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Damn. Robert slammed the door of his office shut. Damn the Queen. Damn Luis. Damn his own foolishness. Damn the whole bloody lot of them.
He needed a drink. There was a bottle of aguardiente in his bedroom; maybe, if he really tried, he could drink himself into not caring any more. He knocked his leg against the edge of a table in the darkness, and damned that as well. Finding a lamp, he fumbled for a light, then squinted as the flame caught on the wick and flashed with sudden brightness. But he made it into the next room without further collisions, poured himself a glass of the local excuse for brandy, and gulped it down. The rough liquor burned his mouth and throat -– firewater indeed, dreadful stuff -– but its cleansing fire seared away the taste of Luis' skin, and that was a start. What was there to lament anyway? It had been a bit of fun, that's all: a sordid little lust-driven tussle, not much more than a glorified wank. It wasn't as if he and Luis–-
Luis. God, Luis...the Colonel would be here in a few minutes, and Robert had a patient to attend to. He took up the lamp and returned to his consulting room. His medical bag waited on a side table, just where he had left it a few hours earlier when he had decided on a whim to walk over to the comandancia for one more round in their foolish game of flirtation. He pulled the bag open and stared blindly into it. What the hell was he supposed to do now? Nothing made sense; he passed numb, uncomprehending fingers over the contents.
"Men like you and I, querido...." Luis' voice lingered like the shadow of a dream dissolving with the morning light. Querido? Slim chance of that any more. "Do you think I would let you back in, now knowing how distant a second I really am?" Luis' angry, outraged pride hissed in his ears. How could Robert explain? How could he make Luis understand that what the Queen had quickened in him was the romantic idealist he had once been, the hopeful, hopelessly reckless younger self he had thought lost on some Spanish battlefield, as dead as his own too numerous victims? It was a fiendish irony: the Queen had resurrected the passionate Robert whom Luis had taken into his bed. Oh, Robert could accept that the Queen might die in the course of one of her escapades, even that Luis himself might kill her; that was the risk someone like her ran, after all. But he could not bear knowing that Luis had executed her, coldly and formally, with the full ceremony of the law. That was why the Queen had nothing, and yet everything, to do with them. And even if he could make Luis understand that he was not second, well, Colonel Montoya wasn't a sentimental fool. Would he trade a public victory for an illicit private dalliance? Not bloody likely.
And yet, if there was the slimmest chance.... Robert considered the contents of his bag more carefully. According to Grisham the Queen had been thrown from her horse; he had said something about her coming to every once in a while. Concussion, then, probably: recurrent lethargy was a not uncommon symptom. And Montoya could hardly hang an unconscious woman.... That might buy her -– him -– them -– some time. Somehow Robert would prevent the Colonel from executing the Queen. He had to. So he would. Faint heart ne'er won fair hand: wasn't that the proverb? Fortune favours the brave. He'd overcome slimmer odds in his time. "By God, Lieutenant Helm," Wellington himself had said to him once, "you have the devil's own luck." In Spain, during the war, they would have called what he was planning a Forlorn Hope: a desperate effort undertaken against all sense and reason, a suicide mission. It was what officers like him volunteered for when they had nothing else to lose.
A soft shuffle outside signalled the Colonel's arrival. Robert picked up his medical bag and swung the door open. Luis, having raised his hand to knock, was momentarily thrown off balance, and Robert felt himself shift instinctively to catch him should he fall. For a fraction of a second they almost touched.
"You could at least let me make a show of it, Doctor."
Even alone, in the middle of the night, in an empty street, Luis insisted on playing the Colonel, all rosewater and starch, cool as ice and elegantly officious in his sober black uniform. Standing so close, Robert was all too conscious of looking a fright and probably reeking of spent sex. But Luis showed no sign of noticing.
They set off toward the jail with barely a further word. Robert stayed a pace or two behind. He could have caught up easily, but resisted the impulse; he needed the distance to focus his thoughts. He remembered, if Luis did not, and all too clearly, that less than an hour ago that they had lain together, limbs entwined with the awkward, carefree grace of lovers. He pushed that thought from his mind, schooled his expression to a practical, professional blankness and straightened his spine.
The whole garrison seemed to be milling around the jail: rumour of the Queen's capture had obviously spread well beyond the patrol that had brought her in. The crowd quieted and cleared the Colonel a path to the door; Robert followed in his wake. Grisham awaited them inside, and as Montoya approached the Queen's cell he claimed his station at his Commander's shoulder. Robert stopped short behind the two and waited as the Colonel stood for a few long moments contemplating the woman lying immobile on the narrow bunk. Savouring his conquest, no doubt. Then he turned to catch Robert's eye and wordlessly inclined his head toward the prisoner.
Robert entered the cell and squatted beside the bed where he knew he would block the others' view. Corporal Cruz had said she was awake, but she lay there unmoving. Dust stained the black silk of her sleeve, and her dark hair hung confusedly over her face like a second mask. A commander with less of a flair for the dramatic might already have satisfied his curiosity and revealed the Queen's identity, but Montoya was obviously reserving that coup de theatre for her execution. Robert paused, taking note of how even and regular her breathing seemed to be. If she were asleep, it certainly wasn't the abnormally deep sleep that precedes coma. Nor could he perceive any signs of bleeding from eyes, nose or mouth, or of the vomiting which often accompanies head trauma. He moved her head slightly, probing with gentled fingers for wounds and contusions, and felt an almost imperceptible resistance in his patient.
"Damn you," he whispered, and she opened her eyes at the sound of his voice. As he expected, her pupils were normal, equal in size, though slightly dilated -– by fear, he imagined, rather than injury. He knew his role, now, in this masquerade. He reached for his stethoscope, and went through the motions of checking her heart rate and breathing. "There don't seem to be any broken bones, but she is suffering from concussion," he said more loudly, swivelling to face the Colonel. "I don't suppose you would allow me to remove her to my surgery?"
Grisham laughed.
"Oh, I dare say you would like that," Montoya snapped. He drew a breath and continued with his more usually polished scorn. "No, Doctor Helm. I fear that will not be possible."
"Then could I at least get some sort of chair in here? This woman is gravely injured: she'll need my constant care." Robert fixed his gaze on the Queen's once more and willed her to understand, to follow his lead. "When she comes round again, she'll be disoriented, dehydrated. She'll need water-- "
"There is water in her cell, Doctor."
"She'll be in no state to help herself." The Queen frowned slightly, but Robert saw her expression relax as she noticed him palm a small knife from his bag and slip it between the coarse gray blanket and the thin mattress near her hand. "And even if she were, she mustn't be allowed to drink too much at first. I'll have to-– "
"I'm sure one of my men can deal with that. Thank you, Doctor."
"Fine." Robert closed his bag, stood up slowly and cast a last look at the Queen. Her eyes were closed again. "I wonder you bothered calling me here at all." He sauntered insolently towards the men in the doorway and brushed past Luis' shoulder, just barely touching it as he stopped, turned back and looked directly at him. "You obviously don't need me." For the briefest of seconds Luis' eyes glinted darkly, their icy, dispassionate calm faltering. "Good night, Colonel."
Robert made his way back to his rooms. He poured himself another glass of the brandy, drank the wretched stuff down. Luis would never allow anything so vulgar in his house. He closed his eyes and his treacherous imagination substituted the heady luxury of chocolate and fine, French brandy on Luis' lips last night, an eternity ago. Would he ever taste that again? He poured himself another glass. The die was cast. Alea iacta est: Caesar's words, conned in the schoolroom long years before, the private invocation of his luck before battle. The Queen would attempt to escape. She might even succeed; she had the kind of luck that had saved him from worse scrapes. And if she died, at least she would be spared the indignity of a public execution. More importantly, Luis would not have executed her.
Robert unbuttoned and shrugged out of his rumpled shirt. Just for a moment he buried his face in it, desperate for one more echo of this evening's passion. The chill night breeze teased his naked back with the remembered friction of Luis' beard and the soothing murmur of his breath. He could almost feel the slickness and the weight of the other man's body against his own, and the too dangerously slow, deliberate rhythm of that body's thrusting seduction. Damn.
Raising his head with a final deep, shuddering breath, he tossed the shirt away. The rest of his clothes followed, then he sluiced himself as best he could with cold water from the pitcher on the washstand. He towelled himself off, found clean clothes, dressed again. He swallowed the last of the brandy, and lay down on the bed to wait. He had done what he could; it was up to the Queen now, and Luis. He angled his head to look out the window: the moon had risen, and stars glittered in the clear sky above the open country beyond the pueblo. Perhaps he should just have packed up and moved on, left this shambles behind him. Well, too late for that. Time was, tonight's sort of lark, this reckless dance on the blade's edge between safety and danger, life and death, the thrill of pushing his luck just one more time, had been almost an end in itself. Now-–
His stomach churned and the bile rose in his throat. Robert lurched from the bed and barely made it to the slop jar before the retching started. He rocked back on his heels, shivering with cold sweat, damning himself as a pathetic fool. Christ! What had he done? There was too much at stake. It took all his strength to fight back the dry heaves as the barrage of images assailed him. Luis preening and swanning about in his elaborate dress uniform. The very human vulnerability and frustration glittering in his eyes when he thought he might die of the fever, or when his favourite horse came down with the colic. Luis holding on to his hand just a shade too long as he greeted Robert and ushered him into one of his interminably tedious soirees. Luis' eyes gleaming, framed by crinkling laugh lines, and one side of his mouth quirking into a smile as he responded to a challenge. Luis' fingers caressing the petals of his damned roses, his melancholy pleasure in their fragile beauty so evident, before he took his pruning shears to their stems. ...You and I, querido...
If only it were as simple as lust. But Robert was suddenly rather afraid he had fallen in love with Colonel Luis Montoya.
Damn.