Stronger Than Passion

by Sharron Gayle Beach

  “I will throw his body out into the street to be stepped on by his own compatriots. What do I care? I am a powerful citizen of this town, they will not disturb me; besides, this man forced his way into my house for the purpose of looting it. His own superiors would hang him for that crime if I did not do the favor of shooting him instead. You must retire upstairs, my dear, and leave him to me.”

  “No.”

  Luis jerked his chin once in her direction, the gesture intended for Ramirez, who left Michael’s side to come and grasp her arm. “Escort the Señora upstairs.”

  “I will not go, Luis!”

  Michael spoke then, his voice hoarse from a blow to his windpipe. “I appreciate the support, Chrissie, but it isn’t necessary. Your fiancé’s got his mind made up. You won’t change it. Leave the room, now. I’d rather you didn’t watch . . .”

  Blood dribbled from a cut over his eye, marking a trail down his chin. His tunic was ripped and so was the shirt beneath it, and there were bloody scratches on his chest, as well. But if he was in pain he managed now not to show it. He straightened, until he leaned back against the wall, the man on either side of him tightening their grip on his arms. His stoic attitude only strengthened Christina’s resolve to do something, anything, before it was too late . . . She faced Luis with a new, conciliatory ploy. “I’ll marry you tomorrow, Luis, if you let him walk out of here. On my word of honor. You can have me and my silver mine, to do with as you please. But if he dies, you’ll never have either of us.

  Her eyes were level and honest, and they watched as he turned ugly and hard. His mouth curled with cynicism. “So, you think I covet your silver? I do, my dear - as well as your own lovely self. I will have you both. But why do you pretend to love this gringo dog? It is unworthy of you.”

  “Get her out of here, Arredondo. Let’s finish this.” That from Michael, who seemed to have tensed in some indefinable way, prompting suspicious stares from his guards.

  “I do not care for ultimatums or threats - from anyone.” His gaze fell on Michael and then returned to Christina. “Señora, you have disappointed me. If you refuse to marry me now, so be it, but I will not set this man free to bother me again. Nor will I release you to leave me, either. You may as well know now that I intend to take you to my country estancia for a time - where I will ensure that you spend many busy hours being comforted for Señor Brett’s death. In all of this confusion, no one will think to wonder where you have gone. And of course, you will remain there until you find yourself persuaded to accede to my wishes in everything. I am through catering to your whims, my dear - you do belong to me now . . . Ramirez!”

  The capitan, who had hesitated to force her before, pulled her away a few steps . . . only to release her in sudden, surprising pain as something sharp sliced into his forearm. He yelped, and jumped back, his flat eyes going to the no-longer-so helpless Señora in unease at this new development.

  Christina stepped back, her small knife held before her in an odd recreation of that other time, when she had wielded a blade against Michael . . . did he remember? She could spare no glance for him now. Her eyes flashed from Ramirez to Luis, the two men closest to her, with concentration and the fortifying assurance that she had done this before.

  Luis was annoyed now, and showing his annoyance openly. “Por Dios, what do you think you are doing? Give me that knife immediately!”

  He stepped toward her, extending his hand; but halted when she said, calmly, “I will cut you, Luis. Believe me; I have done it before.”

  “She certainly has!” came Michael’s wry, hoarse voice. “She cut herself. Get that thing away from her!”

  Luis goaded with fury at her behavior, sprang forward to grab the knife. And at the same time, with the interested gaze of every man present on the diverting spectacle of the Marquès disarming a woman, Michael gathered his will and his remaining energy and used his two clutched arms to fling the mercenaries in toward each other, knocking them together in surprise, and managing, this time, to grab at a weapon or two. There would be no simple escaping now; he would not leave Christina behind. He snatched a large hunting knife out of a sheath on one of the Mexican’s thighs - and without thinking jabbed it into the man’s side, slicing upwards. The man fell at once, screaming, as Michael dropped the knife, kicking it behind him, and used two unsteady hands to point a pistolero at his other closest nemesis. The man jumped away in utter disbelief. Luis, meanwhile, was cursing at the evil gash Christina had made in his chest - and slapping her in the face, undeterred by pain or the blood that streamed from the cut.

  Ramirez quickly noticed the movement in Michael’s direction, and raised his gun. But Michael fired first. He hit Ramirez full in the heart, and the capitan crashed over backwards, onto a table filled with glassware. One of his remaining able men went to him; the other stood motionless and unsure, frozen for the moment in befuddled shock.

  The servants were alarmed by now, too alarmed to remain hidden away, as instructed by the Patron. They rushed to the front of the house to crowd in the sala doorway, and someone started to shriek - setting off the others; including the ladies upstairs. Luis left off hitting Christina long enough to glance around him, observe the mayhem wrought in a matter of seconds, and shout out in rage. He threw Christina aside and drove directly at Michael; his face twisted, the rush of lustful violence still in him, and contemptuously uncaring that Brett still held the gun, and it was now pointed at him.

  Neither man spoke, nor had time to. Luis came forward, hoping, perhaps, that Michael would drop the gun due to his injuries, which had him down on his knees and coughing. But in the end Luis probably didn’t think at all. There was nothing but a look of intense hatred on his face as the gun went off and caught him, jerking his right shoulder back, and bringing him down hard onto the pretty patterns of his own carpet.

  Michael tried to rise, to go to Christina, who lay watching him, wide-eyed, across the room. There was something wrong with her, too; she wasn’t moving . . but there were still two unharmed mercenaries left in the room, to be dealt with somehow, who would keep him from her. He would go through them. Christina lay so still, and her face was whitening, she was in pain . . . had she contrived to stab herself again?

  His thoughts were becoming incoherent now, and when he saw Penny, red hair wildly astray, fly into the room, shoving the wailing servants aside - followed by three men whom he vaguely recognized, Americans all, guns thrust forward, who were managing to terrify the servants even worse than they already were, not to mention the two lone, healthy Mexicans - he began to wonder if one of the blows to his head wasn’t causing him to hallucinate.

  But a welcome hallucination it was! If it would only turn out to be real!

  He knew the truth when one of the Americans, a Louisianan from Worth’s regiment, whom he thought he had once played cards with, leaned down and said to him in a drawl, “You ought to know better than to take on a houseful of Mexies by yourself, sir, even if you are a Texan!”

  And then the man helped him to rise, and to cross the long reach of room to Christina.

  Chapter 34

  How nice if the dark days were really behind her now. How lovely, if all the confusion and the bewilderment and the sickness of the past summer were actually gone for good . . . if she could regain her strength and mend, and heal quickly, so that her life could continue smoothly now, serenely. If she were only able to regain some semblance of her former calm, her former assurance of what she was and who she was, and that being alone, and Patrona of her own estate, was the most important course along which her life was meant to run . . . then perhaps she could adjust, and forget everything that had happened over the past year. She must forget, in order to live.

  When she came to her senses after collapsing in Luis’s sala from the horrible, unthinkable pains in her belly, she found that she had been carried not to a convent or hospital - but to the British Embassy; the safest place at that moment in Mexico City. And while she had lain, writhing and semic
onscious and finally unconscious as her body purged itself of the unimagined and incredible life that had grown in her without her knowledge, Mexico City had been both conquered and occupied by American troops. Outside, in the plazas and boulevards of the town, men had fought and died. Inside the Embassy, she had miscarried her own undreamed of child.

  It was difficult to grieve for something she had not even known she possessed, that was now ripped from her; difficult, but not at all impossible. But she had suffered another strange loss that night, or possibly the day after, she could not be sure. Another loss that she had not really conceived of before in her rational mind, that she had never considered herself as actually having to lose. One that overwhelmed her more as every second of disbelief passed, as every moment of forced realization sank in, so that this impossible happening both aided in taking her thoughts off of the other - and making them somehow worse.

  John Locklyn was her first visitor of consequence aside from the physician who told her of her miscarriage; and he was the one delegated to impart to her the other unpleasant news. He was uncomfortable and unsteady in her room at the Embassy, obviously wishing himself somewhere else.

  But she had been so glad to see him! So pleased to view a familiar face, after the utter astonishment of waking from a chaotic and pain-filled nightmare to discover herself alone - except for a nurse and a physician - and at the British Embassy, of all places. Michael had brought her here, she remembered that much, after all the violence and her collapse. But then he had left her. And where was he now?

  “I’m afraid that Michael has taken ship to England. His poor brother Robert has died at long last, and we received the news only yesterday. Of course Michael had to go at once; the formalities must be overseen concerning his inheritance and the succession. And his mother, of course, needs him now . . . Michael has somewhat neglected his duty to his family over the years, and now is his opportunity to set things aright. He had no choice but to go.”

  Christina’s brain refused, at first, to understand. “He has gone to England? But . . . what of the war? And he was injured, I’m sure of it. How - ”

  “The Americans have things well in hand here, I’m afraid, without Michael. And it’s true that he was hurt; he would have been useless to them for the present. He will regain his health on board the ship.”

  “Did he . . .” she scarcely knew what to ask.

  But John, it seems, guessed. “He left no specific message for you, there was no time - he was already late for the steamship. But he entrusted your care to me personally, and I strongly feel he will return as soon as he has matters in hand in England.”

  “He may not bother,” she heard herself saying. “He has a fiancée there, I understand.”

  “If you mean the Lady Elizabeth, I believe that their connection is over. I only recently discovered that she is responsible for informing Santa Anna of your own involvement with Michael in Texas. She wrote to an old friend of hers, Sir Lawrence Wright - who is incidentally an enemy of Michael’s - and was temporarily in residence here at the Embassy. He passed the no-doubt exaggerated tales along to Santa anna.”

  Christina closed her eyes. How Elizabeth must have hated her, to commit an act so treacherous! It had changed the course of her life, and considerably endangered Michael’s . . .

  “When I told Michael I had finally learned, quite by accident, that Lawrence Wright had been in correspondence with Elizabeth when she was in Texas, then he assumed - as had I - what she had likely done. Michael was not pleased.”

  His dry understatement would have made Christina laugh, if she had been capable of laughter.

  What did it matter now? Michael was on his way to England, where he would no doubt remain. And what of her? What sort of life could she have, now! What had really happened these last days and hours, and what did they mean?

  It was only when John had left and Penny was allowed into her room a little later that she finally began to understand. Penny who, in her own self-recriminatory and uncomprehending state, in her shame that she had failed to diagnose her mistress’s “illness,” and in her anger over Lord Michael’s abrupt departure, cried and cursed and gave vent to emotions that had only begun to touch Christina with any sense of reality. Penny’s distress forced Christina to comprehend that what had just happened to her was real.

  She had actually miscarried a child she had not even known she was carrying! Yet, why should she have known? In her marriage to Felipé, she had tried to conceive a child and could not. She had naturally assumed she was barren. What a twisted joke that she had finally grown fertile now . . . and had conceived a child by Michael Brett, the man least suited to be a father than any man she had ever known.

  Perhaps, as the English physician had pompously informed her, it really was God’s Will and Mercy that the child had come so many months too soon, and died. For it seemed that her baby would most certainly have never had an acknowledged father.

  Luis was gravely wounded, she had been told, and his life was in danger. As for that, she did not even care.

  And Michael had left Mexico; left without even writing her a letter, or making some real effort - any effort - to tell her when, if ever, he would return.

  Had he even known, when he left the city, what was happening to her - and even if she would live, or die! Did it matter to him at all?

  She had broken down in Penny’s presence, overcome with deep, wrenching sobs that brought pain throughout her body. Penny, sensible girl that she was, sat with her silently and determinably until this first spasm of disbelieving grief had passed. Then she administered a dose of laudanum to Christina’s orange juice and forced her to drink it. Christina slept for twelve hours. When she awoke, the hatefulness and the bitterness that she knew she would feel for the rest of her life had set in.

  She was now a forced guest of the British Embassy, and she made up her mind to be out of everyone’s way as quickly as it was possible for her to heal. She must manage to build her strength in order to leave here, and return to her past - the past in which she had been a placid and vaguely content woman, prey to occasional restlessness, yet sure of herself and her place. That would be her future now, yet it would be better. There would be no more emotion in her life, no upsets of any other than an average kind. She would counsel herself every day on her advantages of independence and pride, and on her responsibilities to her disgracefully neglected estate. She would devote herself once again to her people; so purposefully that there would be no time for errant thoughts, or even memories . . . those which she would dread, more than anything else, for as long as she would live.

  The American General Winfield Scott was occupying Mexico City now, and Santa Anna was currently somewhere off near Puebla. But as soon as Santa Anna surrendered his troops - in a matter of days, embassy officials said - then the road to Jalapa would be clear of fighting. She would go home.

  Chapter 35

  February 1848

  El Ence4ro was no longer quite the elegant estancia that Christina remembered, from that grand reception so long ago. The American army, which had passed directly by and through the estate on its way to Jalapa and Mexican City, combined with the humiliating disgrace of its master, both contributed to its air of violation and melancholy. The bougainvillea still combed the walls strewing them with color; laughing guests now, as then, strolled the lawn on their way into and out of the house; but some of the grounds were disarranged by the heavy treads of artillery wagons, and as for the guests . . . they were a much changed assembly, too.

  Santa Anna remained very much out of favor with the present, embarrassingly humbled government in Mexico City. He was feared as well as reviled; no one doubted that the former President would instantly give up his seclusion at El Encero, and proceed to stir up trouble for the country, and publicity for himself, should the slightest opportunity arise. The current ministry intended to avoid his interference at all costs, by shutting him out of governmental affairs as thoroughly as possible. He was comple
tely ignored, socially as well as politically.

  Yet Santa Anna still retained friends, and even a few followers. Those who still smarted over the recent signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ceding land to the United States in return for money and the withdrawal from Mexico of all troops, which Santa Anna would have opposed had he an army to enforce his opposition with. And those who still believed the former general’s allegations that he was not to blame for losing the war. Santa Anna’s oratorical power was formidable, even now.

  However, there were few members of Mexico’s social and political elite here tonight, at Santa Anna’s much-quieter fiesta. Unlike the former occasion, more than a year and a half ago, when Santa Anna was celebrating his triumphal return to Mexico and was preparing to take over the reins of the war. Then, he had presided almost royally over a packed household of prominent admirers. Now he was pleased to receive a fraction of that number, most of them family connections, military associates and neighbors.

  The Condé de Castillo was perhaps the only guest in attendance of high rank and standing, and it was possibly fortunate that Santa Anna did not know that he was only present out of a sense of duty to his daughter-in-law, whom he had persuaded to come. Santa Anna, lugubrious already, would doubtless have sunk even further into the depths of depression had he known that neither Don Ignacio nor Dona Christina were happy to attend his fiesta.

  Santa Anna’s early greeting to Don Ignacio at his and Christina’s arrival was dignified and faintly sad, an air he cultivated these days, as though he were a deposed monarch. His attitude had, however, risen slightly in enthusiasm when he welcomed Christina. He appeared to scarcely notice her restraint in returning his affectionate words.

  “How lovely you are, my cousin! How good of you to visit us in these dark days!”

  He then proceeded to monopolize Christina’s attention, to the exclusion of the Don and anyone else, for a good thirty minutes; during which he referred many times to the misfortunes caused by the war, and those worse ones brought about by a traitorous peace. His normally pallid complexion had heated during these references, making him seem almost healthy. Typically, he had the pale look and the burning eyes of a very ill man.