The Legend of Zorro Page 5

Does El Zorro have a family? Could one of the boys I go to school with be the son of the Fox?

  How would that be, to know your father is a hero, to have the blood of a true warrior running through your veins?

  I dreamed. Though I was awake the whole evening, I dreamed of what it would be like to be the son of the Fox. Yet the image of Mama and Papi laughing and dancing before the fire always intruded, and surprisingly, that reality brought more joy to me than any dream.

  Chapter 3

  Alejandro’s hand playfully explored the soft, sensuous landscape of Elena’s bare back. His fingers traced the ever-changing patterns of flickering amber light cast upon her gently writhing form by the crackling, dancing flames of the parlor’s well-stoked fireplace. Elena lay on her belly, a thick wool rug beneath her, murmuring with pleasure as Alejandro’s touch raced and retreated upon her fiery, tingling flesh.

  “Any more of that and I won’t have the strength to get up and tuck in Joaquin,” said Elena huskily.

  “He’s a big boy,” responded Alejandro, dragging silk sheets over their cooling bodies to ward off a sudden breeze from the open archways of the gallery. He grinned. “Like his father.”

  Arching an eyebrow without comment, Elena reached for a plate of fruit. She plucked an emerald square that sat next to the selection of apples, pears, figs, oranges, plums and other favorites. The glistening fruit of the nopal, or prickly pear—the cactus fruit—drifted to her parched lips and disappeared.

  “I prepared those myself,” boasted Alejandro, his heart skipping with desire as he watched her lavishly consume the moist fruit. “My blade scraped away the thorns, as I always do for you, Mi Amor. The flowers wait in a vase by our bed. If we ever get there…”

  Elena smiled dreamily. The food, like so many other items in this room, reminded her of her childhood. Her gaze drifted to a wall hanging dotted with glimmering pieces of precious stones. Upon its reaches the artist had rendered an image of a sparkling pond she visited many times as a girl. Her favorite horse always went there when he ran away, a silly game between them. Her mother’s oval portrait graced another of the expensive rosewood-paneled walls, while a collection of colorful figurines depicting dancers and matadors stretched across the mantle. Silver candelabras rose at either side of the fireplace, and they, like this room’s mahogany chairs and tables, were replicas of the riches with which she had grown up.

  Those carefree days now seemed like a distant dream. One she would dream again, if she could, one that she would use as a blueprint to transform her waking life. After all these years of struggle, perhaps now such a thing was possible…

  Passion ignited within her. Her gaze fell upon the flowers she had been wearing in her hair when he carried her to this spot; their petals had been strewn about the floor as they had danced…and afterward.

  Shuddering, she reached for the carafe bearing Alejandro’s favorite tequila, dimly aware of banners of soft moonlight striking through the doorway to the outdoor gallery, riffling over her hastily discarded gown and across Alejandro’s carelessly tossed jacket and trousers.

  Twinkling stars gazed down on their tryst. Shimmering sparkles of silver light refracted upon the rims of the two shot glasses she filled. The whistling breeze licked at their bodies and crickets rose up with a playful serenade.

  “To statehood,” said Alejandro as he raised his glass.

  Elena smiled. “To us.”

  Their glasses gently clinked.

  “I wish I was there today,” said Elena wistfully.

  Alejandro stared into the endless depths of her dark, beautiful eyes. He was lost in her—and would be until the end of his days. Reassuringly, he said, “You were.”

  They slung back their shots, the strong drink burning their throats. The tequila filled Alejandro’s mouth with the taste of fiery autumn afternoons spent with his beloved in his arms. Elena set down her glass and nuzzled her husband’s chest. She lightly traced the contours of his dark rugged face. His skin burned where her fingers touched.

  “What are you thinking about?” asked Elena.

  He shrugged, attempting to act as if it were nothing. Her relentless gaze held him, and he surrendered with an easy smile. He asked, “Do you remember the night we decided on a name for Joaquin?”

  “We named him for your brother.”

  “Yes. My brother’s in my thoughts every day. He raised me after our parents died. All my life, I’ve wanted to be like him, to make him proud…”

  “I’m sure you have,” Elena whispered.

  “Would he be proud of me now? Pretending to be something that I’m not?”

  Her lovely brow furrowed in confusion. “How are you pretending?”

  “Me? A don? Think about it.”

  Elena frowned. “You’re embarrassed over our success?”

  “Not embarrassed, no,” he lied.

  Peering into her husband’s troubled eyes, Elena said, “When we were first married, Don Diego’s money was long gone. Don Montero’s remaining fortune was seized—”

  “You’re telling me things I already know.”

  “Clearly, you need a reminder,” explained Elena. “It was your vision that beheld the most fertile land in California when all others laughed. You planted crops everyone said would fail in a single season. I sold nearly all the jewelry I had left so that you could purchase cattle and gain your land grant. It was our one and only chance…”

  “They were right to laugh. I’ve told you many times why I wanted that land.”

  She smiled. “It looked like the home your brother described to you late at night, when he told you his dreams of a quiet life one day. I love to hear you talk of it.”

  “It did indeed. That was a risky time…”

  Elena’s eyes filled with happiness. “But we had each other. So we could not fail. And we didn’t.”

  “Between the cattle trade and land investments, we soon had no worries,” reminisced Alejandro.

  “Mi Amor,” Elena said proudly. “When our son was born, we lived in a palace.”

  Alejandro beamed despite himself. “Yes.” They had moved north where the grazing was better, the fertile land here a considerable improvement over the semi-arid desert around Los Angeles. Their cattle thrived, their holdings doubled, then tripled.

  “And Joaquin?” Elena’s glow faded.

  Worried, Alejandro asked, “What about him?”

  “I think sometimes I might be overprotective. It’s just that…you and me, Alejandro, we’ve both lost people we loved. I saw two men, both of whom said they were my father, die in a single afternoon. One I hardly got to know…”

  “Don Diego. El Zorro. A great man. A legend.”

  “And one I spent a lifetime believing I knew, only to learn it was all a lie.”

  Alejandro’s handsome face darkened. “Montero. A monster.”

  “Was he?” asked Elena, the firelight flickering in her lovely eyes. “I grew up wanting for nothing.”

  “Fancy clothes, a fancy house…that isn’t love.”

  “You’re right,” Elena said softly. “None of it would have meant anything if he had been a stranger to me, but he wasn’t. He was there for me. Always. When I had a nightmare, it was no servant or governess who raced to my side, who held me and read me to sleep. It was him. When I fell from my first horse and the doctors said I might never walk again, he stood with me, he would not let me surrender to despair, he taught me to fight. I wanted to ride again, and he never once tried to stop me. Montero. The monster.”

  Alejandro looked away, his lips pressed tight, his anger rising despite his best efforts to chase it away.

  “I know it pains you to hear this,” said Elena. “It’s simply that…Don Diego, my true father—I wonder how he would have raised me. Would he have tried to keep me safe, or would he have told me the truth?”

  Understanding dawned in Alejandro’s eyes. “You’re talking about our son.”

  “The moment I understood that Montero had been lying to me,
that if not for him my mother would be alive, that he took me from my father’s arms and locked him away…” She shuddered. “I’ve never felt so betrayed. Why would he do it? Raise me as his own?”

  “Vengeance against Don Diego.”

  “No. More than that.”

  “Love for your mother. Looking at you, and seeing her.”

  Elena ran her hand through her silky hair. “Wouldn’t that have been a terrible reminder? Wouldn’t he have just seen her death, the death he had caused, whether he had wanted to or not?”

  “People…they sometimes see what they want to see, and nothing else.”

  She nodded. “People do that.”

  “Joaquin is a fine boy. He’s strong. He loves us both.”

  “And when he finds out that we’ve lied to him?” asked Elena breathlessly. “Just as Montero lied to me, as Don Diego surely would have, and all for the same reason: to protect the ones we love. How will it be when that happens?”

  Alejandro could not meet her gaze. “There is no reason for him to ever find out.”

  “I’m sure that is what Montero told himself, as well. What Don Diego would have, had he been given the chance.”

  Alejandro smiled softly. “You’re forgetting one thing: we’re not them.”

  Elena knew she should have been comforted by those words.

  She wasn’t.

  “In any case, it is over now, it is done. I can’t believe it,” Elena excitedly whispered. “We have our lives back. We can finally take Joaquin on that trip to Spain. I can’t imagine how it’s changed.”

  Alejandro carefully set his glass on a barren stretch of the cool hardwood floor. “Elena…”

  She rose from him and propped herself on one elbow, her silken hair falling playfully over the side of her face. “And New York!” she burst, carelessly caressing his muscular chest. “You should see New York. It’s like the whole world has moved onto one little island—”

  “Elena,” he repeated.

  The muscles beneath her hand tensed. Elena looked up sharply. Something in his voice worried her.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Alejandro said, as casually as he could muster.

  Her smile nervously flickered. “Never a good sign.”

  Alejandro leaned back and stretched. As if suppressing a yawn, he pointed out, “California won’t really be a state for another three months…”

  Elena raised a single eyebrow. “Yes?”

  “And the Federal Marshals may need help keeping things under control until then,” Alejandro added, reaching down and caressing Elena’s flank as if she were a skittish mare.

  Elena knew that touch. She loathed it, for she knew what it always heralded: the mask of Zorro hanging between them, dividing them.

  “Look, I know what you’re thinking,” said Alejandro evenly as he put out his hands to measure a minute distance. “But here’s me, here’s quitting,” he explained, waving one hand for himself, the other for the goal. “We’re this far apart—”

  Elena leaped to her feet, snatching up a blanket and wrapping herself in it. “I can’t believe it,” she howled. “I can’t believe I fell for it!”

  Alejandro’s head sank back and smacked the hardwood floor. He winced and rolled his eyes at his own foolishness. Elena’s expression darkened even more, as if she believed his eye rolling was a comment on her statement. Bad move, he realized.

  Alejandro fancied himself an excellent card player and an even better salesman. Yet none of his tricks helped when Elena got into one of her moods. He might try charm, reasonableness, bluster or bravado, but the cause was almost always lost. Still, he had to try.

  “You’re overreacting,” he told her, delivering his most angelic smile as he grasped a sheet, wrapped it around his middle, and stood across from her.

  “Overreacting!” shouted Elena. “You made a promise! We made a promise!”

  Alejandro flushed. All this fuss over three little months. What was three months compared to the rest of their lives? Or to all the time they had spent helping California get this close to freedom?

  Her father—her true father, Don Diego—had entrusted him with the legacy of Zorro and with the sworn duty to keep his only daughter safe. These cherished obligations went hand-in-hand. Why could Elena not see that?

  He put his hands out as if to hold back the tide of her fury. “I know, but listen—”

  Elena swept a crystal vase containing more romanias from a table. It shattered with a startling crash as it struck the wooden floor, the flowers ruined. “How could I be so stupid?”

  Alejandro’s face reddened. His temper rose to match the sudden explosive rage that had seized his beloved, and it took all his discipline and self-control to force it back. “Elena…”

  Pacing angrily, like a great caged panther, Elena growled, “Husband says he’ll quit, gullible wife believes him.”

  The veins in Alejandro’s temple throbbed. “Elena—”

  She laughed bitterly. “Well it’s not like this is a real marriage! It’s not like you’re missing your son’s entire life!”

  “I’m not missing anything!” roared Alejandro.

  Elena whirled to a halt, the blanket sweeping behind her like a cape. She aimed her words as carefully as she might perfectly balanced daggers. “Oh, really? What’s his teacher’s name?”

  Alejandro restrained a laugh. She thought she had him, did she? “That’s easy,” he began. “Mr.—”

  She cut him off with a sharp quick shake of her head. Her silken hair cascaded to one side as she grinned in angry triumph.

  Alejandro flinched as if one of her blades had struck home. He tried again. “Brother—”

  Her right eyebrow arched. He had been wrong again.

  “Father!” cried Alejandro. Yes, that was right. “Father Kin?” The name fled from his mind. He clamped his hand over his face and muffled a pretend sneeze as he muttered, “…jin…hoofer…”

  She glared at him, her point made.

  How can I possibly win against her?

  Alejandro considered a lesson learned from Don Diego. He could almost hear the older man’s soothing, hypnotic voice:

  You feel angry, but you do not wish the emotion to show. The answer is simple: pretend that you are overjoyed. Lose yourself in the bliss of another, better, less complicated time. Do this and soon you will find you are not angry. Your opponent will be disarmed, and when you move in for the kill, you will be in a much better place to enjoy it.

  The lesson was before him…but he could do nothing. A hot wave swept into his belly. “Okay, so I have a bad memory, what’s that prove?”

  “That you don’t know your own son,” spat Elena. “Even worse, he doesn’t know you!”

  Alejandro had stumbled into a maze. Groping blindly for a way out, he asked, “What would you rather have me do? Live the rest of my life as a wealthy don, order servants around all day?”

  He saw himself grandly reclining in his favorite chair with a pipe and a paunch, his feet up, a bevy of beautiful handmaids swarming around him, cleaning his slippers, pouring his wine, plumping his pillows.

  Yes, the desperado crawled up from the dirt and misery of his outlaw days…for this? Never! It was the most absurd vision he might think to conjure; Elena would surely laugh at the notion.

  Wouldn’t she?

  The flames in her dark eyes crackled, spat. Blinding embers erupted. “Is that all you think I do? Order servants around?”

  He had just escaped the maze—by falling into a pit below it. “Don’t twist my words!” cried Alejandro, narrowly restraining the desire to begin his command with “woman!” This was not about how she spent her time. He thrust out his chin heroically. “The people need Zorro!”

  “No, you need Zorro!” shouted Elena, her heart hammering. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that isn’t true!”

  He glanced about wildly. His hands flung up, open, imploring…they sank with his shoulders, his chin. Eyes brimming with frustration and longing, he s
ilently appealed to her.

  Chest heaving, Elena glared at him for several long seconds—then her shoulders—which had been up around her ears—gracefully swept down. Her hands swung together, her fingertips gliding over the blanket she now clutched. It was warm with his scent. Her face softened. “You remember what you said the day Joaquin was born?”

  “ ‘Mi familia es mi vida…’ ” said Alejandro quietly, his eyes brimming with guilt.

  “ ‘My family is my life,’ ” she translated. Elena inched toward him. Her probing gaze fixed on him, her touch warming once more with the remembrance of all they had shared as her hand cupped the side of his face. “Don’t you know how lucky you are to make it this far alive? That your enemies haven’t discovered who we are?”

  His nod was barely perceptible. He would do nothing to throw off her gaze.

  “For ten years you’ve fought to give California its freedom,” said Elena, searching for a message in her husband’s eyes, “why can’t you give us ours?”

  The sudden resounding clang of the mission church bell clawed the room. The deep sonorous echo stole from wall to wall, vibrating through Alejandro and his beloved, leaving no room for escape.

  The bell tolled…and took its toll.

  Elena’s spine stiffened, her shoulders squared. Her face lit with bitter triumph. “They’re calling you.”

  A cold gust tore at Alejandro’s back. A window had not been shut fully…perhaps. “It’s who I am, Elena.”

  She backed away, eyes angrily raking the room. “What happened to the man I married?”

  “What happened to the woman who used to fight by my side?” demanded Alejandro.

  Her eyes flared in disbelief. “She had a son!”

  Alejandro’s lips curled in disgust as he paced, unconsciously circling the door. “So he’ll grow up to be a nice little aristocrat who has no idea where he came from and doesn’t care about anyone but himself, eh?”

  Elena thrust her pointing finger at the open walkway. “If you walk out that door, take a blanket, because you won’t be sleeping here tonight!”

  “Maybe I’ll just take a suitcase!” threatened Alejandro.