LAVENDER BLUE (historical romance) (9 page)

A silence followed. He made no move to touch her
, and the dreaded waiting was much worse than if he had gone ahead and raped her. Then at least the waiting—six weeks of waiting—would be over with. Suddenly her hat was removed and her braid swung free. Then she felt herself scooped up against his chest. She remembered now—he was tall with broad shoulders and a solid build. That one night she had spent with him had revealed that much to her . . . and that he had an abundant head of hair. Oh, sweet Mary! She blushed with the memory of his parting words—taunting words. “
Le baiser français
!"

Abruptly her body was released to sink into a mattress. Her heart began to chug erratically. She waited for the mattress to groan with his weight beside her, but his footsteps took him away. Her ears strained to hear
—and picked up the sound of splashing water. Then . . . shock as a cool, wet cloth rubbed over her face. And more shock as she realized he was unbuttoning the shirt to throw it open. She tried to move away, but her arms and bound hands were immobile, jammed beneath her by her own weight. Worse was to follow as her buckskin pants were slipped down along her legs to plop on the plank floor. The wet cloth returned again to bathe her shoulders, the valley of her breasts, under her arms. Down past her navel. Gently parting her thighs. The humiliation was too much! Oh, if only she could will herself into a dead faint for the next hour!

Hour? The Frenchman
’s lovemaking took that much time and more. How long she could not remember later. The effect of the blindfold was to produce a curious sense of timelessness, of drifting. She was only aware of the hands that ceaselessly caressed her skin; stroking her shoulders, her calves, the indentations and curves of her body—yet never touching the places that she had been taught were forbidden. Places that she was to learn were extremely sensitive. He whispered words that she suspected were sexual in nature. Desperately she tried to make herself unresponsive to what he was doing to her. But it was impossible. Her body betrayed her, reacting with quivering anticipation of the next step in his slow seduction of her.

At last his fingers touched her breasts, and her nipples sprang erect. A small sigh escaped her parted lips. He whispered something at her ear, and the strangeness of the F
rench language did not conceal the triumph in his voice. “Oh, get it over with, you cursed jackal!”

Still, he made no move to enter her, but continued the erotic play on her body. “
Please,” she whispered hoarsely. “
S’il vous plait
,” she begged with the little French she knew.

When he continued to drop careless kisses in the hollows of her neck and elbow, the indentation of her navel, and along the slope of her hip bone, her body arched toward him in a language of its own. Mercifully, he recognized the langu
age. His torso moved up over hers, and she welcomed the warmth and the weight. He stroked her slowly, deeply. It was not enough. Her body moved in tempo with his, seeking the fulfillment she sensed was so near.

Then it was approaching, that glorious explos
ion of all the senses that was almost painful in its intensity. She ascended, she soared, and finally she floated in that sweet neverland of release. At that moment she was so full of him that she knew she would recognize him even if she found herself next to him in a crowd—he had a subtle musky odor combined with the rich, elusive fragrance of ambergris that she found tantalizingly masculine.

The back of his fingers caressed her cheekbone, bringing her back to reality. He still lay half on her, his heavy c
alf draped over her knees, and she turned her head in his direction. “I hate you,” she whispered. ‘‘I hate you for what you are. I hate you for what you do to me. For what you’ve made of me.” Her voice dropped to an almost inaudible, agonized rasp. ‘‘And I hate myself.”

She knew he did not understand her and so did not worry about his reaction to her words. Yet there was something in his silence
—as if the sadness in her words prevailed in the room. He moved away from her, and the bed creaked, relieved of his weight. His silence was unnerving. After a moment the mattress gave again beneath the pressure of one of his knees, and her body jerked as he unexpectedly ran the wet cloth between her thighs, cleansing her of their lovemaking. ‘‘Damn you to hell,” she croaked, then resorted to Spanish when the English was not sufficient for her loathing of his impersonal treatment.

That he understood. He laughed, and she liked even his sardonic laughter better than his silence. With the ease of a man in excellent physica
l condition he rolled her onto  her stomach. At once her arms stung with the pain of the blood rushing back through the vessels. Unwillingly she whimpered, and his hands began to massage hers. “
Je te prie pardon
.”

Surely she had not understood correctly. T
he Frenchman’s actions were confusing. She wanted to put him in a pigeonhole, but his inconsistent behavior, his personality, as elusive as the ambergris, would not permit her to do so.

“
What?” she derided. “You’re actually asking me to forgive you?”

“
Yes, I am,” he said gravely.

Then, before she could ponder his reply, he was dressing her and turning her over to someone whom he called Solis.

Outside, the handkerchief was removed and the sunlight blinded her. Trying to focus, she blinked, at first seeing only a smooth olive-brown chest. As she rightly guessed, the man was the wiry mestizo she had glimpsed at La Fonda del Olvido. Like the other sailors, he was dressed only in trousers. She dreaded meeting his derisive gaze, but above the flat cheekbones his eyes were compassionate. Which only made it worse.

“
The lighter is waiting,” Solis said gently.

Making no reply, for in truth she didn
’t trust her voice, she turned and let him lead her back to the rope ladder. She was as taciturn as Alejandro, who steered the lighter back to the wharf. Her mind cringed as she recalled what had transpired that afternoon.

And in the next horrifying moment she realized that the Frenchman
’s last words to her had been in English!

She whirled back to face t
he sloop and raised her fist against the sky. “You French bastard!” she shouted.

CHAPTER NINE

“
Y
oung man, the Cause is deeply indebted to your bravery and your generosity,’’ Colonel Ford said, gravely shaking Jeanette’s hand. “I only regret that your Mexican citizenship prevents you from officially serving the Confederacy. With your ingenuity, you could no doubt win a battle single-handed.”

Praise was rare from John “
Rip” Ford, who was no less than a former Texas Ranger, doctor, lawyer, and was now Commander of the Sub-Department of the Rio Grande. Jeanette left his tent that night feeling that his warm words of gratitude were worth all the planning, the hard riding, the sleepless nights of the last five days. Even worth the prostitution of her body. For that was what it really was. She tried not to let herself think about those two debasing times she had given herself to the Frenchman.

She wondered if a man could ever understand the humiliation of being sexually used
—of having one’s own body turned into an instrument of betrayal. Perhaps that was why she felt such a sense of achievement in delivering the war materiel to the Alleyton railhead. She had surmounted odds that many a man would have found difficult—the most difficult being the obstacle of subterfuge that she, as a female, had to undergo.

She watched as soldiers, dressed in yellowish gray tunic coats and pantaloons, began to unload from the four burro-drawn wagons the supplies bought with the contraband cotton. Item by item was checked off
by a pimply-faced sergeant and then stacked on the Alleyton railroad loading platform.

She knew the exact count of every item. Had she not earned each one? Two thousand British Enfield muskets, fifteen new French artillery pieces with ammunition, forty tho
usand rounds of small-arms ammunition, whole bushels of gun caps, along with Sharps’ breech-loading carbines and even some unwieldy blunderbusses from God knew where. She calculated that those Enfield rifles that cost twenty-one dollars apiece in England were costing the Confederacy fifty and sixty in Bagdad.

And what had been her price? Costly. The Frenchman had forfeited a goodly sum for an afternoon with her in his bed.

With Felix, who was as large as his father Trinidad was small, and four of Columbia’s faithful
campesinos
, she began the drive back to Brownsville with the cotton-filled wagons. The ancient Camino Real north from Matamoros was rapidly becoming the Cotton Road. In the moonlight a trail of cotton lint brilliantly marked the deeply grooved wagon route. Though it was the fifth of December, the first frost of the year had yet to come.

Even wearing sturdy leather gloves, Jeanette
’s hands were chafed from handling the lines and working the whip. Her back ached from jouncing in the springless wagon, and her voice hurt from shouting vituperations at the burros. And she loved it. She reveled in riding along through the starry night—carrying out a forbidden and dangerous mission. It was exciting and stimulating.

Much more so than remaining home. The in
activity at Columbia was unbearable. Even Cristobal, her one source of amusement, was off again, pursuing another story. She had tried to involve herself in the running of the household, but between Aunt Hermione and Tia Juana the great house was kept in impeccable condition. And lately there had been little need for bookkeeping with the market for Columbia’s citrus fruits and cotton severely limited by the war.

And then, too, there was Jose Carbajal. Because this latest of the revolutionaries to besiege Ma
tamoros roamed about the Rio Grande, she had insisted Trinidad remain at Columbia. The little old man had offered little resistance. Perhaps after twenty-six. years of serving as a surrogate uncle he knew her well enough to know she would do what she wanted anyway. Still, caring for her as he did, the old man felt, like all males, that a woman had her place—her role—in life.

With a bitter taste on her tongue she recalled some of the men in Brownsville who through bribery had either wrangled medical certific
ates stating they were unfit for military service or who suddenly elected to serve with “home guards” that were far from the battlefront.

Men! The lazy, cowardly Cristobal. The unscrupulous, exploitive Frenchman!

So engrossed was she in her mental damning of the male sex she did not at first notice the two men. Dressed in matted bobtail coats and dirty coonskin caps and sporting long grizzly beards, they moved stealthily out of the shadows of one of the isolated elm motts that dotted the flat landscape. “Hold at it!” ordered the one cradling a rifle with its bayonet pointed directly at her.

In the wagon behind her she heard Juan petitioning the Virgin Mary and all the saints for protection. More and more often bandits were plying their trade along the newly
created cotton route, whose traffic was growing daily. Robbery and murder marked the route as well as the cotton lint. She should have brought a rifle or revolver. Hindsight did not help her now.

“
Well, well. Will yew lookee at this, Clem,” said the other man, whose walleye seemed to rove in all directions at once so that she did not know to which he was referring—the cotton bales or her. He spit a clump of tobacco. “Wagons full of cotton bales.” He grinned then, showing brown-stained teeth. “I bet yer pockets are loaded, too. Contraband fetches a good price these days, don’t it, Clem?”

“
Shut up,” the one with the bayonet commanded. He moved his nag alongside her wagon. “Strip, kid. All yew greasers—strip down.”

Sweat broke out on her palms. The fringed leat
her jacket she wore against the cool December night suddenly seemed as hot and heavy as a coat of armor. If only it were as protective. She swallowed.

“
Do as Clem sez,” the walleyed man said and prodded her shoulder with the tip of his bayonet.

Her blacksnake whip snapped up and left the plaited imprint of its thongs across the man
’s face. She had missed! She had aimed for the rifle! He yelped and dropped the rifle, but Clem’s jerked to his shoulder to fire. Oh, God, she did not want to die yet! The blast shattered her eardrums. She blinked and saw Clem slide off his horse like a sack of potatoes.

She whirled to face the other man, but he was already hightailing it for the sunrise as if a posse were on his heels. The riderless horse pounded close
behind the bandit.

“
Dios, perdóneme
,” Felix rasped, begging God’s pardon, and lowered his Mexican pistol.

Spanish expletives and words of gratitude directed to patron saints filled the night, but Jeanette
’s ears droned with a faint buzzing. She closed her eyes against the gruesome sight of the blood-spattered man stretched out in the dust beside the wagon. Still, she was unable to prevent the churning of her stomach. She leaned over the wagon and threw up in the dust.

“
Señora
, you are all right?” asked Pedro, who had lost an arm in a cotton press.

She nodded weakly. When the threatened fainting spell passed, she feebly cracked the whip over the burros.

“
Hija! Andale! Vaya
!” came the shouts from the Mexican teamsters behind her, anxious to get safely back to Columbia.

But all that Jeanette could think of was the man who had died before her eyes. If Felix had not killed him, she would have tried. It frightened her . . . the violence which she had just realized she was capable.

By the time they reached Columbia’s boundaries, a blinding rainstorm obscured everything but the hundreds of water toads that suddenly appeared. Shivering with cold, Jeanette collapsed into bed for an entire day, secure in the knowledge that even at that moment Trinidad was having the
campesinos
stack the cotton bales in the already packed church.

Aunt Hermione was beside herself with worry. When Jeanette made her way downstairs that evening, her aunt plied her with hot chamomile tea. “
It’s bad enough that you disappear to spend days at a time with your—your—”

“
Lover,” Jeanette supplied, holding a handkerchief to her nose to forestall another ghastly sneeze.

“
But to walk along the beach with him—in the rain— for all to see.”

“
It was raining,” Jeanette mumbled against the handkerchief. “There was no one out walking to see us.”

“
Exactly. No one foolish enough to go out in this weather. And no one foolish enough to flaunt their affair. I don’t know what’s come over you, dear. Why, in my day, if a woman wished to have an—an affair, she did it discreetly.”

Jeanette slid a glance at her aunt, who moved her knitting needles fast and furiously. “
Have I been indiscreet?” she asked cautiously. “Has anyone mentioned seeing me about—with a man?”

“
Why, no. No, dear. But that’s just the point. Why can’t you just marry this man—make it all proper?”

Jeanette stifled a smile. “
What if he’s married, Aunt Hermione?”

The old woman gasped. “
Oh, no! After all the Sundays I have dragged you to church. You wouldn’t dare commit adultery, Jeanette! Would you?”

She smile
d sadly. “No, Aunt Hermione. I daresay this man has not the slightest intention of ever facing an altar.”

“
Then why don’t you invite him to the city’s New Year’s Eve ball? Perhaps if he saw what kind of people you come from, your background—perhaps it might put some ideas in his head. Do I know him or his family?”

“
No, I don’t think you do. Besides, he wouldn’t come to the ball. He—he doesn’t like to be around a crowd.”

The old woman sniffed disdainfully. “
No doubt some Union deserter seeking the safety of the border. I hope you aren’t thinking of marrying someone like that.”

Exasperated, Jeanette set down the cup, sloshing the tea in its saucer. “
Can’t you understand that I am not now, nor will I ever be, interested in marrying anyone? And, if I recall correctly, several months ago you were very interested in marrying me off to a man who never even had the courage to fight in the war!”

“
But Cristobal has good breeding and background,” Aunt Hermione continued, unperturbed by her niece’s outburst. “And I do hope he will be back in town for the ball. His presence adds the perfect touch to a party. Promise me you’ll go to the New Year’s Eve party. Dancing with Cristobal would at least lend some respectability to the evening.”

Jeanette rolled her eyes to the ceil
ing, giving up on ever communicating with the well-meaning old woman, but agreed to attend the ball. She would have that long to calm down Aunt Hermione’s shocked pride—and talk her out of the idea that marriage with Cristobal would be such a perfect solution.

In the meantime, while she waited for word from the Frenchman, she recruited Trinidad as a shooting instructor. She knew she had been lucky with the bandits. She did not intend to depend on the whim of the gods the next time. Foregoing stays and hoops
, much to Aunt Hermione’s displeasure, and wearing only a slatted sunbonnet, she rode down to the abandoned church with Trinidad. Twenty-five years earlier, the monkeylike man had fought at San Jacinto alongside Sam Houston and Deaf Smith for Texas independence, and that afternoon brought his old Navy Colt six-shooters with him.

“
Hijole
!” he swore as he tossed the empty tequila bottles in the air and she missed each shot. “Did I not tell you thees was no job for a woman?”

“
Callate!” she said impatiently. But her impatience was with herself, her lack of skill. “Men weren’t born knowing how to hit a bull’s-eye. Toss another bottle. I’ll hit one yet.” She did, but by that time she had run out of ammunition and daylight and bottles.