Gallant Match

by Jennifer Blake

  He was still for a few seconds, easing her with inventive kisses and fiercely gentle hands while her body accepted him, stretched to accommodate him. Slowly then, with infinite control and the contraction of strained muscles, he began to move.

  His shadow cast by the fire swooped over her, rising and falling in gigantic multiple images painted in shades of black and gray upon the stone walls. She opened to him like a virgin sacrifice, holding him, urging him with feverish need. With powerful, surging movements of hips and thighs, he answered her tentative guidance, pressing deep, abrading, until she lifted against him, finding his pace and matching it.

  And it was not a simple mating of a man and a woman but something more elemental, the primitive tumult of life at its most basic, most true. It caught them, held them in its grip, and rewarded them at last with the paramount gift such mating has to offer.

  The heart-pounding glory burst over them in hot waves. Sonia clenched upon him, every muscle cramped and burning as her very being contracted around him. He bent over her in protective embrace, giving her all he had. She took it, trembling, and with salt tears streaming into her hair for the unselfishness of the gift.

  It was less than she desired at her heart’s core, but more than enough for her need.

  Twenty-One

  Kerr lay on his side with his head resting on his bent arm and his free hand holding Sonia against him. She was tucked into his long length, the soft roundness of her hips pressed against his groin and one breast perfectly enclosed within the trap of his fingers. Her chest rose and fell in the rhythm of deepest sleep and her feet were cool where they touched his shins. The top of her head was just under his chin and a single hair tickled his nose with a maddening itch.

  He exerted rigorous control over his need to shift position, ease the cramp in his side. For one thing, she might wake and she needed her rest. Mainly, he wasn’t ready to let her go.

  Dawn was turning the light outside from blue-black to gray. He could hear the distant, squawking chorus of a flock of parrots. Soon the sun would climb above the trees to herald another sultry, too-bright day. They should be moving, taking advantage of the morning cool, but he didn’t stir. From where he lay, he could see the quiver of Sonia’s lashes and the way their shadows deepened the dark circles under her eyes, see her lips that were parched-looking from their long day without water and the slight twitch of her hand now and then where it lay open on the palm fronds. She was dreaming, he thought. Could be it was one worth keeping.

  He preferred his waking dream.

  She had come to him. She had her reasons, yes, but they hardly mattered against the miracle of it.

  He’d nearly spoiled it, stalking off in a fit of wounded pride because she would grant him no place in her life when this episode was over. What else had he expected? She was who she was, and so was he. Their worlds seldom met, much less merged. He was a fool for wanting more, especially when he had so little to offer in return.

  She wasn’t cut out to be a farmer’s wife. He’d bought a fine place in Kentucky with his earnings as a sword master, a full section of rich bottomland where two rivers met and a white house sat under sheltering oaks on a hill. Living there would seem barren to a woman used to the luxury and entertainment New Orleans had to offer. She was sure to be bored to distraction in a month, no matter what she’d said earlier.

  No, Sonia Bonneval was not for him. She was quite a woman, nonetheless, quick-tempered, headstrong, heedless of consequences, but also fair-minded, considerate of others and quick on her feet. She was soft where he was hard, tender where he was tough, but had inner strength that matched his in every degree, and maybe surpassed it.

  God, he would never forget the sight of her with a stone in her raised fist, like some avenging fury as she killed the scorpion. He’d thought for a second that he was her target. The prospect had so stunned him that he’d been half inclined to let her strike.

  She’d saved him instead. Scorpions in this latitude were twice as large as their American cousins. He would have been painfully sick from the poison, if not dead. Most women he knew would have screamed and hopped around in a panic. Sonia had crushed the thing and watched it die.

  Would she do the same to him if he got in her way?

  Who could say? But he’d rather not take the chance.

  A woman in a thousand, that much he had to admit. He was amazed at the way she had trudged after him, keeping up with him even if it was at the slower pace he’d chosen to travel because of her injured foot. She hadn’t complained or begged to rest, had not whined over the lack of water, heat, injury or even the sting of scratches and scrapes. She ate what she was given and helped when she could. What else could a man ask?

  Well, yes, she’d given even that, and with a generosity that made his heart swell to remember. Not to mention other parts of his damnably susceptible carcass. He’d taken advantage of it in a shameful manner, covering her with his body twice more before they slept, driven by a desperate insatiability unlike anything he’d ever known. It was as if he must cram a lifetime of possession into a single night.

  He would give all he owned to stay where they were for another day, maybe two. It wasn’t possible. Food was not the problem; he could provide ample for them using the woodsman’s lore he’d gained as a kid hunting with his old man. Their haven here kept off the rain and sun and protected them from animal attack. As for water, it was best he didn’t think too much about the pool and its uses. Though he thought the picture of her floating in it, as near naked as God ever made a female in spite of her underclothing, would be something he’d carry to his grave.

  No, the problem with lingering lay behind them. Sonia was worried about her aunt’s safety and where she might land. He was concerned with what Tante Lily would do once she set foot on dry ground. Vera Cruz, as he’d told Sonia, was a likely docking place for the man-of-war. Once there, she would go to Rouillard. She knew no one else, after all, and would expect her niece, if she survived, to eventually make her way to her future husband. What could be more natural than that Tante Lily, inestimable lady that she was, would embark on the story of the wedding voyage and the misadventure that had caused the loss of the bride-to-be, including the name of the man who had traveled with her?

  Rouillard would recognize the threat he represented, Kerr was sure; the man hadn’t stayed one step ahead of him all this time without knowing he was on his trail. The question was what he would do then. Would he wait to see if Sonia turned up or send out a search party in hope of discovering whether she was alive? Would he lead the effort himself or wait at Vera Cruz, barricaded in his stronghold, until he discovered if her protector had died?

  Kerr’s grip tightened fractionally in response to his thoughts, as if to keep what he held for this brief space of time. Sonia stirred, pressing back against him as she stretched a little. Her eyes flew open. She stared straight ahead while remembrance surfaced in her face.

  “Morning,” he said into her hair with its trace of violet scent overlaid by warm female. Releasing her breast with some reluctance, he smoothed his hand down until his fingers were splayed across her abdomen. Rubbing gently, and in ever lower circles, he asked, “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m…fine.”

  He felt the catch in her voice as much as heard it. The increasing tempo of her heartbeat throbbed under his arm as well, and he could feel the rapid rise and fall of her breathing. His brain was suddenly boiling in his skull, his blood coursing through his veins like steam from an engine. Every point where his body touched hers felt marked for life. He fought the urge to simply roll her over and shove into her in rampant fornication. And he was winning, until she moaned under the press of his questing fingers and pushed against his palm.

  He couldn’t help it, and didn’t try. It was no ordinary desire that drove him, no simple need. He was like a man obsessed as he sought the soft, hot core of her, filling her, seating himself so fully inside her that it seemed they must merge into one. He p
lunged again and again while sweat ran into his eyes and he ground his teeth to prevent the consummation that would crown his rampant ecstasy but also end it. So he strived until the edges of his visions blurred and were tinted red, until her cries mingled with his groans and she grasped his thighs with both hands as she rose to meet him and there was nothing, nothing more that either could hold in reserve, nothing he could hold back at all except promises he could not keep and she had no wish to hear. And so he let go, finally, in certain knowledge that the last thing he could ever hold was the woman in his arms.

  An hour later, they were on the trail again. They kept within hearing distance, if not in sight, of the stream that fed what had been their bathing pool, while following the animal path that paralleled it. Neither had much to say. There was no need. They had established a routine the day before and followed it by rote, walking in lockstep with Sonia one pace behind him, bending as one to duck under limbs, avoiding briars, climbing over rocks, stopping to catch their breath and then going on again as at some mutually recognized signal.

  They were climbing, though so gradually that it was almost imperceptible. The forest remained the same, however, and the heat. Nothing changed much at all until the sun passed its zenith and began to slant toward afternoon again.

  A sharp crack was Kerr’s first warning. He came to a stop with his hand on Sonia’s arm. She looked at him, a question in her eyes. He only nodded at the winding trail ahead of them with his head cocked, listening.

  “Ax,” she whispered after a moment of following his example.

  It was what he thought himself. “Best to make sure,” he replied before looking down at her. “You wait—”

  “I’ll wait here. But don’t be long.”

  He had to smile; he couldn’t help it. Not long ago, she would have spat in his eye at any hint of an order from him. Now she looked for the reason behind it. She still might not like it, but accepted the necessity regardless.

  He wanted desperately to kiss her as a reward and also for the taste of her lips. He didn’t dare. Once started, he might not stop until he had her backed against a tree with her legs around his waist while he took advantage of the split in the crotch of her pantaloons.

  His mind went back to the day before as he moved quietly away down the trail from where he’d left her sitting on a rock. God in heaven, what it had done to him, that damnably convenient slit of an opening. The sight of it as she stretched out before him, unaware of the sweetly naked white curves so innocently turned up for his inspection, had nearly made him swallow his tongue. He deserved sainthood for taking only a quick glance. And it was a thousand wonders he hadn’t cut off one of his own fingers while he removed the thorn from her foot.

  He’d been in a bad way already, after hours of tramping along knowing she was the next thing to naked and he had made her that way. Sacrificing his shirt to cover her earlier had been the purest self-preservation.

  Sacrifice.

  Her word choice last evening, and a good one, too. She’d been right in accusing him of planning to throw her to Rouillard in order to get what he wanted. He’d known it all along, but refused to face it. Hearing it from her had brought it home in a way he hadn’t liked. So he had made a burnt offering of his vow to deliver an untouched bride by taking her on an ancient, palm-strewn altar, turning a necessity into an honored privilege.

  She was right again, in thinking it made a fine reason for forcing Rouillard to a dawn meeting. Cowardly traitor that the man was, it could be the only thing that might achieve it.

  Why then, Kerr asked himself for the hundredth time, did it feel as if he had committed a colossal blunder, one he might regret all his days? Not that he had made love to Sonia Bonneval, no, that wasn’t it. Rather that he had done it for the wrong reason.

  He almost walked up on the woodcutters. So much for his woodsman’s skill. If not for the thudding hack of an ax, his absorption in the events of the night would have left him at their mercy. As it was, he slid behind a tree, studying them, their weapons and their purpose, from its cover.

  They were mestizos, judging from their flat features, black hair and eyes and dark skin, and wore the simple homespun clothing and wide straw hats of their kind. They were cutting up a fallen tree, chopping off branches, splintering away what they could of the larger limbs with the single ax they shared between them. The resulting firewood they were bundling onto the backs of a string of donkeys. They talked between themselves in guttural syllables that bore no resemblance to any language Kerr had ever heard, laughing and making an occasional gesture that was ribald but not obscene. If there was any harm in them, much less menace, Kerr saw no sign of it.

  He had a choice. He could approach them and offer payment for the use of a donkey to carry Sonia to wherever they meant to return, or he could hang back, following after them as they turned homeward. Left to himself, he would have opted for the second. He wasn’t alone.

  “¡Hola!” he called as he stepped from his cover.

  They rounded on him, ax at the ready in the hands of the younger of the two. Father and son, he thought. They were remarkably similar in appearance, short by his standard, but wiry and strong.

  They were also more than he felt like tangling with in his present condition. Not that he’d back down if it came to that, but he preferred negotiation. Digging into his pocket, he took out a silver coin, a Mexican cartwheel of the kind often seen in New Orleans these days, and began to barter with more signs than words.

  A short time later, he and Sonia were both seated on donkeys, plodding along on their way to a place call La Casa de las Flores.

  Nightfall fell like a blue velvet stage curtain just as they came within sight of what seemed to be their destination. The donkey train, scenting their home corral, picked up the pace to a trot. Kerr, more sore from straddling the scrawny beast between his legs than he’d have been from the walk, was just as glad to see the adobe walls and passel of dogs and children that ran to meet them in a hubbub of growls and shouts. That Sonia felt the same he never doubted, not only from the heartfelt moan she gave as he helped her down, but from the way she rested her forehead on his chest as she stood in the circle of his arms.

  “We’re here,” he said around the ache in the back of his throat, “almost back where you belong.”

  “And where is that?” she asked in a tired whisper.

  Or at least he thought she did. He could have been wrong.

  Light bloomed from the direction of the house, becoming a bevy of lamps that dipped and swayed as they drew closer. It was, Kerr saw, a welcoming committee of sorts.

  Four or five Indians carrying lanterns led the way, followed by a trio of buxom females in identical blue dresses and aprons. In their midst moved a majestic figure clad in a black silk gown that featured a bodice low enough to display breasts like a pair of white doves and a skirt formed of cascading ruffles. A lace scarf, covering glossy black hair that was held in place by an enormous comb, framed a face of surpassing beauty though no longer youthful.

  “Good evening,” the lady said, speaking in the lisping accents of Castile. “I, Doña Francesca Isabella Cordilla y Urbana, welcome you to my home. Manuel, who ran ahead to warn of your coming, tells me you are victims of misfortune. Please to come inside and allow my people to serve your needs. You will rest and regain your strength for a few days, yes? Or stay as long as you desire, for mi casa es su casa.”

  “You are very kind,” Sonia began.

  “Parbleu, you are French. How stupid of my man not to perceive it.” Doña Francesca switched at once into that language, her manner pleasant but alive with curiosity. “How long it is since I last heard it spoken. You are doubly welcome for the opportunity. Come, now, madame, you and your magnificently huge and so handsome husband. Come inside at once.”

  Aristocrat called to aristocrat, Kerr thought in sour recognition. It might have been his own fault for standing like a stump, but he resented being bypassed as if he wasn’t there. Of course,
it could be that Manuel, who had jogged off in advance of their arrival, had given their hostess to understand he had used sign language instead of Spanish, so she had assumed he had no French either. He had both, thank you, after traveling from pillar to post on Rouillard’s trail.

  Sonia understood the situation perfectly, of that he had no doubt. Yet she hadn’t corrected the mistake that named him her husband. Now, why was that?

  The home they entered was a combination house and fortress, a two-story dwelling built in a horseshoe shape around a courtyard that was enclosed on its fourth side by a tall, gated wall. The general aspect was in keeping with the houses of New Orleans in that its gate was of strong yet ornate wrought iron and galleries on both lower and upper floors looked out onto the courtyard.

  This open space was shaded by palms and leafy trees, and made cooler by the trickling sound of a fountain. Bougainvillea climbed the walls, dropping petals of garnet and ruby from massive bloom stalks to the stone floor below. Huge water ollas sat under the eaves, and a polished silver bell and doors carved with religious figures marked the entrance to a private chapel in one corner. Kitchen, laundry and servants’ rooms where children played faced it across the way. A wide staircase of some exotic wood, located beneath the gallery directly facing the gate, mounted to the main living quarters.

  Doña Francesca led the way upstairs, holding her wide skirts well above fine ankles, while Kerr stalked along behind her and Sonia. At the top, the lady directed them to a suite of rooms at the end of the gallery. Indicating that Manuel would arrange water for bathing and clothing for their needs, she bade them refresh themselves and rest until they were summoned to supper. Inclining her head in a regal nod, she left them.