LAVENDER BLUE (historical romance) Page 6

  “Brandy,” he told her, and she nodded mindlessly, letting her body float on the tidal wave of his lovemaking. Oh, sweet Mary! Was that really his tongue licking the sticky brandy from between her fingers . . . tickling the arches of her feet . . . stroking the backs of her knees? Abruptly the warmth of his body departed, and she heard a woman’s voice sigh with keen disappointment and longing.

  "Le baiser français,” he said with soft laughter now.

  She nodded again, not caring what it was he whispered—until her legs were ignominiously hoisted over his shoulders. Without warning she felt his head dip between her thighs. Violently her hands shot out to shove his head away, but his tongue persisted in its pursuit of the delicate folds. At last she stopped tugging at his thick head of hair and surrendered to the exquisite sensations that winged through her. Clutching his head to her now, she went limp with the unbearable pleasure.

  Le baiser français. The Frenchman’s kiss!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Le baiser français!

  The Frenchman’s kiss.

  Jeanette’s broad-brimmed straw hat swished furiously from her hand. A heated flush stole over her face. Even seated on the grass as she was, she nevertheless felt wobbly, as if on a sea-tossed boat instead of solid ground.

  “Your complexion is positively beet-red, Jen. The sun too much for you?”

  “What?” She looked up from her picnic plate into the dark-brown eyes of the dandy who stood before her with Annabel on the lush grass of the public square. In the square’s center stood a Liberty Pole around which a space had been enclosed for the graves of officers of the Ringgold Battery who had been killed during the war with Mexico. Where was Armand’s grave?

  “I’m sorry, Cristobal. What did you say?”

  “I think I like your complexion much better this way,” he said with that inane little laugh peculiar to him. “A little color to it. Almost golden tan like it was when you were a child.”

  “Fie! A lady’s complexion is a frivolous subject for discussion.” Sighing, she replaced the hat and tied its lilac streamers that matched her dimity day dress beneath her chin. As if she really cared what the sun could do to her complexion.

  “A lady can never be too careful with her skin,” redheaded Annabel reproved.

  Her perfectly oval face was renowned in the Valley for having the creamiest skin. And, to Jeanette’s chagrin, she never failed to mention Jeanette’s freckles whenever the subject of complexion arose. She did not fail this time either, though she was more circumspect than usual. Sinking to the grass like a graceful swan, she cast her Dresden blue eyes demurely at Cristobal, who leaned insouciantly against the courthouse’s shading oak, before looking with simulated pity at Jeanette. “If you’re not more careful of the sun, Jeanette, you’ll look just like one of your plantation darkies.”

  “Does Columbia own darkies, Jen?” Cristobal drawled. “I would think Armand would have been against slavery.”

  “Of course he was against it. No one owns slaves in Lower Texas. It’s easier and less expensive to pay wages to the Mexicans.”

  Cristobal arched a black brow. “Are you sure the reason darkies aren’t owned in the Valley isn’t simply because their masters know it’d be too easy for them to escape across the Rio Grande?”

  Her mouth full of fried chicken, she could only wrinkle her nose at him. It was always that way between the two of them—Cristobal countering her statement with another. Whatever the subject, she could depend on the two of them to disagree. Only now Armand was not there to mediate their heated debates.

  “I don’t want to get into an argument over theoretics,” she said flatly when she had swallowed.

  The question of a Civil War over slavery was simply one she could not understand. In fact, she had her doubts whether that was the real issue. Armand had said several times that it was more a struggle between the North and the South for political and economic power. He had believed in stronger states’ rights and a less powerful Federal Government. She only believed in the worth of a human. And that human was gone.

  “Major Hampton says that the Yankees have darkie regiments,” Annabel said.

  “Ladies,” Cristobal said in a bored voice, “the politicians are talking enough about the war today without us dwelling on it.” He straightened and said, “Anyone for some lemonade?”

  Annabel rose to her feet to clasp Cristobal’s proffered arm, but Jeanette declined. Annabel Goddard obviously had her sights set on Cristobal, as she had on Armand just after he returned from the university. She was a clever, scheming, man-hunting coquette, and for a while Jeanette had wished ardently that she could be just like her. And then miraculously Armand was ignoring Annabel and asking Jeanette to marry him.

  She felt out of place there in the sunshine, with Armand gone, his body somewhere beneath mounds of damp dirt and darkness. She would much rather have been with Trinidad and two of Columbia’s trusted campesinos. They were delivering three wagon loads of Columbia’s cotton to Bagdad’s wharves. There the little Mexican aguatero would see that the bales reached their consignment—the abominable Frenchman!

  Perhaps it was just as well she attended Brownsville’s Fourth of July barbecue, even though it meant listening to the eloquent but boring speeches delivered by the city’s politicians and Fort Brown’s military leaders. She did not want to chance meeting that Frenchman again until . . . until the arms were delivered and it was time for another shipment of cotton—and another payment to him. She shuddered with shame, horrified at the memory of the previous night. The chicken in her mouth tasted like ashes, and she dropped the drumstick back on her plate.

  She had betrayed Armand’s memory. She had reveled in the Frenchman’s arms like—like some whore! Oh, dear God!

  A little boy in knee britches scampered by yelling after a hoop, and she cringed. Her head! The damnable mescal. Her lids closed against the brilliant sun that threatened to bring her liquor-soaked eyeballs to a boil.

  “Some lemonade to cool you, Jen?”

  She looked up again at Cristobal, who held out a porcelain cup to her, and had to laugh at his devilish expression. They both were recalling the last time they were together with a cup between them. It had almost cost them their freedom. “No, thank you, Cristobal. I don’t dare chance you dropping a handkerchief in my cup again.”

  She rose from the grass. “Where is Annabel?”

  “Elizabeth Crabbe cornered her.”

  “That I don’t have to worry about.” She straightened her full skirts over her hoop. “In Elizabeth’s eyes I have become a pariah since she caught you with your hand—” She colored and caught the silly grin that played about his lips. “I think I shall leave early with Aunt Hermione. It’s a long way home, and I’m a little tired.”

  Actually, she would need the siesta that almost everyone observed in that semitropical climate when, come two o’clock, awnings were pulled down and shutters closed for the afternoon. Rarely did she feel the need for a siesta, so restless was her nature these days. But she knew there would be no sleep for her that night. Nor the next two nights after that.

  She and Trinidad would be following the stagecoach route north to the railhead of Alleyton. The two of them would be stopping off along the way to talk to the owners of remote ranches that she hoped to enlist as way stations. With luck, when she was finished, an overland route would be set up for Confederate cotton unloaded at Alleyton to reach the neutral port of Bagdad and eventually European markets.

  Her campesinos would work as teamsters to shuttle the cotton. In return she would receive forty percent of the profit—half of which she wanted in arms and ammunition. But still it would cost her. For each shipment of firearms that arrived in Bagdad—a night with the Frenchman!

  The reins held loosely in her hand, Jeanette slouched in the saddle and tried to get what sleep she could as the bay picked its way over soil too poor to sustain even prickly pear. There were only a few greasewood with devil’s pincushions embedded in
the sand drifts around their roots. A rustling in nearby chaparral snapped Jeanette’s chin up. With a small cry, she hauled in on the reins, almost rearing the bay. But the moonlight disclosed that it was but an armadillo and not one of the savage Kickapoos or marauding Mexican bandidos who gave Aunt Hermione palpitations of the heart.

  At her side Trinidad scowled. “Thees ees no job for a woman,” he muttered.

  She sighed. “Not you, too, Trini.” How ironical that only the Frenchman—only Kitt, as Rubia had called him— was indifferent to the absurd idea that a woman could be a gun runner. And a good one, it would appear. For the few loyal rancheros with whom she had spoken along the road to Alleyton were willing to act as way stations for her for the cotton wagons moving south to Mexico and the ammunition wagons that would be rolling north to the Alleyton railhead.

  As it was, Trinidad was incensed that she had had to bargain with the rebel Frenchman for his aid. According to Trini, it should have been given freely. She knew if she had told Trinidad what her bargain would be costing her, her overseer would readily murder the Frenchman. And that puzzled her—the price the Frenchman demanded. His blockade running surely earned him enough money to buy the charms of any number of women. Indeed, something about the young woman Rubia indicated that she was quite willing to share the Frenchman’s arms without payment if she weren’t already doing so.

  So why me? Jeanette asked herself. Oh, she knew she was attractive, if she listened to the soldiers who were openly courting her now that her period of mourning was officially over. But there were women more attractive. And, as she pondered it further, it occurred to her that the day the Frenchman stated the terms of the bargain she looked very disreputable—a dusty-faced young woman dressed in a boy’s dirt-stiffened clothing. So why me? she asked herself again.

  Again and again throughout the long ride she would curse the despicable French mercenary—and then she would curse herself for the way her spine tingled in memory of his seductive voice. What did he look like? He was probably as homely as Abe Lincoln himself. At the vision of the President of the Union making passionate love to her, an uncontrollable chuckle erupted, and Trinidad cast a dubious look at her and shook his head gloomily. With another grunt of hopeless resignation, he parted from her beneath Columbia’s fruit groves, taking Jeanette’s bay to the stables with him.

  The trellis sagged beneath her weight as she levered herself up to her bedroom window. By the gray light of dawn she unbuckled the gun belt, stripped off the dust-caked pants and shirt, and packed them, along with the Mexican-cobbled boots, in her father’s large iron sea chest that she kept below the window.

  She whirled at the light knock at the door, but let out a weary sigh of relief when Tia Juana’s deep, scratchy voice called low, “Miss Jeanette?” Then: “You feeling better?”

  Jeanette swept the carnation-pink cotton wrapper from the foot of the bed and tied it about her before opening the door to admit old Tia Juana. The rotund Mexican woman winked broadly, saying, “Brought you some Mexican chocolate. Told your aunt dat Yankee tea she sends up no good for dem sick headaches.”

  Repressing a smile, Jeanette took the cup of hot chocolate. She sat down on the velvet-padded wicker chaise longue, snuggling against its broad back and tucking her stockinged feet up under her. “Tell Aunt Hermione that my headaches are just about gone and that I’ll be down later.”

  Tia Juana nodded with another conspiratorial wink and trod out of the room. For years Aunt Hermione’s “sick headaches” had kept the poor old woman to her room for days at a time, and now the malady proved beneficial to Jeanette’s purposes. And, truth to tell, she did have the beginnings of a headache brought on by two sleepless nights of riding. She grimaced, wondering if it were possible to have a hangover linger for three days.

  She finished off the cup of chocolate while she made a rapid calculation. Six bales to a four-mule team at five hundred pounds a bale . . . and if she took five loads a trip, 6 x 5 x 500, or 15,000 pounds at—what was cotton going for a pound now?

  King Cotton’s price fluctuated erratically, but it was becoming a popular medium of exchange for the struggling Confederacy. A multimillion-dollar business, if she figured it correctly. A lot of money was to be made by those willing to run the risk of the blockade, because once the war ended cotton would be a glut on the market. But now— now there was cottonmania. The European textile houses cried for the precious commodity.

  She untangled her legs and crossed to the secretary. Setting down the cup, she picked up the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph. She scanned the index: bacon 55 cents a pound, butter $1.75, coffee $2.75, cotton . . . “Sweet Heaven above!” she breathed. “Seventy cents per pound of lint.” Her fingers went for a pen and scribbled out her computations. Why, that was $10,500! And the European market paid five times that amount in gold specie. Even split in half with the planters who raised the cotton, her share would keep Columbia operating and buy a lot of arms and ammunition as well!

  Her mouth stretched grimly. She did not even have to split her share with a blockade runner—not as long as she was selling her body. Oh, God, that her beloved should see her now; Armand, who expected only the most worthy actions from the damned human race.

  The long penholder slid from her fingers, and for a moment her head drooped. Wearily she rose from the desk and went to lower herself on the four-poster. Sleep. That was what she needed. Later, when she awakened, she would know that what she was doing for the South was right.

  Cristobal flipped the coins on the table and led Jeanette out of the coffeehouse. No doubt a lot of tongues would waggle the next day about her outing with Cristobal. Which was just what she hoped for. A frivolous, flirtatious young woman would scarcely be suspected of running cotton.

  They stopped by Portilla Pena’s Book Shop to pick up a volume of Poe’s poetry for Aunt Hermione. But when they were ready to leave, she impulsively said, “Let’s ride out to Boca Chica. They say oysters can be had by wading knee deep in the ocean and picking them up.”

  “What?” he quipped. “You’d bare your feet like a child?”

  The idea sounded wonderful. “No. But you could.”

  “But, Jen,” he drawled, “why go to the effort of searching for the cursed clams—”

  “Oysters.”

  “—when you can purchase them at Market Hall for little or nothing?”

  She flashed him a withering look and mounted her bay without waiting for his assistance. She rode sidesaddle this time, properly dressed in her sable-brown riding habit— veil, gloves, and all. Cristobal was no less costumed in a camel-colored riding jacket with britches of Bedford cord and Napoleon boots.

  The two of them cantered out of the city along the River Road. It was a mistake. As they came to the outskirts, soldiers could be seen bathing in the river. Every so often, caught in the unsuspected undercurrents, someone drowned. She hurried her bay on past the patches of brush and palmetto and did not slow the mount down until the Palo Alto Prairie, a vast, level grass-covered plain, came into view. Here and there they passed small ranchos with fences made of brush, for there was no timber.

  The muted slap of water against sand and salted breeze warned of the ocean’s proximity. Then the wide sweep of the ocean suddenly lay before the two riders. Cristobal helped Jeanette dismount. “Let’s walk,” he said.

  She fell into step beside him. They strolled in comfortable silence, the only sound the swashing of the surf and the crunching of their boots on the hard-packed sand. She wondered what went on behind Cristobal’s mild eyes. What did a vacuous person such as he think about? Armand would have told—

  As if picking up on her thoughts, Cristobal said, “You’ve never talked about Armand, Jen. Are you over his death?”

  How callous. “No.” The sun was hot, and she longed to remove her jacket and hat, her gloves and shoes. To let the salty wind tangle her hair and to dig her toes in the warm sand. But etiquette forbade it.

  Cristobal bent and picked up a smoothly
worn seashell. “You don’t like to think about it, then?”

  “There is nothing to think about.” Except her bitter sense of wrong. How did one tell a person that he was occupying space, breathing air better meant for someone else?

  “Will you remove that deuced top hat, Jen? The veil keeps flapping in my face like a swarm of angry mosquitoes.”

  She laughed then and gladly accommodated his request. At least Cristobal never conformed to convention.

  The sand was washed smooth by the tide, which occasionally cast upon the beach pieces of boxes, barrels, and bones of ships. Near the white rim of the surf a Portuguese man-of-war lay like a shriveled, phosphorescent bladder, and Jeanette knelt to marvel over it. Which was the second mistake of the day. For when she removed her sand-coated gloves, Cristobal said, “Your wedding ring, Jen . . . it’s the first time I’ve noticed you without it.”

  She looked up guiltily to meet his inquisitive gaze. “I— I misplaced it.”

  He eyed her narrowly. “A wedding ring is hard to misplace. Columbia isn’t hard up for money, is it, Jen?”

  “No. I’m not having to pawn my jewelry like some of the South’s women.”

  If only the ring were pawned. Then she could find a way to retrieve it. But it was stolen. The Frenchman had stolen not only her wedding ring but the innocence that had belonged to Armand. And she grieved more for the latter than the former.

  She rose to her feet and gave Cristobal a sadly whimsical little smile. “You were right. Hunting for oysters wasn’t that good an idea.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Jeanette rubbed the bay’s foam-flecked barrel and tossed the blanket over the stall’s wall. The musty scent of hay and manure filled her nostrils as she led the horse out to walk around and cool off. The night was still star-studded; dawn was some hours away. And she was still exhilarated with the feeling of having accomplished something really worthwhile—all on her own.