Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  “Not my father’s; and summer in New Orleans has been likened to Hades.”

  “That was for the upper class, I would imagine, for patients who could afford the best — and who had their own servants to wait on them.”

  Eleanora frowned. What Mazie said was true, but instead of discouraging her, it served to increase her interest. She had not dreamed, despite the words Dr. Jones had used to couch his request, that the need was so great.

  Their cups were empty. Leaning forward, Eleanora refilled them, then settled back. “You haven’t seen anything of Jean-Paul, have you?” she asked with a casual air that, she was sure, fooled Mazie not at all.

  Mazie’s lashes, tipped with gold dust, fell. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask.”

  “He — isn’t in trouble again?”

  “Not officially, for which you can thank your Spanish friend upstairs. I’ve seen men from the Laredo regiment leading him to his lodgings a half-dozen times.”

  “Lodgings?” Eleanora inquired without looking directly at the woman across from her.

  “He’s left the barracks to make way for new recruits. As long as he performs his duties it doesn’t matter where he bunks — or with whom.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I thought you couldn’t know,” Mazie said, sighing. “I hate bearing tales.”

  “Please don’t feel that way. I have no other means of knowing, if someone doesn’t tell me. It was too much, I suppose, to expect Jean-Paul to understand why I had to come back here, but I haven’t seen him since that night at the theater.”

  The other woman nodded. “Your brother found himself something of a celebrity after his meeting with the colonel. Every man in command makes enemies, people who are happy to see him hurt, brought down. These people fastened on Jean-Paul, making over him until he’s got to the point he’s proud of what he did. The most influential of them is a woman, a dark-haired Nicaraguan vixen — who seems to hate Walker, the colonel — everybody except Jean-Paul. Her name—”

  “—Her name,” Eleanora said, speaking with slow and absolute certainty, “is Juanita.”

  11

  Juanita, the woman who had aspired to be Grant’s mistress, the woman who had given Eleanora the scratch marks finally fading from her wrist, the woman Grant had dropped from the galería: it was not surprising that she held a grudge. It was unusual, however, for someone of her volatile temper to take such an indirect means of revenge. Still, what else could it be? The chance of her pairing with Jean-Paul by coincidence was much too slim.

  After Mazie had gone, Eleanora made a slow circuit of the patio, mulling over the problem. Her conclusion was no different. Juanita had to have a reason for what she was doing. The tiles of the patio were littered with the spent blooms of an orange trumpet-shaped flower. She had stooped to pick them up when she heard the slamming of a door above. She straightened to see Luis moving quickly along the galería. It took only a step or two to meet him at the foot of the stairs.

  “Going so soon?” she asked, placing her hands on the newel. “I thought you would stay for luncheon.”

  “Duty waits — impatiently,” he answered, smiling, making as though to slip past her.

  “Luis?”

  “Yes, Eleanora?” He paused, alert to the seriousness of her tone.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Jean-Paul?”

  “I — judged that you had enough to worry you. Was I wrong?”

  A frown between her eyes, she shook her head. “I might have done something, gone to him, explained.”

  “It troubles you that you and your brother are far apart in your hearts and minds? This is a natural thing, a necessary thing. You cannot stay forever as when you were children.”

  “No, but I am all he has.”

  “This has been so, until now. Now he has Juanita — ah, I begin to see. This is what worries you?”

  “She will use him.”

  “And he, her. It is the way of things.”

  Eleanora raised her lashes. “I don’t need a lesson in Worldliness. There must be something we can do.”

  Gently he reached out to take her hands in his. “Forgive me if I fail you, but there is nothing. He must make his mistakes, just as you, pequeña, must make yours.” Lifting her hands, he pressed them to the warm smoothness of his lips, then released her. His smile held a tinge of sadness before he sketched a bow and strode easily away. The silver rowels of his spurs made a musical jangle long after he had disappeared from sight.

  Picking up her skirts, Eleanora began to climb the stairs. Near the top, she glanced up. Grant stood in the doorway of his room, one arm braced on the frame. There was a black scowl between his brows that, against her will, sent a shaft of apprehension through her, until she realized he was staring past her, staring at the place where she and Luis had been standing. An instant’s hesitation, and she started to move again. Grant shifted his gaze to watch her approach. Letting her slide past him, he turned into the room behind her.

  The table was piled high with papers and the various books which it was Grant’s responsibility to keep. He sat down once more to the paperwork that had accumulated during his absence. The sling of black muslin hung useless around his neck; he used it less and less as the days went by. As he leaned over his work, his hair, grown long, fell in a black wing over his forehead. Eleanora, stooping to pick up a sheaf of papers that had slid to the floor, removing the empty glasses from among the piles, resisted the impulse to reach out and push it back.

  The scratching of Grant’s pen slowed, stopped. He looked up. “Eleanora?”

  His voice was soft, tentative, as if he were tasting the flavor of her name. “Yes,” she answered, turning with the glasses, sticky with lemonade, in her hands.

  “Why? Why did you come back?”

  “You must know,” she answered carefully.

  He threw the pen down and swung around in his chair. “No. Tell me.”

  “I felt — bound.”

  “In what way?”

  “You were injured because of me.”

  “I would have thought that would be a reason for gloating, not pity,”

  “Pity?” Eleanora said, her chin lifting. “I’ve never pitied you.”

  “No? Then if you’re not Lady Bountiful on a charity case, what the hell are you doing here?”

  Eleanora opened her lips to speak, but no words came. What could she answer? Certainly not the truth.

  “Well?”

  The blazing blue of his eyes was impossible to sustain. Staring past his shoulder, she said, “Perhaps for the same reason you stood and allowed my brother to put his bullet in you.”

  “You won’t mind if I take leave to doubt it?”

  “Think what you please. It makes no difference,” she replied, stung by the irony of his tone.

  The suspicion of a breeze stirred the muslin curtains that had been let down over the window to help keep out the flies. It smelled of the dust and the street refuse of the advancing dry season, and did little to alleviate the heat building in the small room.

  “You’ll be happy to learn,” he said, the well-molded lines of his mouth drawing taut, “that I expect to return to the Government House tomorrow.”

  Her eyes widened. “Your shoulder is too tender. You’ll open it again.”

  “Concerned, Eleanora?’”

  “Naturally,” she said, her cheeks flooding with warmth. “I’m not unfeeling.”

  “I wonder,” he muttered, his gaze sliding over the smooth white skin of her shoulders revealed by the low neck of her blouse where her drawstring had loosened. Following the direction he was looking, she hastily tightened the string, tying it in a bow.

  His movements were unnaturally stiff as he transferred his regard to the hazy view beyond the French door. “All that remains is for me to express my gratitude for the part you played in saving my life.”

  “It was nothing.”

  “I won’t argue with you, beyond saying that I value it a little more
highly.”

  “I didn’t mean—” she began, then stopped, seeing the shadow of a dry humor at the back of his eyes. “I meant to say my part in it was small.”

  “That isn’t the way Pedro tells it,” he said, dismissing the subject with a casual gesture that held, once again, that subtle air of command. “I suppose you will now consider your duty completed?” he went on.

  “I — expect so,” Eleanora agreed quietly.

  He pushed back his chair and moved around the bed to the washstand. From one of its drawers he took out a leather purse such as the Spaniards carried, and turning, held it out to Eleanora.

  She made no move to take it. “Are you offering me money?”

  “I want you to have it.”

  “To salve your conscience?” she demanded, her green eyes glittering in her pale face. “My services require no payment. They have never been for sale!”

  “I have never offered to buy yours or any other woman’s, and I’m not doing it now. All right. Call it conscience money, but take it, so you will never have to sell yourself!”

  Eleanora did not stay to listen. She whirled, and with tears blinding her eyes, groped for the door handle. Finding it, she flung the panel wide and ran, seeking the sanctuary of the room she had made her own. Locking the door behind her, she threw herself on the bed and lay tense, listening. Unconsciously, she expected fury, a violent assault on the door. The silence without seemed to flow endlessly, to penetrate the room, crowding in where she lay, resting upon her chest with a great weight that, finally, forced the scalding tears from her eyes.

  The nights of sleepless nursing, the days of anxious waiting, the emotional turmoil of the past weeks, swept in upon her. Exhausted from her bout of weeping, she slept, her wet, tangled lashes lying still as death upon her cheeks.

  She opened throbbing eyes to darkness. Heaviness pressed her into the softness of the bed. It was difficult to move. Lying there, coming slowly awake, she knew she should be hungry, but her throat felt too swollen to eat. By degrees, she levered herself into a sitting position. This would not do. She had to gather her things together, to send a message to Mazie — no, it was too late. She must have been asleep for hours. Moonlight already silvered the rooftops beyond the French window. Tomorrow. It would have to wait until then. Perhaps she could keep still until morning, until Grant had gone. She need not see him again, nor he, her. It would be better that way.

  Standing, lighting a candle, moving about, helped to clear her mind of the bitter dregs of sleep. Splashing water into the basin to wash her face made her feel more alert. On impulse, she removed her clothes, and setting the basin on the floor, stepped into it, then sluiced her entire body, letting the cool, soap-scented water run over her with a sensuous pleasure. Refreshed, she brushed her hair, standing naked before the mirror. When she had dried in the air, she slipped on the brocade dressing gown and set about clearing away the mess she had made. In the midst of mopping up the floor with a towel, she halted, her attention caught by a sound from the next room. It was the squeak of bed ropes as Grant turned in his bed. Had she disturbed him? She must be quieter.

  For a time she sat on the side of the bed with her hands folded in her lap. The wail of a concertina, the monotonous barking of a dog came to her on the night air. It was no use returning to bed; she could not sleep now. Finding her clothes, making a bundle of them, except for the dress she would wear the next day, consumed a few more minutes. Placing it beside the door, she went back to the bed to sit and listen to Grant’s restless tossing.

  Was his wound paining him? Perhaps he had turned feverish again? It was foolish to trouble herself so over a grown man, but she had acquired the habit. She could not help it, any more than she could prevent herself from loving him. Of the two, which was more foolish?

  The thudding sound of something falling on the other side of the wall made her jump An instant later she sprang up and let herself out the door. Her bare feet made no sound on the galería. The position of the door and its knob were so well known to her she could have found them without the captured glow of moonlight in the well of the patio. By contrast, Grant’s room appeared black-dark, alive with unseen dangers. Her skin prickled as she stood inside the door, then she began to move toward the bed.

  Her foot touched a glass tumbler trailing water, no doubt this was what had fallen. It rolled with a deafening clatter across the floor. Still, there was no sound from the bed.

  The sheets felt rumpled to her touch, and damp with night air. The pillow was easily located — the coarse silk of his hair — his forehead—

  Suddenly her hand was caught and tugged. Off balance, she fell across the bed. An arm of tempered steel lifted her, gathering her close against the hard length of the man in the bed.

  “You had your chance,” Grant said, his breath warm upon her neck, his voice husky with desire. “You should have taken it. You’ll never get another one from me.”

  “Grant—” she said weakly as she felt his hand caress her shoulder, brushing aside the lapel of the dressing gown. The belt gave to his quick tug, leaving her easy prey to his possessive touch.

  “I’ll never let you go again,” he whispered, pushing the brocade robe from the bed, letting it slide to the floor. His mouth descended on hers, searching for, and finding, the sweetness of willing surrender. He drew her soft nakedness to his lithe form, holding her close, ever closer, until her chest ached with the constriction of her breathing and the muscles of his arms trembled with the need to make her a part of him. He explored the corners of her mouth and the delicate curves of her ears, breathing deep of the warm, fresh fragrance of her hair. His hands, cherishing, sure upon the curves and hollows of her body, stirred the slumbering dragon-fire of yearning in her loins, and she clung to him with a fierce and sacrificial gentleness. He guided her beneath him, a tender shadow, guiding her also to the onslaught that filled her with such a shock of pleasure that she rose against him, his name a soft sound on her lips. Wide and far their ardor stretched, encompassing great reaches of mindless space, black, echoing with the pounding of their hearts, overflowing the narrow limits of world and time. Rapture and pain intermingled, subsiding slowly. It was several moments before Eleanora recognized the softness of a pillow beneath her head, or the sensation of Grant brushing her damp hair away from her face with his fingers, releasing the tangled strands from where they were pulled taut underneath him, and behind her shoulders. He framed her face with his hands and kissed her soft, faintly tremulous mouth, then with a sigh, settled back, turning her to him, pressing her head onto his uninjured shoulder.

  Eleanora lay as he placed her for a time. The combined heat of their bodies burned along her hip and thigh. Still, she did not move until his chest began an even rise and fall. She inched away then, a fraction at a time, stopping only when a body width of cool linen sheet lay between them.

  She was depraved. She must be, to find joy such as she had not known existed in the physical union with a man who offered her nothing but a whore’s portion: money and passion.

  Beside her he slept with the stillness of content while she lay wakeful. It was not a fair exchange, she thought with a seeping resentment. His shoulder must be more nearly healed than she had suspected to sustain the treatment it had received without paining him. Why, then, had he been so restless? Could she dare to hope it was for want of her beside him? But what did that count for, if it was no more than the result of his manhood’s need? He had tried to send her away for the sake of honor, but finding her near him still, had weakened. I will never let you go again, he had said. Spoken in the flush of desire, the words were not binding, but she must take what comfort from them she could.

  A cock crowed in the distance. The same dog she had heard earlier began to bark again. Her eyes burned, there was an aching pressure behind them, but she had no tears. They had vanished, leaving her with the brittle dryness of self-scorn.

  She awoke to the confinement of a hard-muscled thigh across her legs, the da
zzle of sunlight in her eyes, and a ravening hunger.

  Breakfast was an omelette seasoned with cayenne, corn cakes dusted with panocha, brown Mexican sugar, plus hot coffee, and oranges. Grant peeled one of the golden-red globes for her, and when she had eaten it, leaned across to take a tart-sweet kiss from her lips. At the look in his eyes when he raised his head she said quickly, “It’s getting late. They will be waiting for you at the Government House.”

  “Yesterday you thought it was too soon for me to go back,” he told her, rising to stalk her as she got hastily to her feet. “I think you may be right. Would you suggest a few more days of bed rest?”

  “Rest? I doubt you would get any!”

  “Is that a threat? Then I know I’m staying, at least as long as my strength lasts.”

  His smile was laced with a free and unrestrained humor. His laughing eyes had lost their hard, feverish gleam. Within her, Eleanora felt her heart contract on seeing the difference it made to the pagan angularity of his features. His profile was not classically handsome — it was too strong, even predatory — and yet, it stirred her like no other. She would not have him different, even if she could.

  His advance slowed, came to a halt. “Are you afraid of me, Eleanora?”

  She shook her head. “Of course not.”

  “You watch me like a mouse watches a cat. You stay as much as possible out of reach, except when I take you by surprise and push inside your defenses.”

  “That may be — because I don’t know what you intend — how you feel.”

  Frowning, he said, “I told you I want you with me, always. What more do you want?”

  “Nothing you can’t give freely,” she answered, and found that it was true.

  “But a set of marriage lines would satisfy you, wouldn’t it? You may not give yourself the airs of a belle or a coquette, but you’re like all the rest. You’ll use any wile, any trick to tie a man down. And when he’s shackled you’ll make his life a living hell.”

  “Not all marriages are like that,” she said, pride strengthening her voice, “but if that’s the way you feel I should think you would make a bad husband. Then there is the question of security and your ability to provide a comfortable home — no, I don’t believe you meet my requirements.”