LAVENDER BLUE (historical romance)

by Parris Afton Bonds

  When the Yankees had captured Fort Brown, he knew that running the blockade would be utterly foolhardy. And he knew also that Jeanette would continue to run the cotton and arms, regardless of the risk she was taking. He had thought that, required once more to share the Frenchman’s bed in exchange for running the contraband, she would discontinue her underground activities.

  Or had he hoped, a mocking voice nagged, to once more hold her, to make her his in spite of her passive acquiescence those times she did come to the Frenchman’s bed? And what of those times he had thought he detected a response? Those moments when she clung to him, forgetful of her hatred, had been worth all the agonizing ones he openly played the fool to her flirt. If only the intensity of her hatred for the Frenchman could be converted to an equal intensity of its opposite. To experience such an overpowering emotion as love with Jen he would risk everything.

  Whatever his motive for changing the terms of their business deal, he should have known better than to think she would give up so easily. Never, in all the years he had known her and loved her, had she surrendered without a fight—not in blindman’s buff, or later in the debates they waged on everything from which of them had the fastest doodle bug to the shape of a cloud.

  Though she had yet to visit the Revenge, he suspected that she continued to amass cotton bales. Her periods of absence from Columbia indicated as much. But so far the tail he had put on her in his own absence had been unable to ascertain where she was storing the contraband. What in the hell was she up to?

  He let out a yawn, not an affected one but one brought about by a sleepless two-day run out of Nassau. He knew he needed to keep his wits about him; that General Morgan, the fiftyish man sitting stiffly at his side waiting for Miss Goddard to finish the wintry evening’s repertoire, was a shrewd man. The Matamoros Morning Call had re-ported the falcon-faced Union general as stating he would put an end to the blockade running if he had to hang every suspected citizen in Brownsville as a collaborator. The strict military rule imposed by the Yankees on New Orleans convinced the Brownsville Confederates that Morgan would not be lenient.

  Already the general had established a ten o’clock curfew on the streets of Brownsville—which meant, Cristobal thought with an inner groan of relief, that Annabel Goddard could not go on singing too much longer. Unless Jeanette had succeeded in wringing a special dispensation from the pockmarked general for the evening’s party. Cristobal did not know, because he had not come in until late that afternoon—“time enough to shave your two-day beard and dress,” his wife informed him, not bothering to hide her glance of contempt for his disreputable state.

  He had forced a good-humored smile, saying lazily, “La, Jen, the cockfight lasted half the night.”

  Apparently Rubia’s perfume had lingered about him, for Jen placed her fists on her hips and her eyes narrowed, but she smiled sweetly. “It appears you were fighting with the cocks.”

  Her barb had hit too close to home. He had been with Rubia until late in the night, reviewing the information she had gleaned from the cantina’s French clientele. She no longer expected him to stay the night now that he was married, but the look in her eyes—he would rather face Morgan the Monster. He smothered another yawn. Living a spy’s double life was getting him nowhere twice as fast.

  And Jen as well. He noted she was thinner, but somehow more alive, more vibrant than a year and a half ago when he had first seen her upon his return to Texas. There was an elusive iridescence in her expression. In his eyes—and those of quite a few other males—she was a very attractive woman. And the irony of it all was that she did not even know it—nor of his love for her, gracias a Dios.

  At last Annabel finished her song and rose from the piano, inclining her head in acknowledgment of the polite applause. Everyone prepared to go, and praises of a “wonderful evening” were delivered by the guests. Cristobal lolled at the door with Jeanette to see everyone off. General Morgan was the first to leave. The man, who possessed a small, cadaverous body, was even more dwarfed by Cristobal’s massive frame.

  Tia Juana presented Morgan with his military greatcoat, but when he reached into the inside pocket for his gloves his hand withdrew a scrap of paper. With a curious expression his talon-like fingers unfolded the paper.

  Cristobal watched as the general’s expression darkened like a sea-gale sky. The brows lowered over the piercing pale eyes. The general looked first to Jeanette, then Cristobal. “Who’s behind this?” he asked in a soft, raspy voice that had the edge of steel.

  Cristobal arched a questioning brow at Jen, but she shrugged her ignorance about the matter. He took the note from Morgan. “A December sun in torrid clime gleamed on the Confederate band . . .’’he paused in reading aloud the poem and glanced at the general. The man glowered for him to continue the doggerel couplet.

  “ . . . gleamed on the Confederate band who escaped the Yankee dogs by crossing the Rio Grande. ’ ’

  Cristobal’s gaze dropped to the bottom of the note to the curiously drawn flower, with the words printed beneath it—“Lavender Blue.”

  He stifled the grunt of fury that exploded in him. So that was what his wife was up to—smuggling Confederate refugees across the border! As the fortunes of war turned in the Union’s favor, more and more Confederate soldiers and their families were fleeing—usually into Mexico, where the French puppet, the Emperor Maximilian, who needed supporters for his shaky throne, welcomed them. Sometimes the Confederates traveled into South America—even as far as Argentina—to escape what surely would be harsh rule upon the South should the Union win.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Morgan demanded. Beneath deeply hooded lids his falcon-sharp glare moved one by one over the faces of the Confederate citizens who shifted uneasily in the tensely silent room.

  “Fie, General!” Jeanette rapped. “You don’t think one of us would be foolish enough to leave that in your pocket? Why, wouldn’t we have waited until later rather than chance casting suspicion on ourselves?”

  “And this—” the general’s bony finger jabbed at the drawing of the flower. He turned slitted eyes on the pale Annabel. “What exactly were those words you sang tonight?” he asked in a sibilant voice.

  “A coincidence,” she quivered. Scarlet dyed her complexion so that it was almost impossible to tell where her hennaed hairline began. “The words . . . lavender blue— they’re from an old folk song. Nothing more.”

  Cristobal slashed a quick glance at Jeanette, but she laughed merrily. “ ’Tis nothing but a prank, I vow, General Morgan. The note could have been in your coat pocket since this morning, couldn’t it?”

  The general grimly allowed as much, but suspicion still lurked in the eyes when he took his leave.

  Mark Thompson took Jeanette’s hand as a farewell, his lips lingering far too long on the fingertips of a married woman. But then everyone knew the Cavazos’ marriage to be one of convenience—eccentricity on the lovely Jeanette’s part, greed on the buffoon Cristobal’s end. “A splendid party,” he said, more for her than the husband at her side.

  Cristobal, seeming oblivious to the amorous messages Mark’s hazel eyes flashed at his hostess, sported with Laurie Eubanks. The pale, thin girl blushed shyly at some lazy quip of his. Jeanette privately thought the lawyer’s daughter wore too many hairpieces. The girl was much too young for Cristobal; was most unlike the brazen whores he preferred. Did he never take anything seriously? Her chagrin shortened her words of good-bye to the special agent more than she intended, and she hastily bestowed a simpering smile at the vexed gentleman.

  When everyone had departed, she climbed the stairs to her bedroom, leaving Cristobal in the parlor to pour himself a drink from the well-supplied sideboard. Mentally she ticked off the successes of the evening as she prepared for bed. She had learned that in addition to Brownsville, the Federal Expeditionary Forces had captured the Texas ports of Corpus Christi and Aransas Pass, as well as effectively blockading Galveston; worse, the whole of Mississippi was n
ow in the possession of the Union Army and Navy.

  That did not concern her. What did were the words she had wormed from the special agent earlier that evening. What was it he had said? “The entire Confederate Government has been sustained by resources from Brownsville—feeding and clothing the rebellion . . . arming and equipping it . . . furnishing materiel of war.” She was swelling with pride at her part in the effort when the agent added, “But we’re here to put a stop to it.”

  With a little more pumping she had learned that General Morgan was intending to send forces up the Rio Grande in order to block any further cotton trade. And then Mark inadvertently revealed that the previous day the Confederate companies of Sloss and Spencer at Rio Grande City had disappeared.

  That news was coupled with what Trinidad had learned—that the renegade Mexican, Cortina, had seized Governor Ruiz in Matamoros, holding him a prisoner, and that bands of robbers were prowling both sides of the Rio Grande—and suggested that a state of anarchy existed in the Rio Grande Valley. Now was not the best time to run the cotton. But she had little choice if Morgan intended to march up the river. His soldiers would confiscate everything in sight.

  She did know soldiers were everywhere on the Brownsville streets. They had commandeered quarters while they rebuilt the fort the retreating General Bee had burned. Cristobal had mentioned peevishly that they had even taken over his own apartments and commandeered Henri as the officers’ valet. It would be only a matter of days or weeks before Morgan’s advancing troops marched past Columbia and discovered the cotton in the chapel.

  She had to move the bales. Soon. But that would mean dealing with Kitt. She preferred to think of him as the Frenchman, to keep her past dealings with him on an anonymous level. To give herself to him even one more time—it was too high an emotional price to pay.

  She slipped into her blue velvet robe and crossed to the fireplace mantel to wind the clock. With each twist of the spring’s stem she reminded herself that the Frenchman was a mercenary, that he had used her, that he had no ethics. Still, as much as she hated facing the fact, she knew she was attracted to him. He had the same qualities that heated her own veins. He was reckless and bold but cautious. He delighted in laughing in the face of danger. She knew that same thrill each time she made a run . . . each time she had lain with him.

  These were feelings that her husband would never understand. And in spite of Cristobal’s pleasurable company, she found it difficult sometimes to restrain her scorn. As if the contemptuous thoughts of her husband had summoned him to her, he said from the doorway behind her, “Who do you think our Confederate poet is, Jen?”

  She spun around. Cristobal lounged against the doorjamb, watching her. Rarely did he come to her bedroom. “You surprised me,” she said.

  “Our poet tonight surprised everyone. Who do you think he is?”

  She turned her attention back to the clock. “Probably just a jokester, Cristobal.” Her tone was light and insouciant. But her heart was racing. She never let herself forget that Cristobal, despite his laziness, was shrewd.

  She should have known better than to use as a signet the lavender flower he had told her grew around the Mediterranean shores. But it was the first thought that came to her mind when she decided to lay a red herring. The escaping of important Confederate families should give General Morgan something to think about for a while other than the imperative need to halt the running of contraband.

  Annabel’s song had almost ruined the scheme, but the note had been worth the risk. On Jeanette’s last trip to Alleyton Colonel Ford had asked her, or rather the young Mexican man he thought she was, to help the Confederate family escape. She smiled to think that Cristobal never suspected the wife and three children of a prominent Confederate cabinet member lived in the attic for two days while they waited for an English ship to put into Bagdad. But then Cristobal had been away—off whoring, no doubt.

  She set the clock back on the mantel and turned to him with a casual smile. “Why so intrigued by the note?”

  He moved forward out of the darkness framing the doorway into the light cast by the Rochester lamp. She noticed that his indifferent gaze lightly raked her figure, displayed so vividly by the clinging velvet. Could she possibly arouse Cristobal’s interest? It had never occurred to her.

  “By tomorrow everyone in the Valley will be intrigued,” he replied languidly. He leaned a forearm against one of the bed’s four posters and crossed one highly polished Oxonian shoe over the other. His scarf lay untied about the open neck of his frilled shirt. His eyes roamed from her wildly curling hair, which since its cut she could not longer contain in a braid, down to the breasts that thrust unfettered beneath the robe.

  “‘Who is Lavender Blue?’ will dance on the tip of every person’s tongue,” he continued. “Within a month children will no doubt skip rope to some couplet about the daring man—if General Morgan doesn’t send him to the gallows first.”

  Jeanette shivered. She wanted to change the unpleasant subject. “You know, Cristobal, we have been married almost a year now—and you have yet to kiss me. Not just a friendly peck on the temple or cheek. I mean like a husband kisses a wife.”

  His lids drooped in a sleepy manner. “Gad, Jen, I thought you knew by now husband and wife don’t normally kiss with anything akin to passion.”

  “But they do,” she said, her feminine vanity stung that he could ignore her so easily. “It isn’t just—gray doves who know the power of an impassioned kiss.”

  “Oh?”

  Had he understood what she implied, or was he indeed obtuse to everything but gambling, drink, and whores?

  “Where did you discover this bit of information?” he asked in a bored voice.

  She could shock him and tell him of the rendezvous with a certain Frenchman. She moved toward him, her hands on swaying hips, her mouth curving in a smile that challenged his indifference. But his next words faded the smile.

  “I suppose you and Armand enjoyed the passionate kisses of one another?”

  She stuttered at the mention of Armand. “Why—of course.”

  Caught up in reflecting on the past, she failed to notice Cristobal’s face close over like a mask. It had been so long since those first months as Armand’s bride that she had forgotten the excitement he had aroused in her. She tried to recall the desire he must have stirred—was it ever the kind of frenzied need the Frenchman kindled deep inside her?

  All that came to mind were those last comfortable months she and Armand shared before he went off to war. They both had known he would be among the first to volunteer. Those last nights together had been precious. But it was a shame, she thought, that love relaxed one so much that one fell asleep with regrettable ease.

  As it was, the deep, warm companionship between her and Armand had served to quiet the occasional longings for something exciting that she knew surely must bum in every female. Or, Sweet Mary, was she so different from other women? Perhaps that was why Cristobal never saw her as anything other than a good friend.

  She smiled at him, feeling suddenly shy. “There are other kisses than brief pecks between man and wife, Cristobal.”

  “Such as?”

  She crossed the carpet to stand before him. Before she could lose her courage she stood on tiptoe and splayed her hands against the breadth of his chest. He did not move to assist her endeavor. Eyes closed, she pressed her lips against his hard, immobile ones. She remained so, barely moving her mouth against his. She could smell the cognac he had just drunk. After an interminable moment, she felt his large frame shudder beneath her hands. Were nice women—was the idea of a wife initiating passion—so repugnant to a male?

  Abruptly Cristobal’s hands shot out to grab her upper arms roughly. He jerked her against him and ground his mouth down over hers in a brutal, acquisitive kiss. Surprise held her frozen. Slowly the capturing caress changed to a searching one. His tongue quested the parting of her lips. Once again that feeling of deja vu, of having experienced Cristoba
l’s kiss before, swept over her. Then she became lost in the maelstrom of her husband’s passion. The bottom of her stomach dropped out. Her knees buckled. She clung to the solidity of his shoulders for support.

  Slowly, with great reluctance, he set her away from him.

  “That, Jen,” he said with indolence, “is the other kind of kiss.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Jeanette sidestepped the cotton bales cluttering the narrow aisle. What little warm air filtered into the chapel was musty. She finished counting the bales. Enough for five wagon loads. She shouldered her way back outside and blinked against the bright February sunlight. “Can you have five campesinos ready to leave tonight?” she asked Trinidad.

  The old Mexican shrugged deeper into his poncho. Though the day was not that cold, a good thirty degrees above freezing, his old arthritic bones warned that those blue northerners would soon be riding in. “You cannot wait a few days more, sobrina?”

  She shook her head and pulled her cape closer about her. “Even if the chapel weren’t bulging its sides with cotton, we still need to make the run. The soldiers in the field need supplies.”

  And not just horse blankets and saddles and rifles. If the reports in the New Orleans Times were accurate and not just Federal propaganda, Confederate soldiers were marching barefoot and coatless through winter blizzards. But amputations from frostbite and deaths from pneumonia were nothing in comparison to the savage fighting in the recent battle of Lookout Mountain in Tennessee. The Times reported that in that Federal victory a total of eight thousand men on both sides were killed or wounded. Eight thousand men! Their lives wasted.

  “You weel go back up the river to Rio Grande City thees time?”

  “Yes,” she said firmly, knowing that the old man did not approve the long, roundabout journey through bandit-infested territory. But neither did he approve of running the cotton across the border to Matamoros now that General Morgan’s soldiers patrolled the Texas side of the Rio Grande’s banks from its mouth up past Brownsville. Trinidad had even spotted Yankee troops as far west as Columbia’s easternmost boundary. Any day now they could wander upon the chapel. She simply had no choice but to make the run.