by Jane Toombs
She stood up, stretching. Holding the candle in front of her, she found her way to the kitchen, where she filled a small tub with water from the pump. She unbuttoned her dress, let it fall to the floor and, after stepping out of dress and petticoats, drew her chemise over her head. When she had finished bathing, she put her clothes over her arm and returned to the bedroom, where she laid them across the back of a chair. Naked, she slipped beneath the blankets, crossing her arms over her breasts and hugging herself, feeling the blankets harsh against her flesh. Smiling, she closed her eyes.
An all-encompassing red glow surrounded her. A fire sprang skyward in flames of yellow and orange, warming her, caressing her as the colors changed and deepened to a magenta red whirling around and around above her head in an exotic Spanish dance, swirling up above her higher and higher as the fire decreased in size to form an inverted funnel.
Flashes, brilliant as lightning--lightning without thunder.
She lay on an altar at the top of a great stone pyramid hundreds of feet high. Naked, her body gleaming. A man came up the stone steps toward her, his bronze body suffused by moonlight, the light from the fire in the pit beside her glinting from the knife in his hand. He stood over her and she recognized him.
As he raised his knife, she screamed his name. "Esteban! Esteban!" He dropped the knife and came to her, his brown eyes flashing, a slight smile on his lips.
She opened her eyes and he was beside her, as naked as she, his hand between her thighs, caressing her, his fingers running up and down her leg making her flesh quiver under his touch. The room was dark, completely dark, and it was a moment before she realized where she was. The storm. The hacienda. Jordan.
She sat up, suddenly alert. "Jordan?" she said.
His arms enclosed her and his mouth found her bared flesh, closing on her breast with his tongue to her nipple. Involuntarily she arched toward him as she felt the fever rise in her legs and pulse upward through her body, the burning fever she couldn't control, the red glowing need.
Jordan's hand came between her legs, forcing them apart, his fingers finding the lips of her sex, touching her, caressing her as her whole body shuddered. His mouth left her breasts and slowly came higher, to her neck, to her lips, and he kissed her, a long lingering kiss. She turned her head away.
"No, Jordan," she whispered. "No."
Alitha wrenched herself from him, her hands clawing at his face, her legs closing against him. She fought until he grasped her two wrists in one hand and held them over her head kissing her again. She bit his lip so that he cried out in pain and she tasted blood but his mouth still held to hers as he thrust his other hand between her legs, not caressing her now, forcing her, his hard body following the path of his hand, his leg pushing hers apart.
He entered her and she moaned. As he thrust inside her, she felt the fire return, a fierce red blaze that seared her, threatened to consume her, and she tensed in his arms, then tried to lie inert but the burning need within wouldn't let her and she opened her arms and legs to him. As his passion mounted, she felt her body respond, rise to his, and the fire exploded inside her in a burst of crimson as she arched to him, responding to him thrust for thrust until, spent, he lay exhausted beside her.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Alitha opened her eyes, shivering in the cool of early morning. She lay naked on top of the blanket with Jordan beside her, his hand thrown across her stomach. She moved his hand aside, taking care not to wake him, and then pulled another blanket over them both. Hugging herself, she scarcely felt the roughness of the blanket on her body as she relived the night before in her mind, feeling at peace with herself and with the world.
The two uncurtained windows across the .room were gray with the first light of dawn. Water streamed down the panes, and she became aware of the steady thrum of rain on the roof over her head. Lying snugly in bed with Jordan beside her and with the rain falling outside, she felt warm and content, as though wrapped in a luxurious cocoon. She hadn't believed that another man could make her feel the same excitement Esteban had. But with Jordan there had been the excitement and much more. Passion, yes, rapture, yes, but also a feeling of sharing. Jordan's lovemaking, so tender yet so fervent, made her feel whole and fully alive, made her want to please him as she'd never wanted to please Esteban.
Looking at Jordan, she smiled as she gently brushed a black strand of hair from his forehead. He stirred but did not waken. At last, she thought, she was freed from Esteban--the thrall in which the don had held her was broken.
Sitting up, she drew in her breath, all at once alarmed. What kind of woman am I, she asked herself. Had Thomas been right? Am I a wanton? She had bedded the night before with Jordan Quinn and, she admitted, she had wanted him. Still wanted him, for that matter. She had bedded with him in part from pity because of Margarita, in part from her own affection for him, and in part because of her own need. But there had been more than pity or affection or need.
Jordan shifted on the bed beside her, and his hand found and clasped her hip. Alitha lay back, staring at the whitewashed ceiling, all her senses alerted by his touch. She bit her lip. Was she once again in danger of confusing desire with love? She had thought she loved Esteban and found she didn't. She mustn't make the same mistake again. Besides, Jordan didn't love her, had never said he loved her. He had forced her, after all, and no man who loved a woman would do that. Jordan still loved Margarita, so how could he possibly love her?
His hand slid from her hip to cup her buttocks, and when she looked at him, she saw him staring raptly at her face.
"Alitha," he said slowly as though savoring the sound of her name. When he started to draw her to him, she slipped away and left the bed. Going to the clothes she had piled on the chair the night before, she searched in the pocket of her dress.
"What are you doing?" Jordan asked. He raised himself on his elbow to watch her.
"Looking for this." She dropped a looped cord over her head and lifted her hair so the cord fell around her neck.
"What in the devil is it?"
She came to the bed and knelt on the blanket, facing him. He lifted the reddish stone from between her bare breasts and held it in his hand.
"Why, it's just a stone carved in the shape of a fish of some sort," he said.
"That's all. An Indian boy gave it to me months ago in Santa Barbara, an Indian boy I was very fond of."
"I've never seen one like it. Does the fish have a meaning in his religion?"
"I don't know, but the charm stone has a meaning to me. I can't explain why, but wearing it is sort of my declaration of independence."
"Alitha, my love, I really don't know what you're talking about. And this morning I don't think I really care." He took her by the upper arm and pulled her to him so that she lay on top and Jordan beneath the blanket while he kissed her, his lips parting, his tongue probing for hers. As their tongues met, she felt the fire kindled within her once more.
She drew away. "It's still raining," she said.
"It may rain for days; it does here in tierra caliente. But this isn't the time to discuss the weather. Come here, Alitha, lie next to me. We have plans to make. Where we'll go from Acapulco, where we'll live once we're back in the States. We have a lot to decide."
She shook her head. "No, Jordan," she told him, "we'll make no plans."
He stared at her. "Last night . . ." he said before she interrupted.
"As long as it rains," she told him, "as long as the storm continues, we'll lie together. But once the rain stops we'll ride to Acapulco and everything between us will be the same as it was before last night."
"Alitha, I think you've ridden too long in the moonlight. You've become slightly mad. Nothing can ever be the same as it was before."
"It can and it will."
"I understand what you say but I don't believe you." He drew her close. "I don't want to believe you."
"Wait." She raised the blanket and pulled it over them both, and then he took her into his ar
ms and their bodies met and joined.
Much later Alitha wakened to find Jordan lying beside her, staring down at her.
"I was thinking I've never seen hair so golden or skin so fair or eyes so blue," he said.
She smiled and sat up, the blanket falling away from her breasts as she stretched lazily. His fingers trailed up her legs to her thighs.
"It's still raining," he told her and, when she looked to the window, she saw that he was right. When he knelt above her, she gasped. When he entered her, she moaned, and when at last he lay sated in her arms, she sighed with pleasure.
The storm lasted for two more days . . .
They rode from the hacienda in the muted light of early morning, through a land refreshed by the rain. The sky above them was a pale blue, the breeze cool and pleasant, the grass and trees a bright green. Jordan looked at Alitha and wondered if she would pass a close scrutiny. Wondered if he would. They both wore the robes and cowls of Franciscans, fashioned from the hacienda's drapes. Crosses hung from their necks. Alitha's face was smeared with mud.
They had traveled only a few leagues when four horsemen galloped from a ravine beside the trail to ride on both sides of them. The leader, black-garbed, with black mustaches curling luxuriantly, stared at them without speaking.
"One who travels in times such as these," he said finally, "must have a great need to reach his destination."
"True, my son," Jordan said in Spanish. "We ride to the village of Acapulco to take passage to the north. We travel to the mission of our brothers at Loreto to bring instruction to the Indians in the doctrines of Christianity."
"A worthy endeavor, surely, father." The rider slowed until he rode beside one of the pack horses. As he reached into one of the packs, Jordan said, "Wait—" but the man thrust his hand inside.
He withdrew it with a yowl of pain.
"I tried to warn you, my son," Jordan said. "We carry specimens to a horticulturalist at Loreto for his cactus garden. We also bring seed and tools for the Indians."
As the rider shook his stinging hand, he stared at Alitha. "Your companion is young for the priesthood," he said.
"Some men see fit to dedicate their lives to God after sampling the pleasures of the flesh, others before. God accepts them all if their hearts are pure."
"Your companion is also very silent. And in need of a bath, perhaps?"
"Padre Juan performs a penance. He will neither speak nor bathe until he reaches our destination in Baja."
"A penance is to expiate sins."
"True," Jordan said. "Padre Juan has the curse, as you no doubt have noted, of great natural beauty. Some women found him attractive and he was tempted. He did not succumb, but a sin of intention can be as great as a sin of commission."
"I would think the young father might have tempted some of the men as well as the women."
"We do not find your jest amusing," Jordan said.
The mustachioed rider slapped the flank of Jordan's horse with his quirt, laughing. "May God go with you both," he said.
"Vaya con Dios, my son," Jordan said.
When he looked behind him five minutes later, the four riders were nowhere to be seen.
The lush growth of the jungle had all but completely reclaimed the mule trail leading over the mountains to Acapulco.
"It's the revolution," Jordan told her. "Commerce has been at a standstill since the fighting began in 1810. There have been no ships sailing from Acapulco to Spain and few to the ports of the Pacific."
Alitha nodded, paying little attention to his words as she stared about her at the exotic jungle growth, the flaming flowered shrubs, the arching broad-leafed trees, the delicate beauty of the orchids. Birds flaunting their outrageously colorful plumage flitted from tree to tree over their heads; she heard a raucous squawk and looked up to meet the beady eye of a green and gold parrot.
Soon after they left the jungle they came out on a height overlooking the fishing village of Acapulco "This must be the most beautiful bay in the world," she said. "Look—the white sand, the palms, the thatched huts, the ships in the harbor, the blue, blue sea."
Jordan, however, was frowning. "Only a hermaphrodite brig and a schooner," he said. "I was hoping to find more ships here than that."
As they rode down the mule trail toward the village, Alitha stopped beside a huddled form of a woman at the side of the trail. Jordan didn't notice, his attention on the bay, he rode on.
Dismounting Alitha knelt beside the woman who was shivering despite the warmth of the day. "Are you sick?” she asked in Spanish.
Slowly the woman raised her head to look at Alitha and nodded. "They threw me out," she said in a low hoarse voice.
"Because you were sick? Alitha asked
Instead of answering the woman vomited. Some of the spray hit Alitha's face before the woman turned her face away.
Jordan rode up and dismounted as Alitha used her shirt tail to wipe away the vomit from her face. "What the hell's going on here?" he demanded, yanking Alitha to her feet.
When he questioned the woman, he discovered her husband had come off a ship that had since left the bay. He'd been sick and then died.
"Get back on your horse," he ordered Alitha.
"But she needs—"
"Do what I asked. This could be cholera."
Alitha, remembering how it had been when cholera had hit the Flying Yankee, looked closely at the vomiting woman, now smelling the stink of feces. If it was cholera. which was likely, she could do no more to halt the dread disease than she'd been able to do then.
As they rode down the mule trail into the village, Jordan glanced from side to side at the walled San Diego Fort, at the outrigger dugout canoes drawn up on the sandy shore and at the Indians who mended their nets nearby.
Studying him, in an effort to put the sick woman from her mind, she noticed his knitted brown. Do you suspect the place is full of cholera?" she asked,
Jordan glanced at her. "Not likely. But Esteban could well have followed us."
"I don't think he could have recognized you. And if he doesn't know who has the—"
"Don't say the word," Jordan cautioned her, "not even in English. Esteban may have been able to pick up my trail in Mexico City if he had the nerve to return there. I'm certain there were those who suspected I was an American. Carrying what we do in our packs, even a more trusting man than myself would see dangers where none exist."
Jordan led her into the courtyard of a one-story inn and dismounted. When an Indian boy ran to take the reins from him, Jordan spoke to him in Spanish. At first the boy looked surprised, then nodded.
"I told him I'd look after storing our supplies myself," he said to Alitha once the boy had led their two riding horses into the stable. Seeing a gap-toothed Indian watching them from where he sat with his back against the adobe wall of the inn, Jordan lowered his voice. "I'll carry the packs. I'm not about to let them out of my sight."
After eight trips the gold was all stacked on the floor of their room. When he was done, Jordan slid home the bolt on the door and sat on the bed to catch his breath.
"I'll visit those two ships in the harbor next," he told Alitha. "The sooner we're able to find passage out of Acapulco, the better."
There was a knock on the door. Jordan glanced at the packs before he slid the bolt aside and opened the door. The gap-toothed Indian stood in the corridor holding his stained sombrero in his hands. He smelled, Alitha noticed, of garlic. As the man spoke rapidly in Spanish, he looked down at his feet, avoiding Jordan's eyes.
"No," Jordan told him. The man asked a question. "No, no, gracias," Jordan said. Nodding, the Indian backed away and Jordan rebolted the door.
"He said his name was Enrico and if there's anything we need, anything at all, he's most humbly at our service. You heard what I told him."
Jordan walked to the window, pushed it open and leaned on the sill to look through the black metal grating toward the harbor. Over his shoulder Alitha saw a golden sun settling towar
d the sea.
"I'm going out to the two ships while it's still light," Jordan said. "Keep the door bolted. Don't open it no matter who comes, no matter what they may say. When I return I'll knock twice, then once again."
"I understand," she told him.
Jordan took her in his arms but when he leaned forward to kiss her, she turned her head from him. Frowning, he kissed her cheek.
"I'll bring you back food the likes of which you've never seen before," he said, trying to manage a light tone. He released her and walked to the door. "I'll bring coconuts, melons, papayas and bananas," he said. "You'll think you're the queen of some far Pacific isle."
"Godspeed," she told him.
She slid the bolt home behind him and sat on the bed staring at the packs of gold in the corner. Gold. Already Esteban and Jordan had been enslaved by this gold, she thought, and now the yellow metal had made her its prisoner as well.
And on the hillside a woman waited to die of cholera.
Alitha hurried to wash her face. Her stomach growled in hunger, making her remember that she'd brought along a few bits of leftover chicken from the hacienda.
When she retrieved the fragments she tasted a bite first. It tasted okay, so she finished it all.
Jordan walked quickly along the street fronting the bay. Once out of sight of the inn, he turned from the beach. Ten minutes later he stopped in front of a grilled gateway between adobe walls, rang the bell and waited.