LAVENDER BLUE (historical romance) (25 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

S
teadily the Revenge sailed for the Cuban harbor of Havana. Once Jeanette, still ensconced in the window seat, uncapped Cristobal’s telescope to search the far western horizon for the blockader. But the Union Jack flag was at last lost in a cloudbank. For the moment the
Revenge
was safe, as was Jeanette. The demands of eluding the blockader had forced Cristobal to leave Jeanette temporarily.

All day the
Revenge
glided on, swaying on the gentle swell of inky water; for that was all Jeanette could compare the water to—a deep-blue ink, transparent blue, changing to a living green where the ship’s bow quickly divided its glassy surface, and to a creamy white where the bubbles in the wake crushed each other in their whirling race after the rudder.

Some time after
noon Cristobal returned to his cabin and, with only a cursory glance in her direction, flung himself across the bunk and fell into a heavy sleep. She thought about bashing in his skull with the heavy sextant, but where might that land her with his crew? Besides, she thought, looking at the unruly mass of dark-brown hair that tumbled over his brow, she could not do it. She, who would have killed a man for attempting to steal her wagonload of contraband, could not harm Cristobal—despite the cavalier way he had used her.

She sighed and, with knees pulled up against her chest, returned her attention to claims of the Caribbean. Her forehead drooped on her knees. Much later she stirred in her cramped position. She became aware of another presence and turned her he
ad to find Cristobal, his jaw supported by one fist, watching her intently from the bunk. “Hungry?” he asked at last.

“
I want you to let me go.”

“
After the run is completed.”

“
Then you had best kill me, because I swear, Cristobal Cavazos, I’ll tell every French authority I can about you.” He swung his long legs over the side of the bunk and rose to stretch his massive frame. His self-assurance infuriated her. “And what of Lavender Blue?”

She clamped her lips shut and turned her face to the window where nigh
t was rapidly shading the horizon. “I don’t want to ever see your face again at Columbia,” she said tonelessly. “I want a divorce.”

“
Not as long as I live, Jen.”

Her head swiveled around to meet his gaze. “
Then may God put a swift end to your life!”

The no
rmally droll smile was replaced by the serious set of his lips'. “I’ve wanted you for too long to give you up now. We are married in the eyes of the law, Jen.”

He left her then, and she stared absently out into the night. It was lit by thousands of phospho
rescent insects. It seemed to her that the Revenge sailed on the
Milky Way
rather than the Gulf of Mexico. Ah, such a night.

Her bemusement must have shown on her face, for half an hour later Cristobal was at the doorway, saying, “
One can easily understand why men claim the sea as their mistress; why they cling to her, fickle though she might be.”

“
Were that she was your mistress instead of I.”

He sat a tray down on his desk and crossed to her with a cup of steaming coffee. “
Tsk, tsk!” he mocked. “Such sentiments from my beloved wife.”

She steeled herself against the fury he inspired in her and took the cup, saying sweetly, “
Then you know my sentiments for a mercenary, a man like yourself without principles.”

Unperturbed by the contempt in her voice, he hitc
hed a leg over the edge of the desk and picked up a slice of salted beef, popping it in his mouth. “Are my principles any less because my loyalty lies with the Juaristas rather than the Rebels?”

“
Loyalty?” she jeered, jarring her coffee precariously near the cup’s rim. “What does a man like you know of loyalty? Married to one woman and consorting with another!”

A dark brow quirked in bewilderment and she blurted, “
Rubia!”

“
Ah, so it is a question then of faithfulness rather than loyalty.”

Carelessly she swa
llowed a mouthful of the hot coffee. It seared every inch of her esophagus, and her throat screamed out in silent agony. But she managed to shrug indifferently. “Call it what you will.”

He laughed lowly. “
I call it jealousy.”

“
Ha!”

He leaned forward, a for
earm braced on his knee. “Then we’ll call it faithfulness. But tell me, were you any more faithful to Armand, taking a lover as you did?”

“
I told you, it’s not the same!”

He came to his feet and crossed to her. “
But it is, Jen. I am conjecturing that you never loved Armand any less—”

“
In all those years Armand was never unfaithful to me! After less than three months of marriage you were already bedding—”

“
You never loved Armand any less,” he continued, “despite the pleasure you found in my arms.”

“
I never found pleasure in your arms!”

“
Oh, Jen, what a little hypocrite you are!”

Seething at his accusation, she grudgingly took the biscuit and slice of salted beef he passed her. Was she truly a hypocrite?

After the repast Cristobal left her, and she found herself pacing his cabin, fidgety as a schoolboy on a spring day. She was accustomed to being occupied, if not with the demands of the plantation then with the dangers of running contraband. She plopped down on the bunk, arms crossed behind her head. She tried to will herself to sleep, but her eyes stared at the smoke-darkened ceiling. The steady swish of water against the sloop’s hull reminded her of her dual captivity—a captive of man, a captive of nature.

She experi
enced a terrible desire, almost a mania, to see dry land, to smell the earth, to fill her lungs with other than salt air, to stretch out on some green bank and watch the summer sun filtering streams of light through thick foliage. At that moment her resentment of her captivity was so great that, when Cristobal entered and began to tug off his boots, she snapped, “You smell like the bed of a camel!”

He laughed and, to her dismay, crossed to the bunk and leaned over her, planting his fists on either side of h
er ribs. “And you, my dear Jen, do not smell like any bed of roses.”

His play on words brought a reluctant smile to the corners of her mouth. “
That’s better,” he said.

The smile faded. “
No, it’s not, Cristobal! It’s inconceivable that you would hold me here against my will!” His smell was a decidedly masculine smell—why couldn’t it be a nauseating one? Why did she have to be stirred like some cow a-bulling?

He came to his feet, saying, “
Sorry to have to point out the fact, Jen—but you forced your way aboard the
Revenge
." He began to unbutton the tight-fitting, doeskin britches. “Just be patient and I’ll deliver you back to the comfort of Columbia. Until then you can be my
compagnie de voyage
.”

“
But when?”

He pulled his soot-smudged shirt up over his head, mu
ffling his reply of, “In a month or so.”

“
A month or so!” His very nonchalance in the face of her plight—a situation he was responsible for—irritated her beyond caution. She sprang to a sitting position. “Get out. You’re not sleeping here!”

He blinked his
surprise. “This is my cabin. Surely you aren’t going to be unreasonable at this time of night?”

“
Get out!” she yelled shrilly, all self-control gone. It was going to be another of their confrontations. But this time, in contrast to all their childhood clashes, she meant to get the upper hand. “I demand the privacy accorded a lady,” she said primly.

He hooted. “
A lady!” He crossed to her and grabbed her upper arms, pulling her from the bed. “Look!” he said, positioning her before the small, tarnished shaving mirror that hung above the built-in chest. “Look at yourself, Jen! Is that dirt-streaked face and wild-tumbled hair the mark of a lady? Would a lady be caught dead in boy’s pants that blatantly reveal her curves? Or those hands?” He grabbed up one. “Callused palms and broken nails?” He spun her around to face him and caught her face between his large hands. “But, Jen, I wouldn’t have you any other way. You’re real—vital—alive!”

She shook free. She didn
’t want to hear his tender words. They confused her, diverted her from her purpose in life. Oh, why couldn’t she think clearly! It was the confinement of the small cabin. “I don’t recall having asked you to have me in any other way—other than in name only. Yet you used me abominably, Cristobal!”

He began to st
rip off his pants, and she whirled to face the window. Never had she seen a naked man. Even she and Armand had undressed in the dark and performed the ritual of lovemaking beneath the concealment of blankets.

“
I knew I would take you any way I could have you,” he said lightly, as if that taking were of no consequence.

“
Rape,” she said bitterly. “Oh, you might call it refined rape, Cristobal, since I did have a choice of sorts. But it makes you nonetheless despicable in my eyes. I could never come to love you as I—”

“
I know—I know. As you did Armand.” His boots were plunked down on the floor. “But I’ll settle right now for your arms.”

She heard the soft squish of the mattress, and yanked about. “
Oh, no, you don’t, Cristobal Cavazos. I told you that was my bed.”

He crooked a lopsided grin. “
Want to wrestle me for it?”

She snorted in disgust. “
No! I should have realized long ago you obviously were no gentleman.” She discarded her boots, first one, then the other, and came to the edge of the bed in her stockinged feet. “But you stay on your side. Our marriage conditions still hold.”

When she had settled herself on the mattress with her back to him, he leaned over her shoulder and whispered teasingly in her ear, “
I’m a patient and persistent man, Jen. Eventually you’ll see the error of your ways.”

“
Ohh!” she gritted. “Your conceit knows no limits.”

He feigned a wistful sigh. “
My one failing. But I’m trying to learn to be humble, dear. It’s awfully hard when I have a wife who secretly worships my body.”

She squinched her eyes shut and prayed for sleep.

But just as she would begin to drift off, Cristobal’s warm breath would tickle her ear or his arm would pull her close and awaken her. When his hand continued to snake around her waist to palm one full breast, she snapped, “Apparently it’s
my
body that is being worshiped!”

“
Let me pay your lovely body the full homage due it,” he coaxed.

The way his thumb and finger cajoled her nipples into pert little peaks, the way her lower abdomen ached for the same atten
tion—she was so badly tempted to yield. “You said you were my friend,” she reminded him. “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

“
I try, Jen,” he chuckled in the dark. “Really I do. But all my good intentions vanish when I get near you, and the lusty beast in me takes over.”

The proof of his own desire nudged her impudently in the small of her back. Oh, she did worship his body
—that was the agony of it all. Never had she and Armand performed the intimate acts of lovemaking she had initiated with Cristobal.

When Cri
stobal’s hand slipped under the waistband of her britches to satisfy the yearning of her woman’s secret parts, she twisted around to face him. Her hand over his, halting its progress. “Cristobal, can’t you see?” she rasped. “Can’t you understand that if I yield now, I yield everything? My honor, my self-respect—that I dishonor the love I bear Armand? ’ ’

He jerked his hand from hers. “
Dammit, Jen. That’s just it.
Bear!
Present tense. Armand’s dead! When will you get that through your stubborn head? I can’t compete with a dead man!”

“
You’re not trying to be reasonable!” she charged. “There’s nothing reasonable or logical about love. By God, I wish there were. Then I could just reason you out of my mind.”

He pushed her imploring hands from him and crawled over
her and out of the bunk. As he slid into his britches, the soft moonlight that dappled the walls and floor illuminated his massive body. It gleamed with the movement of well-honed tendons and ligaments undulating beneath brown velvet skin. She stared. She drank in his masculine beauty. Her lips opened to call him back to her side, to tell him of their baby. But she changed her mind.

Her want of him was overshadowing logic. She must not let herself forget that Cristobal Cavazos, for whatever reason, had bec
ome a coldly calculating rogue. When he couldn’t take her body in payment, he had taken her money. When he was bedding her, he was also making love to Rubia.