Chapter 18

After leaving miles of a false trail for anyone who might follow, Zorro arrived at the cave entrance a few hours later. He had left Tornado to graze on a patch of green grass not too far away and made his way on foot to the trap door.

Sniffing cautiously at the air just inside the cave, he was relieved to find that the sweet smell of the gas had dissipated quite well. With each step, he grew more confident that it would now be safe to enter all the way into the main room of the cave itself.

After removing his mask and cape, he allowed himself to sit down and relax for a few minutes. It was the first moment he had allowed himself to think about the events that had happened that day, events that would end up changing his life forever.

A new government for the pueblo. That was more than he could even deal with at present.

Besides…his father, Victoria, they both knew now!

The thought reverberated through his mind, blocking out any other thought. He had always thought it would be a secret he would reveal to both of them, not one they would discover themselves. He had always thought he would be able to choose the moment, to choose how it would be done. Now, that had been taken from him. But the worst part of all was that he had not been awake to even see his father's reaction. How was he ever going to face him?

"Wondering how you're going to face us, aren't you, Diego?" The voice behind him gave him a start and he nearly fell out of the chair.

"F-father!" Diego sputtered. He looked past his father to see Victoria, as well, entering from the passageway. "Victoria!" Diego racked his brain to think of something to say. "How is Lord Hodge?" he finally asked.

"Oh, he's asleep." It was his father who answered him. "Dr. Hernandez has already come and gone and seen to it that the man was given a sleeping draught. He thought he might have trouble sleeping since he was almost hanged today. Oh, and I also gave the indoor staff the rest of the day and night off since almost everyone wanted to check on the happenings in town. Quite an extraordinary day, don't you think, Son?"

"Oh, yes. That would describe it. Extraordinary!" He looked between the two of them, almost flinching visibly from their steady stares. The he watched as Alejandro began to pace listlessly about the cave, looking at all the lab equipment, and stopping here and there to examine his cape, hat and sword. Victoria remained motionless, standing in the archway with her hands behind her back.

"The great Zorro!" Aljeandro mused. "Living under my own roof, pretending to be meek, docile, frail even, at times… even a cow—"

Alejandro brook off the word and looked directly at his son. "Oh, Diego, Please, please forgive me. I do apologize … I have regretted that one word more than anything I have ever said or done in my entire life. I am so very sor—" He choked back tears and could not continue.

"Father, no! I am the one who should be doing the apologizing here. Not you! Please—"

"That's for damn sure!" The sound of Victoria's voice uttering such a curse spun them both around toward her.

"And I think you can add my cursing to your list of mea culpas for confession with the good padre! How dare you!"

"Victoria! I do not quite know how to begin…" He looked at her with blue eyes filled with a tinge of fear. She had never completely forgiven him yet, it was clear. And now, once again, she'd let her wrath build upon itself. He was about to pay dearly for that remark about selling the tavern.

She slowly moved forward, holding his gaze with her own seething eyes. "How dare you?" she repeated, shaking her head. "It is one thing to be Zorro and keep it from those who love you, from the very people who would have gone to their deaths to protect you. But from your own father, Diego! And when I think of all the times that you fooled me, mocked me—"

"Victoria… Querida," he pleaded, "I never mocked—"

"LESSONS!" she shouted at him. "Do I have to say anything more?"

"Those were your idea, not mine!" He pointed a forefinger at her, defending himself.

"What in the world were those lessons for?" Alejandro spoke up from across the room. "Diego?"

"She started it! I only went along with it because—"

"You led me to believe you were too shy to court your mystery woman—"

"What woman?" Alejandro, thoroughly confused, looked at Diego. "Who is she talking about, Diego?" he demanded.

"She's talking about—" But Diego could not explain, for Victoria was mad and when she was mad, the accusations came quick and fast.

"You said she was a lady!"

"She is! I mean, you—"

"You said she cooked for you!"

"Diego!" his father cried, "I'm surprised at you!"

"Father, you don't understand. It was she—"

"And I even thought you got drunk because of—"

"That was something that had nothing to do—"

"Diego, you really shouldn't be making excuses about this sort of thing. I'm surprised at you!" Alejandro shook his head in disappointment.

"But, Father, she—"

"Off campus delights! Side trips to Paris! Oh, Zorro warned me about you!" She stopped, catching herself as she fell back into speaking of Zorro as another person.

"What?" Alejandro exclaimed.

"What?" Diego echoed.

"Just – just - never mind!" she shouted back at them both as they exchanged confused looks.

"And you let me— OH!" She stomped her foot. "Sell the tavern! 'Never a place for a woman anyway!'" She mimicked the way he'd said the words as Zorro.

"Now, Victoria, I only said that because—"

"I don't care why you said it! When I think…when I think of all the things you have said - all the things you did!" Her voice was at a fever pitch and she had to stop. Pictures of him flitted through her mind, one right after another, kissing her hand, caressing her fingertips, holding her, reciting poetry to her… His voice resounded in her ears and she wavered where she stood. "I can't believe you let me…" She let her voice fade away into a sob.

"Victoria, I beg you—" Placing his palms together, he shut his eyes trying desperately to think of the right words, the right way to reach her, to make everything right between them. But the words would not come and he fell silent.

"Don Alejandro, what should we do with him?" Victoria abruptly looked over at the older man. "Do you think he's suffered enough?"

"Uh…" Alejandro was startled out of his own dark thoughts, "well, my dear, I think—"

But she went on before he could complete his answer. "I think that he'll need this! Don't you?" She brought from behind her back a small sofa cushion she'd picked up from the sala and threw it on the cave floor just in front of Diego. "Here, to make you comfortable…" she let a slight smile steal across her lips as she motioned for Diego to kneel before her, "while you beg for forgiveness."

Looking from her face to the cushion on the floor, he only let a split second go by before he dropped to his knees upon it. Whatever the lady wanted – that would be the only way!

"Querida, please forg—" he began, but she held up a hand to stop him.

"No, that's not quite enough. You'll need this." She raised her leg and propped her foot upon the chair beside him, and as both men watched with amazement on their faces, she lifted her skirt to show quite a bit of thigh. There, wrapped around a garter, was a bit of black silk.

"Well?" she said, expectation clearly written on her face.

Diego looked wonderingly over at his father who spread his hands and lifted his shoulders, signaling his own confusion and some amount of shock at the actions of the señorita.

She pointed to the black cloth and obviously expected him to take it from her. Her eyes were full of challenge.

Taking a deep breath, he reached forward tentatively toward the spot of black. The moment he felt the texture, he knew what it was. He fingered it cautiously, wondering just why she wanted him to remove it from its so-very-private hiding place. Freeing the silk cloth from the garter, he let it unfold carefully, one end falling down loosely to reveal it as a black Zorro mask. It was the mask he'd left in the garden on a night so long ago. Zorro's mask. She had kept it all this time. From inside the folds of cloth, a small golden ring with a bright sparkling emerald fell into his palm.

Alejandro gasped the moment he saw the ring. He had not seen it in a very long time, but he knew it well. It was a ring he had bought himself, his dear departed wife's engagement ring. Apparently, it had not been lost after all. Zorro had felt a need for it. Alejandro smiled as he wondered anew at just how much he had never suspected of his own flesh and blood.

Diego also smiled and bowed his head.

"Remember your promise?" she whispered. "Are you man enough to keep the promise of a hero, Diego?" Her voice was barely above the sound of her breathing.

Holding the ring in his hand, he looked up into her face with glistening eyes. "Oh, my love, I have only hoped to tell you I am. Victoria, will you marry me, Diego de la Vega, a humble man who does not deserve you in any way?"

"Oh, Diego!" She leaned down, half-falling, half-propelling herself into his arms in utter glee. Both of them fell backwards, sprawling onto the floor as his wounded leg gave way beneath them. But it didn't matter. They were kissing each other, and laughing at the same time.

Alejandro stayed a few more minutes only to assure himself that they were both all right before he left the two of the alone in the cave. As he walked up the stone steps to the passageway, he muttered to himself, "But don't think, Son, I'm not going to be asking you later about Paris and those, what was it she said, 'off campus delights'!"

Diego and Victoria did not hear him. They were lost in each other's arms for a very long time.

Eventually, Victoria pulled away from him. She had remembered Diego's hurt leg and the thought of it nagged at her.

"Diego, we really should see to that wound. You've reopened it and it could get infected."

"Hmm. Yes, I suppose so. But I think it's no longer bleeding. I'll have Felipe look at it later." He pulled her back toward him only to feel her back away once more.

"No, we will do it now. I won't have you dying on me from some infection because we got carried away. Now where do you keep bandages and water down here?" She got up and looked around her.

"Over here." He got up rather clumsily and he led her over to a wooden box that held all manner of bandages and medicines. She began to look through the items in the box, picking up one and then another as he looked down at his pants leg and the newly made rent that had been made in it.

"Not again," he complained as he looked at the torn cloth. "This is my last pair!"

"Well, change back into your 'Diego' clothes and I'll sew them up for you," she said over her shoulder as she kept looking for just the right healing ointment for his wound.

He looked at her standing with her back toward him and then walked over to Tornado's stall to change. In a few minutes, he had removed his shirt and carefully peeled the black pants from the dried and caked blood of his newly reopened wound and placed them on the feed trough and was reaching for the 'Diego' clothes as she had called them.

But as his hand touched the broadcloth of the blue pants hanging from the hook, he felt it being whisked through his grasp. He looked up to see Victoria with a very wicked grin on her face.

"Maybe you haven't suffered enough after all!" she said, as she held up the blue clothes in one hand and the black ones in the other.

She turned and ran up the stone steps leaving him once more with nothing to do. She had both Zorro's and Diego's pants this time!

The End

Author's notes: I would like to thank all of you for reading this far, and a special thank you goes to all of you who commented this story. And I couldn't forget to thank Leiasky for all the prodding to get this one finished after languishing for about six years in my Word files. She also provided the "bare bones" plot a long time ago when all I had was a funny romantic garden scene.