LAVENDER BLUE (historical romance) (5 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

T
he trellis swayed precariously. Jeanette held her breath. No longer was she the elfish tomboy who had scaled the trellis like a buccaneer the mast. She often lamented over the way her once slender frame had filled out. The budding breasts whose existence had sorely annoyed her at twelve had bloomed into a lushness that often threatened to spill out of her low-cut dresses. Yet the armoire’s mirrored doors reflected the slim hips of a woman who has yet to bear a child. Would that she had.

When no noise of cracking latticework followed, she relaxed and drew a deep breath. The scent of the fragrant roses that laced the trellis mingled with that of luscious oranges and bananas fro
m the Columbia’s fruit groves beyond. Quickly she skimmed the rest of her way down the network of slats.

“
Hell and damnation!” she hissed when she reached the bottom. She thrust her forefinger in her mouth to suck where a thorn had pricked it.

Spitting out
the blood that salted her tongue, she laughed aloud. It had been even longer than the period of mourning since she had enjoyed herself. Perhaps since that day when Aunt Hermione had made her put up her hair and let down her skirts and society had cast her into the role of a young woman.

From behind her a voice cautioned, “
Ssssh!” In the moonlight she made out Trinidad’s weather-beaten sombrero. “You laugh loud enough to wake the cemetery. You want your aunt she should hear us? “

But she knew old Trini was
in good humor also. Riding was in Trinidad’s blood. The little man’s rounded shoulders squared, his back straightened as for the first time in more than a year, he sat astride a superb horse. With the effects of the war, the bays had been reserved for drawing the brougham only. In Richmond and Wilmington and Charleston thoroughbreds now pulled caissons instead of carriages.

Jeanette tried to repress her own capricious good mood. But as the bays clip-clopped their way along the River Road toward Brownsville
and Matamoros she laughed gaily. The delicious solitude of the dark, when no proper lady would be about, the feel of the invigorating night air on her face, and the freedom of her body unrestrained by stays and hoops only heightened her spirits.

At her laughter, the old Mexican overseer cocked his head, and she explained, “
Trini, sometimes I think that when God cut me out of His bolt of cloth, somehow He slipped on the pattern and I wound up a female when I should have been a male!”

Trinidad chuck
led.
El Señor
, He never slips up. One day,
sobrina,
you weel find thees pattern from which He made you.”

She doubted it. There was no pattern for a twenty-six- year-old woman who behaved like a sixteen-year-old boy . . . except for the mentally incompetent
. That was it, she really must be deranged. Only an imbecile would set out on such a futile expedition.

She laughed again, and her exultant laughter echoed up and down Brownsville
’s sleeping streets. Even the saloons and mescal joints snoozed in drunken slumber. Not so Matamoros. The cantinas that wedged every corner were more active than a Baptist riverside revival. Drunks staggered out swinging doors as ready replacements shoved their way in. A brassy trumpet mourned the loss of fortunes on the monte tables. Sloe-eyed women with painted faces struck seductive poses as they displayed their wares outside cantina doors and in the rooms above.

But Jeanette had had enough of cantinas three days before. She let the bay pick its way through the refuse-ridden Plaz
a de Mercado toward the Camino a Los Cemeterios while she formulated the rest of her plan. The bay danced to a halt in front of a stucco building that had openings for rifle barrels in the second-story walls and a large dome used as a lookout post rising above the flat roof. The walls were pitted and scarred with bullet holes from the numerous revolutions. This was the regional headquarters for the Mexican Guardia Nacional. Two soldiers came sleepily to their feet at the approach of the peach-fuzzed youth and the stooped old man.

Fearlessly Jeanette looked over the soldiers
’ bell¬mouthed escopeta. The shotgun was almost an antique. “I wish to see your
capitan
.”

“
He sleeps.”

“
It is important,” she pressed.

The soldier, whose jacket was stained and sloppily bu
ttoned, shrugged at the other, and replied, “Come with me.”

They followed him into a room where light peeked through chinks in the mud-brick walls and, at the soldier
’s bidding, waited while he disappeared down a hallway. The room contained a battered desk and only one chair, but Trinidad found a nail keg for Jeanette to sit on. Soon the soldier reappeared, followed by a stocky man struggling into the jacket of his uniform. This was the officer whom Trinidad told her was known for negotiating deals above and beyond the call of duty—and his office.

He eyed them suspiciously over the bristle of his handlebar mustache, "
Pues
?” he grumped. “Well? Well? What is it that brings you bats out at this ungodly hour of the night?”

“
Cotton,” Jeanette said in a young man’s low-pitched voice.

“
Cotton?” the captain roared.

“
Cotton,” Jeanette answered, unperturbed at the way the captain’s mustache flapped with the jowls that worked in muted outrage. “More cotton than you ever dreamed.”

She hurried to explain the plan she had
formulated over the last two days—the idea to establish an overland route from the railhead between Galveston and San Antonio for shuttling cotton to Matamoros by teamsters.

“
Why Matamoros—why not Bagdad?” the captain asked when she had finished.

“
Because I want guns and ammunition, and the European blockade runners don’t like to risk running firearms through the Federal blockade on the Gulf. But with you as a middleman—and taking a handsome profit—cotton could be freighted to Guaymas on the Pacific in exchange for guns and ammunition from the merchants who risk no blockade.”

“
Ask for wagon loads of whores! Ask for barrels of
aguardiente
! But do not ask for guns and ammunition!” The captain flung a hand at the
escopeta
the soldier cradled. “Do you think my men would shoulder a weapon as outdated as a bow and arrow if we had the means to obtain modem firearms? We need them to fight the French. Even at this minute
los franceses
wait like sea wolves outside Veracruz’s harbor to set up their Austrian Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico. Bah!”

Political machinations in that decade were rife. The French, through past-due debts owed by Mexico, hoped to gain control of that country
’s unstable government, which was already torn asunder by its continuous internal revolutions. Of course, France’s intervention violated the Monroe Doctrine and forced the United States to align with Mexico’s fugitive President Juarez. Thus the Confederacy and France found themselves strange bed partners, both allied against the United States.

“
Then why not buy the firearms?” she ventured. “Mexico has cattle—that means beef and hides. Food and shoes for the European countries.”

The captain grunted, and his great mustache flapped. “
Because of Juarez’s order to defer payments on our national debt, other countries refuse to deal with us. I am sorry,
joven
” he told the young man, “but I cannot help you—nor myself,
ay de mí
."

On the trip back to Columbia Jeanette slumped low on the bay
’s back. Anything she hoped to do for the Confederacy, anything she hoped to do for Armand’s memory, even for Columbia, would have to be done in a woman’s limited capacity. Knitting socks and underwear and making bandages and canteen covers. Her contemptuous snort nearly equaled that of the weary horse.

She crawled into her
four-poster just as dawn shafted the eastern sky. But sleep eluded her as the memory of the blockade runner’s kiss plagued her thoughts. The kiss had not been that repulsive. Surely some terms short of total capitulation could be agreed on.

While the last blistering rays of July sun gilded the cathedral spire, the brougham rumbled through Matamoros, an old fortified city that once offered Easter-egg painted homes, semitropical fruits, exotic flowers, and salt marshes converted to tree-shaded lagoons.

“
Not like it used to be when we would come over for all manner of fiestas and fandangos,” Aunt Hermione declared and pulled her black lace shawl more tightly about her. “A romantic place, Matamoros was then, with gallant caballeros and handsome soldiers everywhere. But now, now—it’s not safe for a woman to be about.”

Now cotton was beginning to flow out of the South through Texas to Matamoros and from there to the neutral port of Bagdad, which the Federal Government could not blockade. The formerly
sleepy little border town of Matamoros was overflowing with twenty thousand speculators from all over the world. The influx of foreigners was catered to by the accoutrements of most boom towns— brothels, gambling houses, and innumerable saloons.

Yet, like
the much-smaller Bagdad, Matamoros had scarcely any sidewalks, no gas works; the streets were not graded and ordinarily had an average depth of eighteen inches of mud. There were likewise no waterworks and peons hauled silty water from the river for two dollars per forty-gallon barrel.

Aunt Hermione
’s fan indicated the peons who lounged about the Plaza de Hidalgo in bare feet and dirty sombreros, the drunken soldier who lurched from a hitching post to the plaza’s iron picket fence, the three beady-eyed pistoleros whose hands rode their gun belts. “Rape—mark my word, Jeanette. The Yturrias’ ball is not so important to take a chance on—”

“
Rape,” Jeanette finished with a sigh. “Aunt Hermione, rape is particularly unnecessary in a town with such a supply of hospitable prostitutes. You have little to fear”—or hope, she added mentally—“of rape.”

On the other hand, Jeanette knew she would have to worry about rape that night
—unless she played her cards right, which was just what she had in mind.

Behind the Yturria
’s high, pink adobe walls the ancient and patrician names of Mexican history were represented—with the exception of Cavazos. But then Cristobal was off researching his article—no doubt in a saloon or brothel. For once she was glad he was not along to relieve the tedium with his foolish yet funny repartee. He would make an excellent red herring that evening.

Many women would readily believe she could leave the ball to have an assignation with such a handsome and distinguished man. The women would be quite will
ing to overlook the inane laugh and the affected mannerisms for a heavy diamond ring on their finger, bought with a lucky or skillful hand at cards, and their name coupled in marriage with the Cavazos name, which still retained the grandeur of its aristocratic past. More than once that evening Jeanette mentioned Cristobal with lowered lashes and a giddy smile at the other young women.

Only with Claudia Greer did she lower her guard. But then Claudia, like Armand, had always been sensitive to others and woul
d have seen through her sham. Even now the plain-faced woman perceived how forced was the bright smile that Jeanette wore. As a properly married woman with a husband away at war, Claudia joined the dowagers and duennas. These women sat against the adobe walls of the large lantern-filled courtyard, away from the fun and festivities.

Claudia put her hand gently on Jeanette
’s and lowered her voice so the other women would not hear. “I know it must be very difficult for you, Jeanette. I know how much you loved Armand . . . and how very much he loved you.”

Jeanette blinked back the tears of shame at her deception and answered honestly, “
Sometimes I forget, Claudia. Sometimes it seems that I never was loved; that Armand was a trick of my imagination.”

“
I think it’s time’s way of lessening the hurt of losing a loved one. But I don’t think the Lord ever meant to limit our love to just one person.” Her stubby-lashed eyes searched Jeanette’s. The young woman’s mouth, much too large for her narrow face, smiled tenderly. “Don’t wait for the perfect person, Jeanette. There are no perfect people, only perfect moments.”

But Claudia had not known Armand as she had. Jeanette stayed just long enough in the Yturrias
’ courtyard to mingle with the citizens of Brownsville and Matamoros and dance a few waltzes with the officers who had come over from Fort Brown. When the mariachis launched into a melancholy rendition of “La Golondrina,” she drew her aunt away from the rotund and pompous Senora Morales to murmur, “I have decided to leave early, Aunt Hermione, but our carriage will be at your disposal whenever you desire to leave.”

Her aunt, annoyed at being drawn away from the gossiping ring of matrons, nodded distractedly. Then her ears almost perked up like those of a horse that had
just scented danger. “What? What? However are you getting home?”

Jeanette
’s lips curved in a mischievous smile. “I’m not going directly home, Aunt Hermione. A gentleman of our acquaintance awaits me.”

Aunt Hermione
’s eyes rounded like horse blinders. “My smelling salts,” she wheezed.

Jeanette took the fan from her aunt
’s trembling fingers and waved it before the old woman’s face, whispering, “I shall be very discreet, I promise you.”

When she had installed her pallid aunt in a comfortable chair in the Yturr
ia
sala
, a drawing room of opulent furnishings, she made her way to the large, hand-carved double doors at the front entrance where Trinidad waited on the brougham’s box. She was grateful for the dark as she awkwardly levered herself up and settled her massive hoop skirts over the sides.

“
Loca
!” Trinidad said, shaking his head and flipping his whip over the bays’ backs. “You are crazy in the head,
sobrina
. Too much sun as a child!”

“
Not enough sun as a woman, Trini.” She lifted her face to the stars. “It’s a glorious night.”

“
Eet’s a dangerous night. I heard the owl,
tecolote
, he hooted twice just at sundown.”

“
Bah! You and Tia Juana are too superstitious. Did you leave the message with Rubia?”

"Si. But she made no promise that the Frenchman would come.”

“I’m taking a room tonight at the Fonda del Olvido—” Jeanette held up a forestalling hand. “I’ll be perfectly all right with your niece Rubia. Just be waiting for me tomorrow morning on the first stage back to Matamoros.”

Grumbling all the way, Trinidad drove
her back to the plaza where the stagecoach stopped on its ten daily runs over the twenty-odd miles between Matamoros and Bagdad. Jeanette wrapped her shawl about the lower portion of her face to conceal her identity, but fortunately she was the only passenger on the stage’s last run of the day.