Emerald Ecstasy (51 page)

Carmen sat beside him and positioned the plate on her lap. “She helped me when I needed help. Did you know that I killed Diego Gonzalez?”

Felix stopped eating and held the spoon aloft. Carmen saw by the look of shock and surprise on his face that he didn't know how Diego died.

“I only knew your husband was dead, killed by an intruder.”

Carmen laughed. “Father arranged the official story, but I stabbed Diego. He tried … to rape me. Diego wasn't a considerate lover and often he beat me, but this last time I didn't beg for Diego's mercy. I thought of you, Felix, and knew you were strong. Your strength gave me courage.”

“I see.” Felix continued eating as if she had just told him the sky was blue. Didn't he care that she had murdered her husband, or did he feel it was justice that she suffer as his family had suffered at the hands of her father?

“Do you think I am a bad person?” she asked him, not quite certain why his opinion of her mattered.

“What I think shouldn't matter to you, Carmen.”

She timidly reached out and touched his arm. “But it does,” she said softly.

Half expecting him to take her hand, she was surprised when he stood up and barely looked at her. “I must tend to the horses,” he said and left her.

Carmen gulped back a sob. “Stupid
lepero
,” she whispered.

The rest of El Lince's group milled about the campfire. Some finished eating and others huddled beneath the blankets for the night. Lianne felt an unrest in the air, though she couldn't explain why. A few of the men looked at her with hard, cold eyes as they had done on many occasions, but this night she sensed something more in their eyes. A sensation of dread overcame her when one of the men known as Domingo came forward from a small circle of men with Theresa by his side. The two of them stopped before El Lince who finished mopping his plate with a piece of stale bread.

“We want to speak to you,” Theresa said to El Lince, ignoring Lianne's presence.

“Quiet!” Domingo ordered. “I am the man here. I will talk.”

Theresa grew silent, but her eyes glowed bright. Lianne felt strangely ill. Once before she had seen a woman look like that. She recalled Paulette Dubois' eyes had glittered their hatred for her the night she arranged for Daniel to be in the summerhouse. The night Victor had turned away from her as her friend. Now Theresa seemed to have stirred Domingo and the others, and Lianne knew their vicious looks were for her.

“What do you want?” El Lince asked.

“How long must we travel before we face Raoul de Lovis?” Domingo placed his hands on his hips and appeared forbidding, but the man's stance didn't bother El Lince.

“We've come to the end of the trip. No more running.”

“This is where you will face de Lovis? Here on this mountain?”

“
Sí
. We're at the top. De Lovis will be at the bottom and unable to reach us. There's one path to the bottom. When his men come up, we pick them off one at a time.”

“How do you know he will even come this way?” Domingo asked.

El Lince smiled. “I've left a trail a child could follow. Never fear,
amigo
, de Lovis will come.”

“Hmmph!” Theresa scoffed. “Just what will happen to
her
after de Lovis is dead? I don't think you will rid yourself of this one.”

“You ask too many questions, Theresa, and the answers don't concern you.” El Lince practically growled at her, and Theresa jumped.

“I see now that I was right to be wary of her.” Theresa inclined her head towards Lianne. “You want her, El Lince, and that is not good for my people. Your heart has grown soft, otherwise, this
puta
would have been made to suffer for her husband's crimes.”

“Theresa is right,” Domingo said and the men who gathered around them nodded their heads in agreement.

“What do you wish me to do with Dona Lianne? The choice is yours,” El Lince told them. His cold smile struck fear in Lianne's breast.

“Our custom has always been to whip the
putas
. This one deserves such a punishment,” Theresa insisted. “And if you do not do this, El Lince, we'll know you are not our true leader, and I will wish to heaven I had let you die that day on the road.”

“Ah, Theresa, your suspicions disturb me, but since that is the custom among you, then so be it. At dawn, Dona Lianne shall pay for her sins.”

The men nodded in silent agreement and wandered away to sleep, but Theresa smiled in triumph at Lianne before joining Domingo under his blanket.

“So I am to suffer because I married Raoul de Lovis.” Lianne faced El Lince. She wished she could see his whole face, but the sombrero obscured it from her.

“Aren't you afraid?” he asked.

“Yes.” Her whisper was low and strained, and her hands trembled.

“Do you trust me, Lianne?”

She didn't believe he asked her such an absurd question, but she realized she did trust him. “Yes.”

“Then be watchful and on your guard. Ask me no questions, but know that I'll protect you.”

Later that night, El Lince tapped her shoulder and rose from the blanket beside her. She stood with him and they quietly made their way through the maze of sleeping men. Lianne caught a glimpse of Theresa enfolded in Domingo's arms, but no one noticed them leave the campsite and head down the mountain path. At the bottom, Lianne discovered El Lince's horse waited, and Felix and Carmen were already mounted on his.

“Where are we going?” Lianne asked him when they rode through the starry night.

He sighed and his breath ruffled the auburn wisps of her hair. “To find your husband,
chica
. We ride toward Raoul de Lovis.”

Lianne thought El Lince must wish to die. She couldn't believe she heard him correctly, but there was no doubt, they traveled in the same direction they had come.

“I imagine your husband is about a day's ride from us,” he said at one point. Soft pink light streaked the violet sky and bathed the landscape in the same hues.

Lianne rested her head against his hard chest, unable to comprehend the man. Why was he returning her to her husband?

El Lince read her mind before she asked the question aloud. “I must face de Lovis as an equal. I was wrong to kidnap you and Carmen. I allowed my pain to interfere with rational thought. Evidently you wished to be his wife and willingly gave yourself to him. I can't blame you for all of it.”

“I don't understand what you're talking about.”

“Don't worry. If you're lucky, you never will.”

When the sun blazed down upon them, El Lince and Felix stopped the horses by a cave at the foot of a mountain whose entrance had been covered with bramble bush. After Felix removed the brush, he led Carmen and the horse into the dark depths with El Lince's horse and its riders following.

“Only we know the cave is here,” El Lince informed Lianne. “We'll rest here until evening. Then we'll start toward Pachuca.”

Lianne didn't know if she wanted to return to Pachuca and Raoul, but she knew she had to. She had her daughter there and carried another child. There was no other alternative.

“I can't wait for a bath,” Lianne said and meant it. It had been five days since she'd bathed.

“Me too,” agreed Carmen.

Felix grinned. “Shall I tell them?” he asked El Lince. El Lince nodded.

“There is an underground pool in the cave. You may both bathe there.”

“Really!” squealed Carmen. “Take me there right now. I demand it!”

“First we build a fire,” El Lince said. “Then you ladies may bathe.”

After a fire was made by Felix and El Lince, everyone settled down for a few minutes by its warming flames. The cave's walls were illuminated by the soft glow. Lianne relaxed against the wall and thought the situation in which she found herself was strange. Here she sat in companionable silence with her kidnappers and wasn't in the least frightened. El Lince had saved her from the sting of the whip and had forfeited his position with the
banditos
. But why?

“I do wish to bathe,” Carmen said and scratched at her neck.

El Lince turned to Lianne. “Do you want to bathe now?”

Lianne liked the feeling of cozy warmth which had invaded her body. She shook her head, and El Lince told Felix to take a torch and escort Carmen to the pool.

When they departed, Lianne said, “I think they might like to be alone.”

“Ah, you're playing cupid.” El Lince smiled.

“Carmen deserves some happiness, even if only for a few hours. Her life with her husband was horrible. I think the only reason she doesn't feel guilty over his death is because Diego deserved to die.”

“Carmen killed him, didn't she?”

“Yes, she stabbed him when he tried to rape her.”

“I owe Carmen my thanks. If she hadn't killed him, I would have.”

“You knew Diego?”

He nodded. The sombrero obscured his eyes. “Very well.”

He said nothing else, but from his biting tone, she decided it was a good thing Diego had died at Carmen's hands rather than El Lince's.

Lianne moved closer to the fire and made a futile attempt to see beneath his sombrero. “It's aggravating to speak to someone I can't see clearly. I wish you'd allow me to see your face.”

“For your own safety, it's best you don't, Dona Lianne.”

“How formal you are! The other night you weren't so cold.”

“You made me lose my head.”

She recalled the feel of his hands upon her and her response. She found herself blushing. “Do you lose your head often, El Lince? Theresa was one of your conquests, too.”

“I admit she was, but I needed Theresa. She was a good friend to me, but I never loved her. I loved only one woman, and she betrayed me.”

“I'm sorry,” Lianne said, “but your past has nothing to do with me.”

His silence gave her cause to feel that she was somehow responsible for whatever pain he carried inside him. She resented feeling this way, but she did owe him her thanks for saving her from the whip and thought perhaps he might not be as menacing as he seemed.

“I'm grateful to you for protecting me. I know you've ostracized yourself from your people for my sake. Why did you do it?”

His head turned in her direction. “Don't think I did it out of a sense of nobility. I only hate to see such beautiful flesh scarred.”

“You can turn around now,” Carmen told Felix when she finished stepping into the breeches and pulling her poncho over her head. The water had chilled her but revitalized her. She shook her wet head. “I feel so clean now.”

Felix turned around, having had to face in the opposite direction while Carmen bathed. But she didn't know that he had sneaked a look at her as the water lapped over her. In the torchlight she had seemed like a beautiful, voluptuous water nymph to him, and rage washed over him to think of the way Diego Gonzalez had abused her. But no longer. The man was dead, and Felix suddenly wished to make up for any pain she had suffered.

Carmen moved forward and laughed up into his face. “Whatever is wrong with you, Felix? You look so odd.”

He wondered if she was able to see the desire on his face for her, read his thoughts. He wished she could. Things would be so much easier, but he knew Carmen was basically still innocent and had never tasted passion for a man.
Madre de Dios!
he thought to himself. I love her!

Unable to resist, he took her hand. The moment he touched her he knew he wanted her, that he'd never love anyone else. And when he bent and kissed her gently on the lips, he knew he must marry her and make her his own. Never mind that she was the daughter of Raoul de Lovis. He loved her. He did!

“Felix,” she said breathlessly. “Why did you kiss me?”

Should he tell her and risk being called a
lepero
in that haughty voice of hers? “Carmen, I … love you.” There, he had said it.

“I love you, too,” she said. “I've loved you since that day you carried me across the mud puddle.”

Felix didn't believe his ears, but there was no doubt she loved him when she threw her arms around him and pressed her lush body against his, kissing him with a passion which equaled his own. “Love me now, Felix. Please,” she begged between drugging kisses.

He groaned her name but put her from him. “No.”

“You love me, don't you?”

“
Si,
more than my life, but will you marry me, Carmen? I want you as my wife, and I fear I'm not good enough for you.”

“Silly
lepero
.” She laughed her delight. “I'll marry you and live on the streets with you.”

“I'll be a good husband to you, Carmen. I swear this on my mother's grave.”