Gallant Match (30 page)

Sonia moved like a silk scarf unfurling, swinging where she stood and drawing out the pocketknife she held in the same moment. She stepped against Jean Pierre and pressed the lethally sharp blade to the pulse that hammered in his thick neck.

“They fire, and you are a very dead man,” she said in clear sincerity. “Countermand the order. Now,
mon cher.
”

O
n a sultry morning eight days later, Kerr and Sonia left Vera Cruz. With Tante Lily, they boarded a Spanish merchantman loaded with corn and tons of some kind of white, rocky ore. It was Tremont who delivered them to the dock in an ugly little carriage called a
volante
that he borrowed from their host of the past week, a gentleman who still used his Spanish title in spite of Republican ties.

This marquis, an elderly man, tall, thin and possessed of a luxuriant white beard he wore in a point at his chin, was apparently a friend of Tremont's with acquaintances among Washington's ambassadorial elite. He had also quickly become a conquest of Tante Lily's. Dressed impeccably, though with a quantity of gold lace on his waistcoat, he presented her and Sonia with bouquets of roses, verbena and oleander tied with yards of ribbon for their voyage, along with his profuse apologies that more of his friends and acquaintances had not come to bid them farewell.

Sonia was just as glad to be spared further speeches, salutations and protestations of the grand pleasure of their company. She only wanted to make for home, putting distance between her and the red-sand hills of Vera Cruz.

Their progress would not be swift. Fears of a blockade had slowed the arrival of the usual steam packets from American ports. Reluctant to stay kicking their heels in Vera Cruz for a moment longer than necessary, they had booked passage for Havana on the Spanish sailing vessel. Still, they should make port in two weeks, transfer to a steamer there in due time, and be at the mouth of the Mississippi in another week after that.

So they stood on the deck, waving to the marquis and Tremont, braving the sun for a last glimpse of the black-and-red walls of the Fort San Juan de Ulúa, the block-like houses behind the city walls, the church spires and great, flapping
zopilotes
that fought over carrion on the sand dunes rolling away from the incredible blue of the water. The lines holding the ship were cast off. They drifted away from the dock, were towed toward open water. Sails billowed above them then. These caught the wind with a resounding crack and they were away.

Tante Lily, standing at the railing next to Sonia, closed her eyes and breathed her thanks to a higher power while making the sign of the cross. When she opened them again, they were more luminous than usual. She turned to Sonia, but her tearful joy faded as she searched her face. “We will soon be home, where you can see your papa again and all your friends,
ma chère.
Are you not in ecstasies?”

“Of course,” she agreed, summoning a smile. “I'm just a little tired, that's all.”

“As well as a little sad, yes? It's always difficult to leave new friends and I'm sure you feel, as I do, that Monsieur Tremont is such a one. There was the voyage we shared from New Orleans, and then he has been so very kind since…since the business with Jean Pierre.”

Those few words—how they brought it all back: the candlelit dining room where the smells of garlic, oil and caramelized sugar lingered, the two men facing each other with swords in hand, the terror and the rage. Sonia had wanted to kill Jean Pierre as she held the pocketknife to his neck. The need had clawed at her, shaken her body from her head to her toes. She had, in that moment, understood something of the bloodlust that sometimes gripped men on the field of honor.

It was Kerr who had stepped close to put a calming hand on her arm and take the knife from her trembling hand.

What happened afterward was a blur. She hardly remembered being escorted from Jean Pierre's house or arriving at that of the marquis. The days since then seemed disjointed somehow. She had slept the clock around, and did the same the next night, and the next.

She still could not get enough rest. She had spoken to a few people in the days just past: Tremont, the marquis's daughter who was past fifty but looked no more than five-and-thirty, a number of townspeople who had called. Everyone had been so kind, so intent on banishing any unfavorable impression she might have gained of their fair city.

She could not remember exchanging more than a dozen words with Kerr.

He seemed to be avoiding her now. Alone at the prow of the ship, he faced the ocean instead of the land they were leaving behind. He looked well, dressed in a new frock coat, waistcoat and trousers made by the marquis's tailor at Tremont's behest, a gift in repayment for the mild concussion received at his orders. The gray broad-cloth matched the depths of his eyes and made his shoulders look as broad as the ship's beam.

It also made him appear unapproachable, impossibly forbidding. He had been that way since it became clear they would be returning together to New Orleans. He fulfilled his duty as her escort, as he seemed to think it continued still, but not an iota more. Beyond the occasional discussion necessary to the position, they seldom spoke, were never alone. All personal contact was at an end.

They had made love for reasons that had little to do with desire and nothing to do with permanency. She had required an excuse to avoid marriage; he had wanted a pretext for a challenge. That neither had worked out as envisioned made no difference since the end was much the same. She had avoided being wed and Kerr had brought low the man who caused the death of his brother. What need was there to touch and hold, to kiss or to sleep in each other's arms?

Sonia clenched her hands into such tight fists that a seam split in her glove. She looked down, smoothing the gap in the leather, forcing her fingers to lie flat on the railing.

“I do wish Monsieur Tremont could have sailed with us,” Tante Lily was saying. “I quite see that it will be best to transport his prisoner in an American vessel, of course. I only hope he isn't forced to wait in port for the invasion force he seems certain will come.”

“No, indeed,” Sonia said, following her aunt's train of thought with desperate concentration. How strange it seemed to think of Tremont as an agent of the United States government, or that the shipment of arms out of New Orleans could be important enough to warrant sending him to investigate the traffic in guns to Mexico. Now Jean Pierre was being held in Tremont's custody for the crime.

What would have happened to her, or to Kerr, if Tremont had not been on hand? She didn't care to think about it.

“You are not still holding a grudge for his abduction of you? He explained his reasons quite well, I felt. I should think you would be grateful it was he who took you and not another of Jean Pierre's hirelings. I shudder to think of the insult you might have suffered, or what injury might have been done to Monsieur Wallace.”

“I doubt I would have been harmed. I was Jean Pierre's bride-to-be, after all.” About Kerr, she was less certain. His death during the abduction would have been most convenient.

Alex Tremont had volunteered to remove her from the diligence, in part to make certain she was unharmed, but also because he had grown suspicious of Jean Pierre's intentions. He had taken Kerr's measure aboard the
Lime
Rock
, so he said, and was disinclined to allow him to be murdered out of hand. She and Kerr owed the American agent a great deal, when all was taken together.

“I never quite understood the business of the rifles,” her aunt complained. “I realize Monsieur Rouillard was importing them into Mexico in partnership with Santa Ana's party. Still, Monsieur Tremont told us himself of their presence aboard the
Lime Rock
when we were hardly out of the Mississippi. Yes, and while Monsieur Wallace was there, as I recall. Did he really believe he might be involved?”

“Apparently so, until he came to know Kerr. Later, when he learned of the enmity between him and Jean Pierre, he knew it was quite impossible that they were working together. In any case, the arms were under the eye of Monsieur Tremont to serve as a trap for Jean Pierre. There was scant danger of them being used against American troops.”

“Then the steamer was sunk by the Mexican man-of-war as it attempted to retrieve them.
Quel dommage
.”

“Actually, the captain of the man-of-war had no idea they were aboard. His mission was to take the American commissioner traveling with us into custody, in part as a hostage, but also to discover what he knew of American plans in the event of war.”

“So it was all a tragedy.”

“That the arms sank with the
Lime Rock
was unfortunate, yes, since it removed Monsieur Tremont's excuse for meeting with Jean Pierre. I believe he called upon him to explain the loss, and so the results were the same.”

“He was taken up with the other passengers when we were rescued,” her aunt said, “but I never saw him questioned.”

“He kept his identity concealed from Mexican authorities, he said. I believe the American commissioner may have aided him in that regard.”

“Indeed. I've never seen such a to-do as that gentleman made when we reached port. He waved his official papers in everyone's face, demanding to be allowed to return to his country at once and threatening all manner of reprisal against the captain of the Mexican man-of-war for daring fire on civilians, yes, and for sinking a merchant vessel of U.S. registry as well.”

“A good point.”

“Yes.” Tante Lily gave a theatrical shudder. “Let us hope they are more careful of those registered in Spain.”

Sonia could only echo the sentiment.

Though they saw several ships on their first two days at sea, none appeared to take the slightest notice of them, much less prove hostile. They made good time, clipping along at five or six knots with a fair wind behind them. Supposing it held, they could expect to be in Havana in something just over a week's time.

It didn't hold.

The winds turned southeasterly, then died away altogether. The sails emptied and hung slack. They were becalmed.

There followed hours of hope when they made some little progress. These were succeeded by days when they were pushed off course and lost all they had gained.
After a week at sea, they could still sometimes catch sight of the peak of Citlaltépetl shining like silver as the sun struck its white snowcap, proof positive they had actually returned to Mexican waters.

The heat was trying, alleviated only somewhat by the cat's paws of wind that now and then rippled the water. Tempers grew short. Fights broke out among the seamen, and the men who gambled away the time in the gentlemen's sleeping cabin often came to blows.

The week at sea became two, and then leaned toward three. On the seventeenth day, the ship's cook, tired of complaints about the fare he put on the table, went temporarily mad and tried to cut off various body parts of his helper with a meat cleaver. On the eighteenth day, it was discovered that an importer of women's sundries from Paris was sleeping in the men's common room wearing nothing except a cream silk shawl with rose-red flowers and gold fringe. On the nineteenth day, Sonia woke with a queasy stomach and, counting back, realized it was highly possible she was going to have a baby.

Arriving in Havana ceased to be important. The greater the delay, the better, or so it seemed, since it meant more time to think before facing her father.

He would be livid. Never in this life would he understand the sequence of events that had led to this conclusion, much less his part in them. The reasons would not matter to him. He would only consider the scandal and how it was to be avoided.

Her papa would doubtless send her away again. She would be shipped forthwith to France or Italy, some
place with an accommodating convent where young women like her could have their babies and leave them with the nuns. Or else she would be married off to anyone who would have her.

As a future, neither course recommended itself to Sonia.

She considered telling Kerr. He had some right to know that he was to be a father, after all. It might make a difference in how he felt toward her.

Oh, but she had no wish to force the obligation upon him. That she had conceived was an accident of nature. There was no need for him to change his life or his future because of it.

Hers would be changed; it was inevitable. Yet what did it matter? After these past weeks, she would never be the same again.

Still, suppose the possibility was important to him? He was a man of deep emotions, stringent concern. Suppose he cared?

Back and forth in her mind she went, back and forth. When the winds finally turned and they sailed free, finally passing El Morro Castle and into the harbor at Havana, she was no closer to a decision.

Their luck changed in the Spanish city with its sleepy streets and mellow church bells. A steamer was leaving within twenty-four hours, and carried empty bunks. They barely had time to complete the formalities of landing and transfer their meager baggage before it would be time to board again.

Suddenly events moved with furious speed. The
Spanish officials stamped their papers, signed them with elegant scrawls, affixed a plethora of ribbons and gold seals and waved them on their way. They had a decent meal at an inn, slept a little and had their laundry done, then made their way back to the quay. The packet steamed out of the harbor and over a sunlit sea, making record time toward New Orleans.