Woman of Three Worlds (33 page)

All Brittany's sisters-in-law–to–be congregated daily in Beatriz's home to oversee the fitting and sewing of Brittany's white satin and lace gown. They soon stopped offering her small cigars from jeweled silver cases, but she sipped chocolate with them and tried to be courteous under their barrage of questions. They weren't to blame for the bargain she had made.

Except for thin, brown-haired Luisa Concepción, who sat stiffly in a corner, looking as miserable as Brittany felt, and Doña Mercedes, who could not countenance her nephew's marriage to a heretic, all the de Haros were kind to Brittany, and delighted that she had learned Spanish enough to satisfy their curiosity on at least some matters.

Even though she was being forced into this marriage, the family's warm acceptance made Brittany say apologetically, “It's good of you to go to so much trouble when you must surely have expected Roque to marry a countrywoman and one of his faith.”

Magdalena, Tranquilino's stately wife, regarded Brittany with still beautiful dark eyes and said thoughtfully, “In truth, we feared he would never marry again. He adored Francisca. It seemed he would go mad when she died. When he finally left off mourning, he—” she broke off, blushing, ending her sentence with a delicate cough.

Nacho had brought Elena in for the festivities and now that plump, earthy, matter-of-fact woman blew a ring of smoke into the air as she laughed and said, “Magdalena means that Roque led such a life that it's truly marvelous he hasn't been shot. We will all breathe easier to see him married.”

As admiringly scandalized reminiscences swirled about Roque's innumerable amorous escapades, Brittany scarcely listened. Zach should be halfway back to Arizona. If only she were with him! She had an impulse to shout at the comfortably gossiping women, “I don't want to marry your Roque at all! I promised in order to save the man I love!”

But they couldn't help her, even if they'd wanted to, even if they'd been able to comprehend the unbelievable fact that any woman wouldn't glory in being the chosen of a de Haro. Elena, in her blunt, good-humored way, had summed it up perfectly. “All you need to know about these men is their family motto,
‘After God, de Haro.'
”

Brittany told herself she was a fool to yearn after a man who'd tracked her for a reward, not for love. That did little good. She picked at her food, slept badly, and awaited her wedding as a condemned person might mark hours till the execution.

XXIV

The
sala
was banked with flowers till it looked and smelled like a magnificent garden. Tapers burned altarlike on a chest draped in white and gold velvet. The tall young priest waited behind it. Not only de Haros and their relations but the proudest families of Alamos and Sonora occupied dozens of chairs arranged to give everyone a good view.

Roque stood by the altar, incredibly handsome in black with a snowy ruffled shirt. He smiled encouragingly as Brittany, veiled in a cascade of lace and pearls, moved numbly forward on Tranquilino's steadying arm. Roque reached for Brittany's hand. His eyes glowed with such joy that she irrationally felt as if she were the one tricking him into marriage.

As Roque's hand claimed hers, the dense mass of flowers and greenery at his side was scattered. Before anyone could move, before Roque saw the silver-haired woman lunging at him with a broad-bladed knife, she had stabbed it into the side of his throat, given it a mighty jerk forward.

Half decapitated, blood gushing, Roque threw up his arms, turned, and fell at Brittany's feet. Only his body kept Lisette from reaching Brittany. As she drew back her arm to attack across him, Luisa Concepción, seated closest, gave a wail like a lost soul, sprang forward and seized the woman's arm.

The frail girl, powered by grief at this slaughter of the man she secretly loved, wrested the knife to the side and backward, driving it into Lisette's belly, dragging it upward through clothing and flesh.

When Brittany fell to her knees by Roque, he was already dead.

The de Haros tried to persuade Brittany to stay in Alamos. She was the same as married to Roque, they insisted. He would have wanted them to look after her.

“No,” she said, not having to pretend shock or distress. “I will go back to my own country. But bless you for your kindness.” She had no wish to tell this sorrowing family the truth of the almost-wedding.

Attending the solemn funeral, she wore black and wept. Strangely, Roque was the closest companion she had ever had. There was much good and tenderness in him as well as gallant grace. Though she was unutterably glad to escape a mockery of marriage, she did indeed mourn him. Luisa Concepción was not at the funeral. She was demented. All the family could do was hope that time would heal her.

After the funeral party returned from the cemetery, Brittany changed into her riding habit. Though the de Haros had urged her to take money and jewels enough to make her rich, she had refused everything except enough money and supplies for the journey, and La Dorada.

When the brothers wanted to find her an armed escort, since she refused to wait for a train, she assured them that she'd select a bodyguard from the men at Los Caciques who knew the way through the mountains. She regretted the lie, but her private conviction was that she'd stand a better chance alone, slipping through the mountains, for of late the main road had certainly not been safe.

Escorted by Mateo to Los Caciques, she embraced Panchita and they wept together. Anselmo had confirmed that the sweet-tempered Indian woman and her children were extremely well provided for. As a measure of atonement for harboring the insanely jealous Lisette, he intended to keep a paternal eye on the children and assist Panchita with their upbringing.

Brittany spent the night in her old room, sleeping soundly for the first time since she had made the fateful bargain to save Zach. Next morning after breakfast, she gave the children a last ride on the golden mare, kissed them and told them to be happy and take care of their mother. They were too young to really understand about Roque, but they cried because their mother did.

Food, blankets, and a scabbarded rifle were being tied to the saddle when Brittany made her farewell to Panchita. They wished each other all luck.

Brittany fought tears as she walked down the colonnade. She took off the elegant wine riding habit and put on her buckskins and moccasins, wrinkling her nose. She never had cleaned them. Not that it mattered much now. They'd have quickly gotten stained.

That morning, while seeing to loading La Dorada, Brittany had told Mateo she was traveling alone. When he started to argue, she said forcefully, “Mateo, I'll be safer alone. A single rider's much less likely to be seen than a group. Besides, Apaches won't attack a woman dressed like them.”

“But if they stop you, discover you are American—”

“At worst, I'll be a prisoner again. I'll get away at the right time.”

He examined that, obviously amazed that she could be philosophical at the prospect. But she had been a captive, so if she felt that way—“Bandits, señorita!” he remembered. “Bandits will see that fine golden horse and they'll treat you worse if they think you're Apache!”

“Of late, it sounds as if bandits have shifted to the main routes,” she said with a dry laugh. “It seems they too are afraid of Apaches.”

His pock-marked face was irresolute. “If Don Roque's brothers learn you went alone—”

Brittany laughed. “Mateo,
amigo
, I don't think it would ever occur to them that I would! If they do ask, you can say I slipped off, at which they'll sadly conclude I was insane!”

“Perhaps you are,” he sighed. “Yet what you say makes sense if one leaves out fear.”

She could not leave it out as much as her bold words would indicate, but she truly judged her chances were best this way. She didn't want to see a dozen men butchered on her account. Also, dismal as the investigation would be. she meant to try to find the
ranchería
, learn what had happened to Jody, Pretty Eyes, and Sara.

If all she found were their bones, at least she could bury those in the proper way, while praying that their spirits had long since found the trail to their Happy Place.

Now, dressed as an Apache, she entered the courtyard. Mateo's eyes widened to see her. “You could be one of
them
,” he whispered, but he helped her mount into the man's saddle, much more practical for a journey than the awkward sidesaddle. “Go with God, my lady.”

“And He with you, Mateo.”

He bowed his face to her hand. From the tower, Panchita and the children were watching. Brittany waved to them, took a last sweeping look at the citadel-home. Her life could not lie here, she was glad to leave, yet tears misted her eyes as she swung La Dorada through the gate.

Along with her genuine sorrow for Roque and those who loved him, she felt something like a bird that was confined for a long time to a luxurious, roomy cage and suddenly confronted with an open door. Its urge for bright air would carry it out, but as it tentatively spread its wings it would remember the safe comfort and falter a bit in the first strong winds of freedom.

Fortunately La Dorada did not. She almost danced as they started northwest up the valley, one ear tilted back toward Brittany, the better to discern her wishes. Brittany stroked the spun-gold mane.

“You're right, pretty one, it's a good morning. Now let's see how clever we can be about avoiding trouble!”

Mid-March had a springlike climate around Alamos, but they must have gradually ascended several thousand feet that day, because it was cool when they reached a spring among oaks and junipers where Brittany decided to spend the night.

Rubbing off La Dorada's sweaty back, she let her roll in the soft sand of the wash before hobbling her and giving her a handful of grain. Brittany planned to stop at the mining camp and replenish supplies, but it was best to be sparing, in case she somehow missed that outpost. She distinctly remembered this spring from her journey with Roque, and knew if she kept to a position to the left and west of the towering sierra, passing along north-south valleys, she would eventually come out in Arizona.

She hoped that she'd be able to recognize some of the plains and mountains through which Kah-Tay had brought her, but if she couldn't, she'd come at last to the wagon road linking Camp Bowie with the east. It would be, even with the best luck, a long, arduous journey, so she intended to rest La Dorada often and let her graze as much as possible to compensate for lack of the grain the mare was used to.

For herself it was the time of flowering agaves. Sara had told her how to bake the hearts and stalks, which formed a staple of Apache diet and could be dried for future use. There was the rifle, but apart from the danger of its sound bringing people she'd rather not meet, she didn't want to kill deer unless she had to.

A fire would have been warming company in the silence disturbed only by bird calls and the sounds of La Dorada's moving about in search of grass. Brittany had flint and steel but forbore using them. In the brightness of full day she might risk fire, but not with twilight closing in.

Battling a wave of lonely nervousness, she made her bed in a cluster of small oaks, draping one blanket over low limbs to make a sort of shelter. It would cut the wind, but more important, it gave her the feeling of being protected by a roof.

Remembering Sara's words about how to travel safely, Brittany made her camp a good distance from the spring, so she wouldn't be seen by anyone seeking water, and used a dead leafy branch to brush out the tracks she and her mare had made in the sand.

With La Dorada hobbled in a clearing hidden from the spring, Brittany felt she had concealed their presence as thoroughly as she could. Leaning against the oak portal of her bed-shelter, she rummaged in one of the food packs and came out with chewy dried peaches, cheese, and a confection of dates and nuts. She was mixing parched ground corn with water when hands closed on hers, compelling her to drop the waterskin.

As she wrenched about, the cry in her throat changed to a choking gasp. “Zach!” Joyful shock went through her.

“Yes, and you're damn lucky it is!” Still pinioning her, he gave her an exasperated shake. “What the hell are you doing?”

“What are
you
doing?” she shot back, anger blotting out her first relieved happiness. “Sneaking up on me, frightening me out of my skin …?”

“You seem to be firmly arranged inside it,” he said. “I've followed you all day, thinking you must surely have planned to meet with a party, but when you camped here—Are you trying to get back to Camp Bowie on your own?”

“What does it look like?” she snapped, jerking away from him and scrambling to a safer distance. “Why are you spying on me? You ought to be almost home by now!”

“After your prospective brothers-in-law got me out of jail, I had a little celebration. When I sobered up, the girl—someone told me you lost your bridegroom at the altar. So I decided to hang around and see if you might want my help getting back north.”

Her lip curled. “Even after what the de Haros gave you, you still want Erskine's reward?”

His eyes narrowed before he shrugged. “Every little bit helps.”

“If you trailed me to the
hacienda
, why didn't you just offer to escort me from there instead of playing this silly game?”

He gave a bitter laugh. “With you, I've learned to expect complications. If you had some dashing
hidalgo
or officer in reserve and were meeting him, I didn't want to intrude.”

“What a flattering opinion you have of me!”

“Erskine didn't offer a reward because you were his daughter's governess,” he said rather bitterly. “Michael O'Shea didn't volunteer for patrol after patrol just because you were a friend. You even had Kah-Tay eating from your hand. So yes, hell, yes, I expected you had more strings to your bow than your lamented Don Roque. Since you apparently didn't, he must have been quite a man.”