Stronger Than Passion (53 page)

When he spoke, his voice was husky and gentle. “You seem surprised, Chrissie. Didn’t you expect to see me, one day? Didn’t you think I’d come back?”

His pale blue eyes were fixed on her steadily and unnervingly. She forced herself to glance away to muster some remaining reserve of sanity to use in self-defense. “No, I didn’t. And I’m wondering why you should bother.”

He shifted his position, and she sensed the tautness in him, the tight self-control. This Michael Brett seemed different to her, and the difference puzzled her almost as thoroughly as his presence.

“I’ve come a long way, Chrissie. Can’t you even be polite, for old times’ sake?”

The slight banter in his voice was familiar, and it angered her. She was glad to feel the anger; she nursed it carefully. Her eyes swung back to his face, the shock of seeing it blunted now by a thickening wall of fury. “I hardly think politeness is possible between us now!”

“Why? Because I went to England? My brother died, you know. I had to go, as soon as I could. I left you in good hands - ”

“You left me! Her voice rose unsteadily to a near cry. “Ill with strangers - without even bothering to write me a note of explanation! And all this time, all these months . . .” She broke off as three gentlemen passed them, coming from the ballroom. Each man nodded, staring as they continued walking across the foyer toward another room.

Michael’s wind-chapped lips were pressed tightly together, his jaw became a hard rectangular line as he glanced around him, obviously seeking a private alcove of some kind. But there were servants and guests everywhere. His gaze returned to Christina, and she recognized the instant demand in the narrowed, bluish eyes.

“I want to talk to you, Chrissie. I want to explain a few things. I’ve come here straight from London; I think I deserve a few minutes of your time! Walk outside with me. I’ve brought along a diligence - we can sit in there, out of the wind.”

“No!” She said the word immediately, automatically; an image of her pretty hacienda, and her orderly life, flashing through her mind as a charm against him.

“Why not?” He countered harshly.

Words and feelings came together out of desperation in her brain, forming into sentences that were forced out by their own power. “Because you are selfish! Incredibly selfish. Horribly selfish! I hate that in you, Michael. You are too self-centered to please anyone but yourself, ever - just like Luis! And I am not going to be used by you or anyone else again. Go back to London, go back to your new title and estates. Go back to your good friend Lady Elizabeth, whom I’m sure you’ve only recently left! And leave me alone, to live as respectably and happily as I can. I don’t want to see you again!”

She turned away, stunned by her own outburst but determined to prove to him that she meant it. Her legs were weak, her skin burned feverishly, and her eyes blinked continually to hold in hot tears, but her resolve was - and must be - firm. That she loved him, that she knew it and hated it and would fight it for the rest of her life, meant nothing. Michael Brett was a cruel man who only wanted her because she resisted him. If she ever gave in, he would treat her with contempt. And then her pride would be gone. Her life would be over.

She would not allow him to take her and destroy her. If she had reached any conclusions at all during her painful contemplations of these last solitary months, it was that Michael was too selfish a man to ever care deeply for her or anyone else. His bitterness precluded anything other than casual affection, such as that which he had felt for Julian, and for his aunt. He was incapable of feeling anything stronger than that.

She took three steps, and was unsurprised when he grabbed her bare forearm to stop her from walking away. Naturally, having come all this distance, as he had reminded her, he would never let her go so easily! Yet when twisted to glare up at him, there was none of the arrogant impatience in his fact that she had expected to see. Instead, he looked grim and determined.

“Wait, Chrissie. Just one more moment. Long enough for me to agree with you. That should be worth a few more seconds, surely?”

If only he wasn’t holding her, she would run away. But she could hardly pull or jerk her arm back from him in Santa Anna’s foyer, could she? Besides . . . was it really safe for him to be here at all? There were several disgruntled soldiers in this building, not the least of which was Santa Anna himself. What would happen if anyone recognized the prominent former Texan, uninvited, in their very midst? She must at all accounts not create a scene.

“What are you agreeing with?” she asked in an undertone. “That you’ve just seen Elizabeth?” She hadn’t intended to say that! She bit her lip in frustration.

“Of course I’ve seen Elizabeth. That’s not what I meant. I am agreeing with your estimate of my character. Selfish is an appropriate word.”

“Quite!”

He stepped closer to her, not releasing her arm, but shielding his tight grasp from view. “I realized that myself some weeks ago. “I’ve been a selfish bastard - to you, to Robert, even to Julian . . .” He paused, considering his words. His eyes stared down into hers, with unusual expression in them: honesty. “I’ve lost Robert and Julian, Chrissie. I don’t intend to lose you. That’s selfish, as well. I haven’t changed. I’ve only come to understand myself a little better. And to regret some of the things I’ve done.”

His voice seemed unaffected, almost casual. But his eyes searched Christina’s, and his grip tightened, almost to bruising strength.

“It’s nothing I could’ve written down in a letter.”

“I wish you had tried,” she whispered.

“Come outside, Chrissie. Where I can hold you.”

She shook her head. Her face had paled, until only her eyes shone with unnatural color: huge, dilated, green-flecked gold.

“Chrissie, I love you.” He said it abruptly, matter-of-factly. “You will come with me, by God - or I’ll take you anyway . . .”

“Christina, my dear - I’m afraid I’ve neglected you for a game of dice! You must be ready to leave. Present me, please, to this gentleman!” Don Ignacio’s abrupt interruption brought both reality and a strange sense of absurdity to a scene which seemed to have exploded into an unexpected, mind-shattering direction.

Christina moved away from Michael, but he retained control of her by-now-bruised-arm - dragging her back, forcefully, to him. Don Ignacio would be shocked, she knew. She felt a sudden, ridiculous urge to laugh, and repressed it with difficulty. She glanced up at her father-in-law through lowered lids.

The Condé’s white eyebrows were both raised. His face, wrinkled but still high-bred and aristocratic, flushed slowly, until he went red to his receding hairline. His thin lips parted, and finally he spoke.

“What is occurring here? Daughter, who is this impertinent man?”

“The Duke of Westbrook, at your service, Sir,” Michael answered for her. “I’ve only recently returned to Mexico from England, and I’ve come for the direct purpose of stealing away the Señora, here. I’m taking her to Texas, where we’ll be married from my aunt’s home. My aunt is Lady Torrance of San Antonio and I am sure you must be acquainted with several good friends of Luis’s in that town. Someone there will vouch for my - respectability, I’m sure.”

The Condé ignored Michael and addressed Christina in astonishment. “The man is mad! Are you acquainted with him?”

“Oh, yes. Well acquainted.” Embarrassingly, she giggled. Her head felt light and completely empty.

The Condé’s puzzlement deepened. “Christina, would you please explain to me exactly who this man is?”

“I’ve already told you who I am,” Michael said with his old impatience. “Michael Brett, Duke of Westbrook. I’m not exactly dressed for a fiesta; and my diligence is outside, waiting to take us down to Vera Cruz, and to the steamship
Laura Belle
. We’re boarding her tonight.”

“Tonight!” The Condé said in a gasp.

“Tonight! Christina stared up at him.

“Tonight. Now.” Michael spoke firmly, and looked down at Christina, their eyes locking together. Hers were soft, and bemused, and, at the question in his, she started to laugh, quietly and helplessly. He was driving her mad - mad with hope, and relief, and the unbelievable happiness brought about by the two.

“Unless you have any objections, querida? Although I won’t accept any, I’m warning you. The ship sails for Texas on the morning tide, and we’re both going to be on her, whether you like it or not. What in hell do you find so funny?”

She shook her head, and concentrated hard on subduing the giddy and extremely unbecoming laughter. When she said severely, “I do have an objection to going anywhere with you, Michael Brett. You know I don’t travel without a chaperone. You must send for Penny; a lady of my station would never consider . . .”

But her words were rudely cut off. Michael turned her and kissed her, there in Santa Anna’s foyer, right in front of the outraged Don Ignacio.

Time had passed, and the world had changed, since before when Christina found herself forced inside a diligence, hurtling dangerously through the night toward Vera Cruz. Yet, enough remained the same inside the dark, ill-sprung carriage to remind her nostalgically of that other, extremely frightening time.

The smell of sweaty upholstery. The jounce and sway of the diligence. The sometimes coaxing, sometimes threatening voice of the coachmen outside, guiding the horses along the badly rutted National Highway.

And, of course, the presence of Michael Brett. Not menacing now. Holding her tightly against him, almost in his lap. Kissing her lazily, tenderly, and hungrily. Running his hands over her with the possession of a man who has finally claimed what is his.

He was talking to her, also intermittently. Seeming to need to tell her of the last months he had spent away from her, in England, coming to grips with the death of Robert, and his own unexpectedly sharp feelings of grief and guilt and regret; and of his growing urge to be with her. To salvage this last, and most important, botched relationship in his life.

There was nothing sentimental in his words - Michael would never be a sentimental man! But he spoke, in alternately sincere and annoyed and pleasantly surprised terms, of his love for her. She reciprocated, at first, by provoking him to a series of small arguments disguised to test his new, not-quite-believable resolve. He accepted her challenges and argued back so persuasively that she finally gave in. When he arrogantly insisted that she loved him, too, or she wouldn’t have come along, she finally replied, “of course I love you, damn you!” And moved huffily away to sit opposite him. He came after her, naturally. They were quiet for some time after that.

Penny - and Maria Juana, too, little did they know at the time - had set out from the hacienda two hours behind them, and would barely make the ship before she sailed. Yet Christina and Michael were rowed on board before dawn. And no chaperone was considered welcome nor necessary when they reached their adjoining cabins, and inhabited only one. Propriety was finally tossed away by Christina, as a useless encumbrance; and so was sleep.

The time left before dawn was not for sleeping, but for rediscovering the passion that had become love.

THE END