The Daughter of Doctor Moreau(70)

“Are you listening to yourselves?” Carlota asked. “You are planning the murder of people!”

“What do you think they’ve been planning for us, Carlota? Do you think they planned to have us for tea?” Lupe asked and brushed the silver tray with the teapot and cups aside. The sugar tongs clattered and fell on the floor.

“No. I can talk to them. I can negotiate something.”

“What something?”

“An agreement, I don’t know. You are not going to do this.”

“It’s not for you to decide for us.”

“Is it for you to decide?” Carlota asked. “You don’t speak for anyone.”

“Then let’s ask the others,” Lupe exclaimed. “But don’t stand here, thinking you are our mistress.”

“We’ll put it up for a vote in the morning,” Montgomery said, touching the bridge of his nose and wincing. “I must rest.”

He stepped out of the room. He couldn’t take it anymore. He’d never been good when someone was ill. He remembered the hours crouching by his mother’s bed when she’d convalesced, the need to speak in a low voice. When his mother had been alive things had been better with his father, but not much. But at least back then he’d had his sister, he’d had Elizabeth. He realized Carlota might be all alone without Moreau.

In his room he removed his jacket and washed his face, then lit a cigarette and shook his head.

He’d liked this place. It had been good to him. It had offered him safety, and now its safety was vanishing with astonishing speed. He let the ashes fall into a cup while he took out his gun and placed it on the desk. He placed Hernando Lizalde’s ivory-handled pistol next to his own. His favorite rifle rested on the wall, by the desk.

He’d killed a jaguar, hunted animals, knew his way with weapons, but he was no cold-blooded murderer. He wasn’t one of those men who goes around with quick threats, despite the rough-and-tumble places he’d ventured into. When he was drunk, sometimes there was trouble. But even in his inebriation he knew a measure of restraint.

When the knock came, he wasn’t surprised, but he was dismayed. He really did wish to sleep, not to bicker, and Carlota’s face when he opened the door was that of a general going to war.

“You always have a bottle of aguardiente in your room so I thought I’d ask you for a glass,” she said.

“You don’t drink aguardiente. Certainly not the cheap kind I keep.”

“I don’t toss my father against a cabinet either, and yet I did a few hours ago,” she said, elbowing him aside and walking in with the breezy air of a conqueror. Her hair now fell loose along her back. She’d undone the modest braid.

He went to the desk, opened a drawer, pulled out the bottle and two glasses. He poured her a couple of fingers’ worth of the drink. “It’s stronger than the stuff you sipped by the bonfire, it’s a cheap and awful swill,” he warned her. “A few sips and you’ll be tipsy.”

“Let me taste it.”

She downed it with a quick twist of her wrist and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She had a beautiful mouth, generous lips. The lamp on his desk made her hair look like it was sketched with charcoal pressed hard against the paper.

“How do you like it?” he asked.

“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. Cachito says your preferred drinks are vile,” she replied and grabbed the bottle, filling the glass to the top.

“It grows on you if you let it. Did you want me to lecture you on different kinds of spirits? Somehow I don’t think so. What is so important you’ve come to see me in the middle of the night?”

“It’ll be dawn soon.”

“My point precisely.”

She sat on the chair he’d been occupying; he took the bed. Her nightgown was properly hidden by a crimson robe, and she demurely crossed her ankles, but the look she hurled him above the rim of her glass was bold.

“I can’t have you killing those men,” she said.

“You mean you don’t want Eduardo killed.”

“I don’t want anyone killed. Are you prepared to see the others hurt? To see Cachito and Lupe bleeding? I want to attempt a peaceful negotiation.”

“Wave a white flag and all that? I suppose you’d be conducting the treaty, hmm?”

“Why not?”

“They may not like you now. Not anymore.”

She smirked and drank. He had to give it to her. She did not grimace as the aguardiente went down her throat. She stretched her hand and dangled the glass above the pistols while with one finger she traced their handles, following the whorls in the ivory.

“I still want to try. You need to push for a peaceful solution.”

“I said we’d take a vote in the morning.”

“Cachito will listen to you. And so will most of the hybrids. They respect you almost as much as my father. You and I could sway them.”

“You’ve come to plot and to manipulate, then.”

“I’ve come to beg you to think this over. I do not want to see anyone harmed. Before we consider bullets, let us consider words. Montgomery, we must try this. You think I want to protect Eduardo, but I’m trying to protect us. I’m trying to save our home.”

He gave an exasperated sigh. “Carlota, I am king of no realm. I said my piece, others will say theirs. You’ll say yours, too.”