“That represents the Mayan creation myths,” said Zane.
“It’s lovely,” Mercy responded, utterly beguiled.
“It’s silly fairytales and super … superstition!” Jolie tugged at her father’s arm. “Let’s eat, Papa! I got so hungry, but I waited for you!”
“You’ve gone to bones!” he gasped, squeezing a chubby arm. “Quick, then! Sit down before you faint!”
He assisted her into a chair scaled to her size, chuckling, but her golden eyebrows knit furiously and she looked on the verge of tears.
“Don’t treat me like a baby!” She darted Mercy an edged glance. “I don’t like it in front of strangers!”
Zane’s indulgent smile faded. “Doña Mercy isn’t a stranger, Jolie.”
“To me she is!”
Except for coloring, father and daughter looked very much alike as their wills clashed. Their mouths hooked down in the same fashion and the angle of their eyebrows was identical.
“I knew you needed someone to teach you manners,” Zane said to the small mutineer. “I’d no idea how much! Now, you will beg Doña Mercy’s pardon.”
Mercy felt a tug of sympathy for the embattled rebel. “I’m a stranger,” she said, “but I won’t be for long.”
Neither Zane nor Jolie responded to her smile. “Apologize,” ordered Zané.
Jolie hung her head, her lower lip trembling, though it thrust doggedly forward.
“Oh, Zane, it’s not important!” Mercy protested.
“Allow me to decide that. Jolie?”
“What if I don’t?”
“By God!” Zane rocked back, between laughter and exasperation. “You young hellion, you have the gall to sit there and ask?”
“You never spank me,” said Jolie in a matter-of-fact tone. “If you send me to bed without supper, I’ll starve myself all week and you’ll beg me to eat! So what will you do?”
Zane looked thunderstruck at this cool appraisal, but he had the sense to refuse idle threats. “Maybe I’ll do nothing,” he said, “but I’ll be displeased with you, and very much ashamed.”
Her shoulders hunched, Jolie was silent for a long moment.
“Doña Mercy,” she said in a whisper, not looking up, “I beg your pardon.”
Mercy wished she dared to put her arms around the child, but the proudly stubborn set of the whole strong little body forbade any such gesture.
“Please, let’s forget it,” she said. But from the grim look on Zane’s face as he seated her and from the way Jolie kept her eyes lowered, she knew it would be a long time, if ever, before Jolie forgot.
It was an uncomfortable meal. Zane, probably with wisdom, made no effort to woo or make up with his daughter, and he ignored her refusal of all the food except for some delicious-smelling turkey. This, Zane explained to Mercy, was pit-roasted in a native way that was also used with deer, small pigs, and iguanas.
“You may want to watch Chepa make pibil one day,” he said. “It makes even tough meat tender and is a perfect method for cooking on a hunt or journey if one has the time.”
There were yams, small, succulent green-corn tamales, tortillas, and crusty rolls. For dessert they had thin pumpkin seed cakes glazed with honey.
Chepa herself had brought the turkey, still nested on the steamed banana leaves in which it had apparently been cooked.
“How did you know I was coming in time to make pibil?” he had asked her, appreciatively inhaling its fragrance.
“I made deer pibil last night,” Chepa admitted, smiling. “It can be eaten cold, after all. And if you hadn’t come tonight, I had a young pig selected for tomorrow. Shall you, the master, not have a good meal when you return from a journey?”
“The meals are always good,” Zane assured her.
“This bad one doesn’t think so.” Chepa touched Jolie’s golden hair, gave her a sharp glance when the girl stared at her plate, then moved off to the kitchen with a regretful lift of her shoulders. Chepa, evidently, was used to Jolie’s temper.
A graceful young woman Zane called Soledad served the other foods and cleared everything away before fetching the pumpkin seed cakes and foamy hot chocolate. Jolie made up for her earlier abstentions by consuming three cakes and two cups of the rich, spiced hot chocolate.
“Bed for you now,” said Zane, rising.
“Thank you, Papa, but I can go by myself.”
“But …”
“I’m not a young child anymore.” Jolie had a quaint, almost archaic, manner of speech that probably came from living with adults and using three languages. Back straight, arms at her sides, she stiffly offered her cheek to be kissed. “Good night, Papa. Good night, Doña Mercy.”
They both said good night. She vanished through the gate, small, lonely, gripped by a pride and resentment that seemed too fierce for her.
“I’ve most deeply offended Her Highness,” said Zane, forcing a smile. “But I suppose it is time I stopped tucking her in.”
“I’m sorry to have caused trouble.”
Zane shrugged. “Clearly, I should have had a woman here years ago, but at first, I … well, to be blunt about it, I wanted nothing to do with the whole tribe of adult white females. It’s just been the last year, when I had visions of Jolie’s growing out of being a child, that I knew I had to get someone.”
“You could send her away to school.”
“Laugh if you want to, but that would break both our hearts.”
It was indeed time for a woman to be at La Quinta, a woman he could love, have a life with when Jolie married. But he seemed utterly set against his own needs, except for the crudest physical gratification. Mercy despairingly believed she might change the daughter’s blighting attitude long before she did the father’s. He had given all his tenderness and protective love to Jolie. Mercy understood this especially well since her father had done the same with her. As far as she remembered, he’d never thought of remarrying.
Trying to imagine her reaction if Elkanah had brought home a wife, Mercy gave a rueful shake of her head and laughed. “It’s hard for a doted-upon daughter to have another woman in the house, even when it’s her own mother. I’m sure I’d have made life difficult for any lady my father might have brought in, though by the time he went off to war I was beginning to realize that he needed someone his own age. And, of course, if he were still alive, I’d be delighted now for him to marry.”
“There’s no question of my marrying.” Zane’s cold words were a slap.
Mercy flushed. “I … I’m aware of that I only meant that I can sympathize with Jolie.”
“That should help, but it won’t serve to be soft with her. She can be as implacable as a tyrant if she senses irresolution.”
“A family trait?” Mercy asked sweetly.
Zane stared at her, poured out liqueur, and offered her the tiny crystal goblet. “You may do,” he grudged.
“I’ll try.”
Their eyes met and held. His hand closed over her wrist and pressed warmly against the pulsing so that she felt revealed to him, nakedly exposed by the speeding pounding of her blood.
“It’s not too late.” His voice was husky, reaching to her depths.
“Too late for what?”
He drew her to her feet. “Let me show you something.”
Moonlight whitened paving stones through the walled courtyard, past a fountain, and out among trees that had the unmistakable scent of citrus.
“Lemons, limes, and oranges,” said Zane. “In the spring their blossoms perfume everything. Bees go crazy trying to collect all the pollen.”
He’d kept her hand in his, her arm tucked up through the bend of his elbow. It was wonderful to be close like this. But even while she felt herself expanding, flowering like one of those blooms he’d mentioned, she was afraid this shared moment would end in bitterness.
She wouldn’t be his mistress, not unless he loved her.
They passed the orchard, a row of coconut palms, and struck a path leading into thick woodlan
ds where the moon couldn’t reach. Zane knew the way, though, and he drew her along.
In ten minutes they stood in a clearing and Mercy stared at a curious square tower no more than twenty feet high, with dark windows facing them like blind eyes.
“Come,” urged Zane, drawing her across the eerily lit open space and inside the building.
He let go of her, fumbled for a moment, and struck a match, quickly lighting a small Phoebe lamp. The soft yellow glow illuminated a large, low-ceilinged room with a circular staircase winding up the center. There was a fireplace, an open-faced cupboard with a few glazed plates and mugs, a small, flower-carved trestle table and bench, and over by a window were two chairs and footstools.
The round table between them held a lacquered tray with a decanter and lacquered cups. The floor was stone, but bright straw mats softened it. The air was musty but not unpleasantly so, for in the damp smell of disuse lingered a wistful trace of roses.
Zane lit a candle, handed it to Mercy, and indicated the stairs. “Have a look.”
Lifting the hem of her skirt, she ascended with care, for there were no banisters and the stone steps narrowed to a point at the end so that she could step only on the broader part. The staircase was designed to be a support for the second story, around which her candle flickered as she stepped onto solidly hewn planking, caught in a breath of wonder.
The high chamber looked Moorish, sparsely furnished, yet luxurious. Long narrow windows had the squared-off arch distinctive of Mayan architecture, because, Zane had explained, they never learned how to make a full arch and instead built converging sides as close together as possible and then closed the tip with a flat piece. The walls were stark white except for floral traceries around the windows, but the ceiling was painted in brilliant geometric designs, with a predominance of purple, dark green, and azure radiating out from a many-petaled flower in the center.
A couch was positioned directly beneath the flower, covered with purple silk and bolsters and cushions of every color. Spotted hides were scattered around the floor. There were several beautifully carved chests, a stand built to hold a large onyx washbasin and brazen ewer, and an airy, high-backed wicker chair cushioned with turquoise velvet.
The high chamber was for the bed, and the bed was for love. Feeling Zane close behind her, Mercy felt as if her blood were slowing, heavy as molten gold. Her breath came quick and short, seeming not to reach her lungs, turning her dizzy, faintingly weak.
“If you’ll be my woman,” Zane said, and his voice seemed to come from far away, strained and odd, as if he, too, were having trouble with breathing, “you could live here and I’d supply whatever you wanted for a pastime—books, a horse, music, or painting equipment.”
“And Jolie?”
His long mouth tightened. “I’ll find another teacher for her, someone older and plain. Why waste you on her when she’s going to fight you every inch and detest you for the reasons that make you so desirable to me?”
“But you say you haven’t found anyone who’ll come here.”
“I haven’t tried that hard. Now that I see how spoiled Jolie’s getting, I’ll get a suitable dragon if I have to advertise in the New Orleans papers.”
“You wouldn’t want me to see Jolie?”
“You’d have a housekeeper. There’d be no need for you to be at La Quinta.”
“You mean that you don’t want your mistress besmirching your daughter.”
He scowled. “It can’t distress you to avoid a trying and perhaps impossible task. I’m no sentimentalist. My daughter’s behavior can only make her distasteful to you.”
“Working with her was the position I accepted when I refused Mr. Kensington’s proposal.”
“I told you flatly there’s to be no proposal—of marriage—from me.”
“And you promised not to force me into your bed.”
“I’m not forcing you.” He laughed suddenly and his eyes shone incandescent. “You want me. Your breasts hurt, don’t they? I can take that ache away with my mouth; I can pierce that inflamed swelling so you’d be honey-sweet and peaceful and sleep happier and sounder than ever in all your life.” He didn’t touch her, but his voice and eyes burned into her depths. “Why deny what you want, too? You’ll have a luxurious life and I’ll be generous. When you go back to the States, it can be as a well-to-do woman.”
“And I can open an elegant brothel like many a retired whore?”
For a moment she thought he would strike her, and she willed herself not to flinch. “I wouldn’t advise it. Some goaded customer would slit your lovely throat ear to ear!”
Bowing sardonically, he stood back to let her descend. “This is where you lodge your paramours?” She couldn’t keep from asking the question.
“It’s none of your damned business, but I’ve only kept one woman here, and she wasn’t mine.”
Jealousy flared in Mercy. She pictured another woman on that couch, smiling at Zane with outstretched arms and a compliant body. “A nun, I suppose!”
“Very near it. She’s Xia, the priestess in the village that I mentioned before.”
“And you made that tower for her?” Mercy asked in a disbelieving tone.
“In daylight you’ll see how ridiculous that is,” Zane said with a harsh laugh. “The tower is part of an ancient ceremonial site that spread over several miles. My father rebuilt it and kept his concubines there after my mother died, but I’ve had no such use for it myself. Nor, in case you’re wondering, have I used the women of La Quinta. A few nights in Tekax have always cured my restless seasons.”
“Then I wonder why you’d risk the possible difficulties of having a mistress you couldn’t just use, pay, and forget till the next one of your seasons.”
“I’m not a young stallion to go rutting off when the devil drives me. The convenience of having a woman close at hand rather than a day’s ride away is beginning, I’ll admit, to counterbalance my liking for solitude, but not,” he added grimly, “to the extreme that I’ll marry, in case you hope to price yourself up to that!”
If you loved me, that would be enough. Nothing else is, unless you do.
“I’d hate the life you offer,” Mercy said. “I’d be doing nothing useful, existing only for your … diversion. No amount of money or luxury could make such a waste of myself worthwhile.”
He stared at her, shock changing to mockery as his long mouth quirked. “And what was the mystic and high purpose you fulfilled in marriage with Philip Cameron?”
Stung but unsubdued, Mercy snapped, “I learned that I need more than to be some man’s convenience! Wouldn’t the prospect of only”—she cast around for some withering description—“standing at stud disgust you?”
“Doña Mercy!”
“Wouldn’t it?” she pressed.
“I’d enjoy a chance to find out.” His eyes danced, the cleft deepened in his chin, and he looked younger than she’d yet seen him.
“Not if that was all you could do. A married woman at least has a house to take care of, cooking, and usually children. Her time can be full and useful. Your mistress needs to be a stupid, sloth-like creature who could spend all day sleeping or preening. No woman of intelligence or ability would live in such a harem-like manner.”
“You,” he said grimly, “make the virtues of a stupid, sloth-like, but amiable mistress shine by comparison! You stole your tongue from an adder! One might as well take a thorn bush to bed. So go to your virtuous sleep, madam, but take this with you!”
He crushed her to him, ground her breasts cruelly against his hard body, forced his loins against hers, and took her lips savagely, bruisingly, thrusting his tongue deep into her mouth. From struggling futilely, she went limp, supported only by his arms, ravished by the onslaught till, if he had thrown her on a bed, she could not have resisted.
As she went softly and yielding, his hands gentled and his lips moved over hers so softly that she trembled. “Good night,” he said, drawing away, steadying her till she had control o
f herself again. “As soon as you’ve settled in, you may start pursuing your Calvinistic ideal of duty and work. I wish you joy in it!”
He bowed, his dark hair falling over his forehead so that she longed to push it back, turned abruptly, and strode to a door opening off the veranda.
Her hand going to her lips which still felt the force of his, Mercy fought back tears. Why? Why was he so obstinate?
Was he so mulish he’d never admit he craved a single mistress to give him the security and closeness he’d failed to find in marriage but could never find with casual, infrequent couplings?
He wanted closeness without risk, the solace of love with none of the pain. He wanted to be the center and source of a woman’s life, and to pay for that in money and things.
Not with me, Mercy vowed, not with me.
But she knew if he really chose to use a little force, break down her defenses as he had just done minutes ago, he could have her.
Once.
If that does happen, if he does take me—and God knows he can if he’s ruthless, for I love him and my body cries for his—then I must go away. To live as he wants me to in that tower would destroy the person that I want to be. His slave I may be, but I won’t be his body servant!
Mercy thought of going to see how Mayel was, but there were no lights in the rooms behind the kitchen. The girl must be asleep.
And Jolie? Had she cried that night with self-pity and hate for an interloper? What would happen if she remained adamant, refusing to be friends?
Mercy sighed. Journey’s end. She was at the center, the fifth direction, and what would happen now?
7
Mercy awoke to a presence and saw Mayel, golden in the light that streamed through the window. The girl had the yellow ribbon at the back of her hair, and the shine in her large, dark eyes made her look like a different person from the whipped, rebel debt-slave of two mornings ago. She put a tray with a covered pot, cup, and crisp, sweet bread on the bedside table.
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