If he had not been unexpectedly recalled to his regiment he might have persuaded her to marry him. Certainly, in spite of all her other admirers, she had seemed to prefer him. Even Pierre, who, for a mere cousin, seemed inordinately jealous of Ginny’s beaux cavalieres, had not seemed to mind too much.
“We’ll write,” she had promised him when he left. She had cried, but had firmly refused to elope with him the previous night. Not surprisingly, he reflected somewhat bitterly, the letters had dwindled to nothing in about six months. After all, he was a soldier, he was not much of a letter writer himself, and how could a man court a girl who was many thousands of miles away, in the midst of all the gaiety in Paris?
But now, soon, he’d see her again. His Ginette. He wondered if she had changed, hoped she had not. Ma foi, would this waiting never end?
If Michel Remy had but known it, his waiting ended that same night. While he was engaged in his melancholy reflections, the wagon train rolled into El Paso right in the middle of the thunderstorm that raged on both sides of the river.
He arrived at the only decent hotel the town boasted, masquerading as a civilian; fatalistically aware that he might, if he was unlucky enough, be arrested and shot as a spy. But at least, he thought with a surge of self-confidence, his English was almost perfect, and he was wearing a suit of clothes that was impeccably cut by the best tailor in Paris.
Most of his misgivings were dispelled when he was greeted by Madame Brandon, a tiny, exquisitely pretty blond woman with large china blue eyes and an enchanting laugh. A man named Hoskins, an American who seemed unusually taciturn and sported a bruised and battered face, escorted him across the river. Tactfully, Michel did not mention the bruises, but he wondered what had happened to the man. These Americans, always fighting! Even in Mexico City, they continued to fight their civil war that had just ended—sometimes with cutting words and sometimes with weapons. Secretly, he sided with the Southerners, who were gentlemen. Now if they had won the war, Maximilian’s troubles would have been ended!
As they waited for Ginny, Captain Remy noted uneasily that the small hotel dining room seemed unusually crowded. Sonya Brandon, as if she had sensed his unrest, whispered to him that these were only men from their own wagon train, celebrating the end of part of their long journey.
“This is the first town we’ve been in since we left San Antonio!” she said, shuddering prettily. And she assured him that she had already mentioned him as a friend of her husband’s from California, so he must not worry.
“Ginny does not know that it is you who are here,” she confided. “I have told her only that the French officer who is to escort us has come. Have you known her very long, Monsieur Remy?”
They had agreed that she would use the less formal mode of address, and he was relieved that she had not forgotten. And then, his answer was lost in the sudden beating of his heart as Ginny Brandon seemed to float down the stairs.
How could he have imagined she would change? If anything, she was even more beautiful. She wore a green velvet gown cut in the latest fashion, one that he knew at once could have been tailored only by Worth. No crinolines for his Ginette—following the style set by the Empress Eugenie her gown’s neckline plunged low in front to show the bold curve of her bosom, and clung all the way to the hip, to be swept into artful folds of drapery at the back. Her hair was piled at the back of her head, high up, and it shone under the lights with the pale, coppery sheen he remembered so well. A single curl fell down over her shoulder, and she wore emeralds in her ears that were outshone by her eyes.
Michel thought that every man in the room gave a sigh of sheer pleasure at her beauty. Certainly none of the fine ladies, some of them titled, that adorned the Emperor Maximilian’s court at Chapultepec could outshine her! He rose to his feet, their eyes met, and he could see how hers widened in stunned disbelief.
Then she gave a little cry of greeting and sweeping her long skirts up carelessly with one hand, she ran down the few steps that remained. With an effort he remembered his manners and the gaping faces that surrounded them, and meant only to kiss her hand. But she came to him artlessly, and flung her arms around his neck, crying out his name.
“Michel! Is it really you? Oh, but I cannot believe it, you of all people!”
He bent his head almost without thinking, and felt her lips cling to his. It was only with an effort that he forced himself to draw away. Ginny chattered happily to him in French as they were seated, and he could not believe his luck. She called him her love, her dearest angel, and vowed he had broken her heart when he left Paris. Michel was overwhelmed.
They had champagne with dinner, and neither of them noticed what they ate. Ginny drank more than she ought, until she felt her head was swimming—from a distance, she seemed to hear her own laughter, sounding high and forced in her ears. But Michel Remy noticed nothing, except that Ginette was happy to see him. She seemed to glow with health and vitality, and he thought the warm, peach-colored tint of her skin suited her much better than the fashionable paleness of complexion that most ladies cultivated. Her face was a trifle thinner than he remembered it, of course, but this only served to emphasize the fine-boned look of her face, with its willful mouth and enormous green eyes. Michel could hardly take his eyes off her all evening, and he was not the only one.
Carl Hoskins sat glowering at the same table, and even Sonya’s whispered explanation that Ginny had known the French captain from childhood did nothing to alleviate his growing anger and frustration. What was the matter with her this evening? She was acting like a—a trollop! And to add to his humiliation, she ignored him almost completely, under the eyes of half the men in the wagon train who knew that he had been her beau. Bad enough that Steve Morgan should have the audacity to be here as well, together with his friend Davis and two brightly dressed females of obviously easy virtue. It was much worse knowing that Ginny would be leaving for Mexico within the next few days, and that Captain Remy, and not he, would be the one to accompany her there.
As Ginny’s spirits seemed to soar higher, along with the champagne she consumed, Carl’s sank lower. It was with an effort that he forced himself to sit tight during the meal—soon after it was over, he excused himself, explaining tersely that they had to make an early start the next day. Ginny hardly noticed him go.
If she was hardly aware of Carl Hoskins any longer, Ginny was, in spite of her champagne haze, very much aware of Steve Morgan’s presence in the same room. The memory of his cutting words had stayed with her, even after they had reached El Paso, flooding her with a sense of humiliation each time she thought about it. She was glad, glad that she had slapped his angry, sneering face—glad each time she recalled the barely suppressed fury in his eyes after she had done so.
It was with a sense of shock, therefore, that she looked up to find he had had the effrontery to approach their table; making his false, polite excuses to Sonya and ignoring her.
“Don’t mean to disturb you, Mrs. Brandon, but I understand you won’t be going on to California with the wagons, after all. So I thought it better that you should hear this from me—Paco Davis will be leading them when they get started tomorrow. I’m quitting—I’ll be leavin’ for New Mexico tonight.”
“But Mr. Morgan, I don’t understand! My husband….”
“The reason your husband hired me, ma’am, was because you and Miss Brandon here were going along. You don’t need two scouts, nor a hired gun, to get the herd and the rest of the men through to California. Naturally, I won’t expect to be pickin’ up the rest of the money I was to have been paid when we got to California.”
“Naturally!” Ginny heard her own voice, sounding sharp and almost shrewish. “I suppose it was too much for my father—for any of us to expect a man of Mr. Morgan’s sort to be gentleman enough to fulfill the terms of an unwritten contract.” If she had expected to wither him with the wealth of scorn in her voice, she was mistaken. He had at least deigned to notice her for the first time in the evening, but
he met her vituperation with a carelessly raised eyebrow, waiting politely for her to continue.
“Ginny!” Sonya’s voice was horror-stricken—she looked appealingly at Steve. “Mr. Morgan, my stepdaughter is not herself. The strain of the journey has been too much for her, and since our old friend Monsieur Remy is here we have decided that he will accompany us to San Francisco by stagecoach—he had been visiting relatives in De Hanis, you see, and…”
“I’m sure Mr. Morgan isn’t in the least interested in our feelings or our plans, Sonya dear! But since you are here, Mr. Morgan, how very remiss of me not to present our friend Michel Remy, the Comte d’Arlingen—Mr. Steve Morgan, our ex-scout.”
Sonya all but wrung her hands—Michel Remy, sensing the tension that almost hummed in the air, without understanding it, came swiftly and rather uncomfortably to his feet, extending his hand.
“I am happy to meet you, sir. But please—” he cast an unhappy look at Ginny, “I don’t use my title in this country. It is not—very democratic is it?”
Steve Morgan shrugged, clasping the Frenchman’s hand.
“Why not? Us simple folk here kinda go for titles, since we don’t have any ourselves.” He looked again at Sonya and bowed. “My apologies again, ma’am. But to tell the truth—it’s better this way all around, especially since Hoskins and I can’t get along. Goodbye, Mrs. Brandon—Miss Brandon. Mr. Remy.”
Words struggled to Ginny’s lips, but she dared not say them, and bit them back. She was very aware that Michel was watching her quizzically, that Sonya was flushed with embarrassment. Only Steve Morgan, his casual farewells made, retained his composure as he left them—going back to his table to join his companions.
Ginny was gayer than ever. Half-laughing, she whispered to Michel that indeed she apologized for being so naughty and so rude, but she had taken an unconscionable dislike to this Mr. Morgan, who was the rudest, most insufferable man she had ever met in her life and needed a set down.
“And thank goodness I never need lay eyes on him again!” She added. “Why, if Sonya would only stop frowning at me, even she would agree that she’s relieved. Come, be honest, you did not like him either, did you?”
“That is no excuse for bad manners, Ginny!” Sonya said firmly, but she allowed herself to be coaxed into accepting another glass of champagne shortly afterwards, and the rest of the evening passed quite pleasantly and without further incident.
Captain Remy escorted both ladies to their room before going to his own, which was at the end of the same passageway. Before he fell asleep, he congratulated himself again upon his incredible luck at having been present in the marshal’s office, when the matter of an escort for Senator Brandon’s wife and daughter had come up. He had volunteered immediately, of course, and when Bazaine had learned of his previous acquaintance with Ginette he had finally agreed. The gold, of course, was his main responsibility, he must try to remember that, but his thoughts stayed with Ginette, and the long weeks that they would spend together. This time, he told himself, he would have her. He would persuade her to marry him, to arrive in Mexico City as his fiancée, before any of the other officers there had a chance to lay eyes on her. And because he was a man, with a man’s virile appetites, Michel Remy thought also of other things—of how it would feel to hold Ginette’s warm, softly accepting body against his, to initiate her into the rites of love…. He was a gentleman, of course, and he intended to marry her, but perhaps, who knew? During the long weeks that they would be thrown together there would be warm Mexican nights, the scent of flowers in the night air, the moon, and the mariachi players to serenade them. Perhaps they would have their honeymoon first. Now that he had met her again, he was impatient to possess her completely.
If Ginny had any idea that Michel had already planned her future, and her seduction, she kept it to herself during the days that followed, even in the face of Sonya’s growing curiosity. Sonya, since she had learned that the handsome Captain Remy also happened to be a count, actually encouraged Ginny’s flirtation with him. He had a title, and even though he had chosen to become a solider, he was rich—Ginny had already told her so. Even William could have no possible objection to that kind of match for his daughter! Sonya felt sorry for Carl, when she happened to think about him, but she felt sure that Carl would soon find a girl in California who was better suited to him. He was a serious and ambitious young man, and she had liked him, but Ginny was really too much of a butterfly—too giddy and inconstant for Carl. And certainly—every time Sonya thought about it she sighed with relief—it was a good thing that Ginny had so quickly gotten over her strange friendship with Steve Morgan. That relationship would have led to nothing good, and no one knew it as well as she did. It was just as well that Ginny had seen him kill that Apache and wakened to seeing what kind of savage, uncivilized ne’er-do-well he was.
Ginny herself went through the first two days of their travel into Mexico in a kind of daze. She had drunk far too much champagne the night before they left El Paso, and had awaked with a terrible, splitting headache the next morning.
And then, to make matters worse, she had had a most unpleasant encounter with Carl Hoskins, who had forced his way into her room after Sonya had dressed and gone downstairs—demanding to know exactly how he stood with her, and what Mr. Remy meant to her. She had actually felt ashamed of herself then, and sorry for herself too, for Carl was really angry and upset. He had called her a flirt and a tease and a little baggage, and then, when she had burst into tears had grabbed her hands and kissed them, apologizing—begging her not to forget him, to remember that he loved her.
To be rid of him and the whole ugly situation he had placed her in, she had ended up promising to do nothing drastic about Michel—to give herself, and him time.
When Carl had finally gone, Ginny had watched the wagon train rumble out of town in a thin drizzle, and had found herself feeling curiously bereft. She hoped that they would all reach California safely, that there would be no more graves left somewhere in the arid, empty wastelands of New Mexico and Arizona. Yes, she would actually miss them all, even old Pop Wilkins, with his gossipy ways.
Together with Michel, they had left El Paso in their own wagon under cover of an early, rain-swept night. The French soldiers who were to be their escort were waiting on the other side of the river, and the gold transferred quickly without incident to the compartment under the floorboards of the “diligencia” that they would travel in for the next few weeks.
Adjusting to the swaying, jouncy motion of the coach as it lumbered over the bad Mexican roads had not been difficult for Ginny and Sonya; used as they were to their wagon. But Ginny, who had ridden on horseback every day, found it almost intolerable to be cooped up for hours on end in the cramped, stuffy interior of the diligence.
It was true that Michel often dropped back from his position with the rest of the small troop, to ride alongside and keep them company; but even his droll stories of life at the Emperor Maximilian’s court in Chapultepec, his attempts to help Ginny with her rusty Castilian Spanish (which he assured her was still spoken by the gachupínes and the better class Mexicans) did nothing to dispel the feeling she had of being stifled.
Michel kept assuring them that they were safe—they had nothing to worry about, but his reassurances made even Sonya feel more nervous than ever.
They were travelling through rough arid country that reminded Ginny of Texas, but at the small cantina where they had stopped to water the horses and stretch their legs on the first day of their journey, Ginny had overheard the proprietor talk to Michel about “bandidos and Juaristas.” Even her small knowledge of Spanish enabled her to understand that much! It was only a slight consolation to know that they carried American passports and letters that would serve to introduce them to the American representative in Mexico City as wives of Americans from the defeated southern states who had bought estates in Mexico. Perhaps the letters they carried (more evidence of careful planning on Senator Brandon’s part) might se
rve to protect them from molestation from the supporters of Benito Juarez, who counted on the friendship of the United States, but if they should be attacked by bandits…!
Michel told them that the French were still in nominal control of this part of the country. He repeated the rumor he had heard that Juarez had in fact flown the country and was reputed to be hiding out somewhere in Texas. And as for the bandits—he told them airily that they preyed mostly on their own kind and would not dare attack a coach guarded by French soldiers for fear of reprisals by the French. His presence and his reassurances helped. After all, what was the use in being afraid? They had already embarked on their journey and on their mission—hadn’t Ginny herself pooh-poohed the thought that she feared the dangers they might run into? When she wasn’t thinking of Michel and how glad she was that they had met again, she found herself unwillingly remembering the night that Steve Morgan had warned her about journeying into Mexico.
“Mexico, in case you did not know it, is in a state of war!” he said, almost shouting the words at her. If the nature of their mission were discovered, would that make her a spy? The thought was almost laughable. Ginny knew that if she mentioned any of this to Sonya she would be told that she had read too many romances.
They had been travelling for two days, following roughly the contours of the Rio Grande, and stopping often to rest while Michel sent some of his men ahead to reconnoitre. But now, he warned, they would be travelling along a trail that skirted the lower foothills of the forbidding Sierra Madre and would lead them, if all went well, safely into Chihuahua.
“From then on, it will be much easier,” Michel said, with a meaningful glance at Ginny’s flushed, tired-looking face. “We will be away from this heat—wait until you feel the coolness of the mountains! And you will see—after we get to Chihuahua there will be no more fears of bandits or Juaristas.
“Does that mean that we have both those possibilities to contend with now?” Ginny asked with some asperity but he refused to take offense at her tone, leaning down from his horse to grasp her hand through the open window of the carriage.
Sweet Savage Love Page 18
