LAVENDER BLUE (historical romance) Read online

  She turned as Cristobal halted in the doorway. He quirked a brow, his normal sleepy gaze moving from her to Tia Juana and back to her again. He was dressed in buff-colored riding britches with Hessian boots and a white muslin shirt that bloused at the wrists. Apparently he had already been riding, for his thick hair was rumpled. With whom? Annabel?

  “Gad, Jen, your expression is positively dolorous,” he said with his imperturbable but dry good humor. “Has someone died?”

  Yes. My heart. Oh, Armand. Why did you have to ride off to battle? I want you in my arms, my gallant husband, not in some nameless grave.

  “I have come with a business proposition,” she said briskly.

  A droll smile tugged at his lips. “Business? Since when, dear girl, have I ever bothered my head with business?” He folded his arms over his chest and crossed one booted foot to lean against the doorjamb. “But do continue. This promises to be a most diverting day after all.”

  She clasped and unclasped her hands. His sangfroid was unnerving. She cut a glance at Tia Juana. The old black' woman understood. She hefted her massive frame from the chaise longue, saying, “I’ll wait below with Honey-pie.”

  Jeanette wandered to the French doors that were thrown open to let in the sunshine. Below her the dulce woman hawked her sweet confections in competition with the tamale woman who fried her tempting dish over a portable grill across the street. But Jeanette neither heard the dulce woman nor smelled the pungent hot tamales.

  “You mentioned a business proposition,” Cristobal prompted in his pleasant but distinct voice.

  She turned and forced her gaze to meet his inquiring one across the breadth of the room. To ask a man to marry her! It galled her beyond anything she could recall. “I need a husband,” she said baldly. Her eyes flashed an unholy blue, daring him to laugh just once.

  Nothing. Neither surprise nor laughter. The usual affable face wore a mask that gave her no clue to his feelings or intentions.

  Cristobal pushed off the door and indolently walked toward her. Reluctantly she let him take her elbow and steer her toward the recently vacated chaise longue. “Apparently this will not be one of our brief little chitchats.”

  He took the wing chair opposite her, leaned forward, propped his forearms on his knees, and clasped his large brown hands. His handsome face wore none of its usual superciliousness. She breathed a little easier. Thank God!

  For once it would seem he was inclined to talk about something in a serious manner.

  “If I remember correctly, Jen, you swore before your aunt and me you would never marry. Why the change of heart?”

  Or is it a change of body? Are you carrying my child, which you think is the Frenchman’s child? His heart suddenly started thudding like the piston rods in the Revenge’s engine room.

  She reached into her reticule for her fan, anything to play with. “Fie on you, Cristobal,” she said and splayed the fan. “How unchivalrous of you!” Demurely she lowered her lashes. “Does a lady have to confess her reasons?”

  He straightened and settled back in the chair. So she was once again assuming the role of the frivolous flirt. He much preferred the boy-woman. With an inner sigh he donned his own mask for the role he was expected to play. “You brought up that loathsome word, business,” he reminded her and crossed one boot over the other knee, waiting.

  “Then let me substitute the word assets.”

  He could tell she was wondering where or how to begin.

  “If—if we were to marry, can you not imagine the monetary comforts you would enjoy?”

  “And the problems of running a large estate,” he said drily.

  “Well, at least you did not burst out in laughter.” Her fan snapped closed, and for a second her pretense dropped. “A contract would specify that the St. John-Van Ryan interest would retain control of Columbia.”

  “But with the marriage to me, the St. John name would come to an end,” he pointed out, his drooping lids concealing the intensity of his gaze.

  “True,” she admitted. The fan began to swish again as if to dispel the depression that had seized the young woman. Did she feel that once again she was betraying Armand? With this marriage not even Armand’s name would remain to remind the world he had once existed. “But my father, through our overseer Trinidad, would continue to govern the estate. On your part you would receive a handsome monthly allowance that would permit you the freedom to pursue your . . . pleasures to an even greater degree.”

  His lips twitched in wry amusement. “You mean subsidize my gambling expenses—among other things?”

  “Exactly.”

  “You are buying my name, then,” he said bluntly. “Why?”

  She had not expected that. “What?”

  “Did I stutter?”

  He could see she was contemplating how much to tell. “My father wants me to return to New Bedford, where he feels it is safer for women. And I—I don’t wish to be under his thumb.” She hurried on. “He would have me settle down, a staid and proper widow. I’m too young to be put away in a rocking chair. I want to enjoy myself. Surely you, of all people, can understand, Cristobal.”

  “I understand, I think. You are suggesting that you wish to carry on your social affairs after marriage the same as you do now.”

  “Exactly. I knew an enlightened man such as yourself would understand.” Her pleased expression indicated she prided herself that the conversation was going along so easily. “Oftentimes I may choose to absent myself from Columbia to pursue the small little pleasures denied a widow.”

  So, it was not a child she was carrying, but the Confederacy and Armand’s memory she was protecting. “Why me, Jen?”

  Her mind worked furiously. “Another husband might expect me to—er, remain in my own bed, and”—she could feel the heat of the blood flushing through her face—“and I knew that you preferred”—this was not going so well, after all—“that you preferred—uh, gray doves.”

  “Prostitutes?” he substituted.

  The fan was oscillating like a windmill in a storm. “Yes!” she groaned.

  He slumped farther into the chair. His supple fingers formed a pyramid beneath a jaw that for a man of his fastidiousness was still unshaven at that hour of the morning. At last he said, “I’m to understand you do wish to forego with me the intimacies of marriage?”

  “Yes! Yes.” She looked anxious to get get this horrendous ordeal of her proposition over with!

  “La, Jen, your proposal is not very flattering to my ego.”

  “Since when have you ever worried about someone else’s opinion,” she laughed, reverting for a moment to her old self. “Your ego is large enough to sustain my womanly blow.” Then, anxiously, “Well? Will you agree?:

  He could think of a dozen reasons why it would be utterly imbecilic to marry her, the most important being the knowledge that she would hate him forever when she learned of his deception. As it stood now, he was still able to enjoy the pleasure of her friendship.

  Mentally he ticked off a number of other reasons: the hell of living in such close proximity with her and not being able to hold her, to touch her; the strain of continuing his covert activities; the danger to him and others should she guess his identity; the fact she would, indeed, be safer in New Bedford. But, hell, even if he did not marry her, she would still find a way to circumvent her father’s edict. In the long run he knew she would be somewhat safer if he could keep an eye on her.

  Still, he tried one more time. “You professed to me recently how noble and honorable Armand was. Won’t it bother you that you are violating the sanctity of his memory by allowing someone to take his place in marriage?”

  She missed entirely the bitterness in his voice and replied with a simplicity that pierced him to his core: “No one could ever take his place.”

  He rose to his feet and held out his hand to her. “You’ve been up here long enough without a chaperone.”

  She let him pull her to her feet. Her gaze lifted to meet hi
s. She clung to his strong hand even after he released hers. “Will you . . . will you marry me, Cristobal?” she whispered, humbled now, her mauve-blue eyes glistening with their desperation. “For the sake of our friendship?”

  “Si, ” he replied, slipping back into the Spanish of his childhood. “For the sake of our friendship, Jen.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It was a simple ceremony without a soirée de contrat or diner de fîançailles or any of the other prerequisites of a fashionable marriage in Brownsville’s haut monde. Nevertheless, Jeanette’s marriage to Cristobal Cavazos was just as binding, just as legal. She was richly dressed in an oyster gros de Naples gown trimmed with eggshell Honiton lace. A limp-brimmed bergère straw hat with a chaplet of orange flowers shaded her pale face as she descended the Cameron County Courthouse’s steps with her second husband at her side, his hand solicitously at her elbow.

  Behind the couple trailed Aunt Hermione, sniffling her happiness into a wet lace handkerchief. Cristobal ushered the two women on board the riverboat tied at the landing, blowing off steam, its big paddle wheel idle. The steamboat, one of the Kennedy-King packet, would take the three of them down the Rio Grande on the leisurely twenty-two-mile trip to the port of Bagdad.

  “Now I can go to your father secure in the knowledge that I have fulfilled my duty,” Aunt Hermione said tearfully.

  Jeanette slid a glance at Cristobal, hoping he would say nothing to contradict her. “We had hoped to wait a more decent interval, Aunt Hermione,” she said, “but Father’s order left us no choice but to marry now.”

  “I’ve known all along you two would be a perfect match for each other.”

  “I’ve been trying to convince your niece of that for some time,” Cristobal said, tossing a mocking grin in Jeanette’s direction. She stifled an urge to laugh, remembering how reluctant her friend had been. Wearing a black frock coat and pantaloons with a gold-trimmed chestnut- colored cashmere waistcoat, he was elegant as always.

  The odor of hot oil drifted up from the boilers in the engine room, and Aunt Hermione held the handkerchief even closer against her red nose. Jeanette did not mind the smell, finding it part of the excitement of riding such a powerful machine. As the steamboat negotiated the sandbars and drifts that scored the muddy river, she leaned against the gingerbread railing with the other passengers, feeling the breeze rustle the curls at her ears. Many times at night she had smuggled cotton across the river by ferry, and she much preferred the river when it looked a serene, dark blue rather than the frothy yellow-brown it was in daylight.

  But her pleasure faded as she gazed out over the waves rippling back from the steamboat’s bow. Too easily she recalled the ocean’s blue-black waves—and him. Was there no respite from being reminded of the Frenchman? Must that awful memory dampen even the simplest of pleasures?

  A warm hand covered her gloved one on the railing. She looked up to find Cristobal at her side. His lips formed a twisted travesty of a smile. “Aunt Hermione will think it strange we aren’t enjoying our conjugal bliss.”

  “Dear Cristobal,” she murmured. Her free hand went up to touch his jaw. “I am truly grateful for your sacrifice. I promise you shall not want for anything at Columbia. ’ ’

  His lids dropped sleepily. “Even for the pleasures of the night?”

  Her hand dropped as if it had been burned. “Well, I would not expect you to bring your—your gray doves to Columbia, naturally.”

  “Naturally,” he said drily, his brown eyes now as muddy as the Rio Grande. As if by unspoken accord, the two of them directed their gazes away from each other toward the flat river bank flanked by twisted mesquites and occasional elm motts. “There are, of course, some conditions that should be discussed.”

  “By all means,” she rapidly concurred. She lowered her voice to a husky whisper. “For one—we are husband and wife in name only.”

  “Secondly,” he contributed solemnly, “I am to be permitted my . . . diversions.” He quirked a silly smile at her. “A cockfight, a horserace, a game of cards, etcetera. After all, dear girl, Columbia is so far from everything and so accursedly boring.”

  She grinned at him. “I couldn’t agree more.” With him absent from Columbia, her activities would be that much easier to carry out. She stood on tiptoe to plant a kiss on his bronzed cheek and inhaled the scent of his men’s cologne that evoked something familiar. “Our business arrangement is going to work splendidly, Cristobal.”

  “Oh, just splendidly,” he echoed with a straight face.

  In Bagdad several Southern refugee families, their household goods stored in ox carts, waited to board the Honduras, bound for English shores. Jeanette and Cristobal waved Aunt Hermione off on the Yankee frigate, with the old woman admonishing, “Take good care of Washington for me, dear. Be sure and talk with him so he won’t get lonely. Oh, dear, I do wish Boston’s weather were better suited to him. I shall miss the tootsie pie.”

  “I’ll treat Washington like he was one of the family,” Jeanette reassured her aunt. She took Cristobal’s arm, adding with a love-stricken smile meant for her aunt’s benefit, “Do tell Father how happy Cristobal and I are.”

  And she was happy, she realized with some surprise as she and Cristobal made the return trip by steamboat to Columbia. She had succeeded in remaining at Columbia, where she could continue her work for the Confederacy. From the steamboat’s railing the two of them watched slip by in the twilight the vast Palo Alto Prairie’s ranchos and their mesquite-fenced corrals. Any bridal jitters she may have had were dispelled by Cristobal’s mots d’esprit.

  Tales of his trips kept her laughing, and every so often she told a story of her own. “Did you hear about the rancher who tried to sell his wife’s silverware for a block of salt?” she asked him, recalling the incident from a run she had made to Alleyton. “‘It’s worth forty dollars if it’s worth a cent,’ the rancher told the speculator. ‘Then it’s worth a cent,’ the speculator said.”

  The story elicited that silly chortle of Cristobal’s, to which she was becoming accustomed.

  It was late when they reached Columbia. Tia Juana welcomed them with her broad nose tilted haughtily and a dark glare in Cristobal’s direction, which he blithely ignored. Though Jeanette was grateful for the old black woman’s presence that particular night, she was irritated by the belligerent attitude. Cristobal should be treated with the courtesy due her husband. Instead of requesting Tia Juana to show him to one of the guest bedrooms, she nervously led the way herself.

  She halted before the door of one of the larger bedrooms, which placed Cristobal at the opposite end of the second-floor hallway from her bedroom. ‘‘Your belongings?” she asked, only then aware he carried nothing but his top hat.

  “I’ll have Henri send them over later in the week.”

  “But your night clothing—”

  The light from the candle sconce on the wall flickered over his dark face, highlighting the devilry that pirouetted at the comers of his mouth. “La, Jen, I haven’t slept in anything in years. My long legs always get tangled in those cursed nightshirts.”

  She turned away to hide the blush that surely must have dyed the roots of her hair crimson. “Very well,” she choked. “Have a pleasant night, Cristobal.”

  She retired to her bedroom, on the whole very pleased with the way the arrangements were working out. True, she thought as she removed first the net then the pins from her hair, there would probably have to be some adjustments. Would Cristobal need to notify Tia Juana when he would be having dinner at the house? Did he smoke? Funny, she had never noticed. Did he plan to entertain his friends at Columbia? What kind of friends were they— gambling associates? What if she did not like them?

  Wrestling now with the corset’s laces knotted behind her back, she told herself that she would just have to adjust to her husband’s idiosyncrasies—as he would have to adjust to hers. But what idiosyncrasies Cristobal had! His chief attributes seemed to be his good-humored foolishness and handsome
looks, for he possessed neither financial assets nor the will to soil his hands or mind with honest labor. But then Cristobal probably thought her just as eccentric and frivolous. Yes, the two of them would work well to-ether.

  “Get out! Awk! Help! Get out!”

  Jeanette jumped and whirled on the macaw. “I had forgotten you were here, Washington,” she laughed. She crossed to the cage suspended on the stand and dribbled some nuts from the feeder into her palm.

  Ignoring the proffered food, Washington tilted his short, arched bill at her in indignation at being overlooked. With a furrow of his scarlet and green plumage, he squawked, “Awk, rapist!”

  “I think the wretched bird is referring to me,” a voice drawled from the doorway.

  Once again Jeanette spun about, spraying the nuts over the Westminister carpet. Unaccustomed to a man in the house, she had left the door open. “Oh, Cristobal!” she sighed, her hand at her throat. “You frightened me.”

  “Help! Help! Rapist!” the parrot yelled.

  Cristobal, his shirt hanging out over his pants, crossed to the macaw and dropped the cover over the cage. “Enough of you, my fine feathered friend.” He turned to Jeanette. “Gad, Jen, I think your aunt had high hopes when she taught Washington to talk.”

  Jeanette’s voice pealed in laughter. “I’ve thought just that for a long time, though Aunt Hermione swears the bird already knew those ‘vile’ words. I suspect my dear aunt to be a frustrated old maid!”

  Abruptly Jeanette colored under Cristobal’s frank appraisal. There she stood with her gown gaping in the back and her hair tumbled about her shoulders like a fandango dancer’s and unabashedly discussed the most personal of topics with him. At moments like this there was something about him . . . something that seemed to alert some dormant instinct within her. A hunch ... a presentiment?