Texas Woman

“No, I guess it is not.” He hissed with the pain as he hugged his arms to his body and slowly rolled over. Once he was flat on his back, he groaned again.

“How do you feel?”

“I do not think anything is broken, but I have one hell of a headache.”

Sloan knelt beside him and ran her hand impersonally over his rain-damp clothes, checking to make sure he was telling the truth. She felt the muscle and sinew that lay beneath the cloth and wondered if she would ever be able to give herself freely to him again.

She forced her thoughts away from the future to the here and now. When she was done with her examination, she confirmed, “Nothing’s broken as far as I can tell, unless you’ve cracked your skull.”

“I do not think it is that bad,” he said with a wry grin.

She had to accept his word. She expressed her tremendous relief by easing her aching body down onto the grass, crossing her arms, and raising them to cover her face as she leaned her head back against a fallen branch.

Cruz dragged himself up onto one elbow and reached out a hand to comfort her by softly stroking her hair. “Please do not cry. I could not bear it.”

Sloan sat up, eyes dry, and said, “I wasn’t crying. I was thinking.”

“Oh? What have you decided?”

“If we can get ourselves up on that big palomino stallion, we can be home by dinnertime.”

There it was again. The reference to Dolorosa as home. Cruz let himself hope. It was all he had left.

Sloan struggled upright, then leaned over so Cruz could hook his arm around her shoulder.

Cruz’s head spun once he was upright, and he had to stand still for a minute before he regained enough balance to move. “That was some bump on the head,” he muttered.

Together, they made their way to the bayo. Sloan helped Cruz drink a sip of water from the canteen, then drank some herself. She dampened the bandanna with some water and washed the blood from his face as best she could. She tied the bandanna around his forehead to keep the dust out of the cut until they could get home and stitch it up.

She bit back a moan when he gave her a push to help her into the saddle. He moaned when he stepped up onto the stallion behind her.

They traveled at a walk, since anything more than that would have been painful. Cruz slipped his arm around Sloan’s waist and pulled her back against him. “We must talk, Cebellina.”

Sloan sighed.

“I am sorry you found out the way you did that I have been working with the Englishman.”

Sloan closed her eyes and bit her lower lip to keep from crying. Until now, there had been some faint hope she might have been mistaken. But Cruz had just confirmed her worst suspicions.

“I can only tell you I have my reasons for what I am doing.”

Sloan searched Cruz’s face for the answers he hadn’t offered and found only the aristocratic pride that demanded her trust. She wanted so much to be able to give it. But too much had happened in the past for her to remain silent.

“Did you know Alejandro Sanchez was still alive when you married me?” she asked.

“No, not until later. A bandit named Jorge Gutierrez was hanged in Alejandro’s place. His face was covered with a black bag. I saw Alejandro’s turquoise and silver bracelet and assumed it was him.”

Sloan grunted. So he hadn’t lied about that, at least.

“Are you all right?”

“I jostled my hip. I’ll be fine.”

“Where do we go from here?”

“I’m not sure I can ever trust you again, Cruz. And I don’t think I could bear a lifetime of doubt and suspicion. Maybe it’s time I went home to Three Oaks.”

Sloan felt Cruz’s arm tighten around her and the swift exhalation of his warm breath on the back of her neck.

“Dolorosa is your home,” he said fiercely. “You cannot go back to Three Oaks now. You still owe me two more months-”

“Surely you can’t expect me to abide by that agreement after everything that’s happened.”

“Oh, but I do. I have told you this other business has nothing to do with us.”

“It does if it means you have to lie to me.”

Cruz swore under his breath. “I cannot explain myself now. You will have to trust me.”

“You ask the impossible,” she whispered.

Cruz’s hacienda should have been a welcome sight, but there was too much left unsaid that they knew would never be spoken once they reached their destination. Yet neither of them slowed the bayo when he picked up his pace as they neared the fortress gates.

Sloan didn’t mention leaving again, but she had made up her mind to return to Three Oaks as soon as her hip was mended enough that she could sit a horse comfortably.

They rode through the fortress gates to exclamations of relief from the pobres, who had been told to be on the lookout for Senora Sloan. Tomasita had discovered her missing early that morning, and Cruz’s vaqueros were out even now searching for her. Runners were quickly sent to carry word that Don Cruz’s wife was safe.

“Patron! Patron! You have found the senora. Gracias a Dios!” Josefa cried, running out of the house to greet them with Cisco and Betsy clinging to her skirt.

Tomasita followed close behind her exclaiming, “You are hurt, Don Cruz. What happened?”

Dona Lucia remained on the veranda, her lips twisted in disgust as she realized that once more an opportunity had come and gone to be rid of her son’s gringa wife. “Come inside, Josefa, and bring the children. Tomasita, your presence is not needed here. Go to your room.”

Once satisfied that Josefa and Tomasita had responded to her commands, Dona Lucia turned to the mestizo servant beside her and ordered, “Sancho, send for the curandera, Maria. We have need of her.”

Cruz carefully eased his aching body off the stallion, then reached up to help Sloan down. He put his arm around her and pulled her close, walking with her up the steps of the veranda to greet his mother.

“Good morning, Mama.”

“I will not ask why you thought it necessary to go riding in a thunderstorm,” Dona Lucia said to Sloan with icy hauteur, “but when you risk my son’s life with your childish games-”

“That is enough, Mama. Please excuse us. We are both hungry and tired and need to avail ourselves of Maria’s healing hands.”

Cruz tightened his grip on Sloan and stepped around his mother, unaware of Dona Lucia’s whitened knuckles fisted in the folds of her satin skirt or her eyes that stabbed Sloan’s back.

“Thank you,” Sloan said once they were inside the adobe hacienda.

“For what?”

“For defending me.”

“I apologize for the fact that I should need to defend you. Mama is set in her ways. It is not easy for her to accept the fact that I have chosen my own wife.”

Sloan’s limp was worse because her bruised muscles had stiffened in the saddle. Cruz simply picked her up, his eyes daring her to protest, and carried her to the bedroom, where he laid her on their bed. He removed her boots and sat down beside her while they waited for the curandera to arrive.

Dona Lucia arrived in the doorway moments later with a tray containing two silver goblets and a bottle of brandy. “I thought you might need something to fortify yourselves until Maria arrives.”

Cruz had to admit a brandy sounded good. His mother turned slightly away to fill one goblet with the golden liquid and offered it to Sloan, who had inched herself upright with the pillow supporting her back. Then she filled a second goblet for Cruz.

Dona Lucia waited to see Cruz take a sip of brandy from the goblet she had handed to him-she wanted no chance of a deadly mistake. This time she would be rid of that woman for good, and her death could be blamed on some injury she had acquired in the storm.

Satisfied that she had accomplished what she had come to do, Dona Lucia left the room, saying, “I will go see what is keeping Maria.”

Cruz sat back down on the bed beside Sloan and touched his goblet to hers, offering a toast, “To long life. To happiness. To love.” He lifted the goblet and took another sip of the fine brandy.

Sloan lifted the goblet to her lips and held it there for a moment, as she contemplated whether she could honestly drink to such a toast. But in her mind’s eyes she saw nothing of happiness and love, and despaired of a long life spent without them. Distraught by the shattered images his words had conjured, she felt the goblet slip from her hand, soaking the sheets in brandy.

“Oh no!” She stared at the brown stain, thinking how quickly what had once been pure was now unclean. “I don’t know what happened. I thought I could handle-oh, Cruz!”

All the pain she had held in abeyance during the crisis just past came flooding across her. “I can’t bear it. How could you do it? How could you lie to me just like Tonio?”

Her head fell back against the pillow, and she turned her face away from him, squeezing her eyes shut to hold back the tears, gritting her teeth to contain the sobs.

Cruz slipped farther onto the bed next to her and laid his head on the pillow beside her. He gently eased his arm across her waist and felt her flinch beneath his touch. “I am sorry for your pain, Cebellina. You will never know how sorry.”