“Weren’t they?”
“No, not like your beloved French soldiers, who raped, murdered and looted with impunity from Maximilian. At least the Juaristas were fighting to protect their own country.”
“Yes,” she said quietly, “and it will happen all over again if you’re right. Steve, please, if Mexico is in danger of having another long revolution, we’ll stay here. Or we can go to France, or even Russia. We could visit my father—he sent for me, and if not for the trouble in Bulgaria, I might be there now. Oh, Steve, it was chance that took me back to France, and then of course, finding out you had brought the children to England—”
When he remained silent, she said almost desperately, “We can go anywhere we’ll be together and not torn apart again. I don’t think I could bear it if we’re separated, or I must be away from the children again. They are just beginning to remember me. You are just beginning to remember me….”
The wariness in his eyes altered subtly. He reached out, touched a blunt fingertip to her cheek, scrubbed his thumb over the moisture he found there and lifted his dark brow.
“Tears, mi amante?”
“Steve, I want a home, a real home, where we can watch our children grow up and know that we’ll always be there together. It’s all I’ve ever wanted, but I never knew how much until recently. Until I saw you again, and saw how the children love you and how you love them. It—it showed me a side of you I hadn’t suspected was there.”
His hand dropped to his side and he didn’t respond. Ginny felt the beginning of despair well inside at the futility of wanting that elusive security and love she’d searched for since she was only a child. First, her mother had died, and her father was always absent. Though she had known herself well-loved by Tante Celine and her cousins, it had not been the same thing at all. Not even when she’d left France to join her father in America, had she felt as if she truly belonged. Always an outsider, always feeling as if she had somehow lost something precious. And she had spent far too long in search of it.
The mistakes she’d made, the men in her life—the futile search for acceptance, for unconditional love to fill the void. Now she was a woman grown, with children of her own, and she still felt as if she was that lost, lonely child inside.
Steve put his palm against her cheek, his skin rough and warm as he stroked her face gently.
“Ginny, I wasn’t going to tell you now, but I guess it’s best to get it over with. I’m leaving next week for Mexico.”
“Next week? When were you going to tell me? As you walked out the door? Oh God, Steve, I thought this time it would be different, that—”
“Listen to me, dammit. With Porfirio Díaz fighting for control and Lerdo resisting, Mexico is in danger of another fullblown revolution. You remember the last one. It wasn’t pretty. This time, there’s no leader like Juarez to guide the country in the right direction.”
“Then take me with you.” She leaned into him, intense desperation engulfing her as he began to shake his head with a frown. “If you leave me behind, our lives together will never recover. I just know it. And I could help. I knew Lerdo, and Díaz, too, so it’s not as if I would be a liability. Oh, Steve, don’t leave me behind again!”
After a silence that seemed far too long, he shook his head, a faint smile crooking his mouth. “I suppose if I don’t take you, you’ll just follow me anyway.”
“Yes,” she said, “I will. And I’ll make certain that I’m an inconvenience.”
He laughed and hooked his hand behind her neck to pull her hard against him, his breath wafting across her cheek as he bent to kiss her.
“Little hellcat. You may be of some use to me, after all, though I’m willing to bet Jim Bishop won’t agree.”
“To hell with Jim Bishop,” she said faintly as his mouth brushed across her lips.
And then Bishop was forgotten, and Mexico, and even Italian opera singers, as Steve scooped her into his arms, carried her the few steps to the wide canopied bed against the wall and tossed her onto the mattress, his lean body following her down as he slid his hands beneath her silk dressing gown. She arched upward, hungrily, reaching for him and twining her arms around his neck.
“Bruja,” he muttered against her throat, “my green-eyed witch. You’ll probably be the death of me one day….”
Her hands raked up his back, shoving impatiently at his shirt until she felt bare skin, her fingers spreading out to hold him close as she shuddered with reaction. Lamplight cast a rosy glow across the room. Lips and hands made new and remembered discoveries as their bodies moved apart, then joined again, the passion that was always between them reignited.
There was no more talk as they came together with a savage intensity, not even undressing. The restraint of the past month was gone, replaced by the familiar need that always consumed them, that had driven them to desperate acts at times, this overpowering passion between them. It was a relief and an answer, and as Steve thrust inside her, his body a hard, driving force that took her past the realm of coherent thought to mindless sensation, Ginny knew that she would do whatever she had to do to stay with him.
He was her past, her present, her future….
5
Steve Morgan was ushered into a large anteroom with gleaming marble floors beneath thick Turkish carpets. Dark mahogany panelling boasted gilt-framed paintings of austere faces beneath white powdered periwigs. A stifling room, with only one tall casement window flanked by heavy draperies allowing in thin light, it seemed to close in around him. Shadows hovered in far corners like guilty secrets
