Stronger Than Passion (51 page)

Her eyes were level and honest, and they watched as he turned ugly and hard. His mouth curled with cynicism. “So, you think I covet your silver? I do, my dear - as well as your own lovely self. I will have you both. But why do you pretend to love this gringo dog? It is unworthy of you.”

“Get her out of here, Arredondo. Let’s finish this.” That from Michael, who seemed to have tensed in some indefinable way, prompting suspicious stares from his guards.

“I do not care for ultimatums or threats - from anyone.” His gaze fell on Michael and then returned to Christina. “Señora, you have disappointed me. If you refuse to marry me now, so be it, but I will not set this man free to bother me again. Nor will I release you to leave me, either. You may as well know now that I intend to take you to my country estancia for a time - where I will ensure that you spend many busy hours being comforted for Señor Brett’s death. In all of this confusion, no one will think to wonder where you have gone. And of course, you will remain there until you find yourself persuaded to accede to my wishes in everything. I am through catering to your whims, my dear - you do belong to me now . . . Ramirez!”

The capitan, who had hesitated to force her before, pulled her away a few steps . . . only to release her in sudden, surprising pain as something sharp sliced into his forearm. He yelped, and jumped back, his flat eyes going to the no-longer-so helpless Señora in unease at this new development.

Christina stepped back, her small knife held before her in an odd recreation of that other time, when she had wielded a blade against Michael . . . did he remember? She could spare no glance for him now. Her eyes flashed from Ramirez to Luis, the two men closest to her, with concentration and the fortifying assurance that she had done this before.

Luis was annoyed now, and showing his annoyance openly. “Por Dios, what do you think you are doing? Give me that knife immediately!”

He stepped toward her, extending his hand; but halted when she said, calmly, “I will cut you, Luis. Believe me; I have done it before.”

“She certainly has!” came Michael’s wry, hoarse voice. “She cut herself. Get that thing away from her!”

Luis goaded with fury at her behavior, sprang forward to grab the knife. And at the same time, with the interested gaze of every man present on the diverting spectacle of the Marquès disarming a woman, Michael gathered his will and his remaining energy and used his two clutched arms to fling the mercenaries in toward each other, knocking them together in surprise, and managing, this time, to grab at a weapon or two. There would be no simple escaping now; he would not leave Christina behind. He snatched a large hunting knife out of a sheath on one of the Mexican’s thighs - and without thinking jabbed it into the man’s side, slicing upwards. The man fell at once, screaming, as Michael dropped the knife, kicking it behind him, and used two unsteady hands to point a pistolero at his other closest nemesis. The man jumped away in utter disbelief. Luis, meanwhile, was cursing at the evil gash Christina had made in his chest - and slapping her in the face, undeterred by pain or the blood that streamed from the cut.

Ramirez quickly noticed the movement in Michael’s direction, and raised his gun. But Michael fired first. He hit Ramirez full in the heart, and the capitan crashed over backwards, onto a table filled with glassware. One of his remaining able men went to him; the other stood motionless and unsure, frozen for the moment in befuddled shock.

The servants were alarmed by now, too alarmed to remain hidden away, as instructed by the Patron. They rushed to the front of the house to crowd in the sala doorway, and someone started to shriek - setting off the others; including the ladies upstairs. Luis left off hitting Christina long enough to glance around him, observe the mayhem wrought in a matter of seconds, and shout out in rage. He threw Christina aside and drove directly at Michael; his face twisted, the rush of lustful violence still in him, and contemptuously uncaring that Brett still held the gun, and it was now pointed at him.

Neither man spoke, nor had time to. Luis came forward, hoping, perhaps, that Michael would drop the gun due to his injuries, which had him down on his knees and coughing. But in the end Luis probably didn’t think at all. There was nothing but a look of intense hatred on his face as the gun went off and caught him, jerking his right shoulder back, and bringing him down hard onto the pretty patterns of his own carpet.

Michael tried to rise, to go to Christina, who lay watching him, wide-eyed, across the room. There was something wrong with her, too; she wasn’t moving . . but there were still two unharmed mercenaries left in the room, to be dealt with somehow, who would keep him from her. He would go through them. Christina lay so still, and her face was whitening, she was in pain . . . had she contrived to stab herself again?

His thoughts were becoming incoherent now, and when he saw Penny, red hair wildly astray, fly into the room, shoving the wailing servants aside - followed by three men whom he vaguely recognized, Americans all, guns thrust forward, who were managing to terrify the servants even worse than they already were, not to mention the two lone, healthy Mexicans - he began to wonder if one of the blows to his head wasn’t causing him to hallucinate.

But a welcome hallucination it was! If it would only turn out to be real!

He knew the truth when one of the Americans, a Louisianan from Worth’s regiment, whom he thought he had once played cards with, leaned down and said to him in a drawl, “You ought to know better than to take on a houseful of Mexies by yourself, sir, even if you are a Texan!”

And then the man helped him to rise, and to cross the long reach of room to Christina.

How nice if the dark days were really behind her now. How lovely, if all the confusion and the bewilderment and the sickness of the past summer were actually gone for good . . . if she could regain her strength and mend, and heal quickly, so that her life could continue smoothly now, serenely. If she were only able to regain some semblance of her former calm, her former assurance of what she was and who she was, and that being alone, and Patrona of her own estate, was the most important course along which her life was meant to run . . . then perhaps she could adjust, and forget everything that had happened over the past year. She must forget, in order to live.

When she came to her senses after collapsing in Luis’s sala from the horrible, unthinkable pains in her belly, she found that she had been carried not to a convent or hospital - but to the British Embassy; the safest place at that moment in Mexico City. And while she had lain, writhing and semiconscious and finally unconscious as her body purged itself of the unimagined and incredible life that had grown in her without her knowledge, Mexico City had been both conquered and occupied by American troops. Outside, in the plazas and boulevards of the town, men had fought and died. Inside the Embassy, she had miscarried her own undreamed of child.

It was difficult to grieve for something she had not even known she possessed, that was now ripped from her; difficult, but not at all impossible. But she had suffered another strange loss that night, or possibly the day after, she could not be sure. Another loss that she had not really conceived of before in her rational mind, that she had never considered herself as actually having to lose. One that overwhelmed her more as every second of disbelief passed, as every moment of forced realization sank in, so that this impossible happening both aided in taking her thoughts off of the other - and making them somehow worse.

John Locklyn was her first visitor of consequence aside from the physician who told her of her miscarriage; and he was the one delegated to impart to her the other unpleasant news. He was uncomfortable and unsteady in her room at the Embassy, obviously wishing himself somewhere else.

But she had been so glad to see him! So pleased to view a familiar face, after the utter astonishment of waking from a chaotic and pain-filled nightmare to discover herself alone - except for a nurse and a physician - and at the British Embassy, of all places. Michael had brought her here, she remembered that much, after all the violence and her collapse. But then he had left her. And where was he now?

“I’m afraid that Michael has taken ship to England. His poor brother Robert has died at long last, and we received the news only yesterday. Of course Michael had to go at once; the formalities must be overseen concerning his inheritance and the succession. And his mother, of course, needs him now . . . Michael has somewhat neglected his duty to his family over the years, and now is his opportunity to set things aright. He had no choice but to go.”

Christina’s brain refused, at first, to understand. “He has gone to England? But . . . what of the war? And he was injured, I’m sure of it. How - ”

“The Americans have things well in hand here, I’m afraid, without Michael. And it’s true that he was hurt; he would have been useless to them for the present. He will regain his health on board
the ship.”

“Did he . . .” she scarcely knew what to ask.

But John, it seems, guessed. “He left no specific message for you, there was no time - he was already late for the steamship. But he entrusted your care to me personally, and I strongly feel he will return as soon as he has matters in hand in England.”

“He may not bother,” she heard herself saying. “He has a fiancée there, I understand.”

“If you mean the Lady Elizabeth, I believe that their connection is over. I only recently discovered that she is responsible for informing Santa Anna of your own involvement with Michael in Texas. She wrote to an old friend of hers, Sir Lawrence Wright - who is incidentally an enemy of Michael’s - and was temporarily in residence here at the Embassy. He passed the no-doubt exaggerated tales along to Santa anna.”

Christina closed her eyes. How Elizabeth must have hated her, to commit an act so treacherous! It had changed the course of her life, and considerably endangered Michael’s . . .

“When I told Michael I had finally learned, quite by accident, that Lawrence Wright had been in correspondence with Elizabeth when she was in Texas, then he assumed - as had I - what she had likely done. Michael was not pleased.”

His dry understatement would have made Christina laugh, if she had been capable of laughter.

What did it matter now? Michael was on his way to England, where he would no doubt remain. And what of her? What sort of life could she have, now! What had really happened these last days and hours, and what did they mean?

It was only when John had left and Penny was allowed into her room a little later that she finally began to understand. Penny who, in her own self-recriminatory and uncomprehending state, in her shame that she had failed to diagnose her mistress’s “illness,” and in her anger over Lord Michael’s abrupt departure, cried and cursed and gave vent to emotions that had only begun to touch Christina with any sense of reality. Penny’s distress forced Christina to comprehend that what had just happened to her was real.

She had actually miscarried a child she had not even known she was carrying! Yet, why should she have known? In her marriage to Felipé, she had tried to conceive a child and could not. She had naturally assumed she was barren. What a twisted joke that she had finally grown fertile now . . . and had conceived a child by Michael Brett, the man least suited to be a father than any man she had ever known.

Perhaps, as the English physician had pompously informed her, it really was God’s Will and Mercy that the child had come so many months too soon, and died. For it seemed that her baby would most certainly have never had an acknowledged father.

Luis was gravely wounded, she had been told, and his life was in danger. As for that, she did not even care.

And Michael had left Mexico; left without even writing her a letter, or making some real effort - any effort - to tell her when, if ever, he would return.

Had he even known, when he left the city, what was happening to her - and even if she would live, or die! Did it matter to him at all?

She had broken down in Penny’s presence, overcome with deep, wrenching sobs that brought pain throughout her body. Penny, sensible girl that she was, sat with her silently and determinably until this first spasm of disbelieving grief had passed. Then she administered a dose of laudanum to Christina’s orange juice and forced her to drink it. Christina slept for twelve hours. When she awoke, the hatefulness and the bitterness that she knew she would feel for the rest of her life had set in.

She was now a forced guest of the British Embassy, and she made up her mind to be out of everyone’s way as quickly as it was possible for her to heal. She must manage to build her strength in order to leave here, and return to her past - the past in which she had been a placid and vaguely content woman, prey to occasional restlessness, yet sure of herself and her place. That would be her future now, yet it would be better. There would be no more emotion in her life, no upsets of any other than an average kind. She would counsel herself every day on her advantages of independence and pride, and on her responsibilities to her disgracefully neglected estate. She would devote herself once again to her people; so purposefully that there would be no time for errant thoughts, or even memories . . . those which she would dread, more than anything else, for as long as she would live.

The American General Winfield Scott was occupying Mexico City now, and Santa Anna was currently somewhere off near Puebla. But as soon as Santa Anna surrendered his troops - in a matter of days, embassy officials said - then the road to Jalapa would be clear of fighting. She would go home.