Bride of Fortune

by Henke, Shirl

  “You gave up that right when you gave me away, Lucero.”

  He took another step, daring her. “You can't shoot an unarmed man.”

  “For you, I would make an exception. Your death would solve a great many problems.”

  “For you and Nick?” He chuckled. It was a low, nasty laugh. “You can't ever marry him, you know,” he said casually.

  “I can if you're dead. Just take one more step,” she countered.

  “It would be incest.”

  She blanched and the gun wavered for a second.

  “You little fool, couldn't you guess? Why do you think he looks so very much like me? Where do you think those Alvarado eyes came from—my father's eyes? My daughter's eyes? He is my brother! You've fallen in love with one of Anselmo Alvarado's bastards! His mother was a gringa whore from New Orleans. He's trash, a nobody who spent his life as a hired killer. And now you're carrying a bastard's bastard. How does that set with a fine gachupín lady, eh?”

  Tiny pinpoints of light burst before her eyes. She blinked them away but her knees felt liquefied. “You're the one who's a killer, not Nicholas!” she lashed out, letting anger purge away the shock, the pain. “You knew you were sending your own brother to live with me and you didn't give a damn!”

  He shrugged. “Neither did he. You see, in addition to his other rather obvious shortcomings, Nick's also a heretic. What do you think Father Salvador would say about all of this?”

  “Get out!” She steadied the pistol and sighted in on his chest. “I'll shoot you where you stand before I ever again let you contaminate me.”

  Her eyes blazed and her hand was steady in spite of the rosy flush staining her cheeks. She would do it. Luce had developed that sixth sense of survival, gauging whether or when an enemy would pull the trigger. And to Mercedes, he was the enemy, no doubt about that. And no doubt, too, she would pull the trigger. Lord, she had become a magnificent woman in his absence. Great masses of darkly burnished gold hair framed her face and tumbled around her shoulders. Her skin was like golden silk, not the insipid white of the court ladies. And the female form revealed beneath her sheer night clothes was lush and full with rounded hips and heavy ripe breasts.

  Mercedes watched him hesitate. Half of her prayed he would back down, half that he would not. She steeled herself to shoot.

  He muttered an obscenity. “You're still a cold little convent girl, not worth risking a bullet for.” With a mock salute, he turned back to his door, saying, “I'm going to look for Cenci. She'll welcome me to her bed with open arms—and legs.”

  With that crude remark he slammed the door. Shaking violently now, Mercedes lowered the pistol and sank onto the chair beside her dressing table, clutching the weapon with both hands in a white-knuckled death grip. A bastard's bastard. Incest. The child of their love was conceived in incest. In the eyes of the Church a brother-in-law was the same as a brother.

  Hadn't she guessed the truth months ago? The resemblance of both men to Anselmo in his youth was as unmistakable as a brand. “I must have known deep inside me. I just couldn't admit it to myself,” she whispered raggedly.

  Numbly she set the gun on the dressing table, then took a sturdy chair over to the door and wedged it tightly beneath the knob so he could not open it without awakening her. The hall door had a stout iron latch secured across the inside which no key could open.

  Nicholas had broken down the door and walked into her room. She had held a gun on him, too, that fateful night; but she had known then that she would never have been able to shoot him, just as surely as she knew now she would have killed Lucero.

  God and all the angels, help me! What was she to do? Even knowing who Nicholas Fortune was, she still loved him.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  “The vaqueros are celebrating Bazaine's withdrawal from Mexico City. Aren't you going to punish them?” Innocencia asked Lucero.

  He raised his arms and clasped his hands behind his neck, reclining on his big bed in the hacienda. She sat up amid the rumpled covers, naked with her inky hair falling below her shoulders. The dark nipples of her heavy breasts peeped impudently through the tangled curtain. His mistress wanted something and it had nothing to do with politics. “Why should I care?” he asked, laughing at her pique.

  “They are Juaristas! You have fought for four years for the emperor,” she replied indignantly. “You are Don Lucero, not that gringo impostor who spies for the enemies of the emperor!”

  “The emperor who's now fled the capital and holed up at Querétaro, waiting like a dumb sheep for Escobedo's army to close in and slaughter him,” he said with a sneer. “Anyway, why do you give a damn what the peons do?”

  “It's not those lowly farmers I speak of, but your own majordomo—old Hilario and his friend Gregorio. They are directly in touch with the rebels—they have all the news from the south before we do.”

  “Even if I were inclined to bother with them, my pet, I could do nothing. Here on Gran Sangre, the only person loyal to the emperor is my beloved wife. If I attempted to disrupt the festivities, I would suffer the same fate as poor Maximilian. In case it has escaped your rather apolitical little mind, my dear, we have lost the war. It's all but over. I expect that accursed little Indian to ride back into the capital in a few months' time. Then the peons across Mexico will hold the very reins of government in their coarse, grubby hands,” he said in disgust.

  Her eyes widened in amazement. Then her ripe lips set in a new pout. “Are you afraid of your own servants?”

  His expression turned hard. “Don't push too far, Cenci,” he said softly. “I don't give a damn about the servants. Why should you?”

  “I want Hilario and Gregorio whipped!” she blurted out, then quickly subsided, fidgeting with the bed linens which partially covered her nakedness. “I overheard them talking last night...about me and you...and the patrona.``

  “I can imagine what they said about you replacing my wife in my bed these past weeks,” he replied dryly.

  “They called me a cheap whore—and they said insulting things about you, too. About how much better Gran Sangre was when the gringo was in charge.”

  He chuckled. “But aren't you glad he isn't any longer? My brother proved far more patriotic than ever I did.” His expression grew speculatively amused. “Imagine, Nick working for a cause—a Mexican patriot. Good lord! How ironic.”

  “I am glad he is gone and you are back. He was crazy to prefer your skinny bitch of a wife to me!”

  Lucero laughed mirthlessly. “She isn't so skinny anymore.” He could see Mercedes’ lush curves, sense the fire in her. How he had wanted to try her, but she was wary of him and allowed no opportunity for him to entrap her and force her to give him his husbandly rights. She was always armed and the servants were completely loyal to her. He had no doubt if she did not shoot him, almost any of them would do it for her.

  What a splendid virago she had turned out to be! Luce tried not to dwell on regrets. Life was too short and Cenci too convenient. Yet the thought of Nick's baby growing in his wife's belly bothered him far more than he ever would have imagined—if he had bothered to think of the possibility when he gave her away, which he had not. His forehead creased in a frown. “I wonder how it would feel to bed my dear wife after all these years?”

  Innocencia huffed. “You would not enjoy such a cold stick of a woman! Ignore her—just as you ignore all the servants.”

  “All but you,” he replied lazily. “Did you know he wasn't me before you overheard him talking with that gringo in the stables?” he asked with amusement glittering in his eyes.

  She studied him intently as he reclined on the big bed. His body was lean and hard yet virtually unblemished by scars, unlike his brother. Most of Fortune's scars were hidden, but one very obvious mark was missing on Lucero. “Of course I did,” she lied. “But I wonder why no one else has asked what happened to that small white mark—the one right here?” She raised her finger and traced the outline of Nicholas’ saber scar
on Lucero's smooth cheek.

  “People see what they expect to see,” he replied with indifference. In fact, he had been amazed at all the changes Nick had wrought at Gran Sangre in the months since he had become . Everyone had accepted his brother and now they accepted him, even though he knew they secretly wished for the return of his more benevolent sibling.

  “You tried to seduce him and failed, didn't you?”

  She dared not meet his eyes. He was playing games with her again, just as he used to do, but now there was an eerie frenetic edge to him that was far darker and more deadly than before he had gone to war. He had always been a little cruel, but now he frightened her at times. Still, he was her criollo lover, her passport away from the endless drudgery of being a kitchen maid on Gran Sangre for the rest of her life.

  He reached up and yanked the sheet away from her, causing her to tumble forward against his bare chest. “I have better things to do than answer questions about the uncertain future, Cenci.” He rolled on top of her and knelt straddling her prone body, then grasped his rigid phallus in one hand and a fistful of her hair in the other, pulling her head roughly to him.

  Soon it would be time to leave. Now that the French army had left the capital defenseless, he had only to wait until Marquez sent for him. They would rendezvous in Mexico City and ride away with millions in silver. Of course, Cenci was not included in those plans, but in the meanwhile, she was a lusty diversion. He gasped with pleasure as she took him in her mouth, then forgot about everything else but the moment's gratification.

  * * * *

  Doña Sofia lay propped up by a mountain of pillows. The candles at the small bedside altar gave off a sweet smoky odor, further impeding her labored breathing in the close confines of her room. She had been failing the past several months. The end was near now. She could not even roll over in bed without aid. Servant girls remained at her side nearly around the clock, and Father Salvador came in to watch and pray with her every few hours.

  Even though her body was giving out, her mind remained amazingly keen. She could hear far better than she could see. By pretending to doze, she learned much from the gossiping servants who came and went, whispering behind their hands while they watched the embittered old patrona die.

  She knew Anselmo's bastard had returned from his unexplained absence and that Mercedes was increasing. She had also heard some disturbing rumors in recent weeks, rumors about the patrón no longer sharing his wife's bed, instead taking up with that trollop Innocencia once more. This news was puzzling.

  Maids always took vulgar delight in the sleeping arrangements of their betters. The fact disturbed her only because she had been so certain he was besotted with Lucero's wife. Perhaps now that Mercedes’ waistline thickened he was only showing his true selfish nature, much as all the Alvarado men before him had. Yet it nagged at her.

  Mercedes did her Christian duty by paying brief visits to check on her every few days. As always, the exchanges were strained, even more so since their ugly encounter over Rosario. The bastard's bastard was growing visibly in the belly of her son's wife now. Perhaps that was why Mercedes seemed so listless and her eyes were haunted. Something was not right. Sofia could not die without learning what was going on in the hacienda that had been her prison for the past thirty-five years.

  She reached up and pulled the bell cord. When Lupe appeared, she commanded the girl, “Send for Father Salvador.”

  * * * *

  Lucero had just returned from a cockfight in San Ramos, flushed with pulque and the pleasure of winning a modest purse betting on a big Shanghai Red that had fought with overpowering ferocity. Of course, the few measly pesos would pale by comparison with the fortune that would soon be his, but for now, it had been a pleasant afternoon's divertissement.

  He sauntered into the entry hall of the big house, headed for the library and what remained of the aguardiente. After consuming it at a profligate rate the past month, he had almost finished the last of it. Grinning, he realized the timing was perfect. He would be ready to leave just about the time the liquor supply ran dry.

  Father Salvador watched Lucero amble into the library, already affected by an excess of drink and in search of more. How had he made such a mistake in judgment as to believe this dissolute killer could be redeemed? When Lucero first returned home, he had seemed changed, as if the wartime horrors he had survived had purged the baser elements from his soul. Now the priest concluded he had been mistaken. Yet he did not choose to examine at all closely the reasons for his error in judgment, for the ultimate consequences of such a quandary would make him and Doña Mercedes both guilty of the most grievous sins.

  Should he dare ask Lucero the boon Doña Sofia had requested of him? Sighing, he knew he must, no matter how dire the outcome. He had given his word to the dying old lady.

  Lucero responded to the light rapping on the door with an expansive invitation to enter, then gaped in amazement when the priest stepped inside. “I'd offer you a drink, but there's precious little left to share—if I were inclined to share, which I'm not, especially with you.” He turned his back and poured a generous slug of amber liquid into a glass, then threw back his head and polished it off.

  “I have come on a matter of some urgency, frankly against my better judgment,” the priest began carefully.

  “Are you going to upbraid me for carousing with harlots? For profaning the sacrament of marriage with my adultery? Perhaps I'm not the only one guilty,” he said, turning to Father Salvador with an odd glitter in his eyes. Did the priest know the truth about him and Nick?

  Father Salvador refused to acknowledge Lucero's dangerous drunken ramblings. “This is an ill time for us to speak. I'll return tomorrow.”

  “I'll not be changed tomorrow or ever, priest. You know that. And if you want me to return to Mercedes’ bed, best you ask her why she refuses to perform her marital duties,” he dared, relishing the horror the old man would feel when he had to face the truth.

  “I did not come to speak of your wife,” Father Salvador said sadly, knowing the breach between Lucero and Mercedes was irreconcilable now. He turned to go but Lucero's purring words stopped him.

  “If not the young patrona, then it must be the old one who brings you to beard me in my den.”

  “We will discuss it on the morrow.” The priest reached for the doorknob.

  “No need. I've neglected my beloved mamacita even more than I have my wife. I should remedy the matter at once, lest it weigh too heavily on my conscience,” he added sardonically.

  “You have no conscience,” the priest replied gravely. “May our Lord and his Holy Mother forgive you.”

  “I doubt they will. What hope is there for a son whose own mother could never forgive him?” he asked raggedly, then cursed and turned back to the liquor cabinet. He did not look around until the door closed softly behind Father Salvador.

  When she heard the booted footfalls on the polished slate of the hallway floor, Sofia knew it was him, coming in response to Father Salvador's request. She had half hoped he would refuse. Interviews with Lucero or that other one were always quite taxing for her. And now her strength was waning so quickly. Be careful what you pray for lest you receive it, the old maxim said. How true.

  Lucero opened the door without knocking and entered the room, blinking to accustom his eyes to the dim light of candles. “God's bones, but it stinks of religion and death in here.” He studied the shriveled old woman whose emaciated body was almost swallowed up in the pile of pillows. “Your prodigal has returned, Mamacita. Aren't you glad to see me?”

  Her lips thinned in a feral grimace. “Now I understand. From the day of your misbegotten birth, I have never been glad to see you.”

  A cold flat light glowed in his dark eyes as he neared the bed. “Then you know it is me this time, not my brother. When did you realize he was an impostor?”

  She gave him a withering look. “He loves Gran Sangre. And he proved a more attentive husband to your wife than ever you
did.”

  The barb struck home, which surprised him. He had cared nothing for his pale, frightened little bride, but after seeing her now, he felt a completely unnatural anger with Nick for making her passion blossom. “A wife I was shackled to for a dynastic alliance. I have no interest in her,” he lied.

  Sofia struggled to sit up. “You gave your own wife to a bastard—allowed him to sire his own bastard on her. The heir of Gran Sangre will be the product of a foul incest, forever cursed.” She fought to regain her breath, then continued, “How do you think your adored father will feel about that?”

  There was a bright flame of madness surging in her once-faded eyes. They glowed with pure malice. Lucero studied her in amazement for a moment. “You wanted Mercedes to lie with him, to have his child—just to spite our father.”

  Then the utter irony of the whole situation struck him. He laughed. “Your husband's dead and can know nothing of Gran Sangre's fate. Your obsessive hatred of papa has always been your weakness, Mamacita. You can see nothing else because of it. You never could. Do you know what is transpiring outside the narrow confines of this little world? Juarez and his republicans have won the war.”

  “Then Gran Sangre is lost,” she said without much interest. “That, too, would distress Anselmo.”

  “No, I don't think so. As you said, my brother loves the land—more than either of us did—and he's a survivor. You don't know him as I do. He'll stab men in their backs, cut their throats, do whatever it takes to hold onto this wretched birthright of his. The birthright I've given him. He wants to belong to it as much as I wanted to be free of it. And he will succeed. Whatever Nick sets his eyes on, he takes and he holds.” Even Mercedes, some inner voice taunted him.

  Sofia watched his expression as he talked about his brother. “You seem to care for Anselmo's bastard,” she said curiously. “To love him?”

  Lucero shook his head. “No, I don't love anybody. I'm not capable of it. You saw to that. But I do admire him, yes.”