Joan Johnston - Texas Woman

“How do you propose I accomplish that?”

Sir Giles smiled, exposing the gums above his teeth. “It’s quite simple, my boy. LeFevre will be staying with Rip Stewart. You will merely take your wife home for an extended visit with her father.”

Cruz couldn’t stop the sardonic twist of his lips. “I suppose I have no choice about this.”

“No, you don’t.”

“When is LeFevre coming?”

“We don’t know. When he does come, I’ll expect you to join him at Three Oaks.”

“Anything else?” Cruz asked.

“That is quite enough, don’t you think?”

Cruz didn’t bother to answer, just turned his back on Sir Giles and headed for the door. The Englishman’s voice stopped him before he could leave.

“Hawk…”

Cruz paused but didn’t turn around.

“You aren’t considering changing your allegiance at this late date, I hope. Because if you do, Alejandro has made it plain he would be willing to solve any unpleasant… complications that arise from such an unfortunate decision.”

Cruz angled his head briefly toward the shadows where Alejandro Sanchez sat. Then he left the Englishman’s room as quietly as he had entered. He had not mistaken the warning he had been given. From now on, he would watch his back.

When Cruz returned to his room he found Sloan in a considerably different state from the one in which he had left her.

In no way could the woman lying tangled in the sweat-soaked sheets of the four-poster be described as resting peacefully. She was curled in a fetal ball and gripping her belly. The groans coming from her throat seemed wrenched from deep within her.

Something was desperately wrong with his wife.

He lifted Sloan into his arms. “Cebellina, your skin is on fire. What is wrong? What has happened?”

“I hurt.”

“Where?”

“My stomach… my head… everywhere… all over,” Sloan gasped out.

Cruz felt fear such as he had never felt before. His heart pounded erratically; his palms were wet. He did not trust the Anglo doctors who healed through bloodletting and purge. Yet where else could he turn?

“I’m so thirsty,” she said.

He laid Sloan back down on the bed so he could get her some water. The pitcher that sat on the dry sink across from the bed was empty. He picked up the canteens they had brought with them from Dolorosa and realized that while his was nearly half full, hers was almost empty.

He brought both canteens with him to the bed. “How long have you felt sick?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did it start after we arrived?”

“No, earlier in the day. Sometime after we ate,” she confessed. “I thought it might be sunstroke.”

Cruz held up her nearly empty canteen. “If you’ve drunk this much water, how could it be sunstroke?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” Sloan mumbled. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe it was something you ate.”

“We ate the same things,” she said with a moan. “You would be sick, too.”

“Maybe the water in your canteen is tainted,” he suggested.

“If so, why aren’t you sick? We filled our canteens from the same well. It couldn’t be the water. Except… I did refill my canteen at the small pond where we stopped to eat. But I could have sworn it wasn’t brackish.”

Cruz poured a small amount of the water from her canteen into his hand. He sniffed at it, then touched the tip of his tongue to his palm. It tasted all right, but that was no guarantee it wasn’t bad. He stared at his wife, feeling the panic begin to rise. “I do not know, Cebellina. It might be anything. I just do not know!”

“Help me, Cruz,” Sloan cried. “It hurts!”

He stood helpless in the face of her pain. Suddenly, he realized he knew someone in San Antonio who might know where he could find a good doctor.

“Hang on, Cebellina,” he urged, kissing her feverish brow. “I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

CRUZ RETURNED A SHORT TIME LATER WITH A distraught and concerned Luke. They had dragged along a thin, white-haired physician, who had obviously been rousted from his bed.

Cruz suffered along with Sloan through the agonies of the purging applied by the doctor as “the most efficacious remedy for any malady of the stomach.” But the white-haired doctor warned Cruz that if Sloan’s illness had been caused by something she had eaten or drunk, “It’s probably already worked its way well into her system.” He could only tell Cruz that her pain seemed to be in her stomach, and, “If she doesn’t die tonight, she’ll probably recover.”

Luke escorted the doctor out the door before Cruz had a chance to vent his frustration on the hapless man for such an unpromising prognosis.

As the evening wore on, Cruz was grateful that Luke had decided to stay. The night that followed was long and, in many ways, horrifying. He had to face the very real possibility that the woman he loved might die.

For hours, Sloan was delirious. Cruz began to get an inkling from the disjointed babble she spouted just how many demons she lived with.

“… Where’s my baby?… I can never love you… Yes, dammit! I’ll marry you!… fit like fur boots… Traitor?… No! He can’t be dead.

“… Three Oaks is mine!… Worms in the cotton? Plow it under and plant again… I need a bath… never invited… too many calluses… betrayed again… Luke… Luke… a bastard son…”

Cruz had never felt so helpless. He tenderly sponged Sloan’s forehead and dabbed at the perspiration on her upper lip, willing her pain away. But there was more.

“… blood… so much blood… Cisco is dead! I can’t bear the pain… not again… Doña Lucia is a witch… Tonio’s lips are so cold… no more… please, no more…

“… stupid bargain… beautiful Tomasita… please don’t touch me… It feels so good… It hurts, Cruz… Why does it hurt?”

Cruz covered his face with his hands to hide his red-rimmed eyes. Her pain unmanned him. Her revelations devastated him. It was like looking behind the walls she had erected to keep him out and seeing all the old wounds-hurt upon hurt upon hurt-that had caused her to build that wall in the first place. He could not bear to watch her suffering.

At long last, she slipped into an uneasy slumber.

Cruz rolled his head on his neck to ease the tension, then turned to Luke and said, “I feel so helpless. Is there nothing we can do?”

“We just have to wait.” Luke put a hand on Cruz’s shoulder and felt the other man flinch. “It isn’t long now until dawn. Remember, the doctor promised that if Sloan made it through the night, she’ll live.”

“She’s in so much pain!” Cruz said, the words wrenched from him.

Luke simply nodded. He had heard Sloan’s feverish murmurs and knew it wasn’t only Sloan’s physical pain that was worrying Cruz.

Cruz thrust both hands through his hair in agitation. “Oh God, she has to live!”

“What do you suppose made her so sick in the first place?” Luke asked, hoping to distract Cruz from his distressing thoughts.

“Maybe the water in her canteen-she filled it up when we stopped to eat. We will probably never know for sure.”

Luke rose from the chair beside Cruz and crossed to the foot of Sloan’s bed. He leaned against the bedstead of the four-poster and crossed his legs at the ankles. “Damn scary to think you could just get sick and die without ever knowing what hit you,” Luke mused. “Makes you think twice about all the things you’ve left undone… like maybe you should tie up all those loose strings before you lose your chance. You got any loose strings out there, Cruz?”

Cruz sighed and leaned forward in the chair beside Sloan’s bed, crossing his arms on top of the mattress. “One in particular.”

“What’s that?”

“You have met Tomasita Hidalgo, I believe.”

Luke was silent for a moment, and when Cruz turned to see why Luke hadn’t answered, he saw the Ranger’s cheeks were flushed. He watched Luke’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed uncomfortably.

“I’ve talked to her some,” Luke admitted at last.

Cruz smiled. “I think perhaps you find her attractive,” he teased gently.

“She’ll make someone a beautiful wife.”

Cruz rested his chin against his hands. “My father had plans that she would become my wife, plans that went astray because I married Sloan. I think Mamá still believes that if it were not for Sloan, I would take Tomasita for my wife.”