Gallant Match

by Jennifer Blake

  Kerr scowled as he stood in the center of the bedchamber they had been given. It was all very well, this grand hospitality, but he would have preferred the offer of horses and directions to Vera Cruz.

  Nagging unease gripped him. Staying in one place too long didn’t seem a good idea. As soon as Sonia had rested and they found a little more decent covering, they would be on their way.

  “What is it?” Sonia asked, turning from her inspection of the salon that led off the room where they stood. “Don’t you like it here?”

  “It’s fine,” he said shortly. He glanced at the tester bed with its white coverlet and mosquito netting then away again.

  “But you would prefer another ruin.”

  He set his fists on his hip bones, a belligerent gesture that suited him at the moment, suited also his spread-legged stance. “You could put it that way.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t care for being looked over like a prize bull, for one thing.”

  Amusement and something more crept into her face and she put a hand to her mouth, probably to hide a grin. “You feel Doña Francesca may want to put a ring through your nose and shut you up in her pasture? Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

  “Heaven forbid.” He barely suppressed a shudder.

  “She was quite taken with your size.”

  “Huge, she called me.” He grimaced.

  “Yes. And handsome.”

  “Do you think I’m huge?” The words popped out before he could bite them back.

  She flushed a little. “I’ve had cause to be glad of it these past two days.” Her color deepened. “That is to say, a smaller man might not have made the swim to shore…”

  “I know what you mean.” Obviously, she thought of him as overlarge in a number of ways. He hardly knew whether to be gratified or irritated.

  “I fear it’s unlikely there will be anything available in the way of clean clothing that may fit you. I’ll repair your shirt so it may be washed. And if you’ll take off your trousers—”

  “I doubt that’s a good idea,” he interrupted.

  “But why—Oh.”

  Her sudden comprehension was preceded by a glance at the front of said trousers.

  “Oh, indeed. Not that anyone will be surprised if we spend our time in bed. Why didn’t you tell Doña Francesca we aren’t man and wife?”

  “It seemed awkward, and I doubt we will ever see her again.”

  “Awkward.”

  “Explaining everything, you understand. She might feel that our state of undress and the night spent alone together would mean I have been hopelessly compromised. You did see the chapel attached to the house?”

  “She can’t force us to marry.”

  “No, but refusing would be—”

  “Awkward. I see.”

  “Especially if she has her own confessor here. Because of the chapel, I mean.”

  He hadn’t considered that possibility, didn’t particularly like thinking of it now. “The plain fact is,” he said slowly, “that you have been compromised.”

  “Surely being shipwrecked will serve as an excuse.”

  “There are those who would deny it.”

  She lifted a brow. “But you don’t feel that way?”

  “And if I did?” Why he was pushing it, Kerr hardly knew. It wasn’t as if he wanted to be held responsible. Was it?

  “I did release you from any obligation,” she said, turning away from him.

  So she had.

  He wished she hadn’t. He really did.

  Kerr fastened his gaze on the dark fall of her hair, the shifting thinness of her pantaloons that showed the color of her flesh through their fine batiste, at the back of his own shirt that covered the rest of her. His eyes burned and his stomach muscles cramped as he sought to imprint the image on his mind. This might be the last time he looked on such a sight.

  Good Lord, he was as randy as a ram let loose in a pen of ewes. He wanted to lay her down on the Turkish carpet beneath their feet, to see her spread out under him with the vivid colors at her back, to discover just how long he could drive into her before the wool burn on his knees became unbearable. He wasn’t sure he’d feel it at all.

  A knock heralded the arrival of their bathwater. Kerr walked to a window and stood looking out while the parade of servants carrying brass pails marched back and forth, filling the tub that sat behind a screen in the dressing room off the bedchamber. He didn’t move again until they were gone, until Sonia had availed herself of the warm water, until she called him to take his turn at washing their jungle idyll from his skin.

  She lay in the middle of the great bed with its dark wood tester and filmy mosquito netting, when he stepped out of the dressing room. She was turned away from him with her hair spread out behind her to dry. A linen sheet edged with heavy lace covered her. She appeared naked beneath it, though a nightgown and wrapper draped the arm of a nearby slipper chair. He moved toward the bed as if drawn by invisible chains. On the far side, he stopped.

  She was asleep. Her lips were parted, her eyelids sealed, her shoulder that rose from under the sheet had a childlike smoothness yet carried an apricot tint of sunburn in spite of the shirt that had protected her. Signs of exhaustion were still there in her face: the under-eye circles, the paleness.

  His chest filled and he felt an acid sting behind his eyes. He had pushed her so hard, too hard. He had taken so much from her, giving nothing in return that he was not obliged to by his agreement with her father.

  Sacrifice.

  He rubbed a hand across his face and down over the back of his head as the word echoed in his mind again.

  What she required now was her aunt and the respectability that lady could provide. She didn’t need to be escorted home after long days of being alone with him. That way lay ruin. She would be an outcast from polite society or else married off to a man she despised, namely him. Her father would demand it, and rightly so.

  There had to be a way to make things right for her. All he had to do was find it.

  In the meantime, he was more tired than he’d thought, and it seemed from the sounds coming from the courtyard that it might be some time yet before dinner was ready. Discarding the towel he wore around his waist, he brushed aside the netting, climbed onto the bed and lay down. He turned to Sonia, stretching an arm above her pillowed head, curling his body around her without quite touching her. He watched her breathe for endless moments while inhaling the scent of soap and fragrant woman. A long while later, he finally closed his eyes.

  Dinner was about as uncomfortable a meal as Kerr had ever endured in his life. For one thing, the dark suit he had been furnished was so tight in the shoulders that he couldn’t take a deep breath for fear of splitting the seams, and the trousers so snug he needed an apron to preserve his modesty. The bones of his wrists protruded from the cuffs and he’d abandoned all hope of actually buttoning the waistcoat that went with the outfit, letting it hang open instead. More than that, the only shoes found to fit him were rough sandals of the kind worn by the house servants. All in all, he didn’t cut a dashing figure.

  Sonia, on the other hand, was elegance personified in sea-blue silk trimmed in lavender and with a black mantilla on her severely coiffed hair. The ensemble could never have looked so well on their hostess, in Kerr’s considered opinion.

  Doña Francesca was well enough, however, in brocade of such sumptuous heaviness that it looked as if it should be able to stand on its own. If it appeared too rich for a meal in the wilds of Mexico, rather than at some European state dinner, it was an observation he kept to himself. In the same way, he gave no sign that he considered more than peculiar the cheroot the lady smoked with delicate puffs of her full lips. He’d known mountain women who sometimes smoked or used snuff, but they were older and past caring what anyone thought of them.

  Kerr sat at Doña Francesca’s right hand while Sonia was farther down the table, sandwiched between the priest who had inevitably appeared, Father To
mas, and a man and his wife introduced as Doña Francesca’s son and daughter-in-law. The son was upright, dapper and mustachioed, his wife thin and sallow. Neither appeared delighted to entertain guests.

  Also at the table was an elderly gentleman with yellow features and a constant, vinegary frown. He turned out to be the father of the daughter-in-law. Next to him was a dumpy and chattering yet shrewd-eyed woman who seemed to be a poor cousin being provided with a home in typical Latin fashion.

  Three children also graced the board. Though they were of an age to belong to the son of the house, it seemed they were Doña Francesca’s children by a marriage that had occurred after the death of her second husband, her son Javier’s father—her first husband having died mere weeks after the wedding. She had since been widowed and remarried for a fourth or maybe fifth time. It seemed the lady was most unlucky in the men she chose to marry. Or maybe lucky, if the size of her estate was any indication.

  All that was, of course, if Kerr had understood the rambling story told of how she had come to be living in isolation at the jungle’s edge. He was by no means sure, considering it had been given in volleys from everyone at the table, and in a bastard combination of Parisian French, Creole patois, Castilian Spanish and Mexican country dialect.

  “In a few weeks or a month, when you are well rested,” Doña Francesca was saying, “you will like, perhaps, to go to Xalapa. This is the only village of size near to us, a lovely place with a nice mountain aspect. If it pleases you, you might take the air there for a few days. Then you may hire a litter to transport you to Vera Cruz. Though, truly, I can’t imagine why you would wish to go there with the season of heat and storms upon us.”

  “The diligence,” her son said in flat contradiction as he sipped his wine.

  “Oh, no,” his wife began, but was quelled by a look.

  “The diligence is a mere public coach and quite impossible.” Doña Francesca removed the ash from her cheroot by rolling the end in her bread plate. “Not only do these conveyances smell, but you will be shaken to pieces, thrown about until you are bruised from head to toe, and forced to ride with persons you will not wish to know. Tell them, Father Tomas.”

  “Just so, my child,” the priest intoned without raising his eyes from the tournedos of beef smothered in hot peppers and tomatoes that he was forking into his mouth. The calmest of men, with an unlined face and small, cherubic lips, he appeared to have enjoyed the beneficence of his God all his life, and to expect it after death.

  The son turned a stolid eye on his mother. “If they take the litter, they are sure to be flung down the mountainside. I know of six people who died that way.”

  “And I know of ten who were robbed on the diligence,” his mother returned in languid certainty. “One unfortunate woman was carried off and never heard from again.”

  “She probably took up with the bandit captain.”

  “What an unkind thing to say.” Doña Francesca turned to Kerr. “Do you not agree, monsieur?”

  “As to that…”

  “I knew you would. You are all amiability.” The lady put her hand on his arm, caressing it, squeezing the muscles, through the sleeve of his coat. “And so strong, too. I’m sure you would be able to discourage any bandit who tried to make off with your lady. Nonetheless, you would be more comfortable in a litter.”

  “He’d require extra mules to carry him,” her son said, his expression jaundiced as he let his deep-set eyes slide over Kerr. “And still they may drop him down a ravine.”

  “I would prefer mounts if they can be bought in Xalapa,” Kerr said a little loudly. The attentions of his hostess made the tops of his ears burn and left him without an appetite. The son had not, so far, appeared to resent the glances of his mother in Kerr’s direction, but he would not be surprised if it came to that eventually. The sooner he and Sonia were gone, the better.

  “That’s all very well, but you don’t know the way through the mountains. You would need a guide. These men who hire out as such are very well in their way, aware of all the trails and watering stops, but are sometimes discovered to be cousins of the bandits.” Doña Francesca spread her hands in a gesture that seemed to say it was only to be expected, after all.

  “Regardless of how we go, we can’t tarry. We will not impose on your hospitality past tonight.”

  “Oh, but you cannot think of leaving so soon.” The lady clasped his arm again as if she meant to hold on to him by main force.

  “I fear we have little choice,” Sonia said, her voice firm as she entered the fray. “Though we are honored by your gracious acceptance of us into your home, it’s a matter of some urgency that we move on.”

  “But what can be so important? Pray tell me, so I may join you in bringing it to pass.”

  “Are you, by chance, acquainted with an American gentleman by name of Rouillard?”

  Uneasiness passed over the lady’s features and she exchanged a swift glance with her son. “I may have heard the name.”

  Kerr watched her, every sense alert as he took up the subject. “In what regard, if I may ask?”

  “He has many connections in the government, for a foreigner.”

  “He’s a scoundrel,” her son said, wiping his mustache with his napkin as if disposing of Rouillard in the same movement.

  “Javier, please!”

  “He advises, he schemes and worms his way in everywhere. He should be crushed like the low creature he resembles.”

  His mother threw a look of embarrassment at Sonia. “It’s said this Rouillard is close to that great rogue General Santa Ana, you perceive. Though the general is from Xalapa, Javier has always preferred the politics of his rival, President Bustamente. We really know little of the gentleman from New Orleans except by reputation.”

  “Which is quite enough,” her son said with finality. He threw Kerr an oblique glance. “You are not related?”

  “By no means,” he answered.

  “An excellent thing.” The Mexican shrugged. “One would not like to insult the relative of a guest.”

  “There can be no possibility. We have never met, as it happens.”

  “There,” Doña Francesca said, her gaze as caressing as her fingers, “I knew you were a man of good sense.”

  The cousin, following the conversation with her black eyes bright in her plump face, spoke then in intrigued tones. “I do believe Señor Wallace is no more fond of Señor Rouillard than Javier is of Santa Ana.”

  “Can this be true?” Doña Francesca watched him, her eyes bright.

  “We aren’t friends,” Kerr allowed.

  “You will remove him, perhaps, from Mexico and from this life?”

  “Doña Francesca, please,” the priest protested, though it seemed a matter of form.

  It would be foolish to answer with the truth, Kerr thought. “I doubt it will come to that.”

  “But you could.” The eyes of his hostess fairly glowed and she clutched his arm with both hands, kneading it.

  “Of a certainty, he could,” the cousin said in forthright tones. “He is a swordsman. Only look at his hands.”

  The table fell abruptly silent. Every eye turned in Kerr’s direction. Without intending it, he curled his hands into fists with the calluses on his palms and the edges of his fingers folded inside.

  “Have you killed your man, señor?”

  The question came from Doña Francesca’s younger son, a sallow waif in hot-looking black velvet. It referred to a fatality that took place in a duel, and could apply to any gentleman forced to defend his honor. Kerr could have answered without going into detail, but refused to deny his calling. “I have,” he said quietly, “and may be forced to do it again, being a sword master by trade. But it isn’t a matter for boasting.”

  “Naturally not,” Doña Francesca said with a frown for her son. “Nor is it a suitable subject for the dinner table.” She turned back to Kerr. “Now that it’s been broached, however, you must tell us what it is like.”

  “Yo
u would be bored, I’m sure,” he answered, searching his mind for a diversion. “A better topic might be the war declared between our two countries.”

  Consternation swept along the board as the diners looked at each other in frowning dismay. Not surprisingly, it was Doña Francesca who recovered first.

  “War? We are finally at war? Tell us at once, for we are so out of touch here that we have heard nothing of it.”

  In her excitement, his hostess carried his hand to her full breasts, pressing his knuckles between them. Sonia’s lips tightened as she met Kerr’s eyes, and she gave him a look chill enough to cover him with frost from top to toenails. It was she who came to his rescue by answering the query.

  “We know little more than the bare fact that open war has finally come after so many months of hostilities. Still, it’s the major reason we must leave as early as possible for Vera Cruz.”

  That was not the end of it. More questions, more pleading that they stay came Kerr’s way. Nevertheless, he was glad to see that Sonia agreed with him on something, even if it was only the need to go.

  It was well after midnight before the interminable meal was over. Kerr was invited to smoke a cheroot and sip a brandy on the gallery with Javier. In this pleasurable pastime they were joined by Father Tomas. He expected the interrogation into his plans to continue, but it did not. Instead, they discussed the consequences and probable direction of the war.

  Javier, for all his refined lack of animation, seemed to have a good grasp of the fundamentals of the conflict. It was his opinion that Vera Cruz would be the point of invasion for a march on Mexico City. His countrymen would fight with much honor and tenacity, so he said, but he could not envision victory if the United States was determined to take what belonged to Mexico, namely, Texas, and the country that stretched from there to the Pacific Ocean.

  Kerr, sitting on the gallery railing with his back to a post, watched the red glow of the cheroots in the hands of the other men and the smoke from his own as it drifted into the night. It was so peaceful here, so quiet and pleasant a life. He wondered if the much-married status of Doña Francesca was responsible for the isolation of her house and her family, or if it was simply a matter of choice. He’d probably never know. Still, it seemed obscene that such a paradise should be disturbed by the ambitions and petty posturing of men and their wars.