by Henke, Shirl
“If he had lived, it might have proven difficult to secure his signature on the petition,” Father Salvador said as Nicholas handed the papers to Mercedes, then looked back at him.
“What you're saying, in effect, is that there never was a true marriage between them—that it can be declared null and void.”
“Yes, that is how it appears to me.”
“Then...then Nicholas never has been my brother-in-law—we could—” She broke off and looked up at him with a blaze of joy on her face.
“Only if you examine your conscience and know in your heart that you and Lucero never had a true marriage,” Father Salvador explained.
Mercedes read the description of their relationship, outlined in stark narration. “Yes, what you say here is true, more than true.”
“But will Rome see it that way?” Fortune asked, still unable to relinquish his cynicism. He could not bear to have her hopes built up and then dashed.
“Annulments have been granted for reasons of political expediency. In such a clearly moral dilemma as this, there should be no question. I've sent word to the archbishop about Don Lucero's death, which should greatly aid our petition. We should receive word in a month or two.” The old priest's eyes moved to her belly, then were quickly averted as his pale complexion bloomed with color.
“In time for us to have our union blessed before our child is born?” Mercedes asked, knowing that she had an ally now, not the adversary she had feared.
“Yes, my daughter. I shall pray for a swift resolution.”
“Where do we sign?” Nicholas asked, smiling at the flustered old man.
* * * *
“I knew you'd come back to us,” Rosario said sleepily as Nicholas closed the book of fairy tales and pulled up the covers around her. “I prayed every night for you. Why did you have to go away, Papa?”
He stroked her hair and placed a kiss on her forehead. “You know about the war.” She nodded gravely. “I found out some evil men planned to kill President Juarez and I had to stop them.”
“Father Salvador says President Juarez is a godless republican,” Rosario replied, waiting patiently for further clarification.
Nicholas smiled ruefully. “Even such a staunch imperialist as Father Salvador would not condone murder, would he?”
“Oh, no! He would never permit that,” she responded. She then asked, “Are you a godless republican, Papa?” Rosario did not seem particularly troubled by the possibility.
He chuckled at the resilience of youth—and the flexibility. “I am a supporter of the president, yes, but that doesn't make me completely irredeemable—or so your mama says.”
“I'm glad.” She yawned again. “Papa, does all of this have something to do with why you changed your name? The servants all call you Don Nicholas now.”
“Someday, when you get a little bit older, your mama and I will explain why I had to use my brother's name,” Nicholas said tenderly, tucking her in and watching as her eyelids fluttered closed.
“I suppose I shall...just...have to...wait.”
Mercedes watched the child drift off to sleep as Nicholas walked silently across the room to where she stood in the doorway. Bufón watched them from his usual place beside the bed. As they closed the door, his tail thumped good night against the thick rug.
They walked arm in arm to their quarters. When they reached her door, he bypassed it, continuing on to his, then guiding her inside. Last night, upon their homecoming, the household had been in such pandemonium over the news of Lucero's death and Nicholas’ return, that he had simply sent her to her room with Angelina to see that she drank a soothing sleeping draught and got some rest. He had made all the explanations and the arrangements with Father Salvador for his brother's burial, then retired to his own room much later.
Suddenly Mercedes felt shy and uncertain. It had been months since they last came together. She had tried to seduce him in that awful prison cell, but he had refused her. What if he found her body misshapen and ugly now? His voice, low and troubled, broke into her self-conscious thoughts.
“I told Rosario I had to use my brother's name. I couldn't tell her it was because I have none of my own. How will I ever explain it to her?” Or to you?
“You didn't steal Lucero's name. You have just as much right to the Alvarado name as he did—as Rosario does,” she said, taking his hands in hers and drawing him to sit on the heavy oak settee by the window. Outside a night bird called to its mate and a brilliant Sonoran moon silvered the landscape with its glow.
“Sometimes I wonder which is worse—being Lottie Fortune's boy or finding out about the other half of my ancestry. If Sofia and Anselmo are what the House of Alvarado stands for, it's small wonder Luce ended up being the way he was.”
“Not all the Alvarados were so bad. Even Lucero had some good in him at the end. I think I should tell you about your grandfather.”
He looked at her with a startled expression on his face. “My grandfather Alvarado?”
“Yes. I never met him, of course. He died when Lucero was only a small boy, but he was a great hacendado—the kind who made the wilderness bloom with his own sweat and blood—a man like you. I've read about him through the diaries and letters of his bride, Doña Lucia Emelina Maria Nunez de Alvarado.” At his curious look, she explained, “When I was first brought here, there was little to do but become acquainted with the family I was to join.
“Lucero didn't want to bother with me, nor did Don Anselmo, and Doña Sofia was hardly hospitable.”
“I can imagine,” he said dryly, waiting for her to continue her tale.
“Doña Lucia was only fifteen when she arrived. The place was little more than a frontier outpost then. Don Bartólome added both wings to the main hacienda as well as having the dairy, blacksmith stables and granary built. Most of the horse stables and corrals were his work, too. He imported fine Andalusian horses from Spain and improved the quality of the beef cattle, even introduced sheep to supplement the hacienda diet of beef and pork.”
Nicholas listened as she described the labors of past generations of Alvarados, good men and women who loved the land and dealt fairly with its people. A new sense of pride and purpose infused him. “I realize now that we'll carry on their work. And our children after us,” he said in a husky voice.
“Don Nicholas Alvarado and his lady, Mercedes,” she said with a soft smile, turning into his embrace. “I always wanted to be like Doña Lucia, a pioneering wife.”
“You've already proven your mettle, holding this place together all these years.” He drew her into his arms, tilting her face up to his, brushing her mouth with his own until she opened her lips. His tongue lightly rimmed them, then stroked inside delicately, as if he were wooing his bride for the first time.
And she would be his bride, truly, as soon as the petition was approved in Rome. But for now, Mercedes only knew that she would pledge her love with her body and her soul.
Nicholas felt her response. Standing up, he swept her into his arms and carried her over to the big bed, which the maid had turned down for them. Like him, Mercedes had bathed and donned a robe before retiring. But hers was of soft sheer muslin, yards and yards of it. Gathered high above her waist, its voluminous folds concealed her pregnancy. The deep sea-green color enhanced her sun-kissed skin and golden hair.
He reached up and began to unfasten the small hooks holding it together, kissing her soft, sweet-smelling skin as he bared it. “You always have the essence of lavender clinging to you, like fairy magic,” he murmured as his mouth grazed the pulse at her throat and it beat wildly for him.
Mercedes’ fingers dug into his shoulders, kneading his hard flexing muscles, then pushing the loose satin robe from his chest. His mouth skimmed along her collarbone, then dipped lower to nuzzle the cleft between her breasts, which had grown large and heavy in the latter stages of pregnancy. She pressed her hands into the hair on his chest and let her fingers comb through it, loving the way his heart slammed against her
palm.
She purred as his lips moved back up her throat and his tongue stroked around the edges of her ear, then she nuzzled him, snuggling her face against his heaving chest, teasing one flat nipple with her tongue until he groaned out an oath of endearment.
Nicholas slid her gown from her shoulders, murmuring, “It's lovely, but you're lovelier.” Beneath the robe her night rail was a pristine white flowing batiste with a rounded neckline that clung to her full breasts. He slipped the buttons with deft fingers, then freed one pale milky globe, cupping it reverently in his palm. His mouth quickly followed, taking the nipple and drawing on it until she keened out her pleasure.
At once he withdrew the other breast and did the same to it. Mercedes could not have imagined the heightened sensitivity of her breasts during pregnancy. She gasped, then closed her eyes in bliss as he worked his exquisite magic. Her hands pulled at his robe, shoving it off his shoulders until he slipped the belt and shrugged it off. Beneath it he was naked. His body gave off a feral heat that made hers answer in kind as an aching wetness grew between her thighs.
But when he began to pull the voluminous gown up and slip it off of her, she seized his hands, stilling them. “Wait.” Her voice held a husky plea.
Nicholas stopped, looking at her with a question in his eyes, his hands gentling as he whispered, “I never thought...is it all right to love you?” She was so frail and delicate looking, unlike the hardy soldaderas he had known. “Might I harm you?”
She shook her head. “No. Angelina explained all about what was happening to my body. I'm fine. Making love can't harm the child.”
“Then what's wrong?”
“It's me...I've grown the past months since we were last together.”
He chuckled appreciatively. “I can see that,” he murmured, cupping her magnificent breasts and letting his thumbs circle the upthrust nipples that begged for his mouth to suckle them.
“But I'm fat. My belly—”
“Holds my child,” he said earnestly as one hand moved lower to cradle the swelling through the bunched-up cloth of her night rail. “I can feel the life inside you—a life I put there. How could it not be beautiful to me? How could you not be beautiful? I want to see you this way, my love, to feel my child kick, to hold you both, to worship you with my body.”
“Then how could I not agree?” she whispered raggedly, letting his seeking hands lift the gown up over her head and toss it fluttering to the floor beside the bed.
“Lie back,” he commanded, pressing her to recline among the pillows on the big bed. Reverently his hands traced the trail which his eyes blazed, from her flushed face down her throat to her breasts. He cupped them and suckled them gently, then raised his head and let his hands move along the curve of her hips and across the swell of her belly, now fully rounded in the last months of her pregnancy.
A fleeting stab of fear touched his mind as he realized how slender she was and how great the burden she carried. Would the birth go all right? But then the baby seemed to provide the answer, kicking against his palm.
Mercedes watched as a broad smile spread across his face and he pressed his ear to her navel, listening. “He's a little hellion already,” she murmured.
His hands massaged the taut skin of her abdomen and he looked up at her and said, “How do you know he isn't a she?”
“Only time will tell for certain, but I do have an intuition,” she replied, once more closing her eyes as he began to trail kisses around her navel and back up to her breasts.
One of his hands moved lower and found the soft wet heat between her thighs as she reached for his rock-hard staff that was prodding insistently against her hipbone.
Nicholas groaned as she stroked him. She whispered, “Please, my love, now.”
He would not take her from on top, fearing he'd put too much pressure on her belly, but Nicholas Fortune was a man with an infinite sense of invention. Gently he rolled onto his side and positioned her with her legs raised, giving him access to penetrate deep inside the scalding heat of her body.
Mercedes arched up to receive him, wriggling her hips until his cries blended with her own, urging him to move harder and faster.
But he would not be hurried. Sweat beaded his forehead as he held himself under careful restraint, slowly sliding deep within her, then withdrawing in a gliding dance of such mind-robbing pleasure that they both gasped for breath.
Her hands clutched at him, one kneading his chest while the other dug into his hip, pulling him deeper inside her. Then, with a sudden animal ecstasy that took her utterly by surprise, the culmination began, like the shock wave of a great earthquake rippling through her body as she cried out, “Nicholas, Nicholas.”
Even sweeter than the hot gripping contractions of her sheath, the sound of his name on her lips drove him over the edge to join her in the maelstrom of fulfillment. Nicholas Fortune had waited all his life for this moment. For this woman and the promise of their life together. He spilled himself deeply against her already-filled womb, knowing that this was the first but not the last child they would create together.
Slowly, reality reclaimed them. Insects droned softly outside the cheesecloth netting around the big bed. In the distance a coyote bayed at the moon and called to its mate.
One of Nicholas’ prize mares whickered softly from the corrals and Peltre answered her.
“Life is good, so much better than I could ever have imagined before I met you,” he said as he rolled onto his back and pulled her into his embrace.
Mercedes cradled his head against her breast and stroked his curly black hair. “Tell me about Lottie Fortune's boy,” she whispered, kissing the errant lock of hair that fell across his forehead, making him seem like a youth once more. She wanted to know all of the tragedy and the triumph of his childhood in a foreign land, all the things that had formed him into the remarkable man she loved.
“I was born in a bordello in New Orleans. A very high-class establishment, according to Lottie. Her real name wasn't Fortune, it was Benson, before she ran away from her father to the wicked city where she survived as many beautiful women do. She became a rich man's mistress.”
“Anselmo's,” she answered, stroking his cheek softly.
“For a while, until he tired of her—or was summoned home to Gran Sangre to wed Sofia Obregón. I don't know which.”
“Then he never knew about you.” She was not excusing Anselmo's behavior. He would probably not have acknowledged Nicholas even if he had known.
He shrugged. “I'm not certain about that either, only that she lost her patron and was forced to find others to survive. Even selling her body was better than being with Hezekiah,” he said with loathing.
She could feel him shudder at the ugly memory and her heart ached for him.
“I'm glad you told me about Don Bartólome. Now I have one grandfather I can be proud of. Hezekiah Benson was the spawn of Satan. Ironic, that was what he called me when she finally sent me back to live with him on that miserable hardscrabble farm.”
“How could a mother give up her own child?” she said aloud before she realized it.
“At the time I wondered, too, but as I grew older, I think I understood. Her looks were fading from too much alcohol and the sort of life she led. She was on a downward spiral and knew it. I guess she figured a kid wouldn't last long on the streets in the neighborhoods we were inhabiting by that time. Or maybe she just wanted to get rid of me. Hell, I don't know. All I do know is life with Pap was pure hell.”
“Pap?” she echoed.
“My grandpappy Benson was a farmer—or at least that was what he called himself, but he hardly ever tended his crops. That's what he had me for. Couldn't afford slaves so I chopped cotton. And had the skin beaten off my back when I didn't work to suit him. He wanted to be a preacher. Read the Bible every day—especially the parts about ungrateful children and the whore of Babylon.”
“Your mother.”
“My mother. He drove her away, then cursed her
for leaving. When he wasn't spouting chapter and verse, he was drinking. Made him even meaner than when he was sober and that was plenty mean, believe me.”
“He punished you for what he thought were Lottie's sins.”
“He punished me for being born,” he replied grimly.
Tears clogged her throat and trickled down her cheeks as she pictured Nicholas as a small boy with black curly hair, looking for all the world like a replica of his haughty Castillian father, a constant reminder to Hezekiah Benson of his daughter's sin.
“I took it for as long as I could, until I got big enough to fight back. By the time I was fourteen, I was as tall as him, but he was bull strong and sneaky mean. We had a few really nasty fistfights. I realized if I stayed, I'd end up just like him—or kill him.”
“So you ran,” she supplied.
“Back to New Orleans. Looking for my mother. Dumb, huh? She was dead and gone by then, so I took a job in one of the bordellos, emptying the slops and doing any other work too filthy for the adults. I filled out quick after that.
“By the time I was sixteen, Pearly made me a bouncer. I'd learned to fight dirty from Pap, so I was a natural. Then I heard about this Frenchman recruiting for the Legion.”
“The French Foreign Legion? So that's how you learned all those languages, traveled to all those exotic places you know about,” she said with dawning understanding.
“Believe me, it isn't as glamorous as they make it out to be,” he replied dryly. “North Africa was hot enough to make the Chihuahua desert seem cool as London and the Crimea was so foul a cesspool, even the New Orleans slums seemed clean beside it. Most of all, I guess it was the war...always the killing, the stench of death. I was so sick of it all, of the rootless wandering, never belonging, just a nameless bastard who would end up some day in a nameless grave like all the others I'd met along the way.”
“But you wanted something better,” she said, curving her cool fingers around his jaw and stroking the faint bristle of whiskers.
