Deep as the Rivers (Santa Fe Trilogy) (58 page)

   
A short while later Olivia found herself seated in the Freuls’ cozy parlor sipping the fragrant French coffee everyone in New Orleans loved so well. The doctor and his spinster sister, Louise, were genuinely solicitous as they made her feel at home in the cheery little apartment above his business office.

   
“Now, you must tell me about this young man you’ve fallen in love with,” Louise said after insisting Olivia eat a thick wedge of rich golden pound cake generously slathered with butter. Mademoiselle Freul was a formidable lady, tall and buxom with heavy iron gray hair fastened securely in a no-nonsense chignon at the crown of her head, but her dark eyes were merry and kind and she laughed frequently. Olivia had worked with her over the past two months at the foundlings hospital and had often thought Louise should have married and had a dozen children of her own to love.

   
With such sympathetic listeners, Olivia found she was eager to unburden herself. She had endured a long and lonely silence, surrounded by strangers who only cared for her because she was the Durand heiress, or shy servants who spoke in monosyllables. Her meeting with Colonel Samuel Shelby and the events of the past year came rushing quickly to her lips. She told them everything.

   
When she described Samuel’s departure, her voice broke. “I...I fear something may have happened to him. His work is dangerous. He may have been killed.”

   
“We can’t be certain of that—after all, it’s only been two months and the mails are so uncertain. You yourself said he travels around a good deal. His letters to you and yours to him may be lost.”

   
Olivia shook her head. “Surely not all of them. I’ve written him so many times, and we agreed to post them through Governor Claiborne’s office. If he were alive, he would have written me. I’ve even tried to contact his sister in St. Louis, but she hasn’t answered. The governor assures me his dispatches arrive from Washington regularly, but the pouches contain nothing from Samuel.”

   
Dr. Freul paced, stroking his short curly beard as he cogitated. “We will not give him up yet. Maybe the president sent him abroad?”

   
Willing to grasp at any straw, Olivia nodded. “It is possible.”

   
“Well, that will still not solve our immediate problem,” Louise interjected practically. “The colonel has to secure a divorce. Even if he were here, he could not marry you.”

   
The doctor looked at his sister and said, “There are many fine young men in the city from good families. Perhaps—”

   
“No! That is, even if a man would be willing to accept me and my child, I could never wed anyone but Samuel. Not if there is the least chance he’s still alive...” She shook her head in despair. “Not even if I knew he was dead.”

   
“Then we shall just have to invent you a husband,” Louise said cheerfully.

   
Both Olivia and Dr. Freul looked at her, stunned.

   
“What devious scheme are you cooking up now, Lou-Lou?”

   
Louise raised her heavy dark eyebrows and regarded her brother fondly. He had not called her Lou-Lou since they were children. “I think the solution to our problem is straightforward enough. Olivia needs a temporary husband—one who will not burden her with marital duties, but who will offer the protection of his name for the coming child. If her colonel is alive and secures his divorce, she will be suitably widowed and can wed him.

   
“Yes, the very thing!” she continued, delighted with her own ingenuity. “A husband with the decency to die young! I think a Spanish officer would suit nicely. Hmm, yes, a don from a fine rich old family, stationed in Spanish Florida. We shall visit Pensacola. I have not seen Señora Valdez in several years, and I believe I shall require the companionship of an adventuresome young lady on the trip. Tell me, Olivia, are you up to a brief sojourn in Florida?”

   
Catching the drift of what Louise Freul was up to, Olivia’s spirits suddenly felt lighter. She smiled at the merry twinkle in the older woman’s eyes and replied, “I’ve already traveled all the way down the Mississippi during an earthquake. I don’t believe the short sea voyage to Florida will be difficult.”

   
“Don Rafael Obregón!’’ Louise crowed triumphantly. “Yes, I like the name. What do you think, my dear?”

   
“I shall wed this mysterious Don Rafael in Pensacola, then be tragically widowed and withdraw to my estate at Bayou Bienvenue to mourn.”

   
As the two women plotted, Dr. Freul shook his head in perplexed admiration. The male, in his estimation, never possessed the tenacious survival instincts and toughness of the female of the species.

* * * *

   
Governor William Claiborne had just spent one hellacious morning placating a roomful of Creole planters who were frantic about the impending war with the British. Where was the American army to protect them against this ancient enemy whose ships sailed unchallenged along the Gulf as if they owned it? After reassuring them that all was secure, a fact he very much doubted, the governor finally succeeded in assuaging their vapors and sent them on their way.

   
With the bill for statehood before the Congress, it would not be long until those very same volatile Creoles would sit in a Louisiana legislature, plaguing his life even more. He rubbed his head wearily as his secretary knocked discreetly, then entered.

   
“What is it now, Darcy? More of those infernal Frenchmen—or another Spanish ship’s captain complaining about the Baratarian freebooters robbing them blind?”

   
The secretary smiled, producing a thick sheaf of papers. “Nothing quite so taxing, your excellency. Just a few official papers requiring your signature—the public notices you requested regarding that pirate, Jean Lafitte, the commutation of sentence for Enrique Salazar, a summons for Paul Schmitt and a series of requisitions for supplies and payments to the quartermaster.”

   
Claiborne scanned the notices. All goods purchased from Lafitte’s illegal smuggling operation would be subject to immediate seizure by the United States government. He signed it with a flourish. “The arrogant scoundrel wants a lesson in manners,” he gritted out, then skimmed a few lines from the next long document, copied out painstakingly in Darcy’s cribbed handwriting. The governor was rapidly developing a blinding headache.

   
If only his beloved Creole wife were still alive, but she had perished of a fever and he was widowed and alone for the second time in his life. Forcing aside personal considerations, he applied himself to signing the mountainous pile of papers where Darcy indicated. He had come to depend on his able and efficient new secretary over the past months since Edmond Darcy had begun working for him.

   
Explaining partially what each document entailed, the secretary opened it to the back page and held it for Claiborne’ s signature until the entire stack was complete. “That should do it for today, your excellency. Why don’t you go home for the evening? It’s getting late and I can finish up here.”

   
“Thank you, Darcy. I believe a glass of Madeira and early to bed would not be at all amiss,” the weary governor said, rising and heading for the door while his secretary meticulously straightened his desk.

   
After Claiborne was gone, Darcy slid one piece of paper carefully from the stack and smiled chillingly. The salutation was addressed to Colonel Samuel Shelby. “This was even easier than I’d thought,’’ he murmured in satisfaction as he sat down at the big walnut desk and folded the letter, then slipped it into an envelope. “I do hope you don’t take the news of your little French tart’s marriage too hard, Colonel. Of course, the governor could have mentioned that she’s already widowed and in seclusion at her country estate...or, he could have told you the truth—just as your beloved herself has. Poor thing, pouring out her heart to you in all those letters, pleading for you to come claim her and your bastard!”

   
His pale eyes glowed malevolently in the candlelight as the perfect features of his aquiline face were cast in shadows. He looked for all the world like a fallen angel. Satan’s right hand.

* * * *

   
Colonel Samuel Shelby walked out of Jemmy Madison’s office by a side door, used only when the president did not wish a special visitor to be seen. Many men from imperial ambassadors to political enemies had slipped through the discreet rear entry since the White House was first occupied by Thomas Jefferson, but Samuel’s mind was far from the military matters at hand as he walked, grim faced, down the long, twisting corridor.

   
Dolley Madison stood poised in the doorway of her salon, silently watching him approach. It was obvious that Samuel did not see her. The look in his eyes was a thousand miles away—in New Orleans if she did not miss her guess.

   
“I know the situation on the Canadian border is grave, but somehow I intuit that your thoughts veer in a southerly direction.” Mrs. Madison stepped into the hallway and gave Samuel a motherly kiss on his cheek, then drew him into the salon and closed the door.

   
When he first returned to Washington, Samuel had confided in her that he was pressing for the divorce from Tish because he had met a woman he wished to marry, a woman who waited for him in New Orleans. The young colonel had always kept his own council and never more so than in matters of the heart. Dolley had deduced that Olivia St. Etienne must be an extraordinary female indeed. But now the new spark seemed to have died in his eyes and his mask of cynicism was once again in place. Beneath it lay a world of pain, of that she was certain, and she wanted to know the particulars so that she might help or at the least offer consolation.

   
“Tell me what has you looking so preoccupied,” she commanded when they were seated on the cabriole sofa in the parlor, well out of earshot of servants after she dismissed her maid. “And don’t you dare give me another summary about the debacle when General Hull surrendered Fort Detroit to the British. Jemmy has already spoken more than enough about that!”

   
He smiled at her. “I could never fool you, could I?” he said fondly, his smile fading as a bittersweet look haunted his eyes before he shuttered them once more. “I no longer need pursue the divorce. Tish really is dead this time.”

   
Dolley gasped softly. “What happened?”

   
“I’m not certain really. I only learned of it yesterday when I was accosted by Worthington Soames. The senator was livid about my filing the petition with the legislature, screaming at me about defaming his beloved paragon of a daughter even in death.”

   
“But you’ve already told me how they faked her death once before,” she said uncertainly.

   
He shook his head. “There’s no fakery this time. He was like a wild man, red eyed and unshaven, crazed with grief. Tish is dead, all right. She was shot in St. Louis after I went downriver. He was too upset to give me any coherent details, but it appears to have been a robbery. Her body’s being sent back to Virginia for burial in the family mausoleum.”

   
“I know this sounds callous, Samuel, but now that she is truly gone, you could send for Olivia...” The bleak look in his eyes when he raised them to meet hers robbed her of breath. Surely it was not grief for Leticia Soames.

   
Echoing her thoughts he said, “I won’t be a hypocrite and say I’m sorry Tish’s gone but...I can’t very well send for a married woman. Ironic, isn’t it? First I was the one not free, now it’s her.”

   
“But how? Are you certain? Did she write this to you?” Her heart was breaking as she saw the anguish of his soul laid bare when the mask slipped for a moment.

   
“I haven’t received a word from Olivia since I left, even though I’ve sent a dozen letters. Governor Claiborne kindly and rather regretfully informed me of the particulars at the lady’s request. I suppose she found it awkward...” He stood up, unable to sit still any longer, and began to pace, needing to talk even though it was impossibly difficult to frame his thoughts.

   
Dolley was a patient listener who had spent years drawing out the shy and very private James Madison. As Samuel gathered his composure, she poured them each a glass of sherry from a decanter on the pier table against the wall. Silently she handed him one.

   
He took it absently. “He’s a Spanish nobleman, Don Rafael Obregón. I always thought she’d look to her own kind. After all, her parents were of the Ancient Régime, a baron and baroness, while I’m just the son of a land-poor Virginia planter. When she was impoverished with little hope of reentry into the humble ranks of St. Louis society, I suppose she changed—or we both wanted to believe she did.

   
“But once I learned about her uncle’s money on the journey downriver, I had this...” his voice faded for a moment as he groped for the right words, “this apprehension, a feeling deep in my guts that she just wasn’t meant to be mine. Then when I realized the extent of the Durand fortune and saw the way the Creole elite kowtowed to her, I wasn’t sure I could live in the shadow of her money, or that I had the right to ask her to give it up.”