In Mexico, a revolution drove Santa Anna from the presidency and the new president, General José Joaquin Herrera, was a man disposed to peace with Texas.
In Texas, Dr. Anson Jones, a man pledged to support Sam Houston’s policies favoring annexation, was elected to replace Houston as the next president of the Republic.
In America, a virtual unknown, James Knox Polk, of Tennessee, a friend of Sam Houston’s and a man in favor of westward expansion, was elected to replace President John Tyler.
Lately, Cruz had read accounts in American newspapers that said the annexation of Texas was “inevitable.” In fact, it was considered a foregone conclusion that when the American Congress reconvened in February, 1845, it would immediately ask Texas to become the twenty-sixth state.
Cruz had not been surprised to receive word that Sir Giles wanted to see him. He suspected the British had come up with some final, desperate plan to thwart annexation. Because once Texas was annexed, the British citizens who had invested millions of pounds in Mexican bonds secured only by land in Texas would have to admit, at last, that their investments were not worth the paper they were printed on.
Cruz was not looking forward to the trip because it meant leaving Sloan-again.
She had seemed content at times over the past two months, but was agitated and impatient at others. He was no more certain now that she would still be with him at the end of April-when the six months she had agreed to give him were up-than he had been the night the priest had married them.
As he gazed at her in the pale gray light of dawn, her lids slowly lifted. For an instant he thought he saw pleasure in her deep brown eyes, but whatever her feelings for him, they were quickly masked.
“Good morning,” she said, her voice rough from disuse.
He reached to brush a stray curl from her cheek, noting the softness of her skin, the silkiness of the hair beneath his fingertips. “Good morning.” He leaned over and pressed his lips against hers.
He felt the tremor go through her as they touched, and was hard-pressed to control his desire for her. He had to speak now or he would never be able to leave her.
“I must leave for San Antonio today.”
“Meeting another ranchero?” she asked, her brows rising skeptically.
“Sí.”
She kept her lids lowered so he couldn’t see her eyes, and her hands toyed with the cotton sheet that barely covered her full breasts. He saw the shadow of a dusky nipple through the cloth and his loins responded by tightening with pleasure.
“I want to go with you,” she said.
“No.”
“Why not? It isn’t as though I would intrude on your business. I have acquaintances of my own in San Antonio I could visit, and I could check to see whether there’s any news about Betsy’s uncle while I’m there.”
Cruz could hardly explain that she would be in his way when he made contact with Sir Giles, but neither could he come up with a satisfactory reason to keep her at Dolorosa. “I will not have time to keep an eye on you-”
“Why would you need to do that?” she said with asperity. “I’ll keep an eye on myself.”
Cruz ignored her statement and rose from the bed to dress.
Sloan forced her gaze away from the lithe muscles that bunched in her husband’s shoulders as he stretched, the strong arch of his back, the taut, hard buttocks which, she noticed with chagrin, were decorated with fingernail-shaped crescents she had put there last night in a moment of mindless passion. She could find no fault with his body, but she was more than a little perturbed by his attitude toward including her in his business.
She had been an obedient-almost docile-wife, allowing Cruz to come and go as he pleased, leaving her behind at Dolorosa, failing to include her more times than not. But she was beginning to feel the constraints of being a dutiful wife. Taking care of Betsy and playing with Cisco weren’t enough to keep her occupied. The nearly complete absence of responsibility, after so many years of being responsible for so much, left her feeling restless.
Not only that, but the constant strain of her relationship with Doña Lucia, and the lingering uncertainty of whether her marriage with Cruz would last, were starting to wear on her. She needed to get away.
So she said, “If you don’t take me with you, I’ll simply go on my own as soon as you’re gone.”
Cruz frowned. “You agreed-”
“I have to get away from here for a while, Cruz.” Her voice was calm, but inside she was wired as tautly as a bowstring. “Either I go with you or I go alone, but I’m going.”
Sloan had sat up abruptly to state her ultimatum, unmindful of the sheet that had covered her nakedness. Once her tirade was over, she realized the cloth had fallen to her waist and Cruz was staring at her. Her nipples puckered under his intent gaze, and she grabbed at the sheet to cover the signs of her vulnerability to him.
Cruz knew he couldn’t keep her here if she made up her mind to go. He realized he would have more success keeping her ignorant of his reasons for traveling to San Antonio if she came along with him. When necessary, he could make his excuses and leave her safely in their room at the hotel while he met with the Englishman.
Besides, he found the thought of having Sloan to himself, of being alone with her away from Dolorosa, exciting.
When Cruz sat down beside her on the bed, he had donned his trousers and boots, but his chest, with its mat of thick black hair, was still bare. Sloan struggled to keep from staring, but it was a battle she was happy to lose.
“All right, Cebellina, you may come with me,” he said. “I plan to leave right after breakfast.”
In her happiness, Sloan leaned over to kiss him on the mouth. “I’ll be ready.” When she would have withdrawn, she found herself captured in Cruz’s embrace.
“You are so beautiful, querida.” Cruz tantalized her with his lips. “I am the most fortunate of men.”
Sloan found herself loath to leave his arms, dizzy with pleasure. She moaned as his hands caressed the curve of her hip. “I should get up.” She reached out a hand and laid it on his bare chest.
He shuddered with the pleasure of her touch. “As you wish, Cebellina. We can continue this in San Antonio.”
It was spoken as a promise, but Sloan couldn’t help hearing the threat to the high walls she had built around her heart. She was afraid to love him; she was afraid she already did.
At the breakfast table, Cruz broke the news that Sloan would be coming with him to San Antonio and heard the same refrain from nearly everyone seated at the table.
“Can Cisco and I come, too?” Betsy asked.
Sloan reached over to catch a spoonful of chorizo, a mixture of scrambled eggs and sausage, that was about to fall into Betsy’s lap. “Not this time, sweetheart,” she said, dropping the bit of chorizo into the girl’s open mouth.
“I could ride my pony. I would not be any trouble,” Cisco promised.
Sloan turned to her other side, where Cisco had stuffed the last bit of a generously buttered tortilla into his mouth and was licking his fingers clean. She took the napkin from his lap and began wiping his fingers. “No, you’re always an angel,” she said with a grin. “That’s why your nickname is Diablito.”
Cruz watched with something akin to awe as Sloan and Cisco grinned at one another. Cruz’s eyes never left Sloan’s hands as she carefully wiped her son’s face with his napkin, then brushed a wayward curl back from his brow. She straightened Cisco’s shirt on his shoulders and tugged one of his ears playfully before settling his napkin back in his lap.
Such moments were rare, and therefore all the more to be treasured. More often than not, Sloan would stop herself from actually touching her son. He had watched her fight a battle with herself every time she came in contact with Cisco, in order to keep from loving the child. There were chinks in her fortress walls, but they were far from being demolished.
“I wish I were going, too,” Tomasita said. “San Antonio sounds like such an exciting place.”
Cruz heard the wistful note in Tomasita’s voice. He had been remiss in finding a husband for her, but he had been distracted by the roundup and then by this business with the British government. He decided to write a letter to both Don Ambrosio and Señor Carvajal the day he returned from his trip to San Antonio.
To Cruz’s surprise, his mother said nothing about Sloan’s accompanying him except, “I will see about preparing a meal for you to take along on your journey.”
“Ana can take care of it,” Cruz replied. He had not been ignorant of the cold shoulder his mother had turned to his wife, but at Sloan’s behest, he had not confronted her for her behavior.
Too late he realized that perhaps he should not have so casually dismissed what he now perceived as a tentative olive branch from his mother. Because instead of insisting, Doña Lucia merely agreed, “As you wish.”
Sloan hadn’t realized how hard it was going to be to leave Betsy and Cisco behind. When it was time for her to mount up, the little girl threw her arms around Sloan’s neck and wouldn’t let go. Cruz pried Betsy loose and handed her to Josefa.
As they rode away, Sloan looked back over her shoulder and saw that Betsy was sobbing out her misery in Josefa’s arms. Cisco stood apart from them, his face equally unhappy, but aware, even at his age, that a man did not cry out his sorrows.
Despite what Sloan knew were good reasons for keeping herself aloof from her son, at that moment she felt like turning her horse around and hugging Cisco good-bye. Cruz’s next words saved her from such folly.
“Come, Cebellina. We have a lot of riding to do before dark.”
Sloan was exhausted by the time they arrived in San Antonio. Actually, she was feeling more than a little sick. Her stomach was upset, and she had been so dizzy the last few miles before they reached San Antonio that she’d had trouble staying in the saddle.
She had drunk most of the water in her canteen but still had an unquenchable thirst. Nor did the water settle her stomach. Her nausea only seemed to get worse.
If it had been hotter she might have suspected sunstroke. But it was January, and besides, she had worn her hat all day. She couldn’t imagine why she felt so bad-unless it was something she had eaten. She hid the way she was feeling from Cruz, because it would only prove to him that she should have stayed at home.
Whether it was a mild case of sunstroke or something she had eaten, she felt certain that if she could get some rest she would feel better in the morning. She dropped like an adobe brick onto the four-poster bed when they finally reached their room at Ferguson’s Hotel.
“Are you sure you do not want a bath first?” Cruz asked with a chuckle when a cloud of dust shot up from her clothes.
“I’ll get one in the morning. It’s late,” Sloan mumbled. “Would you help me with my boots?”
Cruz tugged her Wellingtons off and watched her curl up around one of the pillows. She was asleep moments later. He wanted to stay with her. He wanted to curve his body around hers and feel her warm flesh against his own. But he reluctantly admitted that Sloan’s fatigue had provided him the perfect opportunity to meet with Sir Giles.
He stayed in the same hotel as Sir Giles because it made it less likely he would be watched coming and going. Cruz knocked three times at a door just down the hall from where his wife slept peacefully. When it opened a crack, Cruz said, “It is the Hawk.”
“It’s about time you got here,” Sir Giles said, gesturing Cruz inside. “You’re late.”
“I brought my wife with me. The ride took longer than I expected.”
“I will never understand why you bothered to marry your brother’s whore. Tonio proved she was free for the taking.”
Cruz stiffened. The hackles on the back of his neck told him Alejandro was sitting in the rawhide chair in the far corner of the room.
Alejandro continued, “I am sure it was worth the delay to have that bruja in your bed while you are here, eh, Don Cruz? Perhaps while she is here I will see if she is ready to welcome yet another into her bed.”
Cruz turned to confront Alejandro, and found the bandido’s face half in and half out of the shadows. A row of crooked teeth flashed in a taunting smile beneath the bandido’s bushy moustache.
Cruz realized he had been arrogant to assume he could protect his wife from a man without a conscience. Alejandro wouldn’t fight fair. He wouldn’t fight clean. And if he ever got his hands on Sloan, he would take what he wanted and throw away whatever was left. Cruz’s hands balled into fists, but he managed to curb his desire to wipe the smile off Alejandro’s face.
“Damn and blast, man! You know better than to bring your wife along at a time like this,” Sir Giles complained.
Cruz turned cold blue eyes on the Englishman. “It is done. What do you want from me? Why did you ask me to come?”
Recognizing the peril of harassing Cruz, the stout Englishman got directly to the point. “Mexico is on the verge of giving Texas its independence. I need you to find out exactly what the Texas government is willing to concede to get Mexico to sign over sovereignty.”
“I do not have the political connections-”
“Ah, but you don’t need to be present at the negotiations,” Sir Giles said. “You need only briefly intercept the letters between the parties involved.”
“I am not a thief.”
“Only a traitor,” Sir Giles said, his lips curled cynically.
When Cruz remained adamant in his stand, Sir Giles said, “Oh, very well. Perhaps Alejandro is better suited to that task. I have another, more important, job for you anyway.
“The former American chargé to Texas, Beaufort LeFevre, is coming here to work with the current chargé toward annexation. While LeFevre is in Texas, I want you to keep an eye on him. I want to know everyone he sees, everything he says.”
“How do you propose I accomplish that?”
Sir Giles smiled, exposing the gums above his teeth. “It’s quite simple, my boy. LeFevre will be staying with Rip Stewart. You will merely take your wife home for an extended visit with her father.”
Cruz couldn’t stop the sardonic twist of his lips. “I suppose I have no choice about this.”
“No, you don’t.”
“When is LeFevre coming?”
“We don’t know. When he does come, I’ll expect you to join him at Three Oaks.”
“Anything else?” Cruz asked.
“That is quite enough, don’t you think?”
Cruz didn’t bother to answer, just turned his back on Sir Giles and headed for the door. The Englishman’s voice stopped him before he could leave.
“Hawk…”
Cruz paused but didn’t turn around.
“You aren’t considering changing your allegiance at this late date, I hope. Because if you do, Alejandro has made it plain he would be willing to solve any unpleasant… complications that arise from such an unfortunate decision.”
Cruz angled his head briefly toward the shadows where Alejandro Sanchez sat. Then he left the Englishman’s room as quietly as he had entered. He had not mistaken the warning he had been given. From now on, he would watch his back.
When Cruz returned to his room he found Sloan in a considerably different state from the one in which he had left her.
In no way could the woman lying tangled in the sweat-soaked sheets of the four-poster be described as resting peacefully. She was curled in a fetal ball and gripping her belly. The groans coming from her throat seemed wrenched from deep within her.
Something was desperately wrong with his wife.
He lifted Sloan into his arms. “Cebellina, your skin is on fire. What is wrong? What has happened?”
“I hurt.”
“Where?”
“My stomach… my head… everywhere… all over,” Sloan gasped out.
Cruz felt fear such as he had never felt before. His heart pounded erratically; his palms were wet. He did not trust the Anglo doctors who healed through bloodletting and purge. Yet where else could he tu
rn?
“I’m so thirsty,” she said.
He laid Sloan back down on the bed so he could get her some water. The pitcher that sat on the dry sink across from the bed was empty. He picked up the canteens they had brought with them from Dolorosa and realized that while his was nearly half full, hers was almost empty.
He brought both canteens with him to the bed. “How long have you felt sick?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did it start after we arrived?”
“No, earlier in the day. Sometime after we ate,” she confessed. “I thought it might be sunstroke.”
Cruz held up her nearly empty canteen. “If you’ve drunk this much water, how could it be sunstroke?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” Sloan mumbled. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe it was something you ate.”
“We ate the same things,” she said with a moan. “You would be sick, too.”
“Maybe the water in your canteen is tainted,” he suggested.
“If so, why aren’t you sick? We filled our canteens from the same well. It couldn’t be the water. Except… I did refill my canteen at the small pond where we stopped to eat. But I could have sworn it wasn’t brackish.”
Cruz poured a small amount of the water from her canteen into his hand. He sniffed at it, then touched the tip of his tongue to his palm. It tasted all right, but that was no guarantee it wasn’t bad. He stared at his wife, feeling the panic begin to rise. “I do not know, Cebellina. It might be anything. I just do not know!”
“Help me, Cruz,” Sloan cried. “It hurts!”
He stood helpless in the face of her pain. Suddenly, he realized he knew someone in San Antonio who might know where he could find a good doctor.
“Hang on, Cebellina,” he urged, kissing her feverish brow. “I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”
Chapter 14
CRUZ RETURNED A SHORT TIME LATER WITH A distraught and concerned Luke. They had dragged along a thin, white-haired physician, who had obviously been rousted from his bed.
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