LAVENDER BLUE (historical romance)

by Parris Afton Bonds

  She jerked on the hoops, and they became even further entangled with each other and the bedding. “Get Tia Juana up here to lace me, Aunt Hermione,” she muttered in distraction, fighting with the crinoline that seemed to have taken on perverse animated capabilities.

  The great house locked up at last, Aunt Hermione was ready to evacuate. Accompanied by a grim Jeanette and Tia Juana, who muttered darkly about Yankee scum, the old woman ordered Trinidad to drive them to the convent. The shelling, which had sounded only like a distant drum, increased in volume to resemble crashing thunder. From the fan-leaved palm trees along the River Road an ashy pall could be seen hanging like a curtain just beyond Brownsville. The city’s streets were empty of morning traffic when Trinidad reined the carriage to a halt before the gray-stoned convent.

  Jeanette made no move to get out of the carriage, and Aunt Hermione said impatiently, “Dear, do hurry. The beastly soldiers could enter the city at any moment.” “I’m not going to the convent right now,” Jeanette answered, just as impatiently. She had to find out exactly what was happening. “Tia Juana, guard Aunt Hermione for me.”

  “Have you lost your mind, child!” Aunt Hermione shrieked. “There’s going to be rape and murder and—and, get down from that seat this instant, Jeanette St. John!”

  Jeanette laughed gaily. “Fie, Aunt Hermione. How often does one get to see the real fireworks? It’s been deadly dull, and I mean to enjoy the excitement!”

  Tia Juana smacked a good-bye kiss on Trinidad’s forehead, but Aunt Hermione’s mouth fell open. Her bird cage dropped to the ground, powdering the old woman’s skirts with a thick white film of dust. For once she disregarded Washington’s shrieked imprecations. “I know you’re a flighty girl, but this is sheer madness!”

  Jeanette waved merrily and instructed Trinidad to drive on to Brazos Santiago. “I’m writing your father!” Aunt Hermione yelled after the departing carriage. “Do you hear me, Jeanette St. John?”

  The carriage rocked on down the road that in the dry season lay ankle deep in dust and in the rainy season was a sea of mud. Jeanette felt a twinge of guilt at the worry she was causing her aunt. But she had no other choice than to carry on the charade of a giddy young widow. At least until the South won the war and Armand’s memory was vindicated. Besides, she was a grown woman now, and there was nothing her father could do to stop her.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Shaded by the lime-green eyelet parasol, Jeanette reposed in the canoe’s bow. She felt almost guilty at the pleasurable respite she was taking from her underground activities.

  As the boat drifted on the popular salt lake outside Brownsville, her long fingers indolently swished through the cool aquamarine waters. A warm May breeze whispered through verdant branches of weeping willow, salt cedar, and fanned palms. It played with the tendrils that twisted free of the elaborately crimped curls at her temples and before her ears. Refracted light off the water dappled her upturned face. If only the peaceful afternoon did not have to end so soon.

  That Saturday was the first break from work she had known since the attempted Federal landing at Brazos Santiago. Fortunately, the sandbar at the mouth of the Rio Grande had prevented any large men-of-war from sailing on down to Brownsville, and the few landing boats were swamped in the surf off the island.

  After that scare, her aunt had declared she was returning to New Bedford where it was safe for women and had immediately written her brother of her intentions. Though Jeanette knew she would miss the dear, muddled old woman, she felt that her aunt’s decision to leave was a blessing in disguise—at least her own disguise could be discarded around Columbia, and she would have more freedom of movement without worrying about being observed.

  Realizing that the United States did not intend to let the contraband trade continue, she had worked feverishly since the Federal Navy’s aborted attempt at landing. Soon— maybe in months, maybe weeks—the Federal Navy would try again, this time to take Brownsville, which was the true heart of the contraband trade. Therefore, she instructed her campesino teamsters to make as many runs as possible while they could. Already the Santa Maria Chapel was packed with cotton. Even the choir loft overflowed, and not another inch of space could be found to accommodate the bales. Now she had no choice but to await the return of the Revenge, which was due at any hour now.

  In the meantime she only wanted to relax and escape the demands made by the double life she was leading. How fortunate that Cristobal had returned to Brownsville just the night before; for despite his silly laugh and his pretentious manner, his bons mots were making the afternoon pass most agreeably.

  Lazily Jeanette opened her eyes to regard her friend. He had draped his fawn-colored redingote over the bench seat in front of him and rolled his cambric shirt sleeves to the elbows. As he idly dipped and lifted the oars, the tendons and muscles rippled along his forearms.

  Her gaze moved to the shirt’s open collar and the corded neck. Then she perused the chest that stretched the cambric tightly with its movement. After lingering there a bit longer than necessary, her gaze dropped down past the long legs to the Wellington boots, of the best leather, of course. Slowly her heavy-lidded eyes returned to the thighs. They were sheathed in close-fitting nankeens that revealed their solidity. She continued her desultory inspection, focusing now on the buttons below the waist.

  Involuntarily she blushed, her eyes riveted to the hard rise displayed there. A magnificent specimen of manhood! Too bad it was wasted on—other men.

  She knew she should be revolted by Cristobal’s preference for the male sex, but she could not. She truly liked him, for all his feckless ways. And besides, who was she to pass judgment on him, when she—When she had done things she could not be proud of, either. When she had done things since last summer of which she was terribly ashamed. Why, just the act of boldly sizing up Cristobal’s masculine attributes! It was an urge that had never crossed her consciousness in all her married life. She grimaced. That just illustrated once again how degenerated the Frenchman had caused her to become. He had opened up to her, like Pandora’s box, a sordid world that even at this moment continued to pique her curiosity. Never, if she lived to be a very old lady, would she ever forget le baiser français!

  Seeking to shake the discomforting memory from her mind, she returned her thoughts to her companion. She peered at his handsome face through a thicket of ebony lashes—only to find his gaze steadily fixed on her with what she suspected was amusement at her covert assessment of him. She colored hotly and hid once more behind the facade of the coquette.

  “You don’t think me terribly unladylike for asking you to take me canoeing, do you, Cristobal?” she teased and flashed flirtatious dimples.

  The rich brown eyes with tiny creases at the comers seemed to mock her. Or was it her imagination? For at the next moment he chortled. She repressed a shudder, for his laugh was like a fingernail scraping down a chalkboard.

  “Jen, I’ve only been in Brownsville a day, and already the tedium was wearing away at me. Couldn’t have been more grateful for the message Trinidad brought. I’m afraid, dear girl, that the gaiety of New Orleans night life spoiled me.”

  “You were there doing another war story?”

  He had the good grace to flush. “Supposed to,” he corrected. “For the London Times on the New Orleans-to-Matamoros contraband trade. Alas, not all my time was spent on research. But, gad, you’ve heard how gloriously debauched New Orleans is.”

  She studied him openly now, noting the lines of fatigue that grooved either side of his mouth. “You look like you spent the entire time you were in New Orleans being properly debauched.”

  Cristobal laughed and pulled in the oars. Water droplets off the oars splashed musically back into the lake. He raked a brown hand through his curling mass of mahogany hair. It persisted in escaping the center part he affected, which, along with the side whiskers, had been made popular by the Crimean War. “I confess to the debauchment, but as to how proper it was, you’d have
to ask the ladies of the night.”

  Her parasol dipped dangerously toward the water and her eyes widened in dismay at the implication behind his words. Cristobal apparently participated in—and enjoyed—the most intimate of relationships with women! The idea depressed her somehow, for with him she had always presumed herself safe from the unwanted flirtations made by other men. With him she could relax and be herself—almost.

  She saw that he was watching her reaction, and she sat upright, saying boldly, “I was under the impression, Cristobal, that you—uh, had no interest in the female sex.”

  “La, Jen, that was to stave off your aunt. Surely marriage taught you that men like a certain type of woman sometimes.”

  Her eyes blazed back at the light that danced in his. “No, it did not, Cristobal Cavazos! There are some men who are above such wickedness . . . who are noble and good . . . who believe in fidelity and—and go through life loving one woman.”

  He picked up the oars again. “And women—are there any such women? Besides yourself, of course. I can imagine how devoted you were to Armand. And know how you’ve martyred yourself to his memory.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked sharply.

  “Why, simply, dear girl, that you would never think of taking another man—er, into your bed again. In marriage, of course.”

  Her composure shaken, she twirled the parasol in agitated jerks. “Of course.” Why must she continue to let the guilt of the nights spent in the Frenchman’s arms disconcert her? She must realize she had simply made a mistake. But, oh, what it had cost her!

  She forced a coy pout to her lips and said reprovingly, “But really, Cristobal, this is a subject that no proper lady should discuss.”

  His lips twitched with that foolish grin of his. “How positively ill bred of me to lapse into such an indelicate conversation. As you said, no proper lady would think of discussing such a subject.”

  Which is why I have always found you so delightfully entertaining, my love.

  “I don’t care what he wants. I’m simply not going.”

  “There! Look for yourself, Jeanette.” Aunt Hermione tossed on the parlor’s drop table the letter that had been forwarded from New Bedford by the United States Consul in Matamoros. “My brother says you have no choice.”

  Disbelievingly Jeanette picked up the folded sheets of foolscap that bore her father’s near-indecipherable scrawl. Her aunt said apologetically, “When I wrote your father, telling him I wanted to go back to New Bedford and you preferred to remain here—well, I really did not know, dear, that your father would do this.”

  But the order was before her—in the strict, commanding language of a sea captain. Always he had tried to regiment her into the unquestioning, disciplined behavior he demanded of his seamen. He had tried to control his daughter in the same unbending, authoritarian manner in which he had run his ship.

  So far she had managed to resist that iron will that made no allowances for the fact she was not a seaman but his daughter. Sometimes she resisted through outright defiance, sometimes by subtle evasion. But this time it looked as if she did indeed have no choice.

  Her father’s letter made it undeniably clear that he considered it unsafe for a woman without the protection of a man to remain in a city facing siege and that he expected her to leave immediately for New Bedford with her aunt.

  Because Jeanette was far past her majority, legally she did not have to submit to her father’s dictums. She could rebel and remain in Texas. But the last sentence in the letter, stating that since Armand was dead he was planning to put the plantation up for sale, staggered her.

  It wasn’t just that she loved Columbia and its wild, strong terrain—and loyal, fun-loving people so much. It was also the realization that with the sale of Columbia her scheme for aiding the Confederacy—and eventually establishing her own independence—would die, for there would be no base for her clandestine operations. Where would she store the cotton and firearms that crisscrossed each other at Columbia on their way to their respective destinations? How could she work out of quarters in Brownsville without her movements being observed?

  For long, frustrating moments she stood as if paralyzed, holding the letter before her unseeing eyes, oblivious to her aunt’s rambling apology. Instead, Jeanette’s mind busily searched through the maze of possible alternatives to obeying her father’s ultimatum. One by one she rejected each alternative as being unsatisfactory either to her father or to her own plans.

  And then she knew. She whirled from her aunt and, lifting her hoops, ran upstairs to her bedroom. Without bothering to seat herself, she leaned over the cherry-wood secretary and dashed off a letter to her father. With luck and a fast horse she could get the letter to the United States Consulate in Matamoros and see it off on the next sloop bound for either Boston or New York.

  But it would take more than luck to carry out the rest of her plan. It would take some glib talking, and for once she was not certain if she was equal to that task. Cristobal might be a lazy, jaded fop, but he was sharp. Would he go along with her suggestion?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Jeanette took Tia Juana with her. The old Mexican woman sat in the carriage next to her and grumbled the entire nine-mile trip into Brownsville. Trinidad merely hunched his bony shoulders to show his disapproval and kept his attention on the team of horses. “The old horned devil has possessed you, missy,” Tia Juana said, not letting up in her diatribe. “Better one of my remedios than to do this.”

  Jeanette wasn’t so sure herself. Facing Cristobal with her preposterous suggestion seemed almost but not quite as bad as undergoing one of Tia Juana’s folk cures that went back to the dark magic of Africa. The old woman was a curandera, a healer, or what some of the Anglos referred to as a witch doctor. The last time Tia Juana had tried to practice a remedio on Jeanette was the year she was nine. She broke a wrist falling from her horse as she attempted a jump previously cleared by Armand and Cristobal. The old woman’s cure had been horse manure packed over the break, a method that had sent Aunt Hermione into a frenzy. The two women had battled for almost an hour over the proper treatment. In that time Jeanette was off again, riding, and eventually the wrist healed of its own.

  Privately Jeanette wondered if her head had ever healed. Tia Juana seconded the thought, saying, “You must be bewitched. Why ever would you want to marry dhis—” her ham hock of a hand waved contemptuously and the fat beneath her arm shook, “dhis popinjay? He struts like a Mexican cock.”

  “That you don’t have to tell me.”

  “Den I will tell you that I also have an incantation for bewitchment, niha."

  “It will take more than an incantation,” Jeanette pronounced grimly.

  For a while the three sat in silence as the team of bays clip-clopped down the River Road with its arch of palms of great height and age. Then Trinidad spoke up, saying just loud enough for them to hear, “You are still in love weeth Armand, and still very angry weeth that blockade runner, no? But I don’t think you know what you are doing, sobrina."

  “I know exactly what I am doing,” Jeanette bristled. “And that blockade runner is nothing more than—than a speculator, a mercenary, a pirate! Furthermore this is— it’s a marriage of convenience. If I can persuade Cristobal to marry me,” she muttered under her breath.

  “There!” Tia Juana pounced on the statement. “Dat’s yor problem. Any young man wit’ dah sense God gave a goose would hop into marriage wit’ you quicker than a cat on a june bug. So why Cristobal? Even if he is a man of my husband’s people, he is still a lazy good-fo’-nuttin’!”

  “If I must be protected by a husband in order to remain at Columbia, I don’t want that husband to be a soldier. They have a penchant for dying. And that leaves Cristobal.”

  She did not add that since Cristobal seemed to prefer the loose ladies of the night, the prospects of marriage with him were just that much more appealing. He would not bother her with his desires. She would not be further sullied by anyo
ne else’s lovemaking; for in her heart of hearts she was still and always would be Armand’s wife.

  The solution seemed simple. If only Cristobal would find it so simple.

  For this confrontation she had dressed, appropriately, in a Zouave military jacket over a scarlet Garibaldi blouse braided in black. The black silk skirt had a scarlet band at the bottom that matched her blouse and scarlet hairnet.

  Her Glengarry Scotch cap was tilted at a belligerent angle, though more from her high chignon than from her attitude, which, if anything, bordered on apprehension.

  If ever she needed courage it was now. Everything depended on her ability to persuade Cristobal—something she’d never been able to accomplish in their childhood. And something told her that the dandy Don Cavazos was no more biddable now than he was twenty years before.

  Trinidad halted the brougham before a two-story brick establishment similar to all the others in that area of town, largely due to the iron grillework at the windows and narrow balconies that betrayed a French influence. The little old Mexican waited, petting his beloved horses, while the two women entered the building and climbed the stairs to Cristobal’s set of apartments. Jeanette paused before the door to draw a deep breath of courage, but Tia Juana reached past her and banged on the wood with her fist. “Better to git dhis over wit’, missy.”

  A dwarf bid them enter while he went for “Don Cristobal.” Tia Juana plopped her bulk at the end of a Louis XIV chaise longue, but Jeanette paced about the room in agitation. Peripherally her mind noted that the room lacked the usual clutter of knickknacks. In fact it was sparsely decorated, but the appointments were in good taste. A few paintings caught her eye and imagination as did a bronze sculpture of a charging bull and a pewter humidor of unusual shape.