Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  Eleanora felt the nerves tighten over her body before she turned her head to see Grant. Her supine posture on the bed was both suggestive and vulnerable, and she refused to shelter behind either attitude against what was to come. She pushed herself to a sitting position and slid from the high mattress, searching for her slippers with her toes, ignoring the sardonic look on Grant’s face as, watching her, he tossed his hat to one side and began to unbutton his tunic.

  “Is — is it over?” she asked, her head bent as she retrieved a slipper from under the bed.

  “It never began,” he answered.

  She looked up briefly. “I was speaking of the inauguration ceremony.”

  “So was I.”

  “You don’t mean—” she began, then stopped, unable to go on.

  A hard, almost impatient tone in his voice, he said, “No, I don’t. The general is in perfect health. The would-be assassins, a couple of unfortunate Nicaraguan workmen looking for a little extra money, were picked up with the keg of powder before they got halfway across the plaza. They were persuaded to describe the man who had hired them, and I have a detail searching for him now.”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m glad the general is safe,” she said quietly. “Though I would feel better if the ceremony was over and done with. I suppose with the excitement and the spectacle of having the men caught beneath their noses the workmen couldn’t finish the grandstand in time?”

  “Not at all. The date set for the inauguration is the twelfth, day after tomorrow.”

  “But you said—”

  His eyes were dark and unreadable, and his voice bleak as he answered. “I did, didn’t I? I said the tenth. And you, Eleanora, were the only one I told.”

  It made sense of a great deal she had not understood. His withdrawn silences, the look in his eyes when they rested on her, the feeling that he was exerting greater-than-usual control over what he said to her and how he said it, indeed over his every reaction to her. “You knew — what I was doing, then?” she whispered.

  Reaching into the wardrobe, he took something from a pair of his breeches. Holding it in his fist, he reached for her hand and placed what he held on her palm. It was the shredded magenta petals of a spray of bougainvillea — bougainvillea exactly like that which grew at the end of the galería, exactly like that which she had been holding in her hand as she listened to Grant and the others outside the window that day. “Let’s say I guessed,” Grant told her, and dropped her hand, letting the dried petals float to the floor.

  “And telling me the date of the inauguration, the wrong date, was in the nature of a test?” she queried on a sigh. “One I failed?”

  “That’s right,” he answered in abrupt tones, then took a step toward her, leaning over her as he rested one hand on the bedpost. “What I don’t understand is, why? What made you do it? Was it the money? Or for the sake of that two-faced bastard, Crawford? Or was it because you hate me and what I did to you?”

  “No — nothing like that!” she exclaimed, flinging him a startled glance. “It was for Jean-Paul.”

  “For Jean-Paul?” he repeated without comprehension.

  “Yes. He — he wasn’t executed with the others before the firing squad. He is being kept a prisoner in Honduras as a hostage for my actions. If they find out what I have done today, they will kill him!”

  Grant drew back, a flint hardness coming into his eyes. “Try again,” he grated. “You know as well as I do that your brother hanged himself with his dressing-gown cord on the day you left Honduras.”

  Eleanora stared at him, the color slowly draining from her face. It could not be true, it could not. But there was no relenting in Grant’s face. His words and his manner were inexorable. Jean-Paul would not do such a thing, she tried to tell herself. Still, she kept remembering his despair, remembering him crying that he should have died with the others. She seemed to be swaying a little on her feet, and to hide it from Grant, she turned away, catching her lip between her teeth.

  “So you didn’t know,” Grant said, the harshness gone, leaving his voice tired.

  She shook her head numbly. “They let me think he was still alive, and when I asked about him, I was told he — he was fine.” All these weeks of tension and anxiety, of worrying about Jean-Paul chafing in his prison room, for nothing. For no one. Her brother, cold and lifeless, unable to feel pain or sorrow, could no longer care what sacrifices she made for his sake. He had tried to make them unnecessary with a greater sacrifice of his own. It was no fault of his that she had been duped. The anguish of loss and self-blame moved through her. She thought of his grave, unsanctified, unmarked, unmourned these many weeks. If flowers there had been to make sweet his passing, their petals would be as dry and brittle as those lying about her feet.

  “They kept it from you so you would do as they asked.” It was a statement with the sound of relief as well as regret in it.

  Eleanora nodded her head in a movement which caused the tears to spill over her eyelids, though she quickly raised her chin in an effort to stop them.

  “I should not have thrown the truth at you like that, but I had to see how you would take it,” he said. He made a gesture, as though he would touch her shoulder, then drew back.

  Eleanora knew an almost overwhelming need to seek the comforting circle of his arms. That was impossible now. She would meet no response except, perhaps, an insupportable pity. She needed no such weakness. She must summon strength, the strength to learn what she needed to know, and to tell him what she felt it was necessary, for her peace of mind, for him to hear. Her voice a thread of sound, she asked, “How did you learn of it?”

  “We have our sympathizers and our sources of information too. Among them, in the area where you were, is an old priest. He sent a dispatch to the leader of the exchange party, Colonel Henry. The news about your brother — and your friendship with Crawford — was in it.”

  “I see,” she said. Until that moment she had not been certain Grant realized to whom she had been reporting. Carefully, she went on, “I promise you that I told Neville nothing I thought would damage the phalanx. I did tell him what I overheard the general say he intended to do about President — ex-President — Rivas. But only as much as you were going to make known anyway for the sake of your plan — or what it seemed Neville must learn soon himself. Later, I thought there could be no harm in telling him the date of the inauguration, that it would be posted everywhere in a matter of days. I had no idea he planned to harm the general. I would never have told him if I had. That is all the information I gave him, I give you my word.”

  “I believe you,” Grant said, “since I went to great lengths to make certain that was all you knew to tell him.”

  The satisfied sound of his voice, after her difficult confession, stirred anger as well as shame in Eleanora’s breast. “Was I that transparent?”

  “Only to me,” he admitted, acknowledging the stringency of her tone and the flashing light in her tear-drenched eyes with an odd smile. “Then, I have the advantage of living with you.”

  She eyed him doubtfully. It was not a satisfactory answer; she might even suspect him of deliberately trying to change the direction of her thoughts. She was not in a position to argue, however. “There is something else I must tell you. You may discover that I met Neville at Mazie’s arrangement. It was not because she had anything to do with what I was involved in. She had a good idea of what it was, but no more than that. Knowing she and Neville were old friends, I asked her as a special favor to let me see him at her place because I didn’t want him to come here. I swear to you that is the truth. In fact, it was Mazie who set off the events this morning,” she continued, telling him of John’s part in exposing the abortive plot against the general.

  “That’s interesting to know,” Grant said when she had finished, “but why are you so anxious to tell me? No, let me guess. You want to be sure I don’t take Mazie and her John and stand them up before a firing squad and shoot them.
That’s it, isn’t it? Without going into what I might like to do, let me remind you that I could hardly arrest them without incriminating you.”

  “I don’t see that that matters,” she answered without looking at him. “When Neville is caught he is certain to draw me into it.”

  “Strange though it may seem,” Grant mused, “I appear to have a better opinion of Major Crawford’s sense of honor than you. I don’t think he will mention your name unless he has to. In any case, we haven’t caught him yet.”

  Slowly Eleanora turned to face him, a frown between her brows. “But you said you were looking for him.”

  He let his gaze slip past her shoulder. “The men arrested this afternoon were in some doubt as to his name. They described him well enough; tall, American, light hair, but it was a description which could have applied to any number of the men in the phalanx if they were out of uniform. The officer I put in charge of the search detail will do his best, I expect. Still, he doesn’t have my sources of information. If Crawford is half as smart as I think he is, he will be far away from here by morning.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” she said slowly. “I would have thought you would have wanted to tear him apart for what he was trying to do.”

  “So I would, but that doesn’t mean I want a public inquiry.”

  “But — why?” Her face mirrored her bewilderment, and yet she felt a waiting stillness within.

  “I think you can guess, Eleanora, but if you want me to say it, I will. I don’t want your name drawn into it. Nobody is going to take you from me again.”

  Lightning flashed beyond the window with an odd yellow light. In the stillness they heard the ominous rumble of thunder coming closer. Eleanora swallowed hard on the constriction in her throat. “Grant, I—”

  She had not been certain she could put what she felt into words. He did not give her the chance. “Oh, I know you had your reasons for coming back to me after Honduras, reasons that had little to do with what you felt or wanted. It makes no difference. You did come, and now you will stay, regardless, for my reasons. You are in my blood and my brain. The scent and feel and taste of you are with me always. You are as necessary to me as food and water. I can’t sleep away from you or work without knowing you are somewhere waiting for my return. Resign yourself, if I have to keep you under lock and key the rest of your life, you will never leave me. I won’t let you go.”

  His face was drawn, as if the course he was taking gave him no joy. And as he caught her to him and lowered his mouth to hers she thought she saw pain vying with a muted self-disgust in the shadowed blue of his eyes.

  His kiss was savage, branding her his, taking her with him headlong into wild rapture as the rising wind buffeted the building outside. Freed of the constraint of guilt, Eleanora gave herself to him, matching his craving for her with her own pain-driven ecstasy, molding herself to him with bittersweet pleasure in a deep, intolerable need that he would not assuage because he could not. She wanted a gentle, endless surcease for her yearning and he gave her the fury of his passion. She wanted his love and he gave her nothing but desire. She wanted, in the secret recesses of her heart, to be his wife, and he made her his obsession. It was not enough.

  The rain darkened the gray of the sky to the charcoal dimness of early night. It fell from the roof tiles in steady streams like the silver tears of grief, washing away the accumulated dust and dirt, just as grudges and resentment are dissolved by the sorrow of parting. Eleanora could find no release for the hard pressure of tears closed away within herself, but still she must go. Grant must not compromise his strong sense of duty or betray his commanding officer for her sake. If he did, he would come to despise both her and himself. She could not ask that of him. Nor had she any right to ask him to love her. She had used her love for him, bartering it for value in the form of information like the most wanton of whores.

  More, she would not be held in loveless bondage against her will. Not again. Not ever again. If he had asked her to stay in the soft words and tender manner he was capable of using, she would not have been able to resist. He had not. And because he had not, pride and an aversion to captivity in any form, coupled with the shaming certainty that if she did not get away she would make a fool of herself by confessing her own love, forced leaving upon her.

  Beside her Grant stirred, drawing her nearer. He pressed his lips to the top of her shoulder, smoothing her hair back away from her face. Eleanora closed her eyes tight against the rush of tears, breathing in the warmth of his skin in slow, uneven breaths. Still, even in her nearness she was apart from him, gathering to herself the courage to make the severance final, and to sustain her afterward.

  The oars dipped and splashed, the sound echoing over the still surface of the lake, spreading like the ripples made by the boat’s passage. Eleanora, sitting in the stern of the small native craft, little more than a canoe with a sail, wished fervently that she could tell the two men bending to the oars to be quieter. The night was dark and their chances of being discovered slight with the attention of Granada centered on the inauguration proceedings. Still, she had no inclination to tempt Providence. Not that she actually thought the soldiers who had been lining the wharf and guarding the ticket office for the lake steamer these past two days were watching specifically for her. At the same time, to be caught in the net spread for Neville Crawford and brought up with him before the provost marshal, Colonel Grant Farrell, could cause nothing but embarrassment for both Grant and herself.

  It was strange, after all that had happened, for her to be leaving Nicaragua in the company of Neville Crawford. She recognized the strangeness, but accepted its fatality. She could have refused to share either his place of refuge with Mazie, or his boat, but where would that have got her? She had no one else to turn to except Mazie, and no idea how to go about arranging alternate transport that would be half as swift or as discreet.

  Dear Mazie, she had not even looked surprised to find Eleanora standing on her doorstep in the early-morning light. She had pulled her inside, heard her out, and then exclaiming about the meagerness of Eleanora’s belongings for an ocean voyage, set about finding something to wear. Eleanora had protested that it did not matter how she looked, but Mazie would not listen. Watching the vigor with which she attacked the problem, listening to her strictures on the cheese-paring ways of the military, Eleanora had not the heart to tell Mazie of the two gowns she had left hanging in the wardrobe at the palacio. She had not been able to make herself bring them away with her. It had seemed, in her keyed-up state, too much like accepting a bribe with no intention of carrying through on her part of the bargain. It may have been ridiculous, for Grant had no use for them, and her need was great. Still, an aching pride was all she had to support her, and she would do nothing to lessen it.

  She had needed that support when Grant left her that morning. Taking her surrender the night before for acquiescence, he had made no move to lock her in. She almost wished that he had, that there had been that obstacle to overcome to gain her freedom. Instead, he had kissed her, then turned and walked away, like any other day. Standing at the window, Eleanora had watched him out of sight with her hand twisted in the curtain. She had not lingered long behind him.

  That was not the end of it. Grant had gone to Mazie, pounding on her door in such a blazing, tight-lipped rage, that the actress readily admitted he had her in a positive quake. But by then Eleanora was not in the house. Mazie had found a place for her with a Nicaraguan woman, the mother of one of the children they had helped the sisters of Guadalupe nurse through typhoid. Mazie had not made the mistake of telling Grant she had not seen Eleanora. With as much force as she could summon, she had rung a peal over him for his treatment of her friend, then told him with every expression of enjoyment that Eleanora had already left Granada, going overland on horseback to reach the transit road for a connection to California. Her acting experience must have stood her in good stead, for Grant had left in a hurry without stopping to thank her for the inform
ation.

  Mazie, with an air of giving the devil his due, told Eleanora that Grant had not so much as mentioned Neville’s name. She confessed she had half expected the colonel to demand Eleanora on pain of being arrested as an accessory to the assassination attempt. Whether because in his concern for Eleanora’s disappearance he had forgotten the major, whether he believed Mazie’s tale without question, or whether in honor of his pledge not to draw Mazie and John in the assassination plot, he did not so much as question Neville’s whereabouts. Not that Mazie would have been intimidated if he had. She had Neville well hidden also, and though she was not about to condone what he had tried to do, she had some small understanding of how Neville’s mind worked. She could not bring herself to turn him over to the firing squad, for friendship’s sake, if nothing else.

  It was Mazie also, who insisted that Eleanora sit down to pen a note to Don Esteban de Laredo. She was as excited as a child at Eleanora’s good fortune and went around calling her the Condesa at every opportunity. She had no sympathy with Eleanora’s reluctance to put herself forward or appear anxious to receive her legacy. Searching out writing paper and a pen with a good nib, she had pushed them into Eleanora’s hands with the dire threat of writing the note herself if Eleanora did not feel able. Wincing a little at the color of the ink, a bright Irish green, Eleanora had complied, writing hurriedly, sealing the missive with green wax and sending it around to the address Don Esteban had given her by another of the widow’s children, before she could change her mind.

  The result, delivered by a messenger in the livery of a private servant, was a bank draft described as a small advance against her inheritance which made her open her eyes in shock, and a needlepoint purse of pin money for the journey that in her days as a keeper of lodgings would have fed her household for six months.

  Though the money was comforting, Eleanora was apprehensive about traveling with such an amount jingling at her side. As they stood beside the lake, ready to climb into the boat drawn up on shore, she tried to make Mazie accept some of it as payment for the gowns she had altered for her for the journey. The actress had refused, pushing her toward the boat with a laugh which had a catch in it. “Vaya con Dios!” she called, the Spanish admonition to go with God as comical, coming from her lips, as it was touching.