LAVENDER BLUE (historical romance) (23 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

C
ristobal flicked the lash over the burros’ backs with all the expertise of a mule skinner; hardly compatible with the man who spent his days and nights in darkened grogshops and gambling houses. Her glance skirted over the profile of the man on the wagon seat beside her. The faint lines about his eyes, lighter than his teak-shaded skin, were laughter lines; but in another man they could just as easily have come from squinting long hours at a far horizon under a harsh sun. She had always thought his foolish smile made his mouth weak, but studying it now, she detected a pride etched there, certainly; and a sensual quality.

Below the hat that dipped low in front and back, fitting his head as if he had always worn it, Cristobal
’s eyes crinkled in a slumberous smile. “Have I suddenly grown a wart at the end of my nose?”

Embarrassed, she turned her gaze to the infinite stretch of emptiness. “
I find it difficult equating the man driving this wagon with the Beau Brummel of Brownsville,” she tossed off flippantly.

“
I might say the same of you. Dressed in those boy’s clothes, you hardly resemble the Madame Pompadour of Brownsville parlors. And those calluses.” His large hand caught hers and turned it over, palm up. “The Jeanette St. John I remember would as soon be struck by lightning than sport these.”

“
I told you,” she said waspishly, “I forgot my gloves when I went riding.”

He quirked a brow. “
More than once?”

Her booted foot beat a nervous tattoo on the wagon
’s floorboard. “There were other things to think of.”

“
Oh, I’m sure there were.”

Quickly she looked at her husband, catching the sardonic twist of his lips. Unsure of how to interpret his expression, she asked, “
You aren’t jealous, are you?”

He glanced at her before directing his gaze back to the dusty wagon tracks that cr
awled north over the desert toward Matamoros and Brownsville. After a moment, he said, “And if I were?”

She laughed then, a light musical note that he had once mentioned was appealing in that off-handed manor of his.

“Fie, Cristobal. I know you better than that.”

“
Do you?”

Beneath the noonday blaze of the sun she scrutinized her husband for any sign of subtlety. But his handsome mouth wore its usual foolish grin. She really was fortunate that her misadventure had turned out as we
ll as it did. True, she had to forfeit the gunpowder to Juarez’s men rather than admit her proprietorship and jeopardize her cover. But she had escaped the attack unharmed, thanks—incredibly—to her usually ineffectual husband’s intervention. And Benito Juarez had benevolently freed the teamsters, her
campesinos
, with a warning to choose a less risky commodity to transport.

She had issued a warning of her own. The previous evening she had hastily searched out Felix. She found him with the other
campesinos
, swapping stories around a campfire, and warned him that the teamsters must adhere to the story of her capture she had fabricated for Cristobal’s benefit. Trinidad’s big apelike son had screwed up his mouth. “I weel tell the others. But, senora, there ees sometheeng—” He shook his shaggy head and trod away, saying, “I do not know . . . sometheeng not right.”

In the hours that followed Jeanette tried to pinpoint what it was that bothered Felix
—and her. But she was still weak, and the mere effort of concentrating on anything for any length of time produced a nagging ache at her temples.

Cristobal insisted she rest in the back of the empty wagon when the sun reached its zenith. And he called an early halt that night, drawing the wagons into a horseshoe formation
against other marauders. He easily assumed command, as if he were used to it. Had she not been utterly exhausted, she would have been impressed with the efficient way he handled the caravan—and the solicitous way he waited on her that night, preparing her plate of slum gullion himself.

When the time came to sleep, she made no protest that Cristobal shared the wagon bed with her; instead, with the cold air sloughing over the desert floor, she gratefully curled up in the arms he wrapped about her. She buried
her nose in the warm curls that matted his chest above the V of his open shirt. After a moment, she wrinkled her nose and said, “Your hair tickles!”

In the darkness of the wagon he chuckled. “
All right. Flip over.” His hands grasped her shoulder and waist and rolled her so that her back was against him. Which was worse. For only a short while later she recognized the unmistakable sign of sexual arousal. It pressed against her, taunting her. All fatigue vanished in the knowledge of Cristobal’s desire for her. A heady stimulus. Now her breathing was labored, as if she had been running. Like that first Eve she was tempted. After all, this was her husband.

The wisdom of her mind bickered with the natural urge of her body. Her husband was but a caricature of the
type of man she admired. Yes, he had tenderly cared for her, but he was a worthless scoundrel. True, but she enjoyed his wit and intelligence. And he was strikingly attractive. But good looks were not reason enough for a woman to give herself to a man. There had to be that commitment of abiding love—and that reminded her of Armand. She had a commitment to him; to his memory.

And so she tried to inch away from the man who was now her husband. His hand, flat against her stomach, hauled her back against him. S
he steeled herself against the thick, flesh-stiffened brand that burned tantalizingly into her buttocks, and she prayed for the relief of sleep’s unconsciousness.

“Notheeng but bones!” Tia Juana pronounced, a disapproving curl to her full-blown lips. She had been frantic about her mistress’s prolonged absence from Columbia, but Jeanette never would have known by the way the old Mexican woman plopped the cup of chocolate down on the night stand with a final “Hhhmph!” before she lumbered out of Jeanette’s bedroom.

Jeanette sat up in the bed and looked down at the way her pelvic bones protruded through the nightgown
’s soft satin. No wonder Cristobal whisked himself away as soon as he had safely ensconced her in bed. His important “engagement” was probably another woman with more enticing curves. At least it wasn’t Rubia this time, for at that late hour the young woman was already asleep.

A moment later Tia Juana rumbled back into the bedroom with the bird cage held high. “
That bird—never would shut his beak from gabbin’. I don’t talk to no birds. No suh, it don’t make no sense talking with sump’in that can’t answer yo question. You talk to him.”

While she sat the cage on its stand, she told Jeanette what had happened during the mistress
’s ten-day absence. “Da people are flocking to Matamoros like Moses and the Exodus. Not a soul left to haunt Brownsville. ’Cause dhere’s talk dat de Union soldiers are gonna leave Fort Brown. And destroy Brownsville when dhey does.”

“
Morgan retreat?” Jeanette muttered. “Never.”

“
And I tried to buy a pound of tea—why ol’ man McClellan wanted five hundred dollars, chile!”

Jeanette sighed. “
That’s because the gold dollar is now worth two thousand of Confederate currency.”

Tia Juana plumped a pillow and put it behind Jeanette.
“When you gonna stay home where you belong?”

“
One day.” The candle flickered sleepily in its socket, and Jeanette slid down in the bed, closing her eyes. It looked as if a child would finally force her to do just that. Besides, she was weary of her subterfuge. She missed the friends who had forsaken her as a turncoat. It would be fun to go rowing again with Cristobal, maybe plan a picnic now that summer was here. But what would Cristobal have to say about a child that wasn’t his? Not much, probably.

“
Aawwk. Rape! Lavender Blue. Aawwk.
Sacré tonnerre
!’ ’

Jeanette
’s lips flattened in annoyance at the voluble bird. Then her lower jaw dropped in increments. Her hands began to tremble. A thousand thoughts hurled down upon her mind like a hurricane upon a ship at sea. Slowly her hands tightened upon the bed’s counterpane, bunching it. Astonishment was followed by a fury that raged greater than the force of any hurricane.

Washington let only Cristobal touch him. Washington now spoke French. Epitaphs that Cristobal
did not use—but Kitt did.

The two were one and the same!

She swept the counterpane from her and sprang out of the bed. Her hands tore through her wardrobe until she found the pants and shirts. Her heart labored like a wheezing ship’s engine as she rapidly dressed and tugged on the boots. There was not enough oxygen in the air to support the rage that fed on her lungs like some devouring sea monster. She stood on the brink of explosion. Her mind threatened to shatter into a thousand splinters.

Tears blinded her ride down the darkened military road. Armand. Shame. Cristobal. Betrayal. The Frenchman. The words drummed in tempo with the pounding of her horse
’s hooves. She wanted to turn the revolver’s cold metal against herself. To end the hideous nightmare. But more, she wanted to see Cristobal lying at her feet, his blood staining the ship’s wooden deck. Oh God, if only she had succeeded that first time! Her tortured mind cried for revenge. How perfect—how befitting that Cristobal’s sloop would be called the
Revenge
. She meant to have hers. Her smile was as grim as the skull on the pirate’s flag.

Foregoing the ride to Brownsville for a ferry, she forced the bay into the Rio Grande at the point five miles east
of the chapel. At that point the water was some six feet deep.

The horse shied and tossed its head, but Jeanette
’s knees pressing steadily at its flanks urged it on to ford the river.

The lights of Matamoros loomed in the distance. In the center of town,
the sonorous cantina music could be heard echoing about the plaza. The Mexican town was just waking up at eleven o’clock at night. Spanish dons, Mexican
pistoleros
, French soldiers, sloe-eyed women with their faces discreetly veiled by black mantillas—all stopped to watch the boy on the horse gallop down the dirt streets as if the Master of Hell were hot on his heels.

Jeanette prayed. Whether to the Master of Hell or the Almighty above, she did not know. Her words repeated themselves
—over and over on the twenty-mile ride to Bagdad. Don’t let the Revenge have sailed. Don’t let me be too late.

Why hadn
’t she connected the derivative of the Spanish name, Cristobal, with Kitt? Why hadn’t she noticed the similarities between the two men? Why hadn’t she connected all the coincidences? Oh, what a blind, arrogant fool she had been!

The horse pounded through the shanty-lined streets of Bagdad. Its hooves sank into the sand as it labored toward the beach. Jeanette
’s eyes strained through the darkness. More than two hundred ships now crowded the harbor. Although France now controlled Bagdad, all blockade runners serving the Confederacy were allowed to ply their trade since the Rebel government and France were mutually aligned. And, of course, the French would naturally assume that the French-registered
Revenge
would be aiding either France and/or the Confederacy.

Jeanette slowly let out her breath. There, tugging at anchor, was the
Revenge
. Even at that time of night lighters scurried to and from the sloops, hastily loading and unloading contraband, for the moon was disappearing. Tossing the reins over the bay’s head, she slid from the saddle. She pushed her way through the multitude of men working along the shore, her eyes searching among their darkened forms for Alejandro. Keeping her head lowered, she moved from one mound of contraband to another. Caps and balls. Cheese and wines. Calomel and saw blades. Nearly a quarter of an hour later she spotted him, heading toward a beached lighter with a crate hunched on his shoulders. She curbed the anger that raged and foamed in her throat like some corralled stallion. “Alejandro!”

Beneath the weight of the crate the boy turned slowly. “
I need to see your captain,” she told him. “Immediately.”

He shifted the crate, which was label
ed SALT in block letters, to the other shoulder. “The lighter—it will not be loaded for another hour or so. You will have to wait.”

She shrugged. “
I can wait, then.”

She followed him to the barge-like boat and plopped in the sand while he slid the case int
o position with the others already stacked toward the rear. Insouciantly she crossed her arms over her knees, but her fists knotted and unknotted. She struggled to contain her impatience, to tamp down her fury. Alejandro turned and wiped the sweat from his brow. “You have not come in a long time. The captain will be glad to see you.”

“
I’m sure,” she managed thinly.

At last he trudged off. Quickly she scampered to her feet and began to push against the lighter
’s side. The splintered wood tore into her palms and held solid to the sand like barnacles to a ship’s hull. Her boots dug into the sand for toeholds. It would take two strong men to even budge the lighter. How did Noah get the cursed ark off? It would take a monsoon’s rain to lift the lighter.

“
Hey! Se
ñ
ora!”

She whipped around to confront Alejandro. He loped toward her. “
Que pasa
?” he demanded.

She pointed to the shoreline. “
The tide, Alejandro. Soon it will run out.” And indeed the laggard current was running seaward. “If we hurry we can catch the tide before it goes out.”

Alejandro peered up at the darkened heavens. The bridge of his short nose furrowed with indecision.

She capitalized on it. “Here, give me a hand, Alejandro.”

She turned back to push on the lighter. A tight smile of satisfaction creased
her lips when, yielding to the authority in her voice, he fell in beside her. Together they managed to inch the lighter toward the lapping surf.
Hurry
! she wanted to shout.
Faster!
What if Cristobal decided to come ashore?

Then, miraculously, the lighter
caught the tide’s ripples and bobbed like a Halloween apple. She waded in past her knees, still shoving, until the lighter was afloat. Grunting with the effort, she levered herself up over into the barge and, gasping, collapsed face first on the rough wooden planks. The smell of tar filled her nostrils, and the seawater salted her lips. Beside her, she heard Alejandro’s labored breathing, muted somewhat by the rhythmic slap of the waves against the lighter.

Like some giant sea monster, the
Revenge
loomed closer and closer until its funnels blocked the stars from view. The Revenge had an odd, squarish shape. Then Jeanette realized the vessel’s decks were crammed with bales of cotton mounded in tiers.

Alejandro cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled up, “
Oiga
!" Soon a dim face appeared over the bulwarks, followed by the lowering of the ladder. Deftly Jeanette scaled the swaying ladder and swung over the side. Lantern light at first blinded her.

“
Alejandro?” the sailor asked, puzzled.

She jerked her thumb back
over her shoulder and rattled in Spanish, “Behind me. I have a message for
el capitán
.”

The squat potato-like man hailed two of the many sailors who moved feverishly about the deck, coiling ropes and hoisting the sacks of coal that would permit the vessel
to steam to its first ports without any calls for refueling.

Jeanette seized the chance and faded backward into the darker recesses of the ship. Her heart pumped erratically as she lightly ran down the narrow companionway, up another set of shallow steps,
and halted before the heavy wooden door of the finest white oak timber. Blindfolded, she had made her way along this route many times before.

She knew she stood before the captain
’s quarters. Without waiting to gather her courage, she shoved open the door.