Spanish Serenade (19 page)

“And yet,” she said, “you were sent all that long way to acquire the polish of Spain.”

“My father still loves the idea of Seville and the life there. He believes in the benefits of a classical education and of rubbing shoulders with the sons of noblemen. It was a matter of pride to him to be able to send his son, though he himself would never leave New Spain. There are many, however, who even after three generations and more still plan and scheme and talk about returning. For most, it's only a dream. For me, it was a mistake.”

“You weren't impressed?”

“Oh, yes, Seville is beautiful, and I have an affection for her. And my head is stuffed with knowledge that I'll be digesting for years. Still, I had never learned the knack of bowing my head to every passing hidalgo who felt the need for homage, nor of playing at love.”

“Isabel mentioned your duchess. It seems she had taste, at least.”

He stared at her, his eyes shadowed though the flickering lantern hung just above him. “You're very kind, señorita.”

“Not at all. I suppose you will be traveling on to your home from Louisiana soon after we land, then?”

“As soon as I can persuade Refugio to go with me.”

“He . . . will have other things on his mind.”

Charro lifted his shoulders. “I'm in no great hurry.”

They talked of other matters, of the flat country around his homeland with its mild, dry weather and waving grass watered by the San Antonio River; of the grapevines shading the walls of his home, which was built like a fortress against the raids of the Apaches; of the horses raised on the hacienda and the cattle herded by the charros which sometimes stood taller than a man at the shoulder and had great spreading horns that were sharp as spears; of the mission fathers and their irrigation ditches which had changed the land; and of the mission Indians who were docile and God-fearing and nothing like the Apaches of the wide open plains. Pilar listened and asked questions with bemused interest. To her the Tejas country was somehow unreal, like a place in a legend, one that was beautiful and magical yet troubled by demons.

They were still talking when the gray light of morning, seeping in at the porthole, made the lantern light unnecessary. Charro, in the midst of a tale of how his aunt, his father's sister, had been captured by the Indians as a child, and how his grandfather had been killed trying to get her back, stood and snuffed the light. He stretched, raising his arms above his head so that his fists brushed the ceiling. Clasping his hands behind his neck, he glanced at the berth. He stiffened.

Pilar followed his arrested gaze. Refugio was awake and watching them with quiet care.

It was one of his few moments of awareness.

Refugio did not rouse again, not in the day that followed, or the next, or the next. He wanted nothing, needed nothing, required only to be left alone. He lay with eyes closed for long periods, though it was not possible to tell if he was conscious or unconscious, asleep or awake. Sometimes he stared at the ceiling or gazed at whoever was talking, but seemed neither to see nor hear. It did not appear to matter who came and went, what was said or done. He did not respond to Isabel's pleas for him to drink or to Baltasar's gruff demands to know what he thought he was doing, starving himself. There was no sense that he did not know where he was or who was with him, only that he no longer cared enough to acknowledge these things. He had retreated somewhere inside himself and was entrenched there. Whether it was the result of fever and his injury in combination with years of upheaval, or only of his own inviolable will, they could not tell.

Doña Luisa, some forty-eight hours after her first visit, brought Refugio a posset. She had made it with her own hands, she said, an art she had learned from her mother. It was made of wine and spices and a few other ingredients that were guaranteed to give him rest. Pilar, who was alone with him at that moment, eyed the cup of dark and steaming liquid with distaste and more than a little suspicion.

“Rest,” she said, “is something Refugio has had in plenty. What he needs is nourishment.”

“What do you know of such things?” the other woman said, her eyes flashing in annoyed chagrin that someone would contradict her. “Under your care he fades away before our eyes!”

The strain of the long days had had its effect on Pilar's temper. “That may be, but I will not allow you to force your witch's brew on him.”

“Witch's brew! How dare you! You forget yourself, my girl. You are only his woman, not his wife.”

“And what are you, pray?”

“His friend!”

“Oh, yes, so long as his friendship provides you pleasure and the price isn't too high.”

“Why, you little — I would know what to call you if I were not too much the lady. He can't go on like this, or he will die. He will die and you will be to blame, if you will let no one help him.”

Pilar was suddenly tired, as if she carried a great weight that none could remove. “Just go away,” she said. “Take your posset and drink it yourself, use it for a mouth refresher or hair restorer or anything you please, only go away.”

She shut the door in the other woman's face. After a moment there came a most unladylike exclamation from the other side of the door panel, then the clack of heeled slippers in withdrawal. Pilar stood listening a moment. She almost wished that she had taken the posset, if only in order to dispose of it herself. It was always possible for another one to be made, of course, so it was unlikely to make a difference. This constant vigilance was wearing. It would be nice to be certain that it had a purpose.

She turned from the door, glancing at the berth in what had become a fixed habit. Refugio lay watching her. His face, though flushed with fever and shaded with the stubble of his dark beard, was set in stolid composure. Yet for an instant she thought she saw the sheen of amusement in his eyes.

She moved to the berth and knelt beside it in a billow of skirts. Reaching for the cloth lying in a pan of water left close to hand, she moistened his dry lips. His regard was focused on her face but was lifeless once more, as though the direction of his gaze was no more than an accident.

Putting down the cloth, she took up a cup of water and held it to his mouth, tipping it a little so that a small amount ran between his teeth. He swallowed once, twice, his strong brown throat moving with difficulty but plainly, though it was hard to say if the action was from thirst or simple reflex.

She straightened, considering him. She put the water cup aside, then turned back. Her voice quiet, almost reflective, she said, “What is it? What's wrong. I know you're hurt and weak, but I can't believe a man of your strength can't mend. I refuse to believe that you want to die.”

There was no answer, no recognition that he had heard. She went on. “You can't die, I won't let you. We all need you. Without you, what hope does Vicente have of being freed? What chance is there that Charro will ever reach his home again, or that he and Baltasar and Isabel and Enrique will not be taken up by the police the minute they reach Havana? And what chance do I have of catching up to Don Esteban or getting back even a portion of what he has taken from me?  And if I don't get it back, how will I live? What will become of me?”

The reply she waited for did not come. After a time she closed her eyes. She was so tired, so very tired. She felt as if she were moving in a fog of fatigue, and her nerves jangled with what seemed like endless eons of being unable to sleep. More than that, she was angry, yes, angry, at Refugio for his continued lack of response to all they had done and were doing for him. But most of all she was angry at his desertion of them.

He was so strong, so vital. It did not seem possible that he would simply give up, no matter how extensive his injuries. What could his passive behavior mean, then, except a deliberate withdrawal? That he had a reason, she could not doubt, and yet she was not sure that his body could sustain the effort he was requiring of it, the lack of real nourishment or movement. She did not care what he was doing; he must be made to abandon it.

It seemed as if there must be something she could do to reach him, some words or act she could use to startle him into an awareness of his danger, some way she could seduce him from the course he had set himself. So much depended on it that it seemed, in the confusion of her exhaustion, that whatever she might try would be worth the cost.

She reached for the cloth again, squeezing some of the water from it but leaving it fairly sodden. Drawing down the blanket that covered Refugio, she began to bathe his face and neck as she had done a thousand times over in the past days in the constant attempt to contain his fever. As she worked she spoke, almost to herself.

“It's possible, I think, that your lying here like this has a deeper reason than just the attempt to kill you. I sometimes think that it may be because you know who did it, or think you know. Maybe you saw something, heard something, that gave away the identity of whoever paid your assailant. Possibly you are so soul-sick at the knowledge that you have no will to be well.”

Was that a fleeting shadow of response behind his eyes? Had she, somehow, gained his attention?

She drew the cooling cloth down his neck and over his shoulders with slow care, her gaze resting on his face. There was nothing there. A thoughtful frown between her eyes, she returned to what she was doing.

She turned the cloth over, then dipped it into the hollows at his collarbones. Her movements smooth yet lingering, she trailed over the broad, hard-muscled planes of his chest on either side of his breastbone. She brushed down first one arm, then the other, and holding his wrists, wiped his hands, the broad backs and callused palms and each separate, well-formed finger.

Bending, she swished her cloth in the cooling water and squeezed it out, then returned to her task.

“What is it you want?” she asked in quiet contemplation as she circled his bandaging with care, then brushed across his abdomen underneath. “Are you making a target of yourself, is that it? Do you think that you can draw whoever tried to kill you here? Do you think your weakness will encourage them to try again?”

There was an extra wet corner on the cloth. It left a trail of water across his abdomen that trickled to puddle in his navel. It was wetting the waistband of his linen under-breeches. Noticing it, Pilar swiped at the water but could not quite reach his navel, for the waistband covered it. Dropping the cloth back in the pan, she began to unbutton the waist of his underbreeches.

He drew a soft, hissing breath.

Pilar's movement stilled as she realized what she was doing and his consciousness of it. For a long moment she gazed at the area of flesh she had exposed, an area paler in color than his chest and marked by a line of tightly curling dark hair that disappeared under his last breeches buttons, an area that was board-hard with taut muscles. The slow beat of seconds passing seemed to sound with her heart's throbbing in her ears.

Quickly, before she lost her courage, she raised her lashes to stare at him. There was sentient warmth in the dark gray of his eyes, and accusation.

She drew a shaky breath and let it out slowly. “I really think that's it,” she said. “I think that this weakness of yours is feigned, a deliberate pose designed to entice whoever wants you dead to this cabin.”

The dark centers of his eyes expanded, but still he made no answer.

She moistened her lips, which had a tendency to tremble at the corners. Her voice no more than a whisper, she said, “I think that's it, but I can't be sure. There must be a way to make certain. All I have to do is find it.”

9

SHE WAITED FOR MOST of another week. She delayed until Refugio's followers had had several turns at watching with her through the long night hours, until they had each tried with useless pleas and commands, attempts at humor and even anger to rouse him. She waited until her weariness became so dense that she seemed to be walking in a dream, until she was certain there was nothing else to be done, or else that she would go mad from weighing the decision if she did not act. She waited until she could wait no longer.

She almost abandoned the idea out of the misguided hope that it would not be necessary. On the morning after her confrontation with Refugio, his fever broke. Perspiration made a wet sheen on his bronze skin. It trickled from his hairline and pooled under his eyes and in the hollows of his collarbones. The dangerous flush faded from his face. His eyes became calmer. He took a little broth as nourishment and permitted himself to be bathed and shaved and changed into a fresh pair of underbreeches, since he had no nightshirt in his wardrobe. Still, his acceptance of these attentions was listless. He was as detached from them as if they had nothing to do with him. And he did not speak.