“I’m not a fool, Eleanora,” he said with dignity.
“Then don’t act like one! Think. What is it you hope to gain?”
“There is land to be had. Recruits are promised two hundred and fifty acres just for entering the country as a colonist. There will be more, much more, to be had once Walker has consolidated his position. Whole estates will change hands—”
“And they will be fought over by all the rest of the paid killers. What chance do you think you will have against the rogues, thieves, and murderers, the scum of the world that is flocking to Nicaragua?”
“Take care, Eleanora,” her brother warned.
She flicked a glance around the table, scarcely seeing the stiff faces before her. “Why? It cannot matter to them what I think.”
“It matters to me,” Jean-Paul said quietly. “They are Falangistas, three of the fifty-six ‘Immortals’ who sailed with Walker in May of this year. They risked their lives to free the oppressed peons of Nicaragua in the name of democracy. I will not have them insulted.”
“Democracy? For glory more likely, glory for themselves and William Walker!”
The man standing at the end of the table straightened to attention, his startlingly blue eyes hard in the darkness of his face. “Are your motives any less selfish?” he demanded. There was an edge in his voice, but the cadence, the accent, was indisputably American. “Tell us why you are so determined to keep your brother tied to you. Maybe you see your security slipping away from you? Maybe you’re afraid he’ll discover he can do very well without you?”
Eleanora stared at the hard-bronzed soldier. “Sir—” she began, at a loss. His estimation was far off the truth, but she could not set him right without embarrassing her brother.
“Colonel — Colonel Farrell,” he supplied, the name definitely not a foreign one.
“Colonel, you have no personal knowledge of my brother. He is not a soldier, his nature is far too sensitive.”
“Soldiers are not born, they are made,” he answered curtly, “as are men.”
“Forged in the crucible of war?” She quoted the bit of rhetoric with irony. “First you must have the right metal.”
Jean-Paul came to his feet, pushing his chair back so hard it bounced off the wall. “Enough. Give me the pen and paper. We will see if I am inferior metal!”
“I did not say inferior, Jean-Paul!” Eleanora protested, “Only too fine.” He was not listening. He slashed his signature across the enlistment agreement in a splatter of ink and took up his beer stein.
Fisher picked up the page, waving it in the air to dry it. “Drinks around,” he called, his smile as it rested on Eleanora unpleasant. “Drinks around for everybody!”
The impulse was too strong to deny. Eleanora reached out and snatched the paper from his hand.
Quickly as a striking snake her wrist was caught, imprisoned in a strong grip. Her breath trapped in a startled gasp, she stared into the blue eyes of the colonel, vibrant with anger, as he leaned across the table.
“The paper you hold belongs to the American Phalanx in Nicaragua. Drop it!”
The fingers biting into her arm were dark against the paleness of her skin. Their strength was cruel and utterly unrelenting. From the corner of her eye Eleanora saw her brother move uneasily, as though he would come to her aid despite his irritation with her. A glance at the set bronze mask of the man who would be his superior deterred him.
Eleanora would not willingly capitulate, but it was not a question of will. Her hand grew numb, feeling left her fingertips. The foolscap slipped from her grasp, settling to the table, where Fisher pounced upon it.
“Someone should teach you not to meddle in the affairs of men,” he said testily.
The moment she released the paper, the colonel dropped her wrist and stepped back, his gaze resting in a grim and derisive amusement on her white face.
Her wrist throbbed, her hand tingled, but Eleanora refused to allow them to see her discomfort. With a supreme effort she steadied her voice. “I have no interest in your warmongering or your search for glory. I was concerned only for my brother’s welfare, something I considered very much my affair. It seems I was mistaken. I will bid you good day.”
Blindly she turned away, making her way through the tables more by instinct than sight. She heard behind her the thud of chair legs hitting the floor but the sound held no meaning. A man with a silly grin on his face and a whiskey glass in his fist put out a hand to stop her. She brushed past him, her mind refusing to assimilate the crude suggestion he mouthed.
The door was her goal. Just as she reached it, it swung open and a man entered in a rush of wind-driven rain.
They collided, and for an instant she was swung off her feet, held tightly to a red uniform jacket. At the flash of that hated color, she pushed violently against the embrace, which automatically tightened.
“Ah, what have we here? A small, flame-haired puta, one of the devil’s favorite handmaidens, of a certainty.”
The lilt of the Spanish was softly Castilian. The face, dark and mustachioed, was alight with exultant laughter.
“No—” Eleanora began.
A voice, cutting despite its drawl, came firm behind her.
“I hate to blight your hopes, Luis, but the woman in your arms is, despite appearances, a lady.”
“Es verdad?” the Spaniard asked, one brow lifted as he gazed down at her.
Eleanora nodded. Instantly she was released.
“My most humble apologies — and regrets.” His bow was a model of grace despite the guitar slung across his back. “An introduction is permitted?”
As he spoke he looked beyond Eleanora. Turning, she recognized the sandy-haired giant who had been sitting against the wall. His insignia was not like that of Colonel Farrell.
“There is no need to apply to me,” the man said. “I have not the pleasure of the lady’s acquaintance.”
“I find your attitude bewildering then, Major. Who appointed you the lady’s protector?”
The undercurrent of friction did not escape Eleanora’s notice. These men might both wear the same uniform but they were not friends.
“I find myself in sympathy with all who run afoul of the temper of Colonel Farrell.”
“Especially if they are female, eh?”
“Please,” Eleanora said. “Let me pass.”
“You will be soaked if you go out there,” the major objected. “Perhaps you would care to wait in the courtyard. The glass roof leaks like a sieve but it should be an improvement over the streets.”
“Thank you, no.”
“Then permit me to offer you my escort.”
“I — couldn’t—”
“Because I am a stranger? Major Neville Crawford, at your service, mademoiselle.”
“And I, Lieutenant Colonel Luis Andres Charles Emmanuel de Laredo y Pacquero.”
“You are most kind,” Eleanora said, her hands clasped tightly before her, “however—”
“You cannot go alone,” the Spaniard insisted.
From vagueness Eleanora’s senses sharpened to a painful perception. There were spatters of rain like dark blood on the red jacket of the lieutenant colonel. The lamp nearest them flared in the wind from the open door. In the humid atmosphere the reek of spirits was strong. At the trestle table in the corner there was a shift of men as the colonel started toward them.
Panic scoured Eleanora’s mind. “You — you must excuse me,” she said in a parody of good manners, and slipped past the Spaniard out the door.
Cold rain directly in her face took her breath. She could not go back, however. Ducking her head, she hurried along the banquette already slick and shining with wet. She could hear someone calling after her, but she paid no heed. Only the dark form of a carriage looming up beside her caught her attention.
“Mademoiselle Eleanora!”
It was Zébe, holding the door of a hired hackney wide. “Get in. Get in, quickly.”
The carriage lurched awa
y down the street, sending geysers spouting as its wheels spun through the gathering puddles. Eleanora leaned back on the dingy upholstery. Talking a deep breath, she forced herself to calm. It was good to be away. She did not care if she never saw that place where she had been so humiliated and insulted again. Her life in the past years had been far from easy. Still, never had she been treated in such a manner. And, as bad as it had been, why did she have the feeling that she had escaped lightly, that it could have been far worse?
“You were too late?” Zébe said at last.
“I — yes. Jean-Paul has signed.” How could she explain what had happened when she wished above all to stop thinking of it?
“No doubt he — wished to celebrate?”
Eleanora inclined her head in a weary nod.
“Under no circumstances would I have let you enter that place alone if I had not been certain that Jean-Paul would feel himself obliged to escort you from the premises himself at once. I feel I have failed you.”
“Jean-Paul was not pleased to see me. There is no harm done. Let us forget it.”
“But your good name? What of that?”
“It scarcely matters, though it is good of you to be concerned.”
“If I may be allowed to make reparation—”
“You are not going to do anything foolish such as make me an offer, are you?” Eleanora asked, striving for a light note to relieve the gloom.
“I would be most honored—”
“No, no, really, m’sieur. I spoke in jest only. Forgive me if I sounded facetious, I did not mean to be. All I want is to return home and try to think what I am to do. Believe me, you owe me nothing.”
Nor, it seemed, did Jean-Paul; not even loyalty.
It was a great pity that she could not think well of the dead, but Eleanora placed her brother’s defection squarely at her grandmother’s door. The three years they had lived with her had been more than enough to spoil his character. Their father’s mother — she had cosseted Jean-Paul, indulging his every whim. He was her husband and her son come back to life, especially the latter, and there was no red-haired Irish woman sprung from the world of work gangs, shanties, filth, and disease to wrest his love from her this time. At thirteen Jean-Paul was impressionable. He had accepted his grand-mère’s evaluation of his own worth and the overweening importance of his desires. Sometimes it troubled him to see his sister pushed into the background, ignored because she reminded the old woman of the daughter-in-law she had despised, and because she did not fit the image of raven-haired beauty then in vogue. To have the taint of Irish blood, only a little more acceptable than a touch of café au lait, was bad enough; to look it was a disgrace. Jean-Paul was too young, at first, to make his displeasure felt, and with time the discrimination ceased to be remarkable.
Not that Eleanora was mistreated; far from it. She was fed and clothed and, at the proper time, introduced to society with due ceremony at the St. Charles theatre. Grand-mère would have scorned to allow New Orleans to see that she considered her granddaughter in the light of a penance upon her old age. Still, Eleanora felt it, and learned early to depend upon her own devices.
It was natural for her brother to be more affected by the death of the old woman. There was not only a vast change in his style of living, there was no longer anyone to bolster his ego or approve his every action. He could not quite reconcile himself to giving up the image of himself given to him by his grandmother, that of a fêted young rake, welcome wherever he chose to go because of his birth and position. He loved his sister, but her warnings and strictures carried no weight with him. He obeyed no will other than his own.
Dinner was late. Because the roux was not simmered long enough the gumbo was thin. There had been no time to heat the bread, and the custard did not set properly. These defects were pointed out in minute detail by the pair of maiden aunts who hired the bed-chamber which had been used by her mother and father in happier years. The retired army captain from Kentucky, a veteran of the Seminole Indian War, made no complaint, eating everything set before him. He slept downstairs in the room which had been her father’s surgery because of difficulty negotiating the stairs with his wooden leg. He never complained of it either.
In order to head off the recitation of the unfailing success of the aunt’s various methods with custards, Eleanora turned the conversation to William Walker.
“Knew the man well,” the captain said, leaning back in his chair. “One of those damned — forgive me, ladies — liberals. Never quite came out antislavery in his paper, the New Orleans Crescent, but had some hard words to say about it. ‘Twas a much better doctor than he was a newspaper editor, in my opinion. Looked at this leg — forgive me, ladies, appendage — of mine once, seven or eight years ago. Gave me a salve for the — ahem, well, we won’t go into that, not at the dinner table. Odd little man. Remember he went around summer and winter in a black hat and overcoat. Constant mourning for his sweetheart, some said, a New Orleans beauty who died of yellow fever. You remember him, don’t you, Miss Eleanora? He used to drop in on your father right there in that room of mine. They both studied at some university in Germany, had a lot in common. I used to see you in there helping your father before he died. Just a little thing you were, but not afraid of blood or hard work, no, sir, not like a lot of these fine ladies you see today. Why, I bet you teethed on a mortar and pestle!”
The captain’s conversation had a tendency to be colorful and rambling, but he had spent most of the last twenty years since he lost his leg sitting about the city, watching people go by. He had a son with political ambitions back East who had married into the Tidewater gentry in Virginia. The son sent him a monthly stipend to live on but never a steamboat ticket. In the last years of her grandmother’s life the captain had been an admirer of hers in a gallant, unassuming fashion.
“I seem to remember a man like that, though he couldn’t have been much older than I am now.”
“Twenty-three, twenty-four.”
“That would make him barely over thirty now.”
“It takes a young man to have the nerve to set out to conquer the world — and old men to stop him.”
“What do you think of his campaign in Central America?”
“All this big talk about relieving the downtrodden and establishing democracy? I’ve been around long enough to be suspicious as H-Hades — beg pardon, ladies — when men start such talk. There’s always money involved somewhere, you mark my word. War and money go together.”
If Jean-Paul had been present at the dinner table that statement would, doubtless, not have gone unchallenged. He was not. It was long after their elderly boarders had straggled off to bed that he put in an appearance.
Eleanora sat in the salon, trying to concentrate on a piece of Berlin work by the light of a single candle, when he let himself into the house. He strolled into the room where she was, sailed his top hat onto the settee, and dropped down into the chair across the table from her.
Eleanora did not greet him. A long silence descended, punctuated by the soft rasp of her needle moving in and out of her canvas.
He ventured, “I see you returned safely.”
“Yes.”
“If you had not it would have been your own fault. You should never have come.”
Eleanora did not answer.
Jean-Paul picked at a spot of mud on his breeches with his thumbnail. “Oh, very well. I know I should have looked after you. I’m sorry. But you know it was a stupid thing to have done, coming into the Arcade barroom — let alone without a chaperone. You must admit that?”
“Freely.”
“I hope you don’t intend to go on in that way while I’m gone.”
“I see little likelihood of it,” she said, looking up to meet his gaze squarely. They both knew she had done so only out of concern for him.
“Yes. Well, I’m sure Cousin Bernard and Uncle Narciso will take better care of you.”
Eleanora’s needle was still. “Cousin Bernard?”
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“You must have realized you couldn’t stay on here alone. Cousin Bernard has kindly repeated the offer to have you make your home with him that he made when Grand-mère died. And so you need not feel that you impose. You can make yourself useful in the nursery he and his rich wife will be setting up any day now.”
“You — must have been busy since I left you to have made these arrangements for me.”
“I do have some sense of responsibility,” he said, his deep brown eyes not quite meeting hers.
“I fear you have put yourself to a deal of needless trouble. I have no intention of leaving this house.”
“No, and you won’t have to. Cousin Bernard — and everyone — will be coming here.”
Eleanora got to her feet abruptly, the Berlin work falling unheeded to the floor. “What have you done?”
“Don’t upset yourself, Eleanora. There was no other way. I could not pass up such an opportunity.”
In his harassment he ran his hand over his hair, a gesture that reminded Eleanora poignantly of their father. Looking away, she demanded, “Tell me.”
“The estates of the hidalgos are being confiscated. Some have been given to the Immortals. Others are available for purchase, but at much less than their worth since Walker needs money. For the price of this house I can buy a finca of more than a thousand acres. We will be landowners again, and from the land comes wealth!”
“You sold the house?”
“You know Cousin Bernard has always wanted it.”
“You sold it, without discussing it, without asking me what my wishes were—”
“I am a man. It is my place to make these decisions.”
“But it is my life you are deciding too. Doesn’t that matter?”
“You will be much better off with Bernard. You will have a place in society again. You won’t have to work so hard. He has servants—”
“And I will be one of them! You are a fool, Jean-Paul, if you think it is that easy to regain the ground lost when we decided to take in borders.”
“Then if you feel like that, why did you ever do it? Why didn’t you just go to Uncle Narciso and Bernard in the beginning?”
Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2 Page 47
