Besides, he found the thought of having Sloan to himself, of being alone with her away from Dolorosa, exciting.

When Cruz sat down beside her on the bed, he had donned his trousers and boots, but his chest, with its mat of thick black hair, was still bare. Sloan struggled to keep from staring, but it was a battle she was happy to lose.

“All right, Cebellina, you may come with me,” he said. “I plan to leave right after breakfast.”

In her happiness, Sloan leaned over to kiss him on the mouth. “I’ll be ready.” When she would have withdrawn, she found herself captured in Cruz’s embrace.

“You are so beautiful, querida.” Cruz tantalized her with his lips. “I am the most fortunate of men.”

Sloan found herself loath to leave his arms, dizzy with pleasure. She moaned as his hands caressed the curve of her hip. “I should get up.” She reached out a hand and laid it on his bare chest.

He shuddered with the pleasure of her touch. “As you wish, Cebellina. We can continue this in San Antonio.”

It was spoken as a promise, but Sloan couldn’t help hearing the threat to the high walls she had built around her heart. She was afraid to love him; she was afraid she already did.

At the breakfast table, Cruz broke the news that Sloan would be coming with him to San Antonio and heard the same refrain from nearly everyone seated at the table.

“Can Cisco and I come, too?” Betsy asked.

Sloan reached over to catch a spoonful of chorizo, a mixture of scrambled eggs and sausage, that was about to fall into Betsy’s lap. “Not this time, sweetheart,” she said, dropping the bit of chorizo into the girl’s open mouth.

“I could ride my pony. I would not be any trouble,” Cisco promised.

Sloan turned to her other side, where Cisco had stuffed the last bit of a generously buttered tortilla into his mouth and was licking his fingers clean. She took the napkin from his lap and began wiping his fingers. “No, you’re always an angel,” she said with a grin. “That’s why your nickname is Diablito.”

Cruz watched with something akin to awe as Sloan and Cisco grinned at one another. Cruz’s eyes never left Sloan’s hands as she carefully wiped her son’s face with his napkin, then brushed a wayward curl back from his brow. She straightened Cisco’s shirt on his shoulders and tugged one of his ears playfully before settling his napkin back in his lap.

Such moments were rare, and therefore all the more to be treasured. More often than not, Sloan would stop herself from actually touching her son. He had watched her fight a battle with herself every time she came in contact with Cisco, in order to keep from loving the child. There were chinks in her fortress walls, but they were far from being demolished.

“I wish I were going, too,” Tomasita said. “San Antonio sounds like such an exciting place.”

Cruz heard the wistful note in Tomasita’s voice. He had been remiss in finding a husband for her, but he had been distracted by the roundup and then by this business with the British government. He decided to write a letter to both Don Ambrosio and Señor Carvajal the day he returned from his trip to San Antonio.

To Cruz’s surprise, his mother said nothing about Sloan’s accompanying him except, “I will see about preparing a meal for you to take along on your journey.”

“Ana can take care of it,” Cruz replied. He had not been ignorant of the cold shoulder his mother had turned to his wife, but at Sloan’s behest, he had not confronted her for her behavior.

Too late he realized that perhaps he should not have so casually dismissed what he now perceived as a tentative olive branch from his mother. Because instead of insisting, Doña Lucia merely agreed, “As you wish.”

Sloan hadn’t realized how hard it was going to be to leave Betsy and Cisco behind. When it was time for her to mount up, the little girl threw her arms around Sloan’s neck and wouldn’t let go. Cruz pried Betsy loose and handed her to Josefa.

As they rode away, Sloan looked back over her shoulder and saw that Betsy was sobbing out her misery in Josefa’s arms. Cisco stood apart from them, his face equally unhappy, but aware, even at his age, that a man did not cry out his sorrows.

Despite what Sloan knew were good reasons for keeping herself aloof from her son, at that moment she felt like turning her horse around and hugging Cisco good-bye. Cruz’s next words saved her from such folly.

“Come, Cebellina. We have a lot of riding to do before dark.”

Sloan was exhausted by the time they arrived in San Antonio. Actually, she was feeling more than a little sick. Her stomach was upset, and she had been so dizzy the last few miles before they reached San Antonio that she’d had trouble staying in the saddle.

She had drunk most of the water in her canteen but still had an unquenchable thirst. Nor did the water settle her stomach. Her nausea only seemed to get worse.

If it had been hotter she might have suspected sunstroke. But it was January, and besides, she had worn her hat all day. She couldn’t imagine why she felt so bad-unless it was something she had eaten. She hid the way she was feeling from Cruz, because it would only prove to him that she should have stayed at home.

Whether it was a mild case of sunstroke or something she had eaten, she felt certain that if she could get some rest she would feel better in the morning. She dropped like an adobe brick onto the four-poster bed when they finally reached their room at Ferguson’s Hotel.

“Are you sure you do not want a bath first?” Cruz asked with a chuckle when a cloud of dust shot up from her clothes.

“I’ll get one in the morning. It’s late,” Sloan mumbled. “Would you help me with my boots?”

Cruz tugged her Wellingtons off and watched her curl up around one of the pillows. She was asleep moments later. He wanted to stay with her. He wanted to curve his body around hers and feel her warm flesh against his own. But he reluctantly admitted that Sloan’s fatigue had provided him the perfect opportunity to meet with Sir Giles.

He stayed in the same hotel as Sir Giles because it made it less likely he would be watched coming and going. Cruz knocked three times at a door just down the hall from where his wife slept peacefully. When it opened a crack, Cruz said, “It is the Hawk.”

“It’s about time you got here,” Sir Giles said, gesturing Cruz inside. “You’re late.”

“I brought my wife with me. The ride took longer than I expected.”

“I will never understand why you bothered to marry your brother’s whore. Tonio proved she was free for the taking.”

Cruz stiffened. The hackles on the back of his neck told him Alejandro was sitting in the rawhide chair in the far corner of the room.

Alejandro continued, “I am sure it was worth the delay to have that bruja in your bed while you are here, eh, Don Cruz? Perhaps while she is here I will see if she is ready to welcome yet another into her bed.”

Cruz turned to confront Alejandro, and found the bandido’s face half in and half out of the shadows. A row of crooked teeth flashed in a taunting smile beneath the bandido’s bushy moustache.

Cruz realized he had been arrogant to assume he could protect his wife from a man without a conscience. Alejandro wouldn’t fight fair. He wouldn’t fight clean. And if he ever got his hands on Sloan, he would take what he wanted and throw away whatever was left. Cruz’s hands balled into fists, but he managed to curb his desire to wipe the smile off Alejandro’s face.

“Damn and blast, man! You know better than to bring your wife along at a time like this,” Sir Giles complained.

Cruz turned cold blue eyes on the Englishman. “It is done. What do you want from me? Why did you ask me to come?”

Recognizing the peril of harassing Cruz, the stout Englishman got directly to the point. “Mexico is on the verge of giving Texas its independence. I need you to find out exactly what the Texas government is willing to concede to get Mexico to sign over sovereignty.”

“I do not have the political connections-”

“Ah, but you don’t need to be present at the negotiations,” Sir Giles said. “You need only briefly intercept the letters between the parties involved.”

“I am not a thief.”

“Only a traitor,” Sir Giles said, his lips curled cynically.

When Cruz remained adamant in his stand, Sir Giles said, “Oh, very well. Perhaps Alejandro is better suited to that task. I have another, more important, job for you anyway.

“The former American chargé to Texas, Beaufort LeFevre, is coming here to work with the current chargé toward annexation. While LeFevre is in Texas, I want you to keep an eye on him. I want to know everyone he sees, everything he says.”