she had wanted him since that first kiss the night of the fiesta of San Juan de Bautista, perhaps as far back as the first time she saw him there in the Meyer Street Saloon.

As she watched Filomena pick her way among the men, her hopes lifted. Then her hopes soared, for it was Tranquilino the woman appro
ached, taking his hand and moving into the shadows. So, it had been Tranquilino all along!

But where then was Law?

At her side, Loco said, as he continued to dice the chilies, "Lorenzo is a lonely man. He carries the burden of the Juarista cause on his shoulders. I think he is alone now, with his thoughts. Perhaps there, on that bluff.”

“
I believe you have read my thoughts,” she said, dimples forming at each side of her mouth.

A drooping lid closed in a wink. "There is no need. Your eyes mirror everything,
señorita
.”

She paused only once
—at the wagon to search among the supplies. Yes, there it was—a bottle of Rosé Chasselas from California. Her skirts caught on the low-lying cholla and the sharp lava rocks, but she scarcely heeded nature’s impediments. She was going to the man who held her soul fast in his grip. She did not know if one would call it love. What she felt for Lorenzo Davalos was certainly not the comfortable, quiet relationship one came to expect in a marriage.

She was well aware of Law
’s deficiencies, that he had none of Sherrod’s stability. She knew that if it were not for the war with the French, it would be something else. Too soon he would become restless in the confines of civilization and move on—and she knew she would go with him, for she could not stop loving him ... if this wild calling of the heart was love.

By the time she reached the summit of the bluff, by the time she saw that tall, rangy shadow and the honey-colored hair in the bright moonlight, she knew that it did not matter
what one labeled the feeling, whether it lasted but a night or through the unwinding of the years. For that moment it was real, and to deny it would be to lose something very precious.

He turned and watched her make her way over the last few yards. A cigar
ette stub was clamped between his teeth. His wary gaze dropped from her face to the bottle she held in her hands. She held forth the bottle, saying with a tentative smile, “You once said that all you needed was a jug of wine and a warm, willing woman and you could forget the promises of heaven. Will we do?”

He cocked a brow and removed the cigarette from his lips. “
What about the ring on your finger and babe in your arms?”

She stamped her foot in frustration. “
Must you make it so difficult for me? I’m trying to tell you that I want you, Law Davalos!”

“
More than your want of a husband and children?” he pressed.

Her eyes glistened. “
More than that,” she whispered.

He ground out the cigarette with his boot heel. "I don
’t understand.”

“
In Baltimore—it seems like eons ago—I was foolish enough to think time was important. I thought my time was slipping away faster than that of other people's. I had goals, and I thought I had to hurry to fulfill them. Now I know there is only the present. I was foolish, but I'm learning. Show me, Law. Show me everything.”

He looked at her for one long heart-pounding moment. What if he refused her?

He he took the bottle from her and set it down. Catching her about the waist, he raised her off the ground so that her face was even with his. He kissed her lightly, tenderly. “I’ve underestimated you, Cate,” he said quietly. He sat her on her feet again and began to work at the buttons of her blouse. Her skirt fell about her feet. The corset had long since gone, and there was only the chemise to cover her nudity.

When he began to divest himself of his dust-caked clothing with a naturalness foreign to her, she turned her head away despite the urgency that gripped her. “
Open your eyes,” he mumbled as he tugged the serape over his head. "There’s nothing worse than a woman who insists on turning down the lamps so she won’t have to face reality.”

She could hear him shucking his clothes.
  “Take a look, Cate. Am I all that repugnant?"

She slit one lid. Her field of vision so narrow that whatever she
saw would be screened by the heavy thicket of eyelashes. She had caught fragmentary glimpses of the male body when tending the wounded soldiers but never the exhibition of the complete masculine anatomy—in all its glory.

And those were the words that came
to her mind when she viewed the six-foot-four-inch length of Law’s bronzed, lean frame. Broad, sinewy shoulders set above the hard torso that wedged at the narrow hips. Not a spare ounce of flesh.  The scars and nicks that welted his muscle-roped body, rather than detract, only added to the fascination. 

He planted his fist on his hips and threw back his head in laughter as her eyes widened when her gaze ricocheted to the thick yellow-brown hair at the crotch that curled as riotously as the hair on his he
ad.

She would have bolted then, but where to? She grabbed her skirt and yanked it up over her thighs, inadequately trying to shield her virgin
’s breasts with her free arm.

He came to her and, taking her arms, gently eased her to the soft mounds made by the
ir clothing. "Why do the Anglos, especially you
Yanquis
, see such shame in the body?” he demanded. peering intently into her averted face, as if how she felt about what he was going to do made a difference to him.

But he did not wait for her reply. His han
ds cupped her face and turned it toward him as he tenderly brushed her closed lids and trembling lips with kisses that demanded nothing. He stretched out beside her, and his heat began to thaw her chilled body.

“
What can I tell you to make it easier for you?” he whispered against her breast. His tongue traced the rose-brown aureole. She quivered along the length of her body, and he raised his head. “I’ve never taken a virgin before, Cate—only willing women—so I don’t understand this pain that women talk about. But I do know that it can be something that'll take your breath away, there’s not another feeling equal to it—if you’ll only meet me halfway.”

She understood then. He was giving her the chance to change her mind. It would be her decision. She met his g
aze just as candidly. “Just don’t let me think,” she whispered.

And he did not. Her body, which before she had considered merely flesh, muscle, and bone, with only defects to her biased eye, became a thing of rare beauty worshiped before some pagan altar.
His lips, his fingers, his eyes, his tongue—his words— they did homage to her; they did things to her that she could never have imagined. Through the long night he showed her things she had never suspected.

Only then, toward dawn, did he demand she return
the pleasure. Half curious, half fearful, but totally stimulated by his lovemaking, she slid her fingers along his golden-brown length, causing him to gasp with pleasure. She had not known that the male physique could be so beautiful. This was what her body had been yearning for, had been made for. And she showed her gratitude in her loving of him. Later his breathing stopped in a sheer agony of suspension when her lips, made bold by her love for him, brought him to a shattering climax.

When they lay satiat
ed in each other’s arms, only then did he permit thought to enter her passion-numbed brain. “Cate,” he said quietly, “my wish—beneath the Joshua tree—it was for you . . . you stubborn, irresistible woman.”

CHAPTER 20

C
atherine prowled about the makeshift camp as uneasy as a cat. From afar there came every few hours the whoomph of cannon that made the rocky terrain vibrate beneath her feet. She trailed the women to the mountain stream, for the first time washing out her clothes—and Law's—one of his bandannas, a pair of red flannel longjohns, a faded blue cotton shirt. Was she not his woman now?

She blushed as she recalled the things she had done the night before. She had not known that the giving of pleasure was so great
an aphrodisiac. Yet she felt no shame. Was she sinning, going to Law without the blessing of the Church? Surely as great as her love was it had God’s blessing. If not, then she would be held accountable for the sin, but whatever the price, it was worth it.

Toward evening the bark of muskets seemed closer, but Loco told her it was merely the echo of troops skirmishing outside the city below. Evening came, and still the men had not returned. She looked at the faces of the other women mirrored in the light of
the smokeless campfire. Pale wraiths, she thought. Even Filomena. And herself. Sleep did not come that night, only the torturous waiting for what the sun would bring.

She knew that should Law not return, Loco had been instructed by Law to take her to Guaym
as, the closest destination that would afford her a modicum of safety. Yet she also knew she would not leave Law’s land. She was bound to it, by what she could not ascertain. But she loved the raw, primitive land as much as Lucy hated it.

Over the meager b
reakfast of tortillas and refried beans she calmly told Loco that she would not be going to Guaymas. “If anything, I shall return to Tucson to make whatever form of living I can.’’ She gave the old Indian a dry smile. “Perhaps even as a
lavandera
. I’ve become quite good at washing clothes on rocks since I’ve joined the Arizona Colonizing Expedition.”

Loco looked up at her from beneath his fringe of bone-white hair. He paused in eating the tortilla, which he noisily chewed. “
The people there, they may not forget so easily the Anglo officer’s death.”

“
If I were to try to teach their children, no—they would never forget.” She smiled. “But to scrub their clothes—it matters not who does that.”

“
You love him much—Lorenzo?” the Indian asked, his faded brown eyes studying her.

“
Very much.” she said simply. “To my soul’s everlasting irritation.”

Later that night, one of those fierce electrical storms peculiar to the Southwest rumbled through the mountains, reverberating over the camp like a clash of cymbals. Beneath t
he tarpaulin-covered wagon Catherine stirred as the first splatter of rain droplets pelted the thirsty earth. Her hand sought the reassuring hardness of Law’s body only to come up empty. Another night, and still the men had not returned.

Something guttural
in her cried out at the void beside her . . . and the injustice of fate. Had she traveled so far, endured so much, to finally find what it was she sought from life . . . and lose it before she had ever had it?

Then suddenly lightning zigzagged across the
black heavens and illuminated the ghostly horses and riders moving up through the sheered-rock defile. The wreath of yellow curls sparkled in the lightning’s silver javelin-like streak, and a cry of joy shot through her at the recognition. She was crawling from beneath the wagon, running, her arms open wide.