Bride of Fortune

by Henke, Shirl

  “Single-minded bastard, aren't you,” Nick said with false geniality.

  Lucero grinned with typical Hispanic grace and replied lightly, “I'm not the one who's a bastard—not literally, at least.”

  Nick's eyes narrowed at the insult, but then he realized he'd set himself up for it and shrugged. “I've shot men for calling me a bastard.”

  “My dear mother believes my father and I are far worse,” Alvarado said.

  Fortune grinned. “Really?”

  Lucero threw back his head and laughed in earnest, exactly the same way Nicholas Fortune had always laughed when something suddenly struck him as funny. The two men laughed together briefly, then the humor died as they studied each other again. The bright morning light revealed their amazing resemblance even more clearly.

  “You're slightly taller, and there is that scar on your cheek,” Alvarado said appraisingly, noting the thin white line that ran just below Nick's left cheekbone, a tiny flaw marring the perfection of his features.

  “A saber graze taken in Sebastopol. Women tell me it adds to my charm. I have more all over my body, some not nearly so neat, depending on who the surgeon was at the time.”

  “You can't be much older than me.”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “And you've been a soldier all your life?” Lucero was fascinated.

  “I learned to fight at an early age. A survival skill in the New Orleans slums.”

  “Tell me about your mother.”

  “Not much to tell. She was a whore. Worked in some of the best fancy houses in the city—that is until she began to lose her looks and took to the bottle a little too regularly.”

  “My father had a cousin in New Orleans. I understand he used to visit him occasionally before I was born.” Alvarado looked at Fortune speculatively. “She was very beautiful, your mother?”

  “Like I said, until the life and the liquor caught up with her,” Nick replied cynically, turning his back on Lucero. My brother.

  “Aren't you interested in our father? He is still alive, you know.”

  “Why should I care? He obviously never knew I was alive and wouldn't have given a damn if he did. I'm just a scarlet poppy's bastard to a rich don like him.”

  “He has only one heir. Perhaps a spare wouldn't be amiss, who knows?” Alvarado said cavalierly.

  “I don't want to see him any more than he'd want to see me.”

  “He looks exactly like you—even the harsh expression around his mouth,” Lucero taunted silkily.

  Nick swore a particularly obscene oath and ground out his cigarette. “I don't give a damn if they stamped us out of the same bloody mold and then broke it! You're the heir, rich boy. Leave it at that.”

  His angry outburst was interrupted by the sound of hoof beats. At once both men dropped to the ground and reached for their weapons, peering down the cliff. Sean O'Malley rode out of the trees leading their horses, calling out for his captain. The expression on his face when he saw Lucero Alvarado standing beside Nicholas Fortune was so goggle-eyed it was comical. Every man in Nick's band was equally as amazed, as were the two other men from Alvarado's unit when they located them.

  The men burned with curiosity over the next few days, but it was apparent their captain was not going to discuss the appearance of his seeming twin. Sensing Nick's reticence, Luce, as his comrades quickly dubbed him, did not speak of their relationship either, except when the two of them were alone.

  In spite of himself, Nick was curious about the life of luxury his brother had led and Luce was most obliging in describing Gran Sangre in all its splendor, as well as his family, the servants, even the blooded livestock. It was a world out of a Dumas novel to Nick, who found himself drinking in the stories like a starveling.

  In turn, Luce was fascinated by the mercenary's life his half brother had led since he was a boy, a life that he had only discovered over the past few years. Alvarado was a natural-born soldier, uncomplaining about long hard rides, sleeping on cold ground, and eating short rations on horseback. He was eager to learn from his brother all the tricks of the killing trade. And Luce was an excellent pupil.

  In one particularly vicious hand-to-hand fight, he had dispatched a brute of a man with a knife trick that Nick had taught him. As they were cleaning up after the skirmish, Luce had murmured to Nick, kneeling alongside him at the stream's edge, “You're a good teacher, brother. In fact, you've taught me more in a few brief months than I learned in years with tutors who didn't give a damn about me. That particular lesson just saved my life.”

  Then he chuckled. “The grammar of the knife is far more entertaining than Father Salvador's Latin lessons.”

  Entertaining. Yes, that was what all this amounted to for Don Lucero Alvarado. Entertainment! He especially enjoyed masquerading as a Juarista to ferret out sympathizers in the various towns and hamlets they passed through.

  They had been sent by Colonel Ortiz on just such a mission one rainy afternoon in October. “Serving with Marquez was the first time I really felt alive, you know?” he said as the two of them rode into a small village in Tamaulipas suspected of supporting the rebels. “Two years with the imperial army was little more than a continuation of my old life. I was posted in the capital with the empress' entourage. Lots of balls, dress uniforms, rules. God and all his saints, the damned rules.”

  “And Marquez, he was different?” Nick asked casually, wondering about the rumors he'd heard about El Tigre.

  Luce laughed as he took a long pull on his cigarette. “The man is truly a tiger. Cunning, deadly. He takes what he wants and makes his own rules. And he rewards his men generously. When we sacked San Dimas there was a wool merchant's daughter...” His eyes glowed as he remembered her wildness and the pleasure he had taming her. “We drank the bishop's whole wine cellar dry—and a very large cellar it was, too. I rode off with enough silver to weigh down even a mount as strong as Peltre. My companions and I spent it all in Vera Cruz.”

  He shrugged carelessly in a way Nick understood. Men in their line of work quickly adopted an easy-come-easy-go attitude toward money, spending it profligately on the fleshly pleasures it could buy, for who knew if one would live to drink another bottle of whiskey or caress another woman's soft body?

  They dismounted in front of a small adobe cantina and walked inside the smoky room, which was crowded with armed men who eyed the damp muddy strangers suspiciously. A sultry looking barmaid approached Fortune, hips swaying seductively. Leaning forward to reveal the bounty spilling from her low-cut camisa, she smiled.

  “What do two such pretty men want—pulque? Or perhaps something stronger...?” She wet her carmined lips suggestively. “I have fine aguardiente for only thirty centavos.”

  “Bring us pulque. Do we look like rich men?” Luce said dismissively, his eyes scanning the room surreptitiously. She left in a huff to fill their order, angry at his curt manner. Then he leaned over to Nick and said, “The two by the window are carrying new Yankee rifles.”

  “Springfields, .58 caliber.” Fortune's eyes narrowed. Shipments of American arms were finding their way across the border to Juarez's forces at Matamoros, then being sent south to arm Escobedo and Diaz's armies. The contre-guerrillas had been assigned to intercept just such a shipment. “Keep them entertained here while I see what there is to see around the plaza.”

  ''The puta favors you. I'll do the searching,” Luce replied as she returned, her eyes riveted hungrily on Nick.

  After buying several rounds of drinks, Nick had become the hero of the day. The men swapped stories of how they had routed the cowardly traitors who served the Austrian emperor. After a couple of hours had passed everyone was exceedingly drunk and Lupita was growing insistent in her advances to Nick.

  Although taking care to hide the fact he was the only

  sober man left in the place, he was beginning to grow concerned that Luce had not returned. Had he been caught snooping? Surely there would have been an alarm raised. An outbreak of gunfire woul
d bring his men riding in, weapons blazing. He would prefer to seize or, if necessary, destroy the shipment of rifles before the fighting broke out.

  Finally he excused himself to answer the call of nature and staggered out the back door, leaving Lupita sulking at the bar. A few quick steps down the street away from the noise of the cantina, he heard the sounds of a scuffle coming from a small adobe building. Drawing his Remington, he quickly kicked open the door and stepped inside. Luce was straddling a slender dark-haired girl whose torn clothing and wide terror-filled eyes clearly indicated she had not encouraged his advances. He held her wrists pinioned above her head with one hand while his other was poised at his belt buckle. Her skirts were already bunched up, revealing slender pale thighs which he had pried apart with his legs.

  Alvarado looked up at Fortune, a grimace of lust hazing his vision. “The guns are there.” He gestured to the back of the room where several crates were stacked. A man's body slumped in front of them, his throat cut. “Her father was guarding them. She brought him his dinner. He can't eat and my appetite runs in a different direction tonight,” he muttered, running his hand over her mound and feeling her quiver.

  “The cantina has women eager for your company. Use them when this is over,” Nick said tersely. “This isn't the time or place for sport. Besides, this waif is far too skinny for your taste.”

  With a disgusted oath Alvarado got to his feet and started to yank the girl up with him, but she twisted away with ferret like speed and darted toward the back of the room, now screaming at the top of her lungs.

  “No need to give the signal. Let's just hope we can hold them until our men get here,” Nick said, seizing two of the rifles from the crates.

  “At least we're well armed,” Luce countered, doing the same.

  Both men flattened themselves against the thick adobe walls as a hail of bullets flew through the window and door. They returned fire, taking turns reloading until O'Malley's familiar yell sounded from the plaza. Fortune's men poured into it from every direction. Schmidt and Lanfranc rode up the narrow backstreet, cutting down all resistance while O'Malley gave commands from the roof of the cantina, using the height to oversee what had quickly turned into a rout. Men and horses slipped and slid in the yellow-brown mud. The big Irishman picked off two Juaristas who were attempting to reach the corral, then yelled for Nick and Luce.

  Within ten minutes it was over. The rain had stopped, as if it had surrendered like the village. The unarmed people filed into the square. Most were frightened, their eyes huge as they stared at the hard-looking band of imperial mercenaries who spoke in a polyglot of Spanish, French, English and German. Women clutched crying babies while children hid in the folds of their skirts. Men, some stoic, others unable to mask their blazing hatred, walked into the plaza with hands raised, prodded by the rifle barrels of the victors.

  “Do we shoot them, mein herr?” Schmidt asked, his small blue eyes moving across the lines of prisoners.

  “I doubt there were two dozen able-bodied men in the whole village and most of them are lying dead in the mud,” Fortune said, surveying the carnage. In fact, lots of the bodies in the muck were far from able-bodied and some not even male. “Bust up what rifles we can't carry with us and we move out.”

  “They're our prisoners,” Lanfranc protested in rapid French. “They were hiding a shipment of weapons for Escobedo's army. You know the decree—”

  Luce's bark of laughter interrupted the fat little Frenchman's tirade. “Our commander here doesn't approve of the emperor's Black Decree. Thinks it breaks all the rules of civilized warfare.”

  “There is no such thing as civilized war,” Nick snapped, “but butchering prisoners wholesale only creates more resistance.”

  Maximilian had promulgated a decree giving official sanction to what had already been a common practice, the execution of all men caught bearing arms against the empire. The so-called Black Decree stated there was no legitimate republican government, hence no republican army, only bandits. Considering how Marquez and other contre-guerrillas operated, Fortune thought it an irony that several of Juarez's regular army generals had been executed as brigands. Such mindless brutality only increased the ferocity with which the enemy fought.

  “The young ones we should kill—see the hate in their eyes?” Schmidt said, his own eyes gleaming.

  Fortune kicked over a corpse lying in his path as he walked into the plaza. A boy who couldn't have been more than twelve years old. “Is this young enough for you?” he snarled.

  He combed his fingers through his hair and glared at the armed group surrounding him. He'd spent half his life with men of this ilk, men like his half brother, who grew to love the killing more with every battle. Nicholas Fortune felt like a stranger among them. “O'Malley, are the rifles taken care of?”

  “That they are, Capt'n.”

  “Then mount up. Schmidt, you and Lopez stampede their horses after we cull the ones worth taking with us.”

  Reluctantly his orders were obeyed. They rode out of the silent village just as the rain resumed in a steady, sullen downpour.

  * * * *

  Stupid. The whole stinking mess was senseless, leading nowhere. For every boy with a machete they shot, two more rode down from the mountains to take his place. Lord God above, he was sick unto death of the slaughtering. The coppery smell of blood filled his nostrils and for the first time since he was sixteen, he felt sick with loathing. Time to get out.

  If only Luce's careless words about their father were true, he might have a place to belong, but that was absurd. He'd met enough haughty hacendados to know how one would feel about a man like him, no matter how much he resembled the old son of a bitch. Besides, he had his pride. In all his life, Nicholas Fortune had never begged and he was too old to start now.

  He looked across the fire at his brother, who was dallying with one of the camp followers, a coarse wench with a lusty laugh and great masses of curly black hair. The image of Luce straddling the terrified girl back in that village flashed into his mind. His brother liked women to fight him before he took them. Riding with Marquez had given him a taste for rape as well as plunder and killing. He thrived on danger, volunteering every time a point had to be taken under withering fire or a Juarista town had to be infiltrated before they hit it.

  Last week he had gone into Tampico, which was currently occupied by the rebels, and set a charge of dynamite in the customs house. When it ignited too soon, he was caught in the mob. Nick rode in with Peltre and the two of them made good their escape in a hail of bullets.

  Luce had the devil's own luck. In fact some of the men, especially the Mexicans, had started calling him El Diablo. The Devil. An ironic conceit considering his name Lucero meant “light.” Everywhere he went, Luce brought darkness.

  “So deep in thought, hermano” Luce said in halting English. Since joining his brother he had begun to pick up the language although he detested it even more than French. His mewling pale little wife was half English, but Nick was Americano. A very clever Americano whose uncanny likeness to himself fascinated him almost as much as the incredible life Nick had led. Indeed, his brother had become a hero of sorts to the spoiled young criollo. “What troubles you?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

  Nick tossed his cigarette into the fire. “I thought you were busy with Esmeralda.”

  “She's just a puta.``

  “So was my mother.” Nick's eyes bored into Luce's.

  The tense exchange was broken when a rider came galloping into camp. Expecting dispatches from Colonel Ortiz, Nick stood up and signaled the man to him.

  “You are el capitán?” the grizzled older man inquired in broken English.

  Fortune identified himself in Spanish, asking for the orders from Monterrey. He was handed a small satchel by the rider, who then cleared his throat and held up another envelope.

  “I have a letter of great importance, entrusted to me by the colonel himself. He received it all the way from Sonora, from
a great hacendado. It is for Don Lucero Alvarado. I was told he rides with you.”

  By this time a crowd had gathered, including Luce, who stepped forward, hand extended. He read the crumpled, water-stained missive with a look of peculiar resignation on his face, then stalked off.

  Nick perused the news from the capital and other areas, all the while wondering about the message for Luce. Finally, his brother ambled into camp and sat down beside him.

  “Cigarette?” he asked, rolling one with deft fingers.

  “When you have that cagey look on your face, I've learned to smell trouble,” Nick replied, taking the tobacco. “You walked away a couple of hours ago looking like the sky had fallen on you. What's happened?” He lit up and inhaled the pungent smoke, then choked on it when Luce replied.

  “Our father is dead. I've been summoned home. What would you say if I offered to trade places with you? I'll take charge of the men and you go to Gran Sangre as Don Lucero.”

  “Why the hell would you do that?” Nick asked incredulously.

  Luce gave a careless shrug. “Why the hell not? I don't want to settle down, but I think you do.” He studied Nick with hooded speculative eyes. “You've saved my life more than once and you've for sure taken a damn sight more interest in me than anyone else ever did.” Then his mood shifted abruptly, as if he were uncomfortable, revealing too much. He grinned sharkishly. “Hell, just call it life's payback to you, big brother.”

  * * * *

  Spring 1866

  Nick coughed again, then rolled over on the wide soft mattress and awakened in the master bedroom at Gran Sangre. His dream had seemed as real as the hard wooden chest sitting beside his bed. He rolled up and reached over to it, picking up the makings for a cigarette. But he was no longer dreaming. He had done it, really done it, traded places with his half brother and come to Gran Sangre to claim the birthright his illegitimacy had denied him as Anselmo Alvarado's firstborn son.

  Chapter Four