“Soledad? She’s my godmother, you know. And still a very beautiful woman. You’ve met her, haven’t you?”
“Oh—I suppose so! I’d hardly remember.”
“I’m not surprised, as busy as you were while you were visiting Orizaba. But Soledad remembers you very well!”
“Oh, she does?” Ginny turned on him furiously, stung by his sarcastic tone of voice. “I’ve no doubt she was the one who gave you all the worst gossip she could pick up about me. I suppose she was jealous!”
“I hardly think so, sweetheart!” he said cuttingly, the meaning behind his pointed words so obvious that angry color stained her cheeks.
Whatever remarks she might have made to contradict his insinuations were blotted out, as usual, by the sudden pressure of his lips over hers. He could make her forget all his infidelities and all his cruelties with his kisses, or an occasional moment of tenderness.
To counteract her own treacherous vulnerability Ginny showed him a pride that matched his own—a temper that flamed up to meet his when he got angry. He began to show her almost a grudging respect at such times, although it annoyed him inwardly that she had learned to take such good care of herself. Only in his arms, with his lips on her lips or travelling all over her body, did she submit and become weak.
Steve Morgan saw her cry for the first time since they had found each other again on the morning he got ready to leave the hacienda. He covered his surprise at her unexpected tears by speaking to her roughly.
“For God’s sake! What’s the matter with you now? This sniveling doesn’t suit you—and it’s not going to move me into taking you along; I’ve already told you it’s out of the question. You must just do as you think best, sweet. Stay here if you want to, after all the hacienda is yours, as you’ve reminded me often enough. And if you get too bored, there’s always Vera Cruz—I’m sure you’ll run into lots of your friends there. Salvador can escort you, and I’ve left you with enough money to manage on until that ship Bishop booked your passage on is ready to leave.”
As usual, he seemed to pick on exactly the right words and phrases that would hurt most.
“Don’t you care? Doesn’t it make any difference to you at all whether I’m here when you return or not?”
When she glanced up at him through eyes that were blurred with tears she thought she noticed an almost imperceptible softening of the harsh tension lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth.
“I don’t know, Ginny,” he said slowly. “Dammit—I’m not used to being owned, and neither are you, it seems. We’ve both become used to doing without each other—sometimes it’s as if we were strangers; coming together only in bed. Are we really ready for ties, either of us?” He shrugged fatalistically and repeated, “Quien sabe?”
For two long, dragging weeks those words were all she had to go on.
Here, in the isolated world of the little Hacienda de la Nostalgia, even the war seemed too far away to be real, or to affect Ginny in any way. Where before she had been caught up in a whirl of pointless activities, always with some new item of gossip or news of the most recent battle to be discussed; here it always seemed as if time had been suspended.
Almost thankful that there was so much to be done both around the estancia and within it, Ginny tried to keep herself both busy and tired, so that she would fall into bed before nine o’clock each night—too exhausted to stay awake and think.
The house began to shine inside as Ginny had the old furniture repaired and polished, the windows washed; found bright scatter rugs for the floors. She had lots of help, for the peons sent their wives and daughters up to the house to assist la patrona, and even came themselves to help with bigger jobs like repairing roofs and walls.
They were all proud of their gringa patrona with the bright hair and eyes like the sea—a woman who was not too proud to set her hand to any task, no matter how menial. “Truly,” they would say, wagging heads knowingly, “el patrón chose well when he chose this woman. She is of the people.” It was the greatest compliment they could give her, these simple Indian peasants, and they developed a fierce loyalty for her.
She visited their houses, carried and changed their babies, and could even sit down with the other women and pitch in unselfconsciously when they were grinding the meal for tortillas. She could cook over a little open-hearth cook fire, and get clothes clean on a flat rock by the river. And she could ride a horse bareback and astride, like a man.
Even old Salvador, who could remember Steve’s mother, gave Ginny his grudging stamp of approval. When she came into the kitchen to help him he no longer muttered his objections, but would sit down to gossip with her and give her the news he picked up on his infrequent visits to the nearest village.
It was from Salvador that Ginny learned that the armies of Juarista Generals Escobedo and Corona were closing, like an iron ring, around Queretaro.
“Soon, they will have the foreigner emperor trapped like a rat there—with no way to escape,” the old man said with a ring of triumph in his voice.
She learned of the daring raid that General Miramon had led on Zacatecas, where his cavalry had cut the garrison there to pieces and only narrowly missed capturing Don Benito Juarez himself. She had met General Miramon, she remembered. A tall and grizzled old creole officer, with a face like granite. A veteran of other wars. Ginny wondered if his exploit meant a turn in the waning fortunes of the Imperialists, until a week later Salvador brought her the news that General Escobedo had routed Miramon’s sadly outnumbered little army.
“To teach a lesson to these dogs El General Escobedo had a hundred Imperialist officers executed,” Salvador went on, “and one of them was the brother of Miramon himself!”
Ginny could not help feeling a pang of pity. She recalled Agnes du Salm’s bitter words to her one day that two wrongs did not make a right. Was it really necessary to be so brutal in order to teach the Imperialists a lesson? They were all fighting, after all, for whatever they believed in—although Ginny could not help remembering Miguel Lopez’s cynicism about the loyalty of Maximilian’s three top Generals.
At least Salvador had good news for her about Díaz. The army of Don Porfirio was still moving steadily towards the borders of the province of Puebla. They should be in the province itself within the week.
It meant, Ginny knew, that there was a good chance Steve might make the short detour to see her. If he had rejoined the army permanently, he would be so close! But had he rejoined the army, or was he still skulking in the mountains with the guerrilleros? She had to tell herself sternly that she must be patient—she mustn’t let herself hope too much.
Two weeks after Steve had left, Salvador came padding into the small room Ginny had appointed as her “study,” his face set in disapproving lines…
“There is a man who says he has come to see you, patrona.” The corners of the old man’s lips dropped sourly. “He does not look like a good man, patrona. He looks like a bandido to me! Who else would come softly out of the shadows after dark? But he says the Señor sent him…”
Ginny jumped to her feet, her green eyes shining like lamps.
“Oh, Salvador! Why did you not say so before? Where is he? Have you offered him anything to eat?”
Without waiting for a reply, she had run past him to the kitchen, where the man who straightened up from his lounging stance against the wall as she entered was certainly one of the most villainous-looking characters she had ever seen. He had been eying the little maid that Ginny was training with a calculatedly evil leer that had her cowering up against the stove, but now he betrayed what was almost a startled surprise when he saw Ginny.
Indoors, she discarded the rebozo she normally wore to cover her head and shoulders from the sun, and her hair glowed as brightly as the richly polished copper pans on the wall. She was barefoot, for comfort, and wore a low-cut white blouse and brightly patterned skirt such as the local Indian women wore. Her lips, when she smiled rather questioningly, revealed small, pearly-white t
eeth. The man, whose name was Manolo, found himself regarding her almost with awe.
He dragged off his wide-brimmed sombrero to reveal a shock of long, badly-trimmed black hair as he shuffled his booted feet rather awkwardly, unable to take his eyes off Ginny.
“You have a message for me? From my husband?” Her voice was just as he had imagined it would be—low, and rather husky. He thought, Wait until I tell the others! Esteban will never lack for volunteers to take his wife messages in the future!
Grinning to cover the trend of his thoughts, Manolo produced a crumpled piece of paper from a pocket in his silver embroidered vest. The vest had been taken off the body of a dandyish young lieutenant in the Cazadores, who had had a weakness for a certain cantina when he was off duty, and Manolo was proud of it, although the crossed bandoliers he wore detracted from its beauty.
He kept grinning while the red-haired woman held the note in her hands almost as if she was afraid to open it. She was looking at him inquiringly.
“Have you eaten? You must be tired—Salvador here will be glad to give you a meal, and some tequila to wash it down with if you have time to rest for a while.”
The old man had followed her into the kitchen and now stood by the stove frowning darkly, but when Manolo admitted that he was indeed very hungry he turned to the stove and began clattering pans loudly, muttering under his breath.
Salvador looked even more disapproving when la patrona offered the “bandido” a chair and sat down across from him at the little kitchen table herself. The Señor keeps bad company, he was thinking as he dished out a meal. It’s too bad he could not have found someone better to send here! The patrona should not sit at the same table with such a bad one—nor talk to him in such a friendly fashion either! He sent Maria scurrying off to her home, having noticed the way the man had been eyeing her. At least he would not dare to act so disrespectfully to the patrona.
Ginny sipped at a glass of wine under Manolo’s admiring glances and tried to question him about Steve, but he either knew nothing or wasn’t prepared to say. He shrugged often as he said that he did not know when Esteban would be back here; and as he admitted rather proudly that they never stayed in the same place for too long.
“But when is he going back to join the army?” Ginny persisted and got another shrug from her taciturn visitor.
“Quien sabe? Perhaps it will be soon. Soon we will all be joining the army on its march to Mexico City itself!”
He disappeared almost as quickly and as silently as he had appeared after he had eaten, and Ginny took her letter along with her to her bedroom to read in privacy.
The first letter that Steve had ever thought to send her. What an unpredictable man he was!
She unfolded the creased and crumpled piece of paper and found only a few scrawled words on it, with no salutation nor formal ending.
“We’ve been very busy—moving a lot—but at least things are looking up. I’ll see you soon, perhaps—if you’re still there.”
That was all. Even from a distance, she thought bitterly, he could still hurt her. The note could have been written to anyone at all—there was nothing personal in it, just for her, except that mocking half-promise—“perhaps I’ll see you soon.” What made him so afraid of committing himself?
Oh Steve—Steve, she thought despondently, why do I continue to love you? Why can’t I take you as lightly as you seem to take me?
There were no answers to be found in herself. She would just have to be patient—to wait.
49
Steve Morgan, never a very patient man under any circumstances, was also doing his share of waiting—in this case for Díaz’s huge army to move into a position where it could menace the twin fortresses of Puebla. But Díaz, sure of his objective and its eventual surrender, was taking his own time—preferring to play a cat and mouse game with the Imperialist garrisons who had the task of defending not only Puebla itself but Orizaba, Cordoba and Vera Cruz; to name a few of the more important cities along the thin strip of territory that was now Maximilian’s only pipeline to the ocean.
Steve continued to enjoy the danger and excitement of being a guerrillero, but he was getting rather tired of the constant moving around they had to do—the long hard riding that never allowed a man enough sleep or rest.
Since he could just as easily pass for American as he could for a Mexican, he was almost always the one who scouted for them—riding boldly along the highway or into towns and villages bristling with Imperialist troops or mercenaries who still fought for Maximilian. There were Americans everywhere, and they hardly excited curiosity any longer. Hard-bitten men who had fought in the Civil War and enjoyed fighting for its own sake—men who came to observe the end of a war and to write about it—men who were curious—men who hoped to make some profit for themselves when the empire toppled and there would be lands and estates belonging to Imperialist supporters put up for sale.
Usually, Steve did what he had to do with a coldly calculated concentration that could explode into ferocity when he had a gun or a knife in his hands and was about to use it. Women were instruments of pleasure—put in the same category as a good meal and a comfortable bed in which a man could get a safe night’s sleep—to be thought of only when he had the time. A few of them, like Concepción and the condesa, he could even think of with an absentminded affection.
But before Ginny had hurled herself so unexpectedly back into his life he had not let a woman affect either his judgement or his reactions.
Concepción had been dancing in a small cantina in Orizaba, when he had run into her again. Disdaining the risks he took, he had taken to visiting the Hacienda de Valmes as often as he could—especially since he had found out that Soledad’s husband was still trailing around behind his emperor. By the time he saw Concepción again, the wildly passionate affair that had started up between him and his godmother had tapered away into a loving friendship; particularly since Soledad was deeply religious in her own way and her confessor had spoken to her sternly about what he called an almost incestuous relationship with her godson.
Whether it was partly gratitude and partly because he had not had a woman for so long, Steve had found himself getting almost too involved with her. She was still beautiful, with the figure of a young girl still, because her husband had not been capable of giving her a child. She was experienced—and she was just as insanely attracted to Steve as he had been to her at the beginning. But after a few times, the flame began to burn out and they began to talk more than they made love; their relationship actually became more comfortable, and Steve had to admit to a feeling of relief. He hated ties!
Concepción with her wild gypsy ways was the direct opposite of Soledad. She had been almost out of her mind with joy and relief when she saw Steve, and it was she, catching him in a weak moment, who had persuaded him to take her along with him as his mistress. He thought at the time, Why not? The guerrilleros had no soldaderas to follow them around and hardly any time to stay in any place long enough to find a steady woman. He told himself that it would be nice to have a warm woman waiting in bed for him when he had a few free days. And at least, Concepción knew and understood him well enough not to expect any commitments on his part.
It had been a mutually pleasant, uncomplicated relationship, and he had almost managed to get his green-eyed tramp of a wife off his mind when she had turned up.
Now, in spite of himself, Steve caught himself thinking far too often about Ginny—when he should have been thinking of something else. The vision of her face and her peachtanned, softly sensuous body interfered when he should have been snatching what sleep he could.
He wondered bitterly how she had contrived to bewitch him, and why it had to be her, of all the women in the world, that he craved incessantly. He should have kept on hating her—even now he would not admit to himself that he felt anything more than desire for her; and that was bad enough! After all, how many other men had desired her? Every time her arms reached up to clasp him closer to
her he had jealous visions of the number of other times she must have made exactly the same motions, offered her lips to other lovers in exactly the same way. He remembered how hard she used to fight him in the days when he had been her tutor in the arts of sensuality—but obviously, somewhere along the line she had forgotten how to resist and had learned to yield instead. And how passionately she yielded! Not only that—but she had even learned how to take the initiative in love making…
In spite of his irrational anger at Ginny’s newly acquired accomplishments, Steve could not help grinning when he thought of the way she had reacted to his first rejection of her. The little bitch! She had all but raped him! It didn’t seem possible that she could have changed so much in so short a time, but he had the uneasy feeling that the changes in her went even deeper than she would admit—that there were still secrets she continued to hide from him. What was she hiding? And why?
“Damn her—right from the beginning she’s managed to be an irritant in my life. She’s been the only woman who’s been able to confuse my thinking!”
Steve Morgan stared rather morosely into his beer, one elbow propped on the splintery wooden bar of the cantina he preferred to frequent during his visits to Orizaba. Ever since he’d been back at the hacienda he’d find thoughts of Ginny popping into his mind at the most unexpected moments—and usually at the wrong time. Why couldn’t he forget about her, just as he’d forgotten all the other women he’d taken and used and left when he was ready to move on? Why had he married her? But even as he damned her savagely, he found himself wanting her—wondering if she were still at the hacienda waiting for him, or had decided, after all to go back to pick up the threads of her old life. That was the trouble with her—she was completely unpredictable! But perhaps it was that very quality that intrigued him, and made him wish, even now, that he had not volunteered for this mission tonight. It was his own fault—if he hadn’t been so determined to prove to himself that he could still do without her, he would be halfway to Tehuacan by now, and in a much better frame of mind!
Sweet Savage Love Page 62
