Author's Note: This is the third and final installment of my trilogy around NWZ, this one (you asked for it) centered on Victoria. (I was going to combine hers and Marianna's stories herein, but decided I have enough original material that, if I divorce Marianna's from NWZ and flesh it out, I'll have my first novel. Wish me luck!)

Please note that I haven't seen any of the series since the mid-nineties, so I'm making up details and will inevitably get most or all of them wrong. All errors mine, and my apologies if any rub you the wrong way.

I strongly suggest you read my trilogy in the order it was written: first The Ballad of El Halcón, then The Measure of a Man, and this one last. As with Measure, this will be a long fic, although hopefully not as long, but I will post several chapters at a time as they are completed.

As always, I do not own these characters.

This fic is dedicated to the late Patrice Martinez, who played Victoria; a wonderful actor and astonishing beauty, who will always be deeply missed.

The Truest Heart

Part One: Señorita Escalante

Chapter One

"Victoria!" The shout came from a tall, slender boy, just brushing his teens, who came dashing into the mostly-empty cantina, looked around for a moment, then caught her father's jerk of the head towards the kitchen and ran to that door. He met her there as she responded to his call, grabbed her hands and pulled her back through and out the little back door into the unused patio behind the cantina. Her plain blue cotton dress and bare feet made a stark contrast to his tailored – even at thirteen – pants, boots, and embroidered shirt.

"Diego, what on earth is it?" Victoria asked, amusement making her eleven-year-old face crinkle at her friend. Several inches shorter than Diego, her long black hair was tied up in a single braid that hung well down between her shoulder blades.

"It's happening! It's really happening! Father just got the letter from the headmaster! I'm going to Mexico City, to the San Isidro school! I've been accepted for this fall!" His words tumbled out over each other in his excitement, matching the unruly black hair tumbling over his forehead. He hadn't let go of her hands.

Squealing with a joy that matched his, Victoria pulled her hands out and reached up to fling her arms around his taller neck. "Diego! That's wonderful! I'm so happy for you!" Unselfconsciously they hugged each other close, before he pulled away again. The two year difference in ages, not to mention their different social strata, might seem to make them odd companions, but their respective fathers – each a widower with an only child – being close friends since before they were born had cemented their own friendship just as tightly.

"I wish you could go, too," he told her earnestly.

"But girls can't go to school," she reminded him, not without a pang. "Not past the basics."

"I know. But Father Bernardo says you're the smartest girl he ever taught to read and cipher! I know you'd do as well as me!"

"Well, you'll just have to do well for both of us, then!"

"I will! And I'll write to you, too! Only I don't know how often the mail will get here. But will you write back to me? I'm sure my father or yours can show you how!"

"I will," she promised in return, but then, "but are you leaving already? It's only April! The term doesn't start until fall, does it?"

"It's such a long way that it will take us ages to get there! We're leaving in a few days, as soon as Father can make the arrangements." Then his boyish face cleared from its habitual worried expression. "But not until next week! And I'm certain Father will want to come into town to see your father before we go – and we'll be here on Sunday for mass. This isn't goodbye, not yet!" Suddenly he gasped. "Except it is for right now. I've got to get back out to the ranch. I just rode in to tell you the news! Bye, Vic!" And without giving her time to react, he dashed back through the cantina and out to his horse tethered in front, scrambled aboard, and was gone in an instant, leaving a cloud of dust behind in the pueblo's single street.

Victoria had run after her friend to wave at his back, with some exasperation, from the porch. "He didn't even look back," she complained to her father, Paulo, as he came to put his arm around her shoulders with a grin. A small, wiry man with curly salt-and-pepper hair, he was nattily dressed for the pueblo, in leather boots, black pants, a white button-down shirt, and brown leather vest.

At his questioning look, she gave him the news. "I knew he wouldn't stay here," Paulo Escalante commented. "He's too intelligent, and ambitious. Oh, not for adventure or high office," he explained with a dismissive wave. "He's thirsty for knowledge, that Diego de la Vega. He won't come back until it is quenched."

"But he will come back some day, won't he?" she asked plaintively. "He's my best friend!"

Paulo smiled down at her. "I'm sure he will, querida. This is his home." Then he sobered. "But when he does, things will be very different. He will be a man, and you will be a woman. You must take care never to be alone with him again. In fact," he went on, a far more serious note than customary suddenly in his voice, "you must begin to take care right now, today, never to be alone with any male, of any age – except for me, of course. Especially, you must never allow anyone to pull you out the back door like that again – or anywhere else that is secluded."

She knew what he was obliquely referring to – she helped him run a cantina, after all. She had heard enough of the sly suggestions of their patrons, seen enough of their sideways appraising glances at her already-lovely face atop her still-childish body, that she had asked pointed questions of her father; which he, reddening but determined to do the best he could by his only child, had answered honestly.

"Papa! I'm only eleven! Are you saying people already question my virtue?" She was outraged by the thought.

He swiveled to face her, turning her by the shoulders as well so they looked squarely at each other, even stepping off the porch so they were nearly the same height. "Listen to me, querida. Your virtue, and your reputation, are two entirely different things. One can be sullied, even ruined, without the other being touched. And both are important to keep pure. Especially here, doing what we do. Do you understand me?"

Looking solemnly into his loving, worried brown eyes, Victoria slowly nodded. Losing her mother years before, and living in the cantina since birth, had made her wise beyond her years. "Yes, Papa. I will be careful," she promised, with all the gravity of one much older.