“I knocked. When you didn’t answer, I supposed you were in another part of the house.” He turned and went to stand by the window, its light casting hollows under his high cheekbones. “Forgive me if I hammer at this, Mrs. Cameron, but for a married woman you seem to be singularly unaware of a few raw facts. For your safety and general peace, I want to be sure you’re aware of your possible effect.”
She couldn’t help laughing at that. “You sound as if I were some kind of explosive or poison.”
“Aren’t you?”
Her laughter died at the corrosive bitterness of his voice. “Never mind,” he resumed in a more normal tone. “What you may not realize is that the mere sight of a woman can arouse a man as much as I excited you just then, and his instinct, on which life depends, is to seize and enjoy. Try to remember that.”
“How can I forget after such a … lesson?” What a fool she was, responding as she had to what was sheer randy behavior to him, the mechanical, rutting drive of a healthy male! “I’ll keep my clothes on or the door barred. Do you advise a veil?”
He half-smiled. Tension seemed to drain out of his long, muscular frame. “You’ve a winsome mouth, but that’s not what will get you in trouble.” He jerked his head toward the gleam of dark green satin on the chest. “I fetched a dress from Doña Elena before finishing my business because it may not fit exactly. You may want to make some alterations before the dance.”
Mercy couldn’t pick up the gown without loosing the towel. Grinning as he recognized her predicament, Falconer held up the deeply shimmering cloth for her inspection.
Cut with simple elegance, the dress would expose most of the shoulders, and the bodice laced across an insert of red so dark it was almost black. This same red trimmed the neck and made long, close-fitting undersleeves. It was a dress with medieval flavor that looked black and somber till it caught the light with changing jewel flashes of green and crimson. Mercy burned to try it on even as she gave her employer a rueful glance.
“You don’t intend to let me be inconspicuous!”
“There’s no way you can do that, so make a conquest of it, Mrs. Cameron.”
“I don’t like to be called that anymore.” Mercy said it almost without thinking.
He stopped on his way to the door. “Yes, I can see that, but what’s the alternative? Your maiden name?”
For a moment it was tempting … go back to being Mercy McShane, pretending Philip and their marriage had never been. But it couldn’t be. There was no return. Zane Falconer’s tone was gentler, as if he guessed some of her confused pain.
“There’s an easy way to show respect without stiffness. You can be Doña Mercy, or Mercedes, if you like the Spanish regality. People may think it odd that I don’t give you a last name, but no one will be rude enough to ask why.”
“Wonderful!” Mercy said with relief.
“And I would prefer Zane to being mistered or señored,” he added. “I know that years should elapse before we reach that stage, but under all the circumstances it seems foolish to be so formal. Once we reach La Quinta Dirección, no one will care what we do.”
That sounded ominously true. But the prospect of maintaining a formal address with the only person who’d speak her language daunted Mercy. “Very well, Mr. Falconer,” she said hesitantly, “after we start our journey, I’ll call you Zane—that is, I’ll try.”
He shook his head. “Are you as naïve as you seem?”
She stared in surprise. For a moment he turned back before, frowning, he hurried out and shut the door behind him.
Mercy barred it, dropped the towel, and picked up the dress.
4
Arms somewhat hampered by the tight undersleeves of what she thought of as the dark jewel gown, Mercy finally secured most of her hair in a French knot, though there was nothing she could do about the tendrils’ wilful escape.
The deeply curved bodice showed the swell of her breasts; she wished she had a suitable piece of jewelry to draw eyes to her throat instead. Even a piece of black velvet ribbon tied in a bow would serve the purpose. She was searching through the assortment of trimmings the cloth merchant had sent when there was a loud knock on the door, repeated just as she hurried to open it.
“I wanted to be sure you heard me.” Zane’s business must have gone well, for a smile lit his eyes and his usually grim expression had softened, making him seem younger and less formidable. He surveyed her for a moment, then lightly touched the coiled mass of hair. “I’d rather see that down, but there’s no good in inciting all the men.” His gaze traced the ruching framing her shoulders. “Do you have a necklace?”
She flushed, more conscious of the sexual tension between them now than this afternoon, when she’d been naked. “I was just hunting for something. I … I’m so bare!”
“This might help.” He brought out a plaited silver chain with what looked like a broken-off bit of a shiny, black forked twig. “It’s not what most women would call jewelry, since it’s rough and a bit barbaric, but black coral is precious. It’s only found at depths few divers attempt. Fit it to hang above the charming depths of your bodice.”
Was that a compliment or an insult? With Zane, there was no telling. But Mercy preferred the strange black rarity to any concoction of diamonds or gold, even if such had been forthcoming.
“Thank you,” she said. “It’s just right with the dress, I think.”
“The clasp is tricky. Let me fasten it for you.”
His hands brushed the back of her neck. Warm and tingling shocks spread through her. Did she imagine that his hard fingers were unsteady? He stepped around, surveyed the effect, and gave a satisfied nod.
“Exactly. Are you ready?”
A carriage waited for them in the street, and as the little carriage moved off, Mercy wished they were walking, the better to savor the pleasantly cool air and admire the lanterns hanging from balconies and arches.
The square was thronged even more than it had been that morning, and people, nearly all women, were entering the illuminated cathedral. Zane spoke to the driver, sprang down, and beckoned to Mercy.
“You should look inside,” he said invitingly. “Even if you’re Catholic, I doubt you ever saw the likes of this in Texas.”
A vague fear of papacy and foreign domination flavored the religious atmosphere of most of Mercy’s neighbors, who were mainly Presbyterian or Episcopalian, though she had always rather wistfully thought it would be comforting to have Mary for a mediator. But her father’s rationalist upbringing made her ashamed of that weakness.
Zane brought her up the steps, stopping to speak to an old woman who smiled and handed Mercy her shawl. “Your head must be covered,” Zane explained, and he led her through the doorway.
The long way to the altar blazed with double rows of candles taller than the tallest man while lamps glowed from floor to ceiling along the sides. Music seemed to vibrate from the brilliance. The high altar, raised on a platform, with a towering Christ behind it, was a glory of silver, lamps, and flowers. Women in white with white shawls over their heads knelt so close together that there seemed no room for one more in the great hall, with its vaulted cross-ribbing.
Awesome, magnificent, very, very foreign.
Mercy looked up at Zane, who dropped some coins in a box and took her outside, where the withered lady waited for her shawl.
“Gracias,” Mercy told her, helping the woman place it back over her head. Zane murmured something, seemed at a loss, and then produced from his pocket a small packet that he persuaded their benefactor to take.
“There go your black coral earrings,” he told Mercy as they climbed into the carriage. “I couldn’t offer her money.”
“I’m glad she has them,” Mercy said. She felt a bit depressed from her glimpse at an important part of this world she could not enter, and it must have come through in her voice.
“Don’t mourn for them,” he said coldly. “If baubles are that important, I’ll find you another pair.”
“It’s not the earrings,” Mercy retorted. “The cathedral—all those women—made me realize how out of place I am.”
Zane shot her a surprised stare, frowned, then gestured at a house where men and women were crowding into a hall through which could be glimpsed tables and benches packed tight with Indians, mestizos, and whites bent over squares of paper. Above a buzzing hum of voices rose a screeching singsong.
“I doubt the lottery would make you feel comfortable, either,” Zane remarked. “Will it make your seizure of homesickness better or worse to remind you that my hacienda will not be the least like Mérida? There’s a chapel and store and we hold fiestas, but it’s a poor country cousin compared to this.”
When Mercy didn’t answer, he said stiffly, “You have till morning to change your mind, but where will you find a home? In the defeated South, to which your husband will probably drift back? Mexico City, with the empire crumbling?”
“You … you’re cruel!”
“So is life.”
The carriage halted in front of an elaborate portal. Zane paid the driver and lifted Mercy down. They entered with a flurry of guests arriving on foot and moved with them up a flight of steps leading to the second story. All the furniture in the large room had been moved to the walls and several rows of chairs ran the length of two sides of the room. The orchestra was seated on a platform at the far end.
A diminutive, ripely plump lady in orchid silk embraced the woman in front of Mercy, exchanged a few laughing comments, and then turned, her beautiful dark eyes widening before she smiled, and took Mercy’s hands.
“Welcome,” she said in heavily accented English, kissing Mercy on the cheek. “You are Zane’s kinswoman, come to help him with the small Jolie. How brave you are!” She twinkled at Zane with arched eyebrows. “And how fortunate you are, no?”
He introduced them while Doña Elena looked with approving wistfulness at the gown Mercy wore. “That becomes you well, Doña Mercy. I hope you will keep it, for never on this earth shall I squeeze into it again. Perhaps in heaven I can beg a paradisiacal figure from the good God.”
“Nonsense, Doña Elena!” laughed a deep voice behind them. “Every year finds you lovelier, and since I’ve known you most of my life, that makes you preeminently beautiful.”
“Eric, you wicked flatterer!” Doña Elena seemed a trifle flustered as a man so big that he almost made Zane seem, of average size bowed over her hand. “I’m glad you stayed for my dance. I was afraid you might need to start back to Belize. With the indios bravos repulsed at Tihosuco, they may press to the south.”
“Oh, they’re always trying to get guns and recapture those of their number who’re weary of the wars of the Talking Cross,” said the stranger carelessly. “Hundreds of former Cruzob have settled in British territory and are trying to grow their corn in peace. Some even work at my hacienda. But our biggest headaches are with the Pacificos or Icaiche Mayas, who’ve been driven from their old homes by the Cruzob for not joining them.”
“I thought the Pacificos were supposed to harass the Cruzob and keep them off us,” protested Doña Elena.
“That was certainly the devout hope,” shrugged the huge man. “But they find it healthier to raid Belize.”
He reminded Mercy of an archetypal Viking. His fair hair gleamed silver with a sheen of gold, his strong, hawklike face was tanned, and his eyes were the color of ice reflecting a winter sky. When they touched Mercy, she felt seared, as if by freezing iron.
“Doña Mercy, allow me to present Señor Kensington, my nephew by marriage,” said their hostess. “Zane, perhaps you know Eric? Eric, meet Zane Falconer. Doña Mercy is his kinswoman, newly arrived in Mérida.”
Zane must have been four inches shorter than the towering blond man, but, with some primordial female instinct, Mercy sensed their antagonism and knew that if they ever fought, size wouldn’t determine the winner.
“I’ve heard of Señor Kensington, of course.” Zane’s tone and face were carefully expressionless. They moved forward as Doña Elena left them to greet other guests. “Selling guns to the Cruzob must be a very profitable business.”
“It is,” said Kensington good-naturedly. “As a British subject, I take no sides in these Yucatecan uproars. My factor in Belize will sell you or anyone all the guns you can pay for.”
“It takes courage—or gall—for you to show yourself in Mérida,” Zane said. “If the Cruzob had taken Tihosuco, Doña Elena’s hospitality might not have protected you.”
“She” wouldn’t have had a party,” said the Englishman, grinning. “Besides, most of these charming people know me as her kinsman by marriage and as the owner of a large sugar plantation. I didn’t know my other interests were common knowledge.”
“Those of us who live on the frontier have a lively concern with the source of Cruzob supplies.”
“Understandable.” Kensington stifled a yawn behind a ruffled cuff. He half-turned his back on Zane, and Mercy again felt as a physical impact the frozen blue flame of his eyes. “But I haven’t properly acknowledged my introduction to this lady.”
He bent over her hand. His lips shocked her like an extreme of heat or cold. Sheer physical energy seemed to radiate from him. He would consume a woman who was with him much, Mercy thought, and though he smiled at her beguilingly as he straightened up, she feared him.
“I am enchanted, Doña Mercy. Have you formed an impression of Mérida?”
“It’s very different.”
“From where?”
“The eastern bayou country of Texas.”
“I would have guessed the Garden of the Hesperides … or at least Avalon.” He smiled slowly, deliberately, at Zane, whose face was a taut mask. “May I felicitate you, Falconer, on possessing such a beautiful relative?”
Was there an emphasis on possessing?
“Pure luck.” There was an ironic twist to the edge of Zane’s mouth. “If you returned to England, Kensington, you might learn you’re similarly blessed.”
“Alas, if I have a fair cousin, she’ll have to find me,” said the Englishman, shrugging. “I hope you will be generous and share yours to the extent of granting me this waltz with her.”
“Doña Mercy may accept a later invitation if she chooses to, but she’s promised me the first dance.”
Frost-colored eyes swept from Zane to Mercy, obviously noticing her surprise. “Ah, later, then.” With a flamboyant, almost mocking, bow, the large man gave Mercy a last smiling appraisal before he moved on to the loveliest of the dark beauties at the chairs.
Zane moved Mercy into the lilt of the slow, dreamy music. She hadn’t danced since the early months of the war, because after that, except for soldiers home on leave, there were virtually no men. The waltz had been considered rather gauche, but she’d loved its intoxicating dips and glides, especially with a strong partner who could sweep her gracefully about. Zane was strong enough, but his dancing was vigorous, rather than polished.
He trod twice on her toes and she caught him staring at Eric Kensington, who was whirling his parter with remarkable smoothness. “Confound this rotten tune!” Zane burst out. “I’m not a dancer, as you’ve learned, but I’d be shot before I’d let that swaggering Britisher have the first number.” He grinned ruefully. “But you wish I had!”
“He’s Doña Elena’s nephew?”
“The nephew of her husband who was a retired British diplomat. He was much older, but even though he died ten years ago, Doña Elena has not wished for another husband.” His voice deepened with mockery. “She should be in a museum as the only one of her kind.”
Mercy suddenly wondered what had happened to Zane’s wife. She’d assumed the lady was dead, but his bitterness was like a revealing flash of lightning.
When the waltz ended, he escorted Mercy to a chair, said he saw an old friend he should greet, and made his way through the now crowded room to the men who were standing near the windows at the end.
Mercy felt very much on display. She sm
iled at the young women on either side. They smiled back. One ventured some soft Spanish.
“No hablo español,” Mercy said regretfully. That was one thing she was going to have to change! It made her feel lost, almost frightened, not to understand what people were saying.
A quadrille formed next and then came a spirited contredanse, with couples facing each other in rows. Zane was one of a knot of men involved in deep conversation, and Eric Kensington’s shining head was nowhere to be seen till the musicians slipped into another waltz and he loomed abruptly before her.
“Though you couldn’t save your first dance for me, I think our first one together will be memorable,” he said.
Drawing her up as if there were no chance of her refusing, he swept her into the circling mass of flower-tinted gowns and black tailcoats. He was strong and he could dance, his rhythm dominating Mercy till she felt without a will or body of her own, a part of the music.
“You’re being admired,” he told her. “Men are calling you the Quetzal Lady because your gown shines like the plumage of that sacred bird. The Mayas never killed quetzals, but trapped them for their four magnificent tail feathers, which could only be used by royalty. I have quetzals in my garden, but they are not so beautiful as you.”
Mercy could think of no reply. She was both pleased and dismayed that she was being especially noticed. Pray heaven no rumor circulated yet about a man who’d gambled his wife away to Zane Falconer!
“Look at me,” Kensington said softly. “Your downcast eyes are charmingly like wings, but I can’t guess what you’re thinking.”
She glanced up, but something in those burningly cold eyes made her swiftly avert her own. “I’ve made inquiries about your kinsman, Doña Mercy. It’s fortunate for him that you’re willing to live at a hacienda on the frontier, but not, I should think, so fortunate for you.”
“I’ve little choice.”
“Let me give you one, then. Marry me.”
Bride of Thunder Page 5