He lifted his leg, waiting patiently to see if she would help him remove his boots. Eleanora tilted her head. “Did you forget to bring your bootjack? What a shame if you had to sleep in them.”
“I’ve done it before, I can do it again,” he replied carelessly. “It was you I was thinking of. I’m a restless sleeper.”
She could not resist. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t remember you sleeping at all last night.”
“That,” he said gently, “was your fault.”
“My fault?”
“You shouldn’t tempt me. Well, is it to be with, or without?”
It was a task she had performed for Jean-Paul many times when he had come home so deep in his cups he could not make it up the stairs. Fuming at his suggestion, she moved to the foot of the bed. She was so incensed she hardly realized she was complying with his request in a manner that showed acceptance of his presence. It struck her as she held the boot in her hand, and she weighed the heavy cavalry footwear, a speculative gleam in her eye.
“I wouldn’t” he drawled, divining her temptation.
After a brief struggle with herself, she nodded, dropping it, reaching for the other. “No, it’s not nearly lethal enough.”
He smiled and stretched hugely, raised his arms above his head. Lowering them, he began to unbutton his tunic.
Eleanora set the other boot on the floor, lining it up beside the first with care. On the floor, half-hidden beneath the bed, she found a gardenia. Brown, crushed, it was one of those which she had taken from her hair the night before. Her fingers curled around it as she straightened and turned blindly away. With her back to him, she began to shred the flower, filling the room with its decaying fragrance.
His tunic fell to the floor, followed by his breeches. The bed ropes creaked a protest, then he was behind her, his hands on her shoulders, drawing her back against him. Under his fingers the knot of the dressing gown’s belt slipped away, the edges fell open. His touch was firm, yet gentle, on her warm flesh.
Her inarticulate murmur of protest was smothered by his lips as he easily quelled her abortive attempt to free herself, turning her to face him. The dressing gown fell away as his arms crossed behind her back. She was pressed to him along the entire length of her body, her breasts flattened against his chest, every sensitive plane and hollow crushed to the mahogany hardness of his frame.
His kiss deepened. A jolting quiver ran along her nerves. Her lips softened, parting beneath his with confiding sweetness. The torn gardenia fell from her fingers unnoticed as she slid her hands along his shoulders, clasping them behind his neck. The lingering, spiced-wine freshness of bay rum invaded her senses. Unconsciously she moved closer. Awareness receded. She felt that she was being consumed, losing herself in the overwhelming heat of his need.
Abruptly she tensed. It would not work, that tenuous plan to make him desire her so that he would be bereft when she disappeared the instant Jean-Paul was released. A pitfall she had not perceived while the colonel was absent was made plain to her. Responding to him could be a major mistake. If she lowered the barrier of her resistance at all, he might enter and take what he pleased. He had the use of her body. He must have nothing more.
Stiff, silent, she lay as he placed her on the bed. She clenched her teeth, straining away as she felt his lips at the base of her throat, half-expecting the tantalizing slide to the mounds of her breasts with their nipples contracted in what must surely be revulsion.
Suddenly he raised his head. “If that’s the way you want it,” he said, his voice rasping harsh with frustrated disappointment in the darkness.
Grasping her wrists, he wrenched them above her head, holding both in the grip of one strong hand. His mouth forced her lips open in a savage exploration that tasted of blood as he reopened his old cut. His freehand searched her body with a thoroughness that made her gasp and writhe under it. He pushed her thighs apart, turning her to him, fitting their bodies together in an inescapable bond.
In a suffocating upheaval of the senses, Eleanora endured his domination. And when he was done with his ruthless use of her, she twisted away from his slackened hold and lay on her side, chest bursting as she fought the tears that gathered like acid behind her eyes.
She might have won had he left her alone. Instead, he reached across the width between them, and twining his hand in her hair, drew her inexorably closer to lie with her back to him and his body curled about her. This final imposition of his will destroyed her strained defenses. The silent, difficult tears streamed as his hands moved over her, caressing the soft, resilient skin of her waist and belly. Slowly she recognized that the brush of his fingers had grown more questing, his breath on her neck warmer, quicker. With the suddenness of shock her crying ended as she realized that his cure for her sorrowing self-pity was going to be the same as the cause.
Eleanora awoke to a soundless dawn. No wind stirred, the muslin curtains hung limp and straight. The growing light was clear, heralding another fair day, and yet there was a gray threat in the air that seemed to stem from the quiet.
Lying still, she listened. There was no noise of people on the streets, no carts or wagons moving. The house, the room around her was deathly still. No one breathed beside her.
Turning, spreading her arm over the bed, she found what she expected. Grant was gone, as was his uniform. Where he had lain was cold. All that remained was the indentation of his head in the pillow.
She sat up. Something nagged at the back of her mind, something infinitely disturbing. She should be able to remember, but she could not, quite. It was something told to her. Luis—
In that instant of remembrance, the heavy air of the morning was torn by the roaring explosion of a rifle volley. Immediately afterward came the whir of pigeon’s wings in startled flight, then a single shot, dull with finality.
The firing squad. The man who had murdered the traitor was to die with the dawn. The bed beside her was empty. It was no accident. The man who had held her in his arms in the night was also the man who commanded the firing squad.
7
“They brought the traitor-killer out from the side door of the Government House, through a double rank of Falangistas, the escort party, into the plaza. Eight men waited at attention, weapons at their sides, one containing the squib.”
“Squib?” Eleanora questioned Luis. The Spaniard perched upon the railing, his fingers drawing a wandering tune in a minor key from his guitar as he described the public execution in the central plaza only a few hours earlier.
“The blank, the conscience round, sometimes loaded so that each man may tell himself his was not the fatal shot. A useless device. The recoil is different. A good rifleman always knows.”
Eleanora nodded in comprehension. Luis continued, his eyes dark and unseeing.
“At ten paces the escort stopped. The priest came forward. The old women began to tell their beads. When the holy cross was kissed, the priest stepped back, the blindfold was tied in place. The man was turned with his back to the rifles and forced to his knees in the dust. The colonel drew his sword, gave the order to present arms — aim — fire. The sword fell. Eight shots rang out as one just as the first rays of the sun struck across the plaza.”
“And it was over.”
“Not quite. The seven shots did not kill. My amigo must needs examine the fallen man, and finding him living still, administer the coup de grace, a bullet from his revolver in the ear.”
“Dear God,” Eleanora breathed.
“It is a terrible responsibility, but someone must do it. Still, if the colonel is silent this evening, you will know what preys upon his mind.”
“I — can’t believe it will trouble him overmuch.”
Luis looked up, his gaze keen. “Then you do not know Grant.”
It was a subject Eleanora had no wish to pursue. She let it pass. After a moment of watching Luis’s nimble fingers upon the guitar strings, she observed, “It seems a groveling way to die.”
“It is th
e Spanish way. It is not intended to be a proud death.”
Was there a rebuke in his grave tone? She did not think so, and yet, she could not be sure. He was not an easy man to understand. His moods changed so easily from the gay to the somber, from passion to remote friendship. Yesterday he had left her in what she had thought to be the anger of disillusion. Today he had returned without explanation, disarming the bougainvillea at the end of the galería with an incongruously large bowie knife, and herself with music and a report of what was happening beyond the palacio.
Looking up, he caught her gaze upon him, and his lips moved in a slow smile that gave a glimpse of the whiteness of his teeth against his teak-dark skin. “Don’t be sad, pequeña. To die is no great thing, It is living that requires courage.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” she replied, with a lifted brow. “You are one of the Immortals.”
His smile fading, he inclined his head in acknowledgment of the shot.
“The name fascinates me. Grant did not want to discuss it — and Major Neville Crawford, when I asked him on the ship coming here, treated the whole idea as a joke.
“Grant has not the gift — as I have — of explaining the beginning of a legend in which he plays an heroic part without embarrassment, and so he will say nothing. Major Crawford makes light of the Immortals because he has no claim to the title. It began in Sonora nearly three years ago with the general’s attempt to take Lower California. Major Crawford joined us in New Orleans just before we sailed for Nicaragua this past May.”
“Tell me about Sonora.”
“That was a madness, an act of chivalry, a noble crusade. The general was plain William Walker then, doctor, journalist, but not a soldier. In the name of the “manifest destiny” of the United States of America to extend democracy to other lands, he marched into Baja California with forty-four men behind him and proclaimed it a free republic with himself as president.” He shook his head. “Madness indeed.”
“He failed?”
“Nobly. When reinforcement arrived, he moved to annex Sonora. He wanted to free the people of the country from the oppressive yoke of Spain, and make the frontier settlements between it and the United States safe from attack by marauding bands of Apache Indians. This ambitious and idealistic plan had only one flaw. The Mexican government had no wish to give up these lands rich in gold and silver. Walker expected support from the American government for his action, and when it was not forthcoming he was forced to retreat.”
He paused a moment, his eyes narrowing. When he spoke again his voice was low. “Have you ever been to Baja? There is nothing there that welcomes man. In the heat and sand, rocks and cactus, even the snakes and lizards must scrabble to stay alive. From La Paz we marched over five hundred desert miles to the Colorado River. The horses died and were eaten. Our shoes wore out and we marched barefoot over the scorching rocks and cactus like needles. The yellow sand grew red with our blood. We ate prairie dogs and rattlesnakes and gila lizards and the pulp of the organ cactus. We even ate buzzards. Our lips parched, our brains baked, and our skins burned and cracked open like meat oozing fat on a spit. The wounded, the weak, the stupid, and the squeamish died first. Fever, more deadly than any enemy, attacked us when we had no strength to fight it. Even now the trail from La Paz to the border below Tia Juana can be traced by the sun-bleached bones of the men we left behind.”
His face was so bleak, his voice so softly portentous that Eleanora stood unmoving, waiting for him to go on. The words of sympathy that hovered on the back of her tongue were useless, she knew. They remained unspoken.
Luis’s fingers upon the strings of the guitar stilled their melody. He stared down at their slender length and the signet ring on his smallest finger as if he had never seen them before. “There was a mountain pass three miles from the California border. From that height we could see the flag of the United States waving above the military post north of the dirty little town of Tia Juana. It represented safety, food, medicine, all the things we so sorely needed. And then we were stopped. The pass was in the possession of bandido-soldiers in the pay of Mexico, and their Indian allies. The man in command, Colonel Melendrez, sent his Indians under a flag of truce with an offer of his kind permission to leave his country if we would lay down our weapons. It was a base trick, of course. We were to surrender our arms so they could murder us at their leisure. We sent back this reply: If Colonel Melendrez wanted our guns he would have to come and get them! And he came, oh, yes, he came, riding hard and fast. The men who met his charge ran before him in what looked like a panic-stricken retreat, but led him straight into our ambush. Our first volley emptied a dozen saddles, and then we waded into them, revolvers blazing, with hate in our hearts and the desperation of men who have counted themselves dead in the sunsets of countless days. The bandidos and their Indian friends fled in terror. Thirty minutes later we reached the American post and surrendered ourselves to the officer on duty. The date, we discovered, was May 8, 1854, General Walker’s birthday. He was thirty years old.”
“But you survived — you, and Grant.”
“Yes, and Colonel Henry, and thirty others. We had looked into the grinning face of death and smiled back. We were the “Immortals.” People love heroes, and even in defeat, that is what we were to the hero-hungry press. Without that, without Sonora, Walker would never have raised the money for this venture in Nicaragua, and without Grant and his Apache blood, death would have won in the desert. That is why your amante sits on Uncle Billy’s right hand.”
“His — Apache blood?”
“But yes, Eleanora. You are shocked, appalled? No matter. This is something you must know if you are to understand Grant.”
It would be foolish to pretend disinterest. She would even admit to a certain amount of shock, though she refused to own herself appalled. With startled clarity she recognized the origin of the blue-black straightness of Grant’s hair, the copper tinge of his skin; recognized, and in the same instant, accepted them. The blue of his eyes was unaccounted for, however.
She gave a shake of her head, frowning. “He is not full-blooded.”
“No. Half.”
“You know how it came about?”
“I know,” Luis agreed. “On long marches men draw close together, and, sometimes, they talk.”
A challenging light in her green eyes, Eleanora asked, “Do you intend to tell me what was said?”
“I think yes,” he said, his smile flashing.
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Who can say? Not I. Perhaps for you, perhaps for him, perhaps only to meddle.”
“Or to make trouble?”
“Or to make trouble,” he repeated, his gaze level, though a trace of rich red lay beneath the surface of his skin.
“You have the advantage of honesty,” she said, smiling to take the sting from her words.
“And audacity,” he added, tilting his head to catch the soft tune he had begun to pluck from the guitar once more. He became absorbed in the sound, his fingers moving with blinding precision, the tempo quickening, hovering on the edge of frenzy.
Watching him, Eleanora felt an odd constriction in her throat. She should be thankful that he took the time to visit her. He did not have to. Certainly he had nothing to gain by it. It was ungrateful of her to accuse him of treachery to Grant. It might be that she, too, was beginning to lose faith in integrity.
“I’m sorry, Luis,” she said when the music had slowed once more.
He did not acknowledge the apology or give any sign he had heard, but after a moment, he began to speak. “Grant’s mother was from Virginia, a lady of angelic charm, golden hair, and eyes bluer than the sky. She was gentle, soft, used to comfort, even luxury. She met Thomas Farrell when he came to buy horses from her father for the land he had bought in what was then the section of northern Mexico called Texas. The attraction was strong. This horse-buying trip stretched into a visit of a month. The pair were married. For a few days they were happy. Then they qu
arreled. There had been a great misunderstanding. Farrell had taken it for granted his new wife would return to Texas with him; she had been just as certain he would stay and help run her father’s holdings. If he loved her, she thought, he would not ask her to endure such hardships as this new land promised. If she loved him, he insisted, she would be eager to share his future. Neither would try to understand the other. Both were stubborn. Thomas Farrell was a good man, but hard. He threatened to ride away, leaving his bride behind. As is always the way, the bride gave in. Still, Thomas Farrell did not get off without payment. His Amelia complained and found fault over every bump of the whole weary journey, waxing tearful at every opportunity. Texas, when they arrived, was hot and dusty and windy. The house he built for her was little more than a sty for pigs. Her husband left her alone with only a Spanish maid and a crippled vaquero far too often and for too long a time. Hearing this day after day, it was natural for Farrell to leave her alone more often still, and for longer. That is the way of it, no?”
Tiring of standing, Eleanora had settled herself to the floor. Leaning against the doorjamb, she curled her feet under her, drawing the blue brocade of the dressing gown over her knees. “I suppose,” she agreed.
Nodding, he went on. “Raiding parties of Apaches were known to enter the area from time to time. They were a nomad tribe. They thought it their ancient right to plunder whatever fell in their path. One day, while Thomas Farrell was absent, it was the Farrell ranch. They took horses, food, blankets, and Amelia Farrell. A golden-haired squaw, a great prize, one to be savored. The band moved too slowly. At the end of the fourth day, Farrell and a half-dozen of his neighbors caught up with them. The leader, a tall, straight Indian with long black hair called Black Eagle, offered either to return the horses if he could keep the woman — a magnificent offer from an Apache — or to fight for her in mortal combat. Thomas Farrell shot him where he stood, then they gunned down the others. After that, they had no use for the white flag they carried. They threw it down among the bodies.”
Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2 Page 57
