Bride of Thunder

by Jeanne Williams

  Too hungry to make conversation even if she’d had the slightest notion of what to say in this incredible circumstance, Mercy concentrated on the tasty food. By the time Vicente brought melon and crisp, little honeynut cakes, she was feeling more prepared to face whatever Zane Falconer might propose.

  He’d talked easily through the meal, explaining that this house belonged to a friend who was abroad and who insisted that Zane stay here when in Mérida.

  “Which isn’t often,” said Falconer with a note of warning. “My place, La Quinta Dirección, is a hundred fifty miles from here, close to Tihosuco, the outpost whose liberation is being so ardently—and, I fear, unjustifiably—celebrated right now.”

  “But surely the Indians were defeated.”

  Falconer shook his head. “They abandoned the siege and faded back into territory they’ve dominated for almost twenty years in spite of countless campaigns and the official end of the War of the Castes. The Cruzob Mayas have their own sacred city, Chan Santa Cruz, where white slaves work for Indian masters and the Talking Cross issues judgments, plans raids, and even, as a sovereign power, makes treaties with the British.”

  “The Talking Cross? What is that?”

  “A cross that first appeared and comforted the Mayas when their rebellion seemed crushed back in 1850. Probably by use of ventriloquism or a sound box, it inspired them to keep fighting, and its guardian, or tatich, is what the pope is to Catholics. Of course, the Cruzob are Catholic, but while other Mayas still need priests and rely on the whites, or ladinos, for them, the Cruzob have their own priests, or maestros cantors, at their own shrine. They aren’t dependent on the white world for anything but guns and ammunition, and these they get from the British in Belize. That’s a region south of Yucatán that the English crown has claimed from Elizabeth’s time, when it was settled by part-time pirates, or extremely casual members of the British Navy, depending on one’s view.”

  “The British supported the Mayan revolt, then?”

  “Certainly not,” said Zane with a lift of one dark eyebrow. When his face relaxed its stern expression, it was singularly appealing, and Mercy decided he wasn’t as old as she’d originally judged. There was no gray in his thick, black hair, and the lines at the corners of his eyes seemed the result of sun-squint rather than age. “Our British neighbors only supplied the weapons they were paid for. Besides, plenty of Yucatecan whites have lived off selling arms to the Cruzob.”

  Confusing, dismaying, but the overall message was clear even to a newcomer. “Yucatán’s not really at peace? There’s no chance of Maximilian salvaging his empire here?”

  “Yucatán became a part of the empire early in 1864 when the French fleet sailed into Campeche and found troops from Mérida attacking the city. Though neither could whip the Mayas, those two cities have constantly wrangled, especially since Sisal began to rival Campeche’s importance as a port.” Zane looked somber. “So the French merely took over wanting to make Yucatán the base, for a French-Mexican empire. But that’s a pipe dream. Maximilian had better abdicate and get out of Mexico while he can. I don’t think anyone can unify Yucatán inside the next score of years, much less build an empire from it.”

  As if reading her mind, Falconer looked across the stone table, his features rendered even craggier by lantern light. “It may have been useless, but I left Mr. Cameron enough money for passage to New Orleans.”

  Mercy stared, unable to guess the workings of this man’s mind. If he had, in effect, paid cash for her, as well as forgiven a gambling debt, would he really let her go? Had he beguiled her to avoid a scene in the street?

  Gripped with panic, she was unable to speak for a few minutes. When she did, her voice sounded hoarse. “That was very generous of you.”

  He smiled. “It would be awkward to have your husband drinking himself into all kinds of stupid embroglios, or, worse, repent his novel method of payment and disturb the hacienda. But don’t worry, Mrs. Cameron, if you refuse my offer, I’ll bestow you and your belongings wheresoever you will.”

  Filling the cordial glass, he helped himself to brandy with a deliberation that tautened Mercy’s nerves to screaming. “What,” she demanded in a tone that shook in spite of herself, “is this offer?”

  “I want an English-speaking woman to see that my daughter is properly brought up.” At Mercy’s surprised glance, Falconer added coldly, “My wife is dead. Jolie, the child, is eight now, and I wish her to grow up under the influence of a … lady.”

  Mercy flushed. “Do you doubt that I am a lady, sir?”

  His eyes went over her so slowly that her breath caught painfully. “If I weren’t easy about that, madam, be sure you would have met with a very different proposal.”

  “Indeed?” She flushed.

  “Indeed.”

  The calm flatness of his voice belied his eyes, which had just then a glow of banked embers. With a thrill of danger and awareness of him as a powerful and exciting man, Mercy resolved to have all the facts out before she made a decision that would determine the rest of her life.

  “You mean you’d have made me your mistress?” She had never used the word before, but she did it now without quivering.

  Their gazes clashed. Mercy found it hard to bear the impact of those strange gray eyes; they overwhelmed her, probing mercilessly to depths that Philip had never touched.

  During that silent battle while she labeled him an arrogant freebooter and cynical user of women, she recognized in the core of her being that this was a man. He was a complete person, not a petulant, changeable boy.

  “Yes,” he agreed, not the least abashed. “Your husband assured me that you were beautiful and refined. It’s hard to find such a woman who’ll live on the frontier.” His laugh was coarse, grating. “You are beautiful, Mrs. Cameron. Since you’re undeniably a lady, I could wish that you were plainer.”

  Resisting the tide that swelled through her blood, Mercy looked him straight in the face. “Let’s be clear, Mr. Falconer. I will not be your mistress.”

  He bowed mockingly. “Let me be equally clear. Even if your marriage is ended by divorce or the death of your regrettable husband, I won’t marry you.” She gasped at this calm affront as he went on equably. “No need for offense, Mrs. Cameron. I won’t marry anyone.”

  “I share that sentiment,” she retorted.

  “But you are married.”

  “I don’t consider myself so after my … Mr. Cameron’s behavior.” Mercy drew herself up proudly. “You know my situation. I’m penniless and without friends in a strange country.”

  He tilted his head and surveyed her with an infuriating smile. “That seems an accurate, though somewhat dramatic, way of putting it,” he agreed.

  No help, not even in discussing her problem, was going to be volunteered by him. Detestable, cocksure, unchivalrous! He stifled a yawn. Mercy gritted her teeth.

  “If you’ll loan me enough money to get home, I vow to pay it back with whatever interest you stipulate.”

  His eyes moved over her in a way that both shamed and aroused her. “An intriguing proposition. What if my interest, payable on the spot, was a night with you?”

  Her blood pounded, thick and suffocating in her throat. He came around, drew her up, and, in spite of her frightened struggles, found her mouth. At first his lips were hard, savage, hurting, and she fought him with all her strength till the irresistible force of his arms held her so close to him that his body muted her hands. His kiss changed; he was not compelling now so much as wooing. Sweet, wild flame ran through her. In spite of all she could do, her body went soft, feeling as if it had no bones. She almost fell when he drew abruptly away.

  “Well, Mrs. Cameron?”

  Shaken, angrily horrified at the certainty that if he’d gone on holding her like that, worked on her senses and need, he could have taken what he now so tauntingly requested, Mercy turned away so that he couldn’t read her face.

  “Interest on money is paid with money, sir.”

 
“Sorry.” He shrugged and fished out a long, slim cigar. “I only make loans I consider good risks.”

  Mercy clenched her hands. “You mean the question about … interest … was just to humiliate me?”

  He studied a curl of aromatic smoke. “Let’s say I wanted to know how firm your virtuous convictions are.”

  “If you won’t loan me the money, you know I’ve no choice but to accept the position you offer and pray you have the decency not to further insult a woman in your power.”

  “Mrs. Cameron!” His eyes glimmered and a corner of his long mouth curved down. “I could have sworn that toward the end you returned my ardor.”

  “You didn’t pay the slightest attention to my feelings! You … you’re as bad as a Yankee!”

  “Your husband, of course, is a model of Southern gallantry.”

  Mercy glared. Because of what Falconer knew about Philip, she’d never be able to complain much of his behavior—he knew she’d been exposed to worse. Philip had never struck her or been physically cruel apart from his sexual bunglings, but to hand her over for a gambling debt as if she’d been a horse or dog—the way he had lost Star.

  Oh, she couldn’t bear living with this cool, hatefully courteous man who knew how little her husband had cherished her! Her lip quivered. She bit it savagely, blinking back tears of desolated exhaustion.

  A strong hand fitted under her arm and led her into a small, clean room with a dresser, chair, washstand, and hammock hung from pegs in the wall. Her bags were in a corner. “You need a good rest,” Zane Falconer told her. “You’ll feel better in the morning.” When she didn’t answer, he said testily, “I admit my thrust about your husband was foul. Pardon me.”

  “I shouldn’t have likened you to a Yankee,” she muttered.

  He chuckled. “A deadly insult, I’m sure, but quite lost on me, dear lady, because my father and mother were from New Orleans. There’s water in the pitcher. If you need anything, pull the bell-rope and Vicente will come.” He started for the door but stopped when he saw she was staring helplessly at the hammock. “Know how to get into it?”

  She shook her head. “No, and I don’t think I could sleep in it, anyway.”

  “Hammocks are really very comfortable, though there are several beds at La Quinta.” He sat in the hammock, well toward the middle, lay back, and lifted his legs at the same time. “Do this and you won’t get dumped out.”

  Even rising from a hammock, he managed to be graceful. “Sleep well,” he counseled. “Our two nights on the road won’t be so luxurious.” At her dismayed look, he gave her a pat on the shoulder, as if he were encouraging an anxious child. “Don’t worry about the future. Rest and restore yourself. If, tomorrow, you decide you’ve no taste for my offer, you may withdraw. I’ve business to transact and there’s a formal dance tomorrow night. But once we start that journey the day after tomorrow, there’ll be no turning back.”

  “I can’t see that I have any choice.”

  “There’s always a choice, at least in how one meets a thing.” His jaw hardened. “Make no mistake—I won’t force you to my bed, won’t force you to fulfill Cameron’s bond. But if you come with me, I’ll have no sulks, indignation, and die-away airs.”

  “You want a happy slave!”

  “Drivel! You’re damned lucky to be rid of that worthless drunkard in a way that’ll provide for you very handsomely. Further, if you perform your duties as well as you must to be kept on, when my daughter’s eighteen I’ll pay your passage back to the United States and give you a generous settlement.”

  “Ten years.”

  “You won’t be much older than I am right now.” When that failed to console her, he turned on his heel. “Good night, Mrs. Cameron.”

  ‘She wanted to hurl accusations and upbraidings after him, but the sane part of her mind insisted that, odious as he was, he’d behaved far better than any other man would have. Philip was the cause of her desperate position, but there was no use in thinking about that or bewailing her current predicament.

  She barred the heavy door before undressing, washed at the brass basin, wrapped herself in a cotton spread she found on a chest near the hammock, and cautiously eased into that pecular bed. She had to squirm about considerably and shift her weight several times before, with the help of a pillow, she was reasonably comfortable.

  She had not expected to sleep, but she did, almost at once.

  3

  She slept till awakened by a thunderous knock, then tumbled out of the hammock so swiftly that she fell on the tile floor. Rubbing a bruised knee, dazed by her heavy slumber, she couldn’t remember where she was till a deep male voice brought everything back.

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Cameron? Mrs. Cameron!”

  “I’m fine,” she called back before he could break down the door.

  “You should buy personal needs today. Let’s have breakfast and then I’ll escort you around. This afternoon I can attend to my affairs.”

  Why did his voice send a warm tingling through her, and why was she so eager to see him in daylight? He’d made it clear that, apart from being his child’s tutor, his interest could only be dishonorable. If she responded to that, it would be her own fault.

  Yet, how could she not respond?

  “I’ll hurry,” she promised and hastily performed her morning toilette, brushing out her thick chestnut hair and coiling it at the nape of her neck. Errant tendrils escaped this severity and softened what Mercy considered too high a forehead, too strong a jaw. The ornate silver-framed mirror above the washstand reflected an almost triangular face with black-fringed gray eyes, the austere forehead and almost straight dark eyebrows contradicted by a cleft in the chin and a rather full mouth.

  An unfashionable face. Mercy believed her eyes to be her only good feature. Still, her skin was smooth and glowingly healthy, faintly tanned in spite of her efforts to protect it from the sun. She was small and Philip had complained that her hips were like a boy’s, though he’d admired her high, firmly soft breasts.

  “You won’t thicken with childbearing,” he’d predicted, fondling her. “It should ripen you, sweet Mercy, fill you out a bit.”

  There’d be no child now. How glad she was of that! Thrusting the memory of Philip’s husbanding from her with a bitterness so physical that it left a taste of alum on her tongue, she shook out the skirt of her gray gabardine gown in a vain effort to rid it of wrinkles, and stepped into the hall.

  The sweet flower smell of the night before was almost befuddling, and she held her breath at the flaming riot of cerise bougainvillaea, trumpet vines, hibiscus, and fantastic orchids of varying shapes and colors.

  A table was set under huge trees shielding a splashing fountain. Zane Falconer rose from a cane chair, putting a small notebook in his vest pocket, and she had her first look at him in full daylight.

  He looked thinner, harder, and somewhat older. Was that quirk of mockery always lurking at the edge of his mouth? He seemed even taller, broader through the shoulders than she’d judged, narrower through long, taut-muscled horseman’s flanks revealed by fawn-colored trousers so excellently fitted that they must have been tailor-made.

  Any embarrassment she might have felt in scanning him dimmed in the knowledge that he was appraising her just as closely and, no doubt, more critically. His shirt was snowy-white and faultlessly ironed, his boots glistened, and he was clean-shaven.

  “You look a trifle less peaked,” he decided, seating her. “You’ll need cooler clothing than that most of the year; in fact, I’d advise the native cotton smock for ordinary wear at the hacienda, though you’ll want some conventional gowns. Do you have something for the dance?”

  Acutely aware of the mended and faded state of the three dresses she’d brought as her best, all of them older than the war, Mercy reddened and shook her head. She had no crinoline left at all. Father had never allowed her to have a corset. Her drawers, chemises, and petticoats were plain and patched. Since her neighbors were in no better circums
tances, she’d come to accept shabbiness as normal, but to this well-turned-out man she must seem a scarecrow.

  “I’d better not go to the dance,” she said. “This is my most presentable dress. Besides, how could we explain my presence?”

  “I live on the frontier, Mrs. Cameron, and my friends in Mérida know it. They’ll sympathize with my need for a woman to bring up Jolie.” At Mercy’s dubious look, he grinned and said carelessly, “I can introduce you as a distant kinswoman if you don’t mind the relationship.”

  “Won’t anyone know about what happened last night?”

  “Oh, it’ll be talked of in certain company. The men in our game were all transients passing a few nights in town. If rumor eventually links you to a wagered bride, the gossip will have burned down long before we come to town again. But then there’ll be some new scandal.”

  She shrank at the word. But wasn’t that what it was? She dimly remembered that some man in Texas had gambled and lost his wife, who’d been so hurt and angry that she’d left willingly with the winner and later married him.

  Mercy writhed inwardly at being in a similarly notorious position. There’d be no reputation-saving marriage, either. Falconer had made that clear. But at least she was a stranger here. There was no one whose opinion could deeply wound her, though she had the ordinary wish for respect. It sounded as if she were going to be buried at the ends of the earth, seeing no one but the members of Falconer’s household. She hadn’t been to a party in years and longed for at least a glimpse of the dance, but she could never go like this.

  “I’ve no money for clothing,” she said, “even if it were possible to find something for tonight.”

  “I expect to provide for your needs,” he said calmly. “I think our hostess, a close family friend, might have something you could borrow for the evening. She’s never failed me.” He tilted his head judiciously. “She’s about your height, I should judge, although somewhat plumper.”

  “It’s most improper to speculate about such intimate matters!”