Merline Lovelace (15 page)

But Victoria…

Sam felt his insides twist again.

Victoria, who’d teased and enticed him with her girlish charms and woman’s body. Victoria, who’d jumped aboard ship and arrived in Cuba with only her blasted notebooks and her stubborn courage. Victoria, who toiled alongside the hospital orderlies in a place others might consider hell on earth, yet crafted stories that celebrated the honor, dignity and dedication of those she worked with.

Staring up at the stars, Sam was forced to concede that the woman at Siboney wasn’t the same woman he’d asked to marry him, a point she’d emphasized when she’d broken their engagement. Or attempted to break it. Sam still hadn’t relinquished
his claim. He wouldn’t, until she was home safe again.

And then only if she insisted.

He didn’t quite understand this bone-deep reluctance to let her go. It went beyond desire, struck at something more fundamental than lust. He wasn’t sure when it had taken root, or how it had grown to such proportions.

He’d dreamed of Mary for so long. Had quietly ached for her for so many years. Sam knew he would always hold her in a small corner of his heart, but Victoria—this Victoria he hardly recognized—had somehow taken possession of the rest.

Although the days and nights had long since blurred into one another, Victoria would never forget the afternoon the surgeon in command at Siboney established a contagion ward away from the main body of tents.

“It’s yellow fever,” he confirmed to the staff he gathered in the mess tent. “Only twelve cases so far, but more will soon show up now that it’s started. I’m asking for volunteers to act as nurses, orderlies, cooks and burial detail.”

Before anyone could move or speak, he held up both hands and issued a warning.

“Remember, those of you who go in will have to stay in. And I can only accept immunes for this duty.”

That restriction severely limited his pool. Ignoring the strenuous objections of those who wished to volunteer despite no previous exposure to the infectious disease, the colonel made his choices. Mary was among them. Because of her experience, he put her in charge of the detail.

Victoria recorded the gripping moment they entered the contagion area in a tersely worded dispatch she put on the wires the following afternoon. It concluded with a simple observation:

Not until July 16, the day after the general commanding the Spanish forces in Cuba agreed to terms of surrender, did more help arrive at the Siboney hospital. By then fever patients outnumbered the wounded by ten to one, and more than half of the medical personnel who’d volunteered to care for those in the contagion area were down themselves.

The commander couldn’t afford to lose any more of his trained staff and put out a desperate call for help to the regimental commanders. An entire company of the Twenty-fourth Infantry-Colored answered the call.

They arrived at Siboney late in the afternoon.
The hospital commander greeted them with tears of gratitude in his eyes. A reporter from
Leslie’s Weekly
accompanied the infantry and later quoted the surgeon when he noted that there was more real heroism in marching into a fever-stricken hospital camp and staying there day and night than there was in charging up any hill. The same correspondent would later inform his readers that only twenty-four of the sixty-five men who volunteered to work in the contagion area escaped illness. Thirty-one of them eventually died.

By then, however, Victoria had left Siboney. Sam came for her the same evening the Twenty-fourth arrived, offering an inducement for her to leave.

“The formal surrender takes place tomorrow in Santiago. I’ve wrangled a pass for you to go into the city and observe the ceremony.”

As he must have known it would, the bait proved impossible to resist. Victoria had heard such passes were scarcer than dry boots. When she’d gone down to the town to file her dispatches, the correspondents jamming the cable office could talk of little else. Evidently Harry Scoval’s articles in the
World
criticizing the grossly overweight General Shafter’s handling of the Santiago campaign had enraged the commander. As a result, his already strained relations with the press had snapped completely. Informing Scoval that he would “god
damned never” be allowed into the city as long as Shafter had anything to say about it, the general approved only a handful of passes to selected newsmen. Victoria couldn’t imagine how Sam had snagged one.

“His aide owed me a favor,” he explained with a shrug. “Will you come?”

Torn, she agreed to leave. She owed it to her readers to be present at the historic occasion.

Victoria rode out of Siboney on a bony-spined mule, twenty pounds lighter and a thousand years older than when she’d arrived mere weeks before. Her tattered, mildewed clothes had been replaced by a gray skirt and white blouse bequeathed to her by a nurse who’d shipped home, too ill to continue her duties. Richard Harding Davis’s spare pith helmet shaded her eyes from the broiling sun, and her soiled valise carried notebooks crammed with stories of the nurses she’d come to admire and respect beyond words.

Both she and Sam twisted in the saddle to take a last look at the hospital camp. Neither spoke of it, but the knowledge that they were leaving Mary behind in the contagion area hung like a stone around both their necks.

V
ictoria spent the night of July 16 at a tumble-down sugarcane plantation on the outskirts of Santiago. About twenty correspondents had commandeered the ruins, which they’d irreverently dubbed the Santiago Pressmen’s Club.

“Richard Harding Davis is here,” Sam said as he lifted her from the saddle and set her down in a courtyard strewn with rubble. “He’s promised to help you secure a good spot to observe the ceremonies tomorrow.”

“They should prove interesting,” she murmured through her weariness.

Sam had used the ride from the hospital to fill her in on what he knew of the highly charged politics surrounding the ceremony. Not only had General Shafter alienated the entire press corps by limiting their attendance, the irascible commander had also neglected to issue passes to any officers of the
navy, whose warships had sunk the entire Spanish fleet within sight of the city. Nor did Shafter invite General Calixto Garcia, leader of the Cuban Army of Liberation. The freedom fighters who’d battled so long and so fiercely weren’t included in the celebration of their first major victory after ten years of war.

That Sam could secure a pass for Victoria in the midst of all this political turmoil was nothing short of a miracle.

“I knew you wouldn’t want to miss the ceremony,” he said with a shrug.

“No, I wouldn’t.” Cocking her head, she studied him in the light of the full tropical moon. “You know, I believe you’re finally coming to accept my status as a credentialed correspondent.”

His drooping hat brim shaded his face, but she caught the glint of white teeth as he smiled down at her.

“You’ve earned your spurs, Victoria. I had to learn how to separate the woman from the journalist before I could admit it.”

It was a step, she thought on a quiet thrill of pride. A major step. Perhaps one day soon Sam might take the next and learn that the woman
couldn’t
be separated from the journalist. Victoria was only beginning to realize that herself.

“What about you?” she asked as he hoisted her
valise down from the saddle. “Will the Rough Riders be present at the ceremony?”

“Those who can still march will. We’ll enter Santiago with the Second Brigade. Not that we’ll look much like a victorious army entering a conquered city,” he added, rasping a hand over his whiskered cheek. “My men are even scruffier than I am.”

She had to admit he looked more like a street beggar than a United States Army officer. After weeks of slogging through dense jungle, sleeping in the mud, subsisting on army rations and dodging bullets, Sam had lost considerably more weight than she had. His face was gaunt beneath its scratchy beard, and his tattered uniform hung on his spare frame like rags on a scarecrow. With a jolt, Victoria realized she might not have recognized him if she’d passed him on the street in Cheyenne.

He’d changed as much as she, she thought. Outwardly, at least. They could have been two strangers staring at each other in the moonlight. Wanting—needing—to find the old Sam under this lean, leather-tough warrior, she picked her way through the rubble to the farmhouse.

“Do you have to return to your unit right away?”

“I can steal a few hours.”

“Good. We haven’t had a chance to just sit and talk since Tampa.”

“Funny,” he murmured as they stepped through the open doorway. “I don’t recall we did all that much talking in Tampa.”

The memory of just what they
had
done in Tampa sent a sudden, slicing spear of heat into Victoria’s belly. Thoroughly shaken by its intensity, she stepped inside.

“Miss Parker!”

While Victoria struggled to recover her composure, Richard Harding Davis detached himself from the group of correspondents clustered around a wooden table. Most of them looked every bit as ragged and tattered as the army they’d marched with. There were one or two exceptions, most notably the woman in a clean, simply tailored suit of lightweight cotton.

“I don’t know who you’ve met,” Davis said, drawing Victoria and Sam toward the group. “You remember Stephen Crane, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“This is George Clarke Musgrave, with the London
Times.
William Paley, who’s here taking movies for Vitascope. A. W. Layman, Associated Press. Harry Scoval, from the
New York World,
and his wife, Frances. She’s just arrived from Key West.”

Victoria nodded to each in turn, feeling more than a bit intimidated. She’d read many of Lay
man’s dispatches. Harry Scoval, who’d already become a legend for his coverage of the Cuban situation, was now gaining almost as much notoriety for his continuing skirmishes with General Shafter. Rather awed to be in the presence of such distinguished journalists, she blinked in surprise when Davis included her among their ranks.

“This is Victoria Parker,” he announced. “She writes for the Cheyenne
Tribune.
”

“So you’re the one!”

With a smile, Frances Scoval rose and shook Victoria’s hand. “I’ve read your stories about the army nurses and the Red Cross volunteers. They make one quite proud of our American women.”

Both flattered and curious, Victoria returned her friendly shake. “However did you find copies of
Tribune?
We’re rather a small paper compared to most.”

“I saw your pieces in the
World.
AP has picked them up. Didn’t you know?”

“No!”

The Associated Press stringer confirmed the astonishing news. “They’ve appeared in any number of papers across the country,” Layman told her. “Evidently the
Tribune
’s owner made them available to the AP network. Make sure he pays you syndication fees when you get back.”

“Yes,” Victoria murmured, dazed by the knowledge that her readership apparently extended far be
yond Cheyenne. “I’ll certainly speak to Papa about that.”

That won a round of hearty laughter. When it died down, Davis introduced Sam to the group.

“Join us for a drink,” he said, gesturing to the others that they scoot their chairs over to make room. “Frances, divine angel that she is, brought us several bottles of cognac from Key West. We’re toasting the surrender and debating how best to get around Shafter’s ridiculous edict limiting our attendance.”

“I don’t intend to get around it,” the thin, intense Scoval announced with a scowl. “I shall simply ignore it.”

“Of course, you shall, dear,” his wife said, patting his hand. “And then you’ll write a blistering piece about how the general maligned the press corps, offended our Cuban allies and insulted the navy, and we shall be banned not just from Santiago, but from the whole of Cuba.”

The prospect didn’t appear to concern her husband. “We’re leaving tomorrow, anyway,” he said with a shrug. “With the rainy season coming in a few weeks, the army won’t be able to march on Havana until December at the earliest. The fun’s over in Cuba for the time being.”

Victoria would hardly classify the Santiago campaign as fun, but she’d learned that women tended to view such matters differently from men.

“The
World
has directed the captain of the
Seneca
to take us to Puerto Rico,” Scoval informed his companions. “Word is General Miles will land with his expeditionary force any day now.”

“I’m for the Philippines,” the moviemaker announced. “The fighting’s still pretty fierce there. I hear the troops who didn’t make it to Cuba are being transported to San Francisco for embarkation. With luck, I’ll get there in time to ship out with them.”

“What about you, Miss Parker?” Frances Scoval asked. “Will you stay in Cuba or follow the sound of drums to the next battle?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Well, if you decide to push on to Puerto Rico, I’m sure Mr. Pulitzer would have no objection to letting you come aboard the
Seneca.
”

“Only if she gives him exclusive rights to her stories,” her husband drawled, generating another round of laughter.

Victoria joined in the laughter, but she couldn’t help but notice the way Sam had gone stiff beside her.

Quite suddenly, their on-again, off-again engagement seemed to have taken on an added dimension of uncertainty. When she’d made the painful decision to end it, Victoria had assumed she’d go home after Cuba and wait for her heart to heal.

Yielding to Sam’s insistence, she’d agreed to
keep up the pretense as long as she was on the island—to give her the protection of his name and rank. At Siboney, he’d cupped her cheek and promised quietly that they would sort matters out, but by then she was too weary to think beyond the next hour, let alone the next week.

Now…

Now a whole new vista of possibilities shimmered in the hazy future. She didn’t have to return home with an aching heart. She didn’t have to go back to writing amusing little anecdotes about Fourth of July picnics. As Sam said just moments ago, she’d earned her spurs. Dare she go to Puerto Rico? Or halfway around the world to the Philippines? Did she want to?

Her thoughts churning, Victoria listened with half an ear to the animated discussion by the journalists who’d so casually accepted her as a peer.

Beside her, Sam swallowed a string of silent curses. Like the rest of the troops, he had heard rumors that the Puerto Rico campaign would kick off any day now. Had known, too, that veteran correspondents like Davis and Scoval and the others would jump right into the thick of it, as they had in Cuba. But never for a moment had Sam imagined that Victoria would consider joining their ranks.

He slanted her a glance, searching for a glimpse of the girl he’d proposed to in her parents’ front
parlor that chilly night in March. Her hair was still as bright as a copper penny, if darkened a bit with sweat. She still looked out at the world with clear blue eyes. But heat and weariness had put dark circles around those eyes, and her tanned skin now stretched taut over her cheekbones. Her borrowed clothes hung on her loosely, all but obscuring what remained of her lush curves.

The girl had aroused him despite his every determination to the contrary. The woman fascinated him, yet she drew farther and farther away from him with each passing hour. With a slow tightening of his gut, he was forced to admit she now had more in common with this group of war-hardened correspondents than she did with him.

Frances Scoval’s cognac had disappeared and the fragrant Cuban cigars were down to stumps when Sam pushed back his chair.

“I’d better get back to my men.”

Regret flickered across Victoria’s face. Shoving back her chair, she walked with him to the door. “We didn’t get a chance to talk.”

“No, we didn’t.”

“Perhaps we’ll find time after the ceremonies tomorrow. Will you and your troops be quartered in town?”

“We don’t know yet. Stay close to Davis. I’ll find you and let you know.”

Like Harry Scoval, scores of uninvited correspondents simply ignored General Shafter’s edict and strolled into the city on the morning of July 17, 1898. Apparently the guards at the checkpoints hadn’t been advised to keep them out. Victoria and Richard Harding Davis didn’t have to produce their precious passes. Their credentials alone gained them access to the city.

Threading through the maze of barbed wire and sandbag barriers the Spanish had erected in anticipation of a long siege, they made their way down narrow streets to the governor’s palace. The long, low stucco building rambled along one side of the main plaza. A towering cathedral dominated the opposite side, its spires spearing straight into the cloudless blue sky.

Since Frances Scoval had already gone aboard the
Seneca
to prepare for its imminent departure, her husband joined Victoria, Davis and a group of others in the shade of the cathedral. Elbow to elbow with throngs of Cuban residents and foreign observers, they waited while the conquering army entered Santiago.

Even to Victoria’s eager eyes, their entrance appeared to be more of a scramble than a parade. The troops tried valiantly to keep ranks, but the city’s defenses necessitated circuitous routes down winding side streets. As a result, the various regiments arrived at the plaza in a distinctly haphazard fash
ion. Once there, they formed into massed ranks and assumed parade rest. Stretching up on tiptoe, Victoria searched for the Rough Riders. Their khakis weren’t hard to find among the blue of the regulars.

Sam stood at the head of his company, tall and proud despite the ravages to his uniform. Roosevelt had ridden in on his charger, which had miraculously survived the assault on Kettle Hill. His eyeglasses clouding in the steamy heat, the colonel took his position at the head of the regiment.

“Damn,” Harry Scoval muttered. “I can’t see a bloody thing. Here, give me a boost, Richard.”

“Keep out of sight,” Davis hissed as Scoval scurried up a tree and climbed onto the roof of the building adjacent to the cathedral. “If General Shafter spots you, he’ll likely order one of his men to shoot you.”

Victoria dismissed the warning as mere hyperbole, but soon realized Davis hadn’t exaggerated.

“Here!” one of the staff officers shouted, spotting the correspondent on the roof. “Get down at once!”

His shout attracted the general’s attention. With a bellow, Shafter ordered the major to damn well throw the bastard down off the roof. Wide-eyed, Victoria watched Scoval hastily drop to the ground and melt into the crowd.

“How like Harry,” Davis said dryly. “He makes almost as much news as he reports.”

Thankfully, a stenorian command rolled across the plaza at that moment and diverted both the general and his harried staff officer.

A-tennnnnnn-shun!

Backs snapped straight. Thousands of heels clicked together. Rifles slapped onto shoulders.

Preeeee-sent, arms!

The officers whipped up their swords. With a crack that rifled through the air like gunfire, the enlisted men slapped their palms against wooden stocks, unshouldered their weapons and stiff-armed them forward. The band broke into the opening bars of “Hail, Columbia.” Slowly, the Marine Guard hoisted the Stars and Stripes over the palace.