Half-fainting, she moaned and struggled as his fingers cupped her breasts, then toyed with her nipples. His teeth nipped her from breasts to belly. He tossed her garments aside, put her down on a couch of blankets spread on fragrant leaves in the corner, wrenched off his own clothing, and held her arms above her head while he thrust and battered his way into her tightly constricting body.
Deep within her, he moved back and forth on his knees astride her, his free hand stroking her as if claiming, branding.
“Narrow as a virgin,” he said. “At least it’d seem you’ve had no one since Falconer chose to play the noble ass and go join Peraza. Open your eyes.”
She kept them closed, turning her head as far as she could to one side. Eric’s grasp closed over the bottom part of her face, bringing it around. “Look. I want you to see me on top of you, to get it through your skull that I’m your master.”
When she still defied him, he lowered himself and rammed savagely in and out. Each thrust of his swollen, pulsing hardness made her want to scream with pain. Would he tear her apart? As suddenly as it had begun, the staccato lunging smoothed into lazy, almost contemplative, strokes.
“Look at me,” he whispered.
She couldn’t bear another onslaught without crumbling. She opened her eyes and slowly met his. He was bronzed to the waist, as if he was often without a shirt, and the crisp, curling hair on his chest was even brighter than that on his head.
“Feel me inside you,” he told her. “You must want me. You must be ready to receive me.”
As if he derived great excitement from her upturned gaze, he increased his tempo till he paused with a violent shuddering. Her bruised vitals felt the pumping flow drain rigidity from that part of him that had driven into her so cruelly.
And all the time he simply watched her.
Mercy awoke in a hammock, not remembering where she was till the aching between her thighs brought back in a stabbing rush all that had happened. Gray light showed that the hut was empty.
Sitting up in a rush, a trapped creature discovering its tormentor was at least momentarily gone, Mercy gnawed her lip as she stood, wincing, and gripped the blanket closer as she saw her torn clothes crumpled by the bench.
The wan light was choked off as Eric filled the doorway. “There’s a dress for you on that peg in the corner. I picked it from the things Thomas brought. It would seem odd for you to leave your belongings, so I had him bring your clothes and personal items. Your hairbrush is on the stump. If you need anything else, we’ll dig it out of the packs tonight.”
Bending to avoid the ceiling, he reached her in one long step and kissed her deeply, as if he drew from her some rich, subtle nourishment. He put his hands on her beneath the blanket and caressed her till she trembled in dread and shame.
“What, my dear, so eager?” he mocked, raising his lips slightly from hers, “Control yourself. When we rest at noon, you may show me what you enjoy. I’m certain I can introduce you to some new pleasures.” He pressed the heel of his hand hard against her stomach. “Inside you feel like wet, warm velvet. I can scarcely wait to be there again, but I’m also eager to get you home, where we can have a proper bed.”
Taking the blanket from her protesting hands, he sucked in his breath as he looked at her.
“It seems I can’t wait.”
He forced her to the fallen blanket.
Mounted on a glossy black little mare, Mercy had to crouch against its mane most of the time to keep from being caught by vines and low branches. Eric, ahead of her, led his big bay thoroughbred, which he told her he’d gone to Kentucky to examine and buy.
“I’m particular about what carries me,” he’d said as he lifted her into her saddle. “It takes stamina to bear my weight and pace. Add to that my being hard to please and you might see why I think no journey’s too long or price too high for what I’ve determined suits me.”
Mercy couldn’t answer and was thankful when he moved ahead to take the reins of his horse. Excruciatingly sore and nauseated, she’d forced down the hot tea Eric insisted she have and had eaten a bite or two of sweet bread. Eric had tried that morning to woo her a bit, but he quickly lost patience with her rigid body and took her swiftly.
“At the House of Quetzals, there’ll be baths, lotions—all the luxuries that make loving an art,” he’d said while she was dressing. “By the time we get there, you should appreciate them.”
She longed to say that nothing would make her welcome his passion, but she was fast learning that angering him was a costly gesture. If she was to preserve her sanity and health for the time that must surely come when she could escape, she’d do well to spare herself.
Thomas walked ahead of Eric, clearly on alert. The other men followed behind Mercy. They kept to a narrow jungle track that finally came out on what Mercy judged to be the road to Tekax.
How wonderful it would be if Zane and his score of armed men came trooping along it! But he was probably in the north helping his old commander plan the capture of often-besieged Mérida. Mercy sighed. When he read her letter, and that might not be for months, would he hate and despise her? Or would his heart make some excuse for her and leave him sad?
Eric looked back at her with that uncanny way he had of seeming to guess her thoughts. “Peraza’s massing men for a push on Mérida,” he said. “But the men who remember Carlota, danced with her, and received decorations will fight for the empire with more conviction than usual in Yucatán’s purely political joustings. Until the War of the Castes, when butchery became the rule, political prisoners were seldom shot, but there’ll be executions after this revolution, whichever side wins.” He chuckled while Mercy tried to keep all expression from her face, hiding the fear for Zane that her captor’s mocking words stirred in her. “How would you choose, Mercy, mia? For Falconer to return and read your message, or that he have a heroic death sweetened by the memory of you?”
Her scorn must have shown clearly on her face.
“Actually,” Eric said, shrugging, “if he dies, it’ll probably be from dysentery or yellow fever. I can’t imagine why, having soldiered as a pup and knowing the danger of it, he let himself be urged away from you and that plantation he takes such pains in running. Lucky for him he’s rich enough to be considered eccentric, or he wouldn’t be received in society.”
Mercy couldn’t restrain an incredulous laugh. “Society he mixes with a few days a year after a hundred-mile journey?”
“In your eyes, of course, he’s far too superior to mind what people say.” Eric made a deprecatory flourish with a hand surprisingly graceful and well shaped for such a big man. “But when he wishes to marry again, my dear, the opinions of the mamas and dueñas of Mérida will have paramount importance if he wants one of their daughters. For all he’s the son of a pirate, Falconer knows that.”
“He was going to marry me!” Mercy couldn’t keep from crying.
“Ah,” mused Eric in a tone of sympathy. “Is that how he breached you?”
“It wasn’t like that!”
“No? It’s curious, then, if his intentions were so lofty, that he went off to war without going through the ceremony. What if you had a child, especially should the father be killed?”
Mercy disdained to tell Eric that she and Zane had come together only after, and because of, his decision to join Peraza.
“Especially if Zane dies, I should want his baby,” she retorted.
Eric stopped in his tracks and faced swiftly around. “Are you in that condition?”
Strange that she hadn’t even thought of that before. It was possible, but after last night she didn’t think any beginning life could have survived. “I don’t know,” she said, pleased to goad him.
He turned and strode onward. “I wouldn’t mind getting a child from you, though naturally I won’t marry another man’s mistress. If you give birth, we’ll have to check dates to see whether to keep it or give it to a wet nurse.”
“I’ll keep any baby I have!”
> “Get it first and then we’ll argue,” he advised.
They went on and on till the aching where he’d used her merged with saddle weariness and a drumming headache. When they stopped at noon, she was so plainly ill that Eric swore, slung a hammock for her between two breadfruit trees, and gave her a mug of tea before he had any himself.
“Once we’re into British territory, I don’t care how indolent you are,” he said. “But I pray to heaven that you don’t prove to be a delicate wench!”
“I suppose you could always feed me to the crocodiles.”
His eyes narrowed. “I should get a doctor and see that you did what he advised,” he said grimly. “Don’t try to play fragile with me, Mercy, for if I find you’re shamming, I’ll take it out of your lovely hide.”
He set Thomas to making broth from doves one of the men had shot and compelled Mercy to sip that and eat an orange before he let her sleep.
14
It would be six days till they reached the Rio Hondo, a calm jungle river dividing Yucatán from Belize and Guatemala and which would put them within miles of Eric’s plantation. They swung south before reaching Tekax or Peto and took a wide detour around Chan Santa Cruz, the holy city where the Talking Cross gave orders through the tatich.
“He’s a mestizo, Bonifacio Novelo,” explained Eric. “And though Yucatán is constantly protesting, the British have little choice but to treat the Cruzob as a de facto nation. Besides, what are these squabbles and wranglings to us? We don’t care whether those with wood to sell or money to buy our guns are ladinos, mestizos, Indians, or Creoles.”
“They aren’t English,” summed up Mercy caustically.
“How well you put it,” said Eric. “But whatever your opinion of British condescension, the population of Belize is tremendously varied and free-shifting, with color no barrier to marriage and position. Whites are only a small fraction, far outnumbered by Negroes, mulattos, and Carib Indians who revolted against their French masters and fled here, close to five hundred Amoy coolies who were brought here last June to work in lumbering, some sepoys deported from India after their rebellion failed, and even some Confederates like your late husband.
“Then there are perhaps ten thousand refugees from the War of the Castes, some ladinos, some Cruzob, with every range in between. Most of them live in the Corozal region, which has been raided frequently during the last few years by Cruzob and Icaiche Mayas. The Icaiches are supposed to help fight the Cruzob, but they’d rather plunder across the Hondo.”
He went on to tell her that just before Christmas some men of the Fourth West Indian Regiment were sent to repulse Marcos Canul, the Icaiche batab, but instead were defeated and chased all the way to the city of Belize. During January, the Icaiches continued their invasion, demanding rent for the disputed border and Belize itself. The governor of the crown colony kept his barge ready to sail and panic was widespread. A militia was organized to aid the West Indian detachment and they set out with “rocket tubes” to subdue Mayan villages that had supported the invasion.
The zooming of these fiery missiles into easily kindled thatched villages quickly restored order, but the Icaiches were still on the roam.
“And as soon as the militia is withdrawn, the Icaiches will be back,” Eric growled. “Belize protests to Campeche, since Canul, as a batab, is actually considered a local official of the Campeche part of Yucatán. Campeche, which can’t do anything about Canul and his Icaiches, promises to try while complaining that Belize isn’t English but really belongs to Yucatán, and that people who sell guns to rebels shouldn’t howl when the guns are turned on them.”
“I can’t see how they’d feel that way,” said Mercy dryly.
The pack trail they’d come down had grown steadily worse, often little more than a tunnel through dense jungle and swamp along which the horses had to be led. Either the journey left Eric with little inclination to dalliance, or he’d been alarmed by Mercy’s near-prostration the day they started out, for, while he’d treated her as well as the grueling traveling allowed, he had not even kissed or fondled her since that morning assault in the hut.
She was almost beginning to hope that he’d decided he didn’t want her when, during a noon stop, he cocked his head at her. A week’s stubble made him look more than ever like a wild Norseman, but his white shirt was clean and his supply of linen handkerchiefs seemed inexhaustible.
“I don’t want you to think, sweet Mercy, that you no longer attract me. Nor must you think that the way I took you first is my accustomed mode with ladies. I thought it wise to teach you an initial lesson through your body, which, if learned solidly, needn’t be repeated. When we reach the House of Quetzels, I want to show you that I can be as tender and sensitive a lover as you could ever wish for.”
“A tender, sensitive man wouldn’t treat me as you have.”
His eyes glinted. “Well, Mercy, mia, you may have me however you choose, but you’ll have me.” He rose and lifted her to her feet with that effortless strength before which she was helpless.
On the sixth day they passed through desolated Bacalar, unmolested by the small Cruzob garrison kept there to protect the Rio Hondo trade route.
At the Hondo, a boat manned by eight blacks waited at a small wharf beside several thatched open shelters and warehouses. Thomas and their previous escort took the horses and packs overland while Eric handed Mercy into the pitpan.
“These are what the Indians were using when the Spaniards came,” he said. “The design can’t be improved on, but mine is a bit more luxurious than most.”
Mercy nearly smiled at that. Forty feet long, tapering from about six feet at the center to narrow ends, the pitpan was hollowed out from a mahogany trunk. Handsomely carved posts supported a wooden roof above cushioned seats, and there were curtains to protect passengers from sun and storm. Two of the blacks steered from behind with rudder-like motions of their oars, while the others sat two on a seat and plied paddles, as long as they were tall, beginning a rhythmic chant as they set the boat in motion.
Forest on either side; sun glinting off the water; the voices of the boatmen. Reminded of Cleopatra’s barge, Mercy could have enjoyed the excursion if she hadn’t been compelled to it and didn’t dread the end. Eric seemed content to relax and look from her to the sparkling water, radiating a kind of satisfied peace.
He was the buccaneer sailing home with his loot. Mercy avoided his quietly triumphant eyes and stared at the water, glimmering like broken fluid shards of mirror, until, almost mesmerized, she fell asleep.
She awoke while being picked up lightly. Eric sprang with her from the pitpan to a dock at which other boats and barges were tied up. Striding along the planks that shook under his weight, Eric held her high against his chest and kissed her on the mouth.
“Soon,” he said, “soon, my love. There’ve been many women at my house, but none like you.”
His mouth was hard, insatiable. Mercy tried to slip down. “I can walk.”
He chuckled. “But I wish to carry you. See? There’s my House of Quetzals for my quetzal woman.”
“I’m no quetzal woman!”
“But you are, for the quetzal is precious and rare.”
“And caged?”
“You’ll see.”
The house before them was built of beautiful woods, cedar, mahogany, and some she didn’t know, making a spectrum from ivory to near-black, with rich shades of red and dark brown predominating. Stone was used for the foundation and trim. It was a sprawling two-storied structure of many verandas, guarded by giant palms and other majestic trees.
Like a conqueror with booty, Eric raced up the steps with her through the doorway, where there stood a tall black in a spotless white jacket with a blood-red sash. They went through a passage, with doors opening on either side, and out into a court formed by the L of the house and thick plantings of bamboo and palm.
Here, among trees, vines, rioting bougainvillaea, poincianas, hibiscus, and poinsettias, hung a number o
f cages. Each held what could only be a quetzal, with iridescent tail feathers gleaming, the brilliance of green and crimson unbelievable.
Though the ornate brass cages were large, the birds wouldn’t fly. All perched so morosely that Mercy asked falteringly, “Are they alive?”
“Of course.” Eric put her down at last, but he kept his big arm around her. “These are all male. Females aren’t showy.”
“But they live in cloud forests!”
“These don’t.”
“Isn’t the climate bad for them? They don’t look very happy.”
He regarded her with amused scorn. “Happy? Birds? My dear girl, you’re wildly sentimental! Birds don’t have feelings. What they do possess is instinct, their nature.”
“It’s the nature of a bird to fly.”
Mercy’s voice shook. He stared at her in true astonishment. “You’re crying over them! Why? They have the best food and are safe from predators. Can’t you just think of them as living jewels?”
“I hate this garden!”
His jaw set. “Do you? Well, then, it’s time you saw your chamber.”
“My cage?”
“You could consider it your frame, your setting. I created it for you.”
“For yourself, you mean,” she corrected bitterly.
“By God,” he said slowly, drawing her inside, “do you need another lesson? Shall I rape you in the hall so the servants can watch?”
She didn’t answer. He gave her a slight shake. “Well?”
There was nothing to do but say, “I’d like to see the room.”
He picked her up again. Laughing exultantly against her hair, he ran with her up the curving staircase. Mercy closed her eyes.
It was a large, airy room with a balcony overhanging a view of the river and with windows with shutters that were open to let glossy leaves and fronds form a second sun-spangled curtain outside. The floor was covered with woven grass matting with Persian rugs scattered about, and the walls were of polished, fragrant wood. There were several gracefully curving bamboo chairs padded with turquoise velvet, an inlaid rosewood chest, a writing desk, and an immense bed of intricate brass filigree wrought into birds and leaves. It was mounded with pillows and spread with an iridescent green satin.
Bride of Thunder Page 24