The Alamo Bride

by Kathleen Y'Barbo

  Ellis barely recalled how she got from Mission San Jose to the ship that took her home to Mama. To New Orleans. Grandfather had come for her, that she knew, though she’d never thought to ask how he found her.

  Only later would she recall the letters she had written, for her memories of those days in San Antonio de Béxar were fraught with loss and unreliable at best. The man who shot her had barely missed killing her instantly, a fact that Grandfather Valmont reminded her of far more than she cared to hear.

  Upon his arrival in New Orleans, her grandfather had commissioned three of her able-bodied cousins—men who had wished to join up with the Greys but had been dissuaded by family—to sail to Velasco and take over Valmont Shipbuilders until the war ended. Thus he lovingly plagued her waking moments with the same attention that she once lavished on him.

  And to think she used to worry over his coughs and lack of sleep. The fact that the tables had been turned did not sit well with Ellis.

  Nor did she think she could tolerate another day spent sitting in the parlor stabbing her fingers while attempting embroidery or some other activity that her aunts felt was ladylike.

  The home on Royal Street that had been passed down from generation to generation showed no sign of age. Rather, the elegant decor that had likely greeted her great-grandfather when he returned from his privateering missions was the same decor that Ellis was looking at right now.

  Glancing up at the fire-haired female in the portrait over the fireplace, Ellis smiled. If the stories about Maribel Cordoba were true, the aunts wouldn’t have approved of her either.

  “That is the first smile I have seen from you in far too long.” Mama set her embroidery aside to regard her with a curious expression. “To what do we owe the honor?”

  “To her, I suppose,” Ellis said, nodding toward the portrait. “I wonder how she was with embroidery.”

  “Hopeless,” Mama said as she shifted position. “She claimed she had never successfully completed a piece of embroidery in her entire life.” She nodded to the basket and the piece she had just set aside. “I am hoping to remedy that. I found one of her unfinished pieces in the attic and I am determined to have it finished before the baby comes in a few weeks.”

  Ellis glanced down at the baby gown and shook her head. “Better to plan to have that finished for the next generation of Valmont babies. I doubt you’ll finish it in three weeks.”

  “Maybe four by my calculations,” Mama said.

  “Three,” Ellis said. “Plus maybe a day or two.”

  Her mother grinned. “Well, aren’t you the expert now?”

  “I learned from the best,” Ellis said.

  “Yes, I will be in good hands for the birth.” She paused, her eyes downcast. “This one will be bittersweet.”

  “Oh Mama.”

  Tears threatened but she refused to give in. She’d cried her weight in tears over the last six weeks, and she certainly would not be responsible for making Mama cry too. So she rose and went to stand in front of her, motioning for her to follow and then having to help her out of the chair.

  “Where are we going?” Mama asked.

  “Anywhere but here in this parlor.” She nodded at the portrait. “I don’t blame her for hating that painting. It’s stuck inside this parlor all day.”

  Mama laughed. “Well now, I hope you’re not planning some kind of outing that requires I walk anywhere. Not that I have done anything but waddle for the past month.”

  They both knew Mama’s size was likely due to carrying twins, though neither wanted to discuss the matter. The one time Ellis had tried to talk to her mother about the possibility, Mama had refused to hear it. The fact that both of Mama’s sisters had sets of twins spoke almost as loud as the expanding girth that her mother was carrying.

  The bell rang downstairs, indicating a caller. Mama froze. Ever since her arrival back in the fall, old friends and family had made it their business to stop by to greet the newly returned Sophie Valmont.

  Through Christmas and the spring the constant stream of visitors had continued. Though Ellis hadn’t been here nearly as long as Mama, she was in complete agreement.

  Nodding to the back stairs, she grinned. “You know, Mama, we could sneak out of here and hide from whoever thinks it’s a good idea to interrupt our adventure.”

  She giggled. “Adventure? Is that what we were about to have?”

  “It was,” Ellis said, her enthusiasm rising for the first time in a very long time. “Let’s slip away and have an adventure. And I promise, you won’t have to do much walking.”

  “Yes, let’s.” Mama pressed past her to begin the arduous trek down the narrow servants’ staircase. “As long as our adventure includes Antoine’s Restaurant for lunch. I haven’t had Antoine’s since I came back, and I am absolutely starved for a—”

  “So that’s how it is, is it? Your husband leaves for a little while and his wife goes off to Antoine’s without him?”

  “Papa!”

  Ellis whirled around to see her father standing in the foyer on the other side of the parlor. Though he was a little slimmer than when she last saw him, his smile was still the same. Thomas stood behind him, his grin matching Papa’s.

  “Boyd?” Mama called as she made the laborious climb back up the stairs.

  “Where are you, Sophie-girl?” he demanded. “Your husband is home and you are taking your sweet time welcoming him. I brought your son with me, if that makes any difference. But if you truly were glad we …”

  “Hello, Boyd,” Mama said as she stepped into the parlor. “Welcome home.” When he froze, apparently speechless, she continued. “Say something.”

  “Sophie?” he managed. “How did that happen?”

  “The usual way, Boyd,” she told him as she closed the distance between them to wrap him in her arms. “Oh Thomas,” she said as the dam broke on her tears. “You’re home. You’re all home.”

  Not all of them, Ellis thought as she joined the family. And though her tears were mostly happy tears because her papa and her brother had survived, sad tears mingled with them for the man she had lost.

  “Mama,” Thomas said gently as the sound of Lucas and Mack echoed in the stairwell outside the parlor. “I would like to introduce you to someone special to me. If you’ll excuse me just a minute, I will go and get her.”

  “Well, of course,” Mama said. “Although I don’t know why you would assume I wouldn’t want to meet her,” she called as he exited.

  “Could be because her family wasn’t so keen on Thomas,” Papa said, his arm still around Mama. “We might have been home a week ago except that Thomas wouldn’t leave Texas without her and I wouldn’t leave Texas without Thomas.”

  Mama smiled up at him. “Thomas?” she said. “Am I thinking …”

  He pressed his index finger to his lips. “Let the boy tell you,” he said.

  Lucas and Mack poured into the room with Thomas a step behind them. Trailing but holding tight to his hand was a very familiar face.

  “Rose?” Ellis said, and Rose giggled then nodded.

  “Mama,” Thomas said. “I would like to introduce you to my wife, Rose Valmont.”

  “Your wife,” she said on a whisper. “Why, Thomas, I don’t know what to say.” She paused only a second. “Except to say to Rose that I am so very glad to meet you and thrilled that the balance of males to females is returning.”

  “So I see,” Thomas said as the two little boys whooped and danced around their newly returned father. He grinned while Papa knelt down to gather both little ones into his arms. “But there is more to tell.”

  Clay. Had he come with them? Ellis’s smile rose but she dared not interrupt Thomas to ask.

  “Rose and I have been married for a few months. After Ellis was shot, I knew I couldn’t risk missing my chance to ask this woman to be my wife. So while I was at the mission, we had the padre marry us.”

  Mama’s smile broadened. “Thomas, that is so romantic,” she said.

&nb
sp; “More romantic than you know,” Papa said as he tossed Mack onto his shoulders.

  “You’re one to talk,” Thomas said as he nodded toward Mama.

  “Wait,” Ellis said to Rose. “Are you, that is, you and Thomas are—”

  “Going to have a baby,” Thomas said. “Yes. And it doesn’t take an expert to determine that he or she should be arriving nine months after the wedding.”

  Ellis hugged Rose. “I finally have a sister,” she said with a genuine smile. “I am so very happy for both of you. This is the perfect happy ending to your story. He was lost and now here he is.”

  “I am so sorry you cannot have the same end to your story,” Rose said softly. “I prayed every night that he could come home to you. Marianna, she sends her love and says she prays now too, in English and Spanish.”

  Ellis grinned through tears that rose once again. “She’s a very good student.”

  “And a good healer too. She is shy, but she knows much of the healing ways thanks to you. She says she will write when her English is better.”

  Mama clapped her hands, and the room fell silent. Even the little boys ceased their chattering. “With only a month until my time arrives—”

  “Three weeks,” Ellis corrected.

  Mama shook her head. “As I was saying, with only a month until my time arrives, I propose to throw a party for the newlyweds the likes of which New Orleans has never seen. What do you say, Boyd?”

  “Is Boyd home?” Grandfather called from the stairs.

  “Yes, Grandfather,” Ellis said. “Papa and Thomas. And Thomas’s wife.” She grinned. “And Thomas’s future son or daughter.”

  Grandfather arrived in the parlor and had to hear every detail of the story all over again. “So you were both at San Jacinto, then?” he said. “The newspapers appeared to exaggerate. Surely the battle was not over in such a short time.”

  “Eighteen minutes,” Papa confirmed, “and Santa Anna tried to escape dressed as a common soldier.”

  “There will be time enough for talk of war,” Mama said. “Ellis, Rose, and I must talk of parties right now. So if you will excuse us, we have so many plans to make and so little time.”

  “Just three weeks,” Ellis said.

  “Hush.” Mama swatted her playfully and then led them out of the parlor and down to the kitchen to break the news to Cook and her crew that they had a party to prepare for.

  In the days that followed, the entire house was in an uproar over the newly returned soldiers, the new Valmont bride, and the big party that would celebrate it all. While Ellis was thrilled that her friend Rose was now related by marriage, she did allow the slightest tinge of jealousy at the happily ever after that Rose and Thomas would have.

  What began as a sit-down dinner for three dozen in the formal dining room soon became a ball with dinner and dancing. Ellis shook her head as the guest list continued to grow.

  “You’re not going to believe who is coming now,” Rose said three days before the event as the seamstress was letting her new dress out once again.

  “Who?” Ellis sat in the window seat casually turning the pages of the swashbuckling novel that had once belonged to her great-grandmother.

  “The president!”

  “Of what?” Ellis said as she turned the page and followed a young sailor up the mainmast to watch for sails on the horizon.

  “Of the United States, Ellis!”

  She shook her head. “Andrew Jackson?”

  “Yes, can you feature it?”

  “Well, he has friends here,” she said. “Namely a few of my aunts, though none of them will admit to more than a flirtation in their youths,” she said, imitating the society ladies.

  She looked over at Rose, who was now crying. Rising, she went to hug her, shooing the seamstress out of the way. “Why are you crying?”

  “Because my mama and father will not be here but the president will.”

  “Oh honey,” she said as she patted Rose’s back. “You cannot change them, but God can.” She paused. “God and the news of a new grandchild. Just you watch.”

  Rose sniffed and smiled. “Do you think so?”

  “I do,” she said. “Just give them time.”

  But time was something that seemed to flow forward even though Ellis willed it to go backward. Back to the moments she spent with Clay.

  She held that thought close and did not share it, even with Mama or Rose.

  The day of the party, though chaos reigned downstairs, Ellis stayed up in her bedchamber in the eaves of the house until the very last minute. Though she allowed for the maids to dress her and situate her hair just so, she refused any invitation to join the party until after the guests had begun arriving.

  Finally her father knocked at the door. “You’re very much missed downstairs,” he told her as he sat on the bed beside her. “People have asked where you are.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude,” she said. “I just don’t feel much like attending a party tonight.”

  “I know you don’t, sweetheart,” Papa said as he wrapped his arm around her. “You’re heartbroken, and that is never an easy thing to remedy, even for a healer.”

  She smiled to keep the tears from flowing. “You always did understand.”

  “I still do.” He stood and offered his hand to help her to her feet. “This is for Thomas and Rose,” he said. “And I know you’ll manage to feel like attending a party for them, won’t you?”

  “I will,” she said, “whether I feel like it or not.”

  “That’s my girl,” he said. “Oh, by the way. I have something for you.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small leather pouch and handed it to her.

  “What is it?”

  Papa shrugged. “Came by delivery a few minutes ago. Open it and see what it is.”

  She loosened the strings and poured the contents into her palm. One wooden cross on a leather string and a feather.

  “Where did you get this?” she demanded.

  “Go see for yourself,” he said with a shrug. “The fellow who brought them is waiting outside in the courtyard.”

  Ellis fairly flew down three flights of stairs, ignoring the greetings of half of New Orleans high society and likely shocking all four of her aunts beyond their current state of disapproval of her. Throwing open the door, she stepped out into the courtyard and left the noise of the party behind.

  Out here the only sounds were the splash of the fountain and the occasional laughter from the party upstairs. At first she thought she was alone. Then she saw the man in the shadows.

  “Who is here?”

  Clay stepped out then, moving toward her without a word. Ellis fell into his embrace, tears blurring the handsome face of the man she thought she would never see again.

  “I thought you were—”

  He stopped her with a kiss. And then another.

  And then she lost count.

  Later Clay would explain that Andrew Jackson had offered a job in his cabinet and he turned him down. That the money stolen from his rooms over the arcade had been found and delivered to its new owner courtesy of the United States government and the guards who had been secretly posted around Clay while he was in New Orleans.

  He would tell Ellis that the Gallier treasure still lay hidden steps away from the tree near the San Antonio River and that he had plans for them to dig up that treasure together someday.

  He would tell her about the pirate grandfather he was learning about through President Jackson’s personal recollections and the family in Tennessee who would descend on them soon. He might also tell her that one of the memories he’d recalled included a visit with his uncle to this very home where he snuck into the parlor on a dare alongside a certain red-haired girl who looked very much like the woman in the painting over the mantel.

  And then he would tell her about the hope he had that they would make a life together somewhere, be it in New Orleans, Texas, or Timbuktu. The hope that had kept him alive when he tried and failed
to get through enemy lines to defend the Alamo alongside his men. About the mission that had taken him away from the garrison in time to save his life but to cause him to lose those same friends.

  About the guilt that nearly drove him mad and the prayer about feathers that brought him back here to her door.

  Later. But not now.

  Now he would hold the green-eyed woman in his arms until he could find the words to ask her to be his wife. Which might take some time since he far preferred kissing over talking at this moment.

  But he would tell her all of that.

  And more.

  Later.

  BENT HISTORY: THE REST OF THE STORY

  As a writer of historical novels, I love incorporating actual history into my plots. As with most books, the research behind the story generally involves much more information than would ever actually appear in the story. In truth, I could easily spend all my time researching and not get any writing done at all!

  Because I am a history nerd, I love sharing some of that mountain of research I collected with my readers. The following are just a few of the facts I uncovered during the writing of The Alamo Bride, and a few historical facts I have “bent” to fit the story. I hope these tidbits of history will cause you to go searching for the rest of the story.

  We first meet Clay Gentry at an establishment on the corner of Magazine Street and Natchez Street owned by Jim Hewlett. Hewlett’s Exchange, as it was sometimes called, was a multipurpose endeavor with fine dining and all the trappings of luxury on the second level and highstakes gambling and gaming going on a floor above. The first floor was reserved for all manner of business transactions, including slave trading.

  Moving to Velasco, Texas, there is a conversation in chapter 2 regarding the Battle of Velasco, which took place on June 26, 1832. In this battle, the Texians under Henry Smith and John Austin were engaged in battle when they attempted to pass the fort in a vessel that contained a cannon meant for use against the Mexican forces at Anahuac. The battle ended when the Mexican forces inside the garrison ran out of ammunition and were forced to surrender. Terms of the surrender included a return to Mexico by all who wished on a vessel supplied by the Texians.