LAVENDER BLUE (historical romance)

by Parris Afton Bonds

  The sudden appearance of his foolish grin dissipated all apprehension. She had forgotten that with Cristobal she did not have to conform to society, since he himself did not. “I heard the yelling,” he said sheepishly, “and like some Don Quixote came to rescue you.”

  He turned to leave, and she said, “Wait, I’ve gotten these laces all knotted. Would you mind?” She pivoted to display her back.

  After a second she heard him walk up to her. She lifted the heavy mass of hair from her neck to reveal the mess she had made of the laces. His fingers began to work at the knots, and she could feel the give in the stays as he loosened each lace from its metal eyelet. “By the cuckoo’s nest, I can’t perceive why you wear these accursed torture instruments, Jen. You’re much more—”

  “What?” she asked, curious as to what he had been about to say.

  “Don’t utter another word, or you’ll pop the laces,” he warned instead.

  She could feel his breath upon her nape, and she quivered at the pleasant sensation.

  “Cold?” he asked.

  Her eyes trained on the covered cage, she shivered again. Something about that rich baritone voice elicited an unidentifiable response from her. “A little,” she lied.

  She really should not be exposing her intimate undergarment to him. But Cristobal was her husband now. And she did know she had no worry about him making any kind of amorous advances toward her. After all, he had more than once made it quite clear to her that she held no appeal to him other than that of a friend.

  His hands came up to clasp her shoulders, gently rubbing up and down her arms. “You’ve goose bumps, Jen.”

  She surrendered to the power flowing from the hands that ran lightly over her shoulders and arms. ‘Mmmm,” she acknowledged. Her head lolled back on his chest, as she savored the warmth of his body against hers. Above her head, his breath stirred her hair. Her head drooped forward. “Massage my neck, will you, Cristobal.”

  One arm about her waist, bracing her, his strong fingers found the tension-rigid tendons in her neck and exerted just enough pressure to cause her to go limp in relaxation. It had been a long day, and she had been more nervous at the civil ceremony than she had the day she had married Armand. But then she had known Armand all of her life, and Cristobal had been gone for so long. He was almost like a stranger in some ways, for she had not shared all that had happened in his life in the intervening years. “Oh, I wish you would do that all night!” she sighed. Abruptly she was released and almost staggered without his arm to steady her.

  “But it’s late—and I have a wager on some duel being fought at dawn.” He stretched his massive frame and yawned. “’Night, Jen.”

  “Rape! Help!” cawed the covered Washington after the broad back of the departing man.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Jeanette arched her back and shifted her position on the wagon seat. She waited for the ferry to return to the Mexican side of the river. Her wagons were stacked high with crates of rifles, barrels of ammunition, and boxes of medical supplies that she had collected from the Matamoros warehouse the Frenchman used. Although it was nearing two in the morning, and her body and mind cried out in fatigue, she felt a sense of exhilaration at having completed another successful cotton run. After a few hours of sleep later that morning, she would begin preparing for the gun run north under the cover of night’s darkness.

  She was happier than she had been in a long time, since—she really couldn’t remember when she had experienced the elation that suffused her daylight hours. A sense of being productive, a sense of fulfillment, a sense of purpose imparted by her underground work for the Confederacy. Even her bitterness over Armand’s needless death, her anger at the general, the “Monster” Morgan, who refused him medical aid were diluted through her work.

  Only on those nights when she was not occupied in running contraband did she experience despondency. The dark hours stretched interminably before her. Too much idle time to recall the Frenchman . . . and the marvelous way he had made her body come alive. It seemed almost a sacrilege that her body—and, yes, even her mind—could respond to a stranger in such an unladylike way when she had never abandoned herself to Armand like that.

  Worst of all were her dreams, where she had no power to suppress her treacherous visions. The dreams bothered her the most when she knew the Frenchman was in port.

  She would roll from one side of her bed to the other, punch her pillow for a better position, and at long last succumb to sleep’s oblivion through sheer exhaustion. But she would awake the next morning, tangled in the sheets and mosquito netting, with the nauseating knowledge that even her unconscious had betrayed her in her dreams of the damnable Frenchman.

  Bleary-eyed over a cup of Tia Juana’s hot chocolate, she would remind herself that her life was better these days. She no longer had to deal with the Frenchman; neither did she have to worry about Aunt Hermione discovering her duplicity. She attributed her restlessness to Cristobal’s frequent absences from Columbia that summer. She had come to enjoy his company. He temporarily kept away the gloom that night brought. She suspected that he sometimes slept over at the quarters he still kept in Brownsville rather than disturb her by returning in the morning’s early hours.

  Trinidad was waiting when she and the three campesinos drove the wagons up the dirt road that zigzagged from the river bank, where it was lined with canebreak, up the bluff to the chapel. “You’re late, sobrina," he told her, when she threw on the wagon’s brake. “I worried eet was another bandit raid.”

  She jumped from the wagon’s seat. “No,” she said and swatted her dusty hat against her thigh in disgust. “The customs agents wanted a greater share of the tariff before they would let the Frenchman’s agent release the war supplies—claimed they couldn’t be sure the arms weren’t going to the French.”

  Trinidad grunted. “If eet’s not the French, eet’s the Juaristas, and if eet’s not the guerrillas eet’s the Yanquis."

  She left him to oversee the concealment of the loaded wagons while she sought a few hours of much-needed rest. Tia Juana clucked over her like a mother hen, picking up the dirty boy’s clothing Jeanette haphazardly discarded as she moved through the house to her bedroom. “Hot bath’s what you need, missy. You gonna sleep better.”

  “I’ll sleep like the dead no matter what,” she mumbled, and fell forward across the bed nude. “Keep the water warm till later, Tia Juana,” she managed to add before her lids dropped like shutters.

  The heat of the July day beaded Jeanette’s back with perspiration where her thick braid followed the line of her spine. From the open window wafted the scent of the summer roses and the humming of a bee busy pollenating. Her nose tickled, and her hand drowsily swatted the air. The pesky fly persisted in its attack. With annoyance she slit one lid to find a yellow rose waving before her nose. Groggily she rolled to a sitting position—too late! Cristobal sat before her in the reading chair. His hand held the rose that only seconds earlier had played upon her nose.

  Immediately she rolled back on her stomach and grappled with the bedcovers, trying to pull them up over her exposed backside. “What are you doing here!” she demanded.

  He lifted his booted feet and laid them on the mattress. “Why, I came home to change clothing, Jen.”

  “In my bedroom, I mean,” she strangled indignantly, still wrestling the tangled bedding past her waist.

  “Oh—that.” She could have sworn she heard laughter in his voice. “Tia Juana said you weren’t feeling well. Seeing how your door was open, I thought I’d check on you. Do you need anything?”

  “No. Yes. My robe.”

  "La, Jen, make up your mind.”

  “Oh, get out!”

  “You know,” he drawled, “you sound just like Washington. Glad you moved the nit downstairs. He was making sleep impossible.”

  “I tried to tell Mr. Cristobal you were too sick to be disturbed,” Tia Juana said from the doorway.

  Cristobal leaned over and pl
aced a hand on Jeanette’s forehead. “Anything serious, my dear? It’s not like you to spend the day in bed—naked as a Thanksgiving turkey.”

  She groaned. There was nothing to do but go through with the farce. “Tia Juana, get me a cup of hot tea—for my headache.”

  The old Negress lumbered off, and Cristobal arched a brow. “Merely a headache?”

  She cowered beneath the covers. “No . . . no, I think I may be getting—the dengue. It comes on every so often and lasts several days. I just need plenty of rest—and quiet.”

  Her obtuse husband did not take the hint to leave. “That tropical fever?” he echoed incredulously. “It’s those deuced mosquitoes!”

  “And there’s nothing that can be done for it,” she wanly added, really getting into her character of the dying Lady of the Camellias. She let her lids droop with the heaviness of serious illness.

  It seemed Cristobal refused to take her performance seriously. “Oh, I don’t know, Jen. I could always dance around your body naked and lash you with wet reeds as a cure.”

  “That’s not a cure,” she snapped. “That’s a social event!” And then the comers of her lips danced in a smile in spite of herself. “Oh, Cristobal, it’s just a headache. Let me rest a while, will you?”

  He took his leave with an elaborate bow and his foolish grin.

  The carriage passed by the dusty streets and alleys where Mexicans lived in squalor and entered the open black-iron gate of the Quarter Masters Fence, the brick wall which separated Brownsville from the fort. Fort Brown, the oldest United States garrison on the Rio Grande, sprawled in the sweeping curve of the river, isolated from the town by a large resaca. Above the fort, the stars and bars of the Confederate flag fluttered with the merciful evening breeze that rustled in from the Mexican side of the river.

  The horses pulled the carriage across the parade ground and past the enlisted men’s barracks to the largest building of the encampment, the post exchange and warehouse. Here a fashionable ball was being held by the Brownsville Needle Battalion to raise funds for clothing for troops in the field. Jeanette was exhausted and would have preferred to remain home. Only that morning she had returned from running the most recent shipment of guns to Alleyton. However, she felt it was important that she and Cristobal attend the ball in order to maintain her reputation as the typical female social butterfly who had nothing better to do.

  She peeked up through the fringe of lashes at the handsome man who helped her alight from the carriage. His clean-shaven face was totally at odds with the handlebar mustaches and flowing beards of the soldiers in full-dress grays who entered the post exchange. Not once had Cristobal questioned her about her ten-day absence, and she could only assume he accepted at face value her previous statement that she intended occasionally to partake of the pleasures denied a widow.

  In fact she asked him that morning in a pointed but light-hearted manner, “Did anything happen while I was gone?”

  “Were you gone? So was I.”

  It had been a little deflating to her ego. But then that was what she had wanted from Cristobal—indifference to what she was about.

  Inside, the exchange had been cleared of all merchandise and a blue-velvet-draped dais erected at one end for the five-piece military band and the Brownsville Home Guard Chorus. As this was their first appearance in society as man and wife, Jeanette was curious to see the reactions of Brownsville’s elite to her precipitous marriage.

  Surprisingly the distinguished women, the clever men, and the soldiers of exalted station formed a brilliant court about the two of them. Jeanette’s smiles and Cristobal’s sallies entertained the war-bored citizens far into the night. That evening acknowledged them as the leaders of fashion and style. Later their words and dress would be copied— Cristobal’s lavender doeskin gloves (to complement his wife’s eyes, he replied with a sleepy grin), Jeanette’s golden hair powder (to resemble that of the Empress Eugenie, she answered carelessly).

  If Jeanette’s good-natured contempt for her husband’s foolish yet funny repartee showed through her frivolous veneer, people smiled indulgently and regarded her marriage to the lazy peacock as supreme eccentricity on her part. As for him—well, a golden key is said to open every door, asserted the more malignant minds, referring to the attraction of Columbia.

  Annabel Goddard was among the disgruntled, her overblown lips pushed out petulantly; yet Jeanette noticed the long-limbed Cristobal’s new marital status did not keep Annabel from clinging to his arm. When the Brownsville Home Guard Chorus opened their portion of the evening’s program with “Troubadour,” Jeanette retired from the sand-sprinkled dance floor with her present partner, the aging Deputy Collector of Customs. She rejoined her husband and Annabel in time to hear him drawl, “I go to the opera whether I need the sleep or not,” followed by the blonde beauty’s high peal of laughter. Jeanette did not think the remark that humorous. Indeed, she was beginning to find it a little annoying that her husband seemed to lavish more attention on other women that he did on her.

  Claudia, the one woman Jeanette would have enjoyed talking to, had not come because her husband had managed to obtain a leave. With the intermission the talk once more turned to war, a Captain Ffauks divulged that military spies in New Orleans reported, in addition to the Federal blockade operating off Brownsville, Louis Napoleon planned to establish his own blockade at the mouth of the Rio Grande.

  “Old Louis plans to use his French Navy to capture the independent blockade runners bringing arms to Juarez’s government operating now out of northern Mexico,” the officer stage-whispered with a conspiratorial wink that included all those who had gathered about Cristobal and Jeanette.

  Her detached interest suddenly became intense at the mention of the French. For days now she had been uneasy, knowing the Frenchman’s steamer lay at anchor with only a few miles separating her from him. What would happen to the Frenchman once Napoleon’s navies set up a blockade? Since the Frenchman’s steamer was obviously a registered French vessel, he should have no trouble passing through Napoleon’s blockade—unless the Frenchman planned to continue his sale of war supplies to Juarez’s armies. But this made no sense at all, fighting against his mother country, France.

  On the other hand, what if he chose to run the blockade out of some other, less dangerous port? And if he did, how then would she obtain her own arms and ammunition?

  As much as she wished to see the Frenchman before a firing squad, her continuing need for war materiel was stronger. One day soon, she promised herself grimly, she would have both her wishes granted.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “The Yankees have landed!” Through the November drizzle the red-headed boy galloped his roan down muddy Elizabeth Street, shouting again, “The Yankees have landed. They’re here!”

  Jeanette paused at the doorway of the Yturria Bank, thinking that the boy sounded like something out of Longfellow’s latest poem, “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” This was the second or third time such an alarm had been sounded, and she was not that concerned. She went on through the doors and took her place in the teller’s line to purchase the usual sight draft to the agent acting for the Matamoros merchant whom the Frenchman used.

  When she stepped outside again, the streets were filled with people running and yelling. She stood on the edge of the boardwalk and strained through the shroud of rainy mist to see the fort at the far end of Elizabeth Street. The boy had been right! Soldiers wearing the yellow stripe of the cavalry charged through Fort Brown’s gates like Attila’s Huns. Behind them rolled supply wagons and caissons weighted with siege guns.

  Jeanette thought of her cotton stored at the chapel. What would happen to it? Forgetting to open her umbrella, she hurried toward the fort. Her skirts dragged in the mire, and the heavy mist plastered wisps of hair against her cheeks. Dodging the frenzied men and women who clogged the streets, she caught the bridle of a passing cavalryman. “What has happened?” she yelled.

  “The Union General”—th
e soldier gasped out—“Morgan—he’s marching on Brownsville—with seven thousand men!”

  “Sweet Mary in Heaven!” she breathed. “Seven thousand against four hundred!” Then she turned cold. Morgan the Monster. Armand’s executioner.

  “We’re preparing for retreat now,” the soldier said. “General Bee is putting the torch to the fort. If you value your life and property, ma’am, git!” Before she could question him further, he wheeled his mount and rode away.

  She tried to make her way back to her carriage, but the hysterical mobs buffeted her about the street like a leaf in a whirlwind. She found herself pushed along toward the single bridge leading to Matamoros. Everyone was anxious to reach the Mexican side of the river, which afforded protection from the invading Yankees. At the ferry she saw three men pull guns to force room for women and children. A worse sight followed as she watched soldiers dump the siege guns into the river. The Confederates were not even going to defend the city!

  Suddenly eight thousand pounds of Confederate gunpowder exploded in a great roar. The ground beneath Jeanette’s feet shook. She looked over her shoulder as orange and red tongues of flame leapt from Fort Brown. Firebrands showered down upon the town’s roofs. She whirled about and began to shove her way back into the city. In the melee she lost her umbrella, and someone knocked off her straw bonnet.

  The crowd grew less dense, but already looters were shattering windows, breaking into stores and houses. Soldiers were too busy firing government buildings to halt the plunderers. Smoke filled the air so that the sky looked black. Jeanette continued to plod through the mob of men and women who rushed past her like stampeded buffalo. At some point her hair tumbled loose from the chignon’s pins. She pushed a wave out of her eyes and hurried on.