"How could you do it? And how dare you just sit here and eat as if nothing happened?" Zafira asked Juan a few hours later as she saw him having dinner by himself, some thirty feet away from the rest of the men.

He didn't answer, just gave her an annoyed look and took a sip of tequila. One of the other men had brought him a whole bottle as consolation for losing his wife as he did, and Juan gratefully accepted it. By the time the young woman showed up, he had spilled more than half of the bottle while no one was looking, and was slowly drinking the rest of it.

"You have nothing to say? You are a coward! If you wanted revenge, you should have challenged him to a duel! Instead, you attacked him without a warning. You could have killed him! Diego might yet die because of you!" She insisted, still in shock after receiving the news of the stabbing at returning to the hacienda.

"Not unless that wound gets infected." He answered as he chewed on a piece of chorizo. "Even if it does, he's strong. He'll pull through."

"You can't know that!"

"I've seen worse injuries. Besides, had I intended to kill him, he'd already be dead. Instead, he'll be fine in about a week, at the most, only a scar to remind him of me for the rest of his life. A life he will spend with Victoria" He told her. "So why do you care? He already made his choice, and it's not you."

"That doesn't mean I don't care about him." She answered.

"You still love him, don't you?" He inquired before making a slight noise of contempt that irritated the young widow even more than his words.

"I always have and I always will," Zafira replied, certain of herself.

"Can't imagine your husband liked that particular truth." He pointed out mockingly.

"My husband always knew what was in my heart. I was faithful to him, but he knew I loved another. He even told me to stay with Diego when we were in Los Angeles. If he hadn't told me there was someone else in his life, I would have –"

"Left the cause for him? That would have certainly been the wise thing to do." He uttered. "Why did you join it, anyway? Your husband forced you? I mean… a beautiful and educated woman such as yourself could have had a bright future with a worthier man."

"Joaquin was a good man. And he never forced me to do anything. This life was my choice… But we weren't always rebels." She answered, not even realizing how their conversation had switched to a very different topic. "We fought against the French at the beginning. My brother died during the Siege of Segovia. It was where I met Joaquin. When Spain started to win back the country and the King returned to the throne my husband and his men were all given military ranks in recognition for their contributions. My husband was once a Lieutenant, just as you.

"Less than a year later, the same King we had risked our lives for proved a tyrant, and his men turned against us when my husband found out about the way they had acted while Napoleon's brother was ruling. We were forced to flee Spain, leave everything behind, and come to the colonies, where the oppression proved to be even worse than in the Old World. So we decided that, if we were forced to choose a side, we'd side with the people against the oppressors."

"Oppressors? You are confusing civilization with oppression. All that the people have here, they have by the will of the King." Juan answered.

"Thanks to the King? A King they have never seen, who has never been here, and only remembers they exist when he needs more money for his parties or new jewels for his wife? Most people in the colonies can barely survive from one day to the next. Do you think he cares? We are but numbers to him, slaves to exploit. If you truly are on our side, you should not forget what we're fighting for, and why! And never forget the King of Spain abandoned us long before we even thought of abandoning him!"

She turned to leave when her little speech was over but remembered just in time why she had come to him in the first place: to give him a piece of her mind. "You didn't answer me!" She turned back to say. "Why did you do it? Why did you try to kill Diego?"

Juan finished the rest of the tequila in his bottle, then stood up and turned away, heading for the nearby ravine in the hope he might get some time by himself. He hated answering questions, especially when having to lie.

Zafira, however, wasn't one to give up that easily. So, after a few moments, she followed him.

"Leave me be, Señora Correna!" Juan said. "Leave me be, or I won't answer for my actions!"

"What's that supposed to mean? Are you going to answer for what you did to Diego?"

"Enough!" He ordered. "I don't care much for reproaches. I had my reasons! What I did, I did for him, not against him!"

As he confessed his truth, he turned around and found himself face-to-face with the young woman, who watched him wide-eyed. Whether it was the alcohol in his veins or his anger and frustration to cloud his judgement, he didn't fully know. In the span of a few seconds, he found himself forcefully kissing Zafira. She hungrily accepted that kiss at first but, as she came to her senses, realizing what she was doing, she bit his lip and pushed him away with all her strength, then ran back to the hacienda.

Juan fell on his bottom and took some time to gather himself up. When his mind cleared, he cursed himself for having just ruined everything, certain he would have to pay a steep price for having behaved as he did towards Correna's widow.

Yet, at returning to the others, he soon realized she had not recounted what had happened to anyone there, and briefly wondered why. The only explanations he could come up with made no sense, so he decided women, in general, made little sense, for which reason trying to figure them out was a useless endeavor.

As for Zafira, she didn't understand what had come over her, nor what she was feeling for the Lieutenant. It made no sense to develop feelings for a man who had spent his life in service to those she had dedicated her life to fighting against. It made even less sense to find herself so taken in by the man whom she considered partly responsible for her husband's death, days after being rejected, for good this time, by the man she had always carried in her heart. Yet there was something about Juan, something she couldn't explain to herself, no matter how much she tried.

ZZZ

It was a day later when Victoria decided to confront her husband. Leaving Diego in Zafira's care, she found Juan in an isolated part of the ravine, just as he was about to return to the hacienda.

He stopped in his tracks at seeing her, then looked around as if searching for a way to avoid her and the argument he knew would follow.

Victoria made sure he wouldn't, so he stopped trying, and looked defiantly at her.

For a few moments, neither one dared to speak.

"I know what you must feel –" Victoria uttered, hesitantly.

"That would be impossible." He interrupted her.

"You should have taken it out on me, not on Diego. I am the one who wronged you, not him." She said.

"You just followed your heart." He replied. "Besides, I could never harm you, Victoria."

"But you did! When you stabbed him, you hurt me. I was terrified. Do you have any idea what it is like to find someone you had thought forever lost to you, only to see yourself about to lose that person again?" She inquired, her ire growing.

"I do," Juan replied, looking intently at her.

"Then how could you?"

"I promised… I promised myself that I would keep you and your child safe. What I did, I did to fulfil that promise." He answered.

"Keep us safe? By trying to murder my child's father?" She shouted at him. "When you helped me free him and the other rebels I actually thought you were a lot like him. That you were a good man. But no good man would do what you did. Diego is so much better than you will ever be!"

"Perhaps he is. But he is also the reason why you are a fugitive and your life, as well as the life of your unborn child, is in danger. He, his secrets, and his lies led to this!" Juan told her.

"It was my own mistakes to put us in danger. But Diego will find a way out, as he always does!" Victoria stated.

"You have much faith in him." Her husband remarked in what she assumed was a mocking tone.

"I do." She answered.

Juan nodded and passed by her, feeling that their conversation could very well end there.

"You know the difference between the two of you?" She asked, her question stopping him in his tracks. "You tried to kill Diego when you saw him respond to my kiss, while he would never consider killing you. Neither to protect his secret nor so that I could be free to marry him as I should have."

Juan was about to say something hurtful to her but stopped himself just in time. All the torment he had been living with since he had stabbed the caballero was due to the very fact that he knew she was suffering, and that it was him to have caused her sufferance. Considering that, he couldn't bear to cause her more pain, not even through his words.

"I never tried to kill him." The Lieutenant, thus, answered. "And I will not stand in the way of you being with the man you love, Victoria. Whether I die in battle or we receive an annulment, the two of you will be free to marry each other soon enough. As for his secret…no one will learn it from my lips."

The young woman watched him leave, and turned around, her attention resting on a white dove innocently looking at her from the tree under which Juan had been sitting. She smiled taking the bird as a good sign, then became pensive as she returned to Diego.