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her weight several times before, with the help of a pillow, she was reasonably comfortable.
    She had not expected to sleep, but she did, almost at once.

3
    She slept till awakened by a thunderous knock, then tumbled out of the hammock so swiftly that she fell on the tile floor. Rubbing a bruised knee, dazed by her heavy slumber, she couldn’t remember where she was till a deep male voice brought everything back.
    â€œAre you all right, Mrs. Cameron? Mrs. Cameron!”
    â€œI’m fine,” she called back before he could break down the door.
    â€œYou should buy personal needs today. Let’s have breakfast and then I’ll escort you around. This afternoon I can attend to my affairs.”
    Why did his voice send a warm tingling through her, and why was she so eager to see him in daylight? He’d made it clear that, apart from being his child’s tutor, his interest could only be dishonorable. If she responded to that, it would be her own fault.
    Yet, how could she not respond?
    â€œI’ll hurry,” she promised and hastily performed her morning toilette, brushing out her thick chestnut hair and coiling it at the nape of her neck. Errant tendrils escaped this severity and softened what Mercy considered too high a forehead, too strong a jaw. The ornate silver-framed mirror above the washstand reflected an almost triangular face with black-fringed gray eyes, the austere forehead and almost straight dark eyebrows contradicted by a cleft in the chin and a rather full mouth.
    An unfashionable face. Mercy believed her eyes to be her only good feature. Still, her skin was smooth and glowingly healthy, faintly tanned in spite of her efforts to protect it from the sun. She was small and Philip had complained that her hips were like a boy’s, though he’d admired her high, firmly soft breasts.
    â€œYou won’t thicken with childbearing,” he’d predicted, fondling her. “It should ripen you, sweet Mercy, fill you out a bit.”
    There’d be no child now. How glad she was of that! Thrusting the memory of Philip’s husbanding from her with a bitterness so physical that it left a taste of alum on her tongue, she shook out the skirt of her gray gabardine gown in a vain effort to rid it of wrinkles, and stepped into the hall.
    The sweet flower smell of the night before was almost befuddling, and she held her breath at the flaming riot of cerise bougainvillaea, trumpet vines, hibiscus, and fantastic orchids of varying shapes and colors.
    A table was set under huge trees shielding a splashing fountain. Zane Falconer rose from a cane chair, putting a small notebook in his vest pocket, and she had her first look at him in full daylight.
    He looked thinner, harder, and somewhat older. Was that quirk of mockery always lurking at the edge of his mouth? He seemed even taller, broader through the shoulders than she’d judged, narrower through long, taut-muscled horseman’s flanks revealed by fawn-colored trousers so excellently fitted that they must have been tailor-made.
    Any embarrassment she might have felt in scanning him dimmed in the knowledge that he was appraising her just as closely and, no doubt, more critically. His shirt was snowy-white and faultlessly ironed, his boots glistened, and he was clean-shaven.
    â€œYou look a trifle less peaked,” he decided, seating her. “You’ll need cooler clothing than that most of the year; in fact, I’d advise the native cotton smock for ordinary wear at the hacienda, though you’ll want some conventional gowns. Do you have something for the dance?”
    Acutely aware of the mended and faded state of the three dresses she’d brought as her best, all of them older than the war, Mercy reddened and shook her head. She had no crinoline left at all. Father had never allowed her to have a corset. Her drawers, chemises, and petticoats were plain and patched. Since her neighbors were in no better