Stronger Than Passion

by Sharron Gayle Beach

  Luis avoided mentioning Michael Brett to Christina; perhaps he sensed her sensitivity to any conversation about the man whom he had once entertained.

  Luis Arredondo, however, was not the kind of man to forget anything. As Christina was more in his company, she began to understand that there was a great deal more to him than wealth and sophistication. Luis was an important man in Mexico these days . . . spending hours meeting with the ever-changing members of the Ministry, entertaining other influential city leaders, and receiving and dispatching dozens of messages to all parts of Mexico . . . including the army, and Santa Anna. Besides that, he still managed to oversee operations at a distance of his large country estate, his mines, and various other income-producing acquisitions which Christina knew nothing about. He was not likely to ignore her past, anymore than he would any other intriguing detail in his life.

  She asked him, one morning over breakfast, why he had never sought high political office.

  He looked at her for a moment; then smiled his elegant, knowing smile. “Why in the name of God would I ever want to do that? What is the President of Mexico, other than an inflated puppet whose strings are really pulled by others - if he would keep his office? Strong dictators, like your dear cousin Santa Anna, never remain in power long in this country; someone is always rallying against them, and there is a constant struggle to stay on top. Why would I bother to sully my name in public by scrabbling for my job? I prefer to leave the indignities to others - while I remain firmly in the background, influencing Mexico’s policies in my own way.”

  “Yet you would be a king, if you could, Luis,” Christina said, unafraid of annoying him.

  He laughed in appreciation of her subtlety, his brown eyes dancing with self-mockery. “To be a king is no disgrace to one’s ancestral name, since a king has absolute power - and divine right. Yes, I would be a king. But not a president.”

  He leaned toward her - she was seated to his right - and brushed her cheek with one long, manicured finger. “What a lovely queen you would make,” he murmured, eyes half-shut and calculating.

  Señora de Velosa, the only other person at the table, cleared her throat and remarked on a forthcoming reception at the British Embassy. Luis leaned back in his chair. Christina picked up her fork, and the discussion was closed. But Luis’s intimate and entirely honest words remained with Christina for quite a while.

  Yes, Luis was as arrogant as any European noble. And he had the knack of acquiring wealth, and of manipulating other men. That made him quite formidable.

  But he was tender and protective toward her, and during these days of her own uncertain emotions she was grateful. She was content to let him plan her days, and her nights. She was pleased to leave her re-entry into society to him and his considerable social power. And she was glad to have his assistance in her dealings with Santa Anna and Colonel Diaz - who insisted on visiting her every week, leaving unspoken threats in his wake.

  She was indeed relieved to have Luis beside her. Without him, her courage might break. Without his devotion to soothe her, her time with Michael Brett might seem even more confusing than it was.

  *

  One night, in early March, Christina learned where her reliance on Luis was leading. She was sitting in the garden, alone, in the dark. It was late; they had returned from a promenade at the Alameda, and dinner at a friend of Luis’s, after which she had bolted outside - stifled by the interior of the house.

  Her heart pounded in quick, uneven beats. She told herself that it was the heat; she couldn’t swish her fan fast enough, to cool the perspiration at her temples. The air was still, the cloying smell of roses mingling with the less-pretty scents of city sewage, the resulting odor nauseating. She sat for several minutes, trying to blank thoughts which instead focused on remembered talk from dinner - of the recent battle of Buena Vista, and the American General Scott’s reputed landing at Vera Cruz. She attempted to order her mind, to keep from thinking about the casualties of the battle - both Mexican and American - and of the war which had now moved to Vera Cruz, so close to Jalapa. Luis emerged from the house and joined her on the bench.

  “Hiding from the charms of my company?” he murmured, his tone gentle, but his glance sharp.

  She half-smiled. “Hiding from my bed. It’s too warm to sleep.”

  “Why are you out here alone? Haven’t you had enough of that lately?”

  “I haven’t had one moment to myself since I arrived here, Luis.”

  “You know I didn’t mean the past few weeks.” He paused to study her. When he resumed speaking, his voice was annoyed. “But I suppose you still don’t wish to discuss anything significant that occurred to you during those months that you were lost.”

  “I was not lost. I knew exactly where I was.”

  “Yet you refuse to discuss it. And you would prefer that I do not bring the subject up.”

  “Luis, please!” She turned to him, eyes large and pensive. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that the subject, as you call it, is difficult for me?”

  “Why querida? You said that you were not hurt. You said that your time in America was an unpleasant experience, but nothing more. What is still upsetting you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, ‘it is my old acquaintance Señor Brett that you are pining for.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Luis; it is not becoming,” she snapped.

  “Nor is your melancholy. You should be the happiest woman in Mexico right now, instead of the saddest.”

  “I am not sad. How you exaggerate! I was merely thinking on the time I have lost. Months, Luis; gone from my life. And now Santa Anna distrusts me and forbids me my home.”

  Luis’s brown eyes softened in the darkness. He reached an arm around her silk-draped shoulder, and pulled her against him. Her immediate stiffness eased into acquiescence as she leaned into him, and he smiled.

  “My dear Christina. Please do not consider the past anymore, or worry about Santa Anna. You are here with me, at last; and I warn you now that I intend to keep you. Those months were painful for me, as well - do you think I didn’t worry for you? But now is the time to celebrate, querida. And look to the future. I have plans for us I want you to know! Plans that should have been acted upon years ago.”

  “I can’t imagine what you are talking about.”

  “Yes, you can. I am referring to the two of us, and the fact that we should have been married long before now.”

  She attempted to straighten and pull away. First the mention of Michael Brett, and now this! But he held her, easily; his grip surprising her in its strength - reminding her of the other man, and other times. “Don’t fool yourself, Luis,” she murmured. “You don’t want to marry me.”

  “Why not?” he said lightly. “You of all people should know how suitable a marriage between us would be. Much more sensible than the match you made with Felipé, or even the one I contracted with my wife, Adela.”

  “If you are referring to bloodlines, then I suppose you are right. But - ”

  “There is fortunately more to a successful marriage than good breeding; I should not have to tell you that! You were miserable with Felipé.

  “I would be miserable with any man now. I enjoy my independence.”

  He released her, only to turn her to face him - and cup her cheeks with his hands. “Look where your independence landed you . . . into the country of America during the middle of the war. Had you been married to me, none of those adventures would have happened. But don’t speak; I want to show you another reason for ending your freedom. A good one . . . ”

  He moved toward her, to cup her face in his hands and kiss her mouth. A tender kiss, that lasted for several seconds, and was both deep and subtle. Unthreatening. Pleasant . . . with the careful promise of more. Luis was well-practiced; and even well-able to restrain himself, when he sensed she had had enough.

  He drew away, leaving one hand behind to drift along her jaw line and down her neck to her shoulder
, caressing softly and expertly. He smiled at her, and there was both strain and satisfaction in his wryly-turned lips.

  “Your eyes are so large, querida. What do they see?”

  “A very good friend,” she whispered.

  “No.” He continued to stroke her, as if she were a pet. “Friend no longer, niña, I warn you. From this moment on, you do not know me at all . . . you must pretend that. It will make your future life as my wife and my lover much easier to bear, if you forget that we were ever ‘good friends’.”

  She tore her eyes from his and closed them. Could she really marry Luis, after all that had happened to her? Could she accept him in her bed? The idea filled her with anxiety. Michael had said she should not marry Luis . . . but had left too many other things unsaid.

  She opened her eyes and smiled, brightly and, unknown to her, sensuously.

  “As if I could ever forget how dear you are to me, Luis; really! It is cruel of you to make a pitiful game of me. You must not do it again, lest I join in, and turn the game on you - and you find yourself betrothed, without ever really intending to every marry again.”

  “But I do intend it,” he said, dropping his hand to his side. His face was dark and thoughtful, and otherwise unreadable. “Never mind, my dear; you will agree with me, in time. I can see that you are not yet recovered from your American experiences . . . whatever they may be.”

  He stood, and extended both hands to pull her up. She took them; his words and their possible meanings imprinted in her brain as disturbing.

  As he escorted her back into the house, he changed the subject to a more neutral topic. That didn’t stop her, however, from the vague worries that plagued her later in bed, until she slept.

  Chapter 25

  Less than two hundred miles southeast of Mexico City, Julian Torrance wound his way down the side of a rock-strewn hill into the dry bottom which encased - and hid - his camp. He was returning after a brisk meeting with one of his Comanche messengers; and thinking about the short letter which he had just been handed, and about women, in general. A subject he had always ignored before as a serious contemplation.

  Those females whose services had amused him, for an extended period of time - and there had been two or three - flashed into his mind, inked-in etchings on fragile vellum.

  Marie-Laure, The French cabaret dancer with the plump body so different from those of the athletic Indian maidens he had previously admired. She had occupied him for more than two months of his first summer in Paris, teaching him many things abut Parisian women, but nothing of himself. Lucy Carmichael, the English housemaid, with her quaint superstitions and her thirst for his “exotic” body, who had instructed him in ways British for a full four months - until he had been unable to temper his restlessness, and wandered out of her sphere without even a goodbye.

  And now Leaping Spirit, or Renata, as she liked to be called, who had transferred her affections from Michael to himself and who followed him with a dog-like devotion.

  He was unable to conjure even the faces of all the rest - females bought or freely taken for a night or two. They were all unimportant to his mental state or to his plans for his life, which revolved around his need for revenge, and his urge to understand why he had been born. And no woman, however pretty, could ever assist him in killing Santa Anna . . . or give him any insight into his feelings of bizarre displacement, and the bitterness that had raged inside him since childhood.

  Except for one woman, who was a delight and a revelation. And he had run across her far too late in life . . . and under inauspicious circumstances, to boot.

  Christina de Sainz had a way of looking at him that made him enjoy his own intelligence and appreciate what that search for learning and revenge had cost him. She also made him aware of his power - over the Indians, and the white men to whom he was Captain - by obeying him, his will, when her spirit, in its dogged way, was as durable and unbreakable as the diamonds in the Queen of England’s crown. And by triumphing spiritually over her, he was winning in a sense against the lure of Mexico and Santa Anna.

  This letter be held concerned her. And now he permitted himself the luxury of thinking of her.

  Her respect, and - he hoped - liking, for him, had helped to balance things regarding his place in the world. His biological father had not wanted to acknowledge him with his own name, and had not married his Comanche mother; but Christina had trusted him with the secret of her escape from Michael. His Comanche relations grudgingly accepted him, out of fear, mainly - yet Christina had seen the cruelty in him and grown fond of him anyway.

  Julian had had no quarrel with his adopted white family, the Torrances, who one and all were fine and generous people. But other white men had hated him, and despised him because he was a half-breed. Was that any fault of his? Hadn’t he wished, his entire life, to belong to either one race or the other?

  Yet he had the impression that Christina admired him because of the interesting qualities he had inherited from both.

  Julian had done little good in his life, but knew that now he would be drawn into something that was not only “right” but foolish.

  Christina was not his woman, nor ever would be. But Julian couldn’t help his protectiveness toward her. And, judging from the contents of this letter, she could bear some watching over.

  He reached the outskirts of camp, checking to see that the guards he had posted were on duty and well-concealed. Jack Eastman called out a greeting to him from somewhere high and to the left. There was no sound to be heard from the right, the post held by a new recruit - another half-breed, this time Apache and Mexican. Pedro “Light Eyes” Estevez would consider any verbal acknowledgment unnecessary.

  Julian’s dark gaze scanned the camp, and found the extra horse tethered to the guerilla’s usual string. Recognizing it, he went to his own tent, pitched as far away from the other mens’ as he could get. He ignored the glances thrown his way by the three who sat playing cards around the fire, their usual occupation at dusk; and stooped to enter the tent.

  As expected, Michael was inside. He had thrown his own bedroll and lay sleeping heavily, fully clothed; the arm wounded at the Battle of Buena Vista well over a month ago, and since then re-injured, still in a sling on his chest. He looked worn out, and the lines of aggravation no doubt incurred during the time he spent in Vera Cruz with General Scott had not yet left his unshaven face.

  Was it better to wake him now, and give him the news of Christina . . . or wait until he had slept some of his irritation off?

  Now, Julian decided. Michael would be incensed anyway, and then later he could go back to sleep and forget everything. Besides, Julian felt a malicious curiosity overcoming him. How would Michael react to hearing that Christina had been arrested and taken to Mexico City? Would he care that she had been interrogated by Santa Anna’s soldiers because of her association with him? Would he profess indifference even when he heard that her engagement to Luis Arredondo was imminent?

  Julian had been uncertain for some time about the nature of the end-relationship between the two, knowing only they had grown close during the journey to Mexico, and then parted. Michael had refused to discuss Christina since. Now Julian wanted the truth.

  He prodded Michael’s side with the steel toe of his boot. “Wake up, hermano. I want to talk to you.”

  Michael groaned, but kept his eyes shut. “Jesus Christ, Juli, you’re as bad as General Scott. He wouldn’t let me sleep, either.”

  “You can sleep all you like in a few minutes.”

  “Then get me some coffee, for God’s sake.”

  Julian smiled, and went out again to the campfire. When he returned, Michael was sitting up, and looking mean.

  “You and Scott both want to kill me. I haven’t slept in two or three days - I nearly fell off my horse, getting here. Why in hell are you camped so far off the main highway?”

  Michael knew better than to ask him that. He was merely tired and foul. “Because the view’s better here. What do yo
u think?”

  “I think I’ve had enough bullshit for one day.” He gulped the coffee Julian handed him, swallowing deeply. “Scott doesn’t believe me, you know. Not completely.”

  “What?” Julian said, startled.” Is he that much of an idiot?”

  “I think its his advisors, his trusted staff. They just don’t understand how Santa Anna, with a force of 6,000 men, could be sitting just up the road at Jalapa so quickly. They think he’s still far away, trying to regroup from Buena Vista. They don’t know him well enough to believe us when we say he has not only regrouped, but moved 6,000 men to Jalapa already.”

  “You told them you’d seen some of it with your own eyes? His baggage wagons , his artillery?”

  “Yes. They all think I’m overestimating the situation.”

  “They’re fools.”

  Michael didn’t even bother to nod. That went without saying.

  “Yet, General Twigg has already made some progress up the road, with Worth’s men to follow,” Julian said.

  “They’re expecting some action, and taking some precautions. But probably not enough. If Santa Anna doesn’t grow impatient, and strike too early, all of Twigg’s men could march right into his lap. And Scott won’t know about it in Vera Cruz until its over - and Santa Anna comes down the hill to meet him.”

  Disgusted, he drank the rest of his coffee while Julian stared at the tent wall - wondering what in hell the use of intelligence information was to the army if the army didn’t believe it!

  Michael finally sighed deeply, and stretched . . . wincing at the familiar pained twinge his movement brought to his damned sore arm, which should have healed already; and would, probably, if he had had the chance to rest it up.

  “Was that all you wanted to know? If so, get out of here for a while and let me sleep.”