Orphan Moon (The Orphan Moon Trilogy Book 1)

by T. K. Lukas

  “Spanish. Comanche. A few other tribal vernaculars. It comes in handy on the job.”

  Hughes tapped the five-point star pinned to his vest lapel with a look of pride. It was forged, like all Rangers badges, from a silver Mexican peso. As essential as a knife or a gun, a Texas Ranger’s badge opened doors quicker than a polite knock or a forceful kick.

  As Hughes spoke, Leighselle studied his face. She considered his square jaw, the fine angular slant to his nose, his intense, wide-set amber eyes, and she took in the way the sunlight streaming in the window brought to life the honey gold strands that glistened in his dark brown hair.

  His countenance reminded her of a lion, powerful and majestic, although in Hughes’s case, almost too handsome to be dangerous. But she knew better. She knew the truth behind the sensuous smile, the manicured nails, the scholar’s vocabulary, and the well-placed manners. He was a gentleman, yes, but dangerous and capable of audacious deeds.

  “It’s difficult for me to reconcile the precocious young boy from New Orleans with this rough-and-tumble lawman sitting before me.” Leighselle laughed at the memory. “Not one to be told ‘no,’ you kept showing up at my saloon until one day we tired of chasing you away. Oh, how my girls doted on you.”

  “I’m not always rough-and-tumble, wearing this badge.” He leaned in close. “I tell you a little secret. Sometimes, when not Rangering, I’m employed by our federal government. I take care of business that others don’t want to.”

  “Ever the chevalier,” she whispered. There was no point in asking or in saying any more. She assumed he’d shared with her as much as he was able to divulge.

  A violent cough erupted with a sudden force that wracked her body, bending her forward, shaking her shoulders. Her entire body heaved as she fought to catch her breath. Leighselle covered her mouth with her black handkerchief, wiping at speckles of blood she feared marred her face.

  “My dear, are you all right?” Hughes was at her side, patting her back, then he took the handkerchief from her and dabbed at the blood that stained the corners of her mouth. “Here, sip some tea. Can I get you something else?”

  “No. No, I’m fine. Thank you.” Her shoulders rose and fell in slow motion as she took deep breaths, trying to refill her lungs.

  “Ladies who are fine do not cough blood. There’s a doctor in residence at the Menger Hotel where I keep a room. I’ll send for him.” Worry was etched in deep lines on his forehead.

  “No, please don’t trouble yourself. More tea would be lovely.” The smile she gave was weak and unconvincing.

  “You should let me send for the doctor, Leighselle. That cough concerns me.”

  “It’s too late for a doctor, Hughes.” She cupped a hand over his, her pleading eyes telling him to let go of the idea. “My doctor advised that there is nothing more to do short of easing my pain.”

  Hughes swallowed, and then took her hands in his. “Is that why you’re here, Leighselle? Did you come to see me one last time? I should have come back—”

  “I came to San Antonio to ask a favor of an old friend. Your brother told me where to find you. I didn’t want to write. I wanted to see you, to ask you face to face. I need your help, Hughes, in tracking—” Another cough even worse than the first rattled Leighselle’s emaciated body, her tiny frame seeming like it might break in two. “Please excuse my coughing. Today is the worst so far.”

  “Would sitting outside in the fresh air help?” Hughes offered her a glass of water.

  Sipping it, she nodded. “It would. Let’s take a short stroll.”

  Hughes took Leighselle by the arm and steered her outside, where the warmth of the late September’s morning sunshine hinted at an afternoon suitable for siestas. An umbrella stand that Oma kept on the front porch held a ladies parasol. Hughes opened it, carrying it over Leighselle’s head, shielding her from the rays of the Texas sun. They walked, unhurried, arm-in-arm, passing by the Spanish Mission where the Battle of the Alamo had occurred.

  As they strolled the esplanade that hugged the San Antonio River, Hughes pointed out the Menger Hotel where he kept a room. It was a conspicuous European-looking building amid Spanish Colonial architecture, thanks to a German immigrant who built the hotel next to his beer brewery.

  “What a grand building. I would very much like to tour it later,” Leighselle said, accepting the offered chair that Hughes pulled out for her.

  Adjacent to the hotel, a cluster of tables sat under the sweeping arms of cypress trees that lined the river’s banks. Hughes pulled a chair and sat across from Leighselle. “As you wish.”

  A man dressed in a gray morning coat with a gleaming white towel draped over one arm approached. Hughes greeted him with a smile. “Hello, Jameson. This is a dear friend of mine from New Orleans, Miss Leighselle Beauclaire. She was more like a big sister, really.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mademoiselle Beauclaire.” Jameson bent at the waist.

  “Enchantée.” Leighselle smiled and nodded, impressed with Jameson’s manners and French pronunciation of her name.

  “Bring us two lemonades, if you will, Jameson. A small shot of whiskey on the side for me,” Hughes requested.

  Leighselle held up two fingers.

  “Make that two shots of whiskey, Jameson, and also send word to Doctor Schmidt that I’d like a moment with him, at his convenience.” Hughes winked at Leighselle.

  “Of course, Mr. Lévesque, right away, sir.” Jameson bent, whispering something to Hughes, while at the same time tucking a note into Hughes’s vest pocket. Then, turning on his heels, he marched away with brisk, purposeful strides.

  Hughes said, “Please, indulge me.”

  “There is nothing a doctor can—”

  “Please? Indulge me. Let Doctor Schmidt have a look at you. What’ve you to lose?”

  “Time. A commodity of which I have precious little. But, I’ll agree to see your doctor just so you will feel better.”

  “Thank you,” he nodded. “You’ll like Doc Schmidt. He’s well respected. And, he’s an avid though rather inept poker player. If nothing else, you might persuade the good doctor to cut the cards with you. Who knows, you may walk away with a little spending money. Maybe go buy yourself a new petticoat, parasol, or pistol.”

  “I have plenty of undergarments and umbrellas, but a new little pocket Derringer might be fun.” Leighselle’s laugh melted into a blood-red cough, her thin shoulders lifting with the weight of each spasm.

  Jameson returned with a tray of refreshments and a new folded note for Hughes. After pouring the lemonade into tall tumblers with sugared rims and serving the dark amber Old Crow in short cut crystal whiskey glasses, he stepped back and clasped his hands in front of him, waiting for further instructions.

  “Excuse me, Leighselle. This needs my attention. I’ll be just a moment,” said Hughes as he put the second note into his vest pocket.

  “Of course,” she said as she poured the whiskey into her glass of lemonade. “I have a suspicion that this will treat a cough better than tea with lemon and honey.”

  “Fix mine up like that, too, if you will. I’ll be right back.” Hughes stepped away from the table, Jameson following.

  Leighselle watched as they stepped into the shade of the walled patio at the side of the hotel, Jameson speaking, Hughes attentive. Hughes took the notes from his vest, looked at each one, nodded his head, and handed them back to Jameson, who then marched away, disappearing from view into the dark doors of the hotel.

  Hughes returned to the table, apologizing. “I hope you’ll forgive the interruption.” He sat and leaned back in his chair, taking a sip of the potent lemonade concoction. “Mmm. Refreshing. Intoxicating. This may become my new favorite beverage.”

  “It’s mine, without a doubt.” She waited for a moment, wondering whether or not Hughes would volunteer anything about the secretive notes, but decided that he would not. Men like Hughes kept secrets. Women like her understood.

  “All right, my dear,
you have my undivided attention.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees, fingers tented, eyes alert and on hers. “Tell me what favor you came all this way to ask of me.”

  Leighselle brought her handkerchief up to her mouth anticipating a cough, but it never materialized. “Must be the new medicine,” she said, sipping her drink. “I came here to ask you to help me find my daughter.”

  “Your daughter?” Hughes leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. “I didn’t know you had a daughter. And she’s lost?”

  “Only a few people knew I had a child. Most of them, if not all of them, are dead now. And she’s not lost. She was taken from me when she was an infant just days old. I was drugged and blackmailed into giving her up. It’s such a long, complicated story, I . . . I don’t know where to start.”

  “At the beginning. Start there.” Hughes leaned forward. He took her gloved hand in his, giving it a gentle squeeze.

  “The beginning. I was fifteen. My father sold cattle to a Texas rancher. He wasn’t a Texan. He was an Irish immigrant who settled in Texas. He would come to our ranch in Vermillion Parish to purchase our pure-bred Brahman cattle and have them shipped to his ranch in Corpus Christi on the Texas Gulf Coast.”

  Hughes listened, watching Leighselle’s confident posture weakening as she spoke, her hands twisting and untwisting the lace handkerchief in her lap.

  “He visited several times a year, and every time I would catch him staring at me. Long stares, not casual glances, but vulgar stares so intense that I felt his eyes left a stain on my skin.”

  “Your father and mother—did they notice his unusual attention to you?”

  “Yes. Mother couldn’t stand to be in his presence. She would make sure I was kept busy upstairs with my tutor or someplace out of sight. Father tolerated him because he was a rich cattleman and was good for business. Father talked about buying more land, about importing more bulls. He couldn’t afford to turn away a wealthy client.”

  “Did he hurt you, or try to hurt you?” Hughes’s voice lowered and darkened.

  Leighselle’s eyes brimmed with tears. “It’s been so long since I’ve spoken of what happened at Vermillion Bay.”

  *****

  August, 1836

  Rusty red soil clung to the slippery banks of the Vermillion River, which flowed into the tepid coastal waters of Vermillion Bay, the river snaking its way south before spilling its murky iron ore into the Gulf of Mexico. The rich dirt oozed a blackish, brick-red slime. Seasonal tidal waters pushed inland and crept upstream through the marshlands, at times causing the river to appear to run backward and head north toward its source, as if the river was swallowing itself in one thirsty gulp.

  Everything in the small Louisiana parish—the river, the bayou, the bay, even the parish itself—claimed the name “Vermillion,” while the vermillion iron ore claimed the air, the water, the land, the animals, anything else that stood still too long, tinting all within its reach in varying shades of red.

  Armand and Jeanine Beauclaire’s only child was never still long enough for the color red to claim her. Leighselle La Verne Beauclaire was an active girl, and the minutes spent sitting still were minutes wasted. She hated sitting still; stillness was not something for which she had any patience, and she hated the color red.

  “I prefer yellow, Mama, like the sunflowers.”

  “Then you shall always wear yellow,” her doting mother would proclaim.

  Leighselle was aware of how the sun’s yellow rays could distract her from the ugliness of Vermillion Parish, where everything was a dusty, rusty red. As she grew, Leighselle also gained a keen awareness of how it felt to distract a man from his business, though not through affectation. At the juncture when a young girl crosses over to womanhood, she was a natural beauty. Chestnut hair fell in silky waves past the small fullness of her hips. Flawless porcelain skin provided a palette on which to showcase pink Cupid’s bow lips. A straight, narrow nose turned up a fraction of a degree at the tip and seemed to point upward to her most dramatic feature: gold-flecked emerald green eyes that edged on the side of being too large for her face. Fringed in thick ebony lashes that grew thicker and longer at the outer corners, the effect was feline.

  Seamus Flanders, an Irish immigrant who settled in Texas and conducted business in Vermillion Parish, was not immune to her charms, despite the twenty years that separated them. His business dealings with Leighselle’s father could have been accomplished in a single yearly visit, but he came to Vermillion Parish more often, looking for any excuse, purchasing more cattle than what he needed, because it meant another chance to eye the object of his desire.

  On the occasions when he would insinuate himself to be an invited guest for a meal, he would study Leighselle as if she were an objet d’art meant to be inspected and admired. His intense stares and undue attention made her uncomfortable. She couldn’t help but notice that during those times, he often kept his hat strategically placed across his lap.

  *****

  Leighselle and her little dog, a small white terrier with brown ears and a brown spot at the root of its tail, skipped down toward the river bridge. Her mother had promised that she could have a swim and a picnic if she was a good girl and completed her lessons for the day.

  The woods thickened. It became dark and cool despite the heat from the near-noon-day sun. Leighselle stopped at the rock where the others had taken off their dresses and took hers off, too. Splashing into the water, her white skin was almost translucent compared to the nut-brown skin of the two slave girls who splashed and played alongside her.

  “We supposed to be dying them linens, Miss Leighselle. If Massah Beauclaire catches us a swimming and not a working, he sure enough going to be mad.” Addy-Frank dove into the water, Esther following.

  “I can handle Father. I’ll tell him that I was drowning and that you both jumped in to save me. He’ll award both of you a work pass for snatching his daughter from the jaws of death.”

  “He ain’t going to believe a word a that.” Addy-Frank and Esther splashed Leighselle while Jacques, the little white terrier, raced along the shoreline, barking.

  The expensive ivory linens imported from Paris floated in tubs of ocher water made deep mustard yellow by an abundance of iron oxide in the soil, the mineral-rich dirt a treasure hidden in secret pockets along the riverbank.

  Where everything else in Vermillion Parish was red from the prevalent hematite, the soil in the inlet where the girls bathed and washed clothes was infused with the yellows, oranges, and browns of ocher. Using the mineral as pigment, colorants were made to dye the linens and other fabrics of the Beauclaire household in beautiful shades of yellow.

  “Come on. We best be getting back with them linens. You mama tell us to have them pinned to the line ’fore noon so the sun can bake that color right in,” said Addy-Frank.

  “Go on back without me. I’m staying a little longer.” Leighselle, chest deep in the slow-moving waters of the Vermillion, flung her head backward and forward, streaming a spray of water from her long hair onto the bank where Jacques jumped and barked, trying to catch the water droplets in his mouth. Leighselle and the girls laughed at the little dog in his tireless efforts, jumping many times his height into the air.

  “I reckon that be OK, Miss Leighselle, but don’t you be too long,” said Addy-Frank. “Your mama get worried if you ain’t home ’fore lunch.”

  “I brought a picnic lunch. Mother’s not expecting me back until later.” Leighselle splashed the girls as they scampered out of the river, Jacques twisting and twirling in the air, barking at the water droplets as they sank into the sand. Scratching and rooting with furious energy, Jacques tried to get to where the water droplet disappeared from view, his paws and nose turning a bright ocher yellow.

  After the girls hurried away with one of the tubs of linens, Leighselle sat on the bank of the river, rubbing the warm ocher sand onto her legs and arms. “Jacques, look. I’m not white anymore. I’m yellow, like your nose. I think I’ll stay
yellow the rest of my life—it’s such a fine color. Much better than red. When I’m old, I shall ask to be buried in a yellow dress.”

  Pulling on her lace underslip, she reached into the small tote, bringing out a sandwich. She halved it, giving the generous portion to Jacques. It disappeared in an instant. “We must work on your manners, petit chien. Maybe teach you to say please and thank you.”

  “If I say please, will you let me kiss you? Or, will I have to take what I want?” Seamus was on her in an instant, grabbing her from behind, clapping a hand over her mouth before her scream was out. He pushed her onto the wet sand, pinning her to the ground with his weight.

  Leighselle struggled but was powerless against the brute force of a man intent on taking what he wanted.

  His hot breath panted against the back of her neck, his words—grunts—groans loud in her ear. She wrenched one of her arms free from under her, clawed backward at his face, his hands, but he pinned her arm again. Ripping at her underslip, his rough hands scratched and bruised her tender flesh.

  Jacques raced in circles, barking, lunging, biting at his bootleg, grabbing the fabric in his teeth, pulling backward. Seamus shook the little dog off, then kicked hard, booting him a solid blow to the side. Jacques landed in the sand, quiet, unmoving.

  Leighselle screamed. His hand over her mouth muffled her cries. The more she struggled, the rougher he got. “I see the way you look at me, teasing me, begging me for this. It’s in your eyes that you want me to fuck you. Say it. Say you want me to fuck you.”

  Leighselle shook her head, frantic, tried to say no, tried to scream, but his hand clamped down on her mouth again. Sand clogged her nostrils, grated her eyes.

  “You’re mine, Leighselle. After today, no one else will want you. You’ll belong to me.” Seamus took her in the roughest way he could. “Do you understand? Mine.”

  Pain ripped through her body. With each push and shove, Leighselle felt as if she might slip into unconsciousness—she prayed that she would. A silent cry formed in her throat and stayed there, even though her mouth, wide open in horror and fear, allowed for its release.