Bonds, Parris Afton

CROSSROADS OF THE HEART

Anne first glimpsed Colin Donovan when she was but a
girl and he a dazzling young envoy from the Royal Court of England to the lush
island of Barbados.

She next saw Colin when she was a new bride, about to
sail to a husband she barely knew and a land she already feared. It was then
that she first knew Colin's kisses, and the ungovernable feelings they stirred
within her.

Now Colin had entered her life again ...now that she
was no longer an innocent girl or a blushing bride, but a woman in the fullness
of her beauty and in the power of a lover as irresistible as he was arrogant
...

...and now Colin was demanding that she choose―between
the man whose strength she had come to adore or a tantalizing promise of tender
love that well might be a deadly trap....

Also by Parris Afton Bonds

and available from Popular Library―

SWEET GOLDEN SUN

SAVAGE ENCHANTMENT

THE FLASH of the FIREFLY

by Parris Afton Bonds

Published by Fawcett Popular Library, a unit of CBS
Publications, the Consumer Publishing Division of CBS Inc.

Copyright ©1979 by Parris Afton Bonds

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 0-445-04497-7

Printed in the United States 'of America

First Fawcett Popular Library printing: December
1979

For friends who make life special... Chris, Irene,
and Lou.

My gratitude to the Lewisville Public Library and
especially Addie Armstrong for their assistance. Also, to Sara Arnold.

"Theirs was the trouble life,

The conflict and the pain,

The grief, the bitterness of strife,

The honor without stain."

―Inscription on cornerstone of the
Vereins-Kirche, Fredericksburg, Texas

They were like the swooping buzzards of a century
earlier that had avariciously searched the desolate prairie for carrion.

The sightseers crowded greedily into the
mustysmelling bedroom of the Spreading Oak House. They sweltered in the
un-air-conditioned room and hardly heard the monotonous drone of the tour
guide, a young college student whose carefully plotted mask of make-up hid her
boredom. Instead, the sightseers fingered the rough-hewn cradle, handled the
cracked porcelain pitcher and its chipped washbasin, or rotated the small
spinning wheel in the room's far corner. A few surreptitiously eyed the
incredibly high bedstead, wondering what moments of passion had transpired
there, what hours of agony had been endured in childbirthing there.

"As you can see," the tour guide intoned, mechanically
gesturing to one wall, "the Spreading Oak House was built to last. The
heavy timbers of the main rooms were sawed and cleverly fitted together, aging
to a flinty hardness. Now, if you'll follow me, I'll show you the golden oak
desk where Milam County's first Senator worked with Sam Houston on the draft of
the Texas State Constitution."

Sixty-three minutes later the tour guide wound up
the tour beneath the enormous oak for which the historic house had been named.
The oak's spreading branches reached out above the thirty some odd heads of the
sightseers, giving shade from the hot August sun to almost a hundred times
their number. "And now the Milam County Historical Commission bids you
good-bye and hopes that you have enjoyed our Ninth Annual Pilgrimage."

Taking her cue of dismissal, the sightseers began to
disperse, heading down the rocky incline toward the newly paved parking area.
Around them the towering skyscrapers loomed like massive sentinels, casting
their twentieth century shadows over the oasis of a time long gone, a time
never to be repeated. And the cacophony of the surrounding city drowned out the
faint echo of a young girl's rich laughter, laughter coming down through the years,
as out of date as the Spreading Oak House.

Long before the tall, cold buildings sprang up
across the prairies and rolling hills, a sunburned frontiersman, nude to the
waist, worked beneath the giant oak tree. In the area he had cleared of wild
grapevines and scrub oaks was the first tier of logs that would constitute the
Spreading Oak House. The chopping of his axe against the pine logs produced
long, curling, pleasant-smelling shavings even as the lithe, easy movements of
his body produced muscled ridges that glistened with a patina of sweat beneath the
blistering summer sun.

While that part of his mind conditioned by perilous
years on the Texas frontier was alert for the slightest noise or cessation of
noise, another part of his mind searched backward over time to encounter
pain-filled thoughts, bittersweet memories that, like the worms in the earth
before him burrowed through his brain.

He was a man trained to patience, accustomed to
waiting for the sight of the deer before his rifle barrel, the cautious
approach of the channel cat to his baited hook, the nigh―invisible
shadows of the Kiowas stealthily moving along their war trail beneath the
waxing of an Indian moon.

And yet this waiting―waiting for the woman who
scorned him, who might never come―was the most agonizing of all. He
wanted to shout aloud, to curse himself for seven kinds of a fool. And,
perversely, to whisper aloud her name upon the hot, dry wind, as if to summon
her image across the miles that separated them ... to tell her of the love he
bore her, the love he had been too proud to profess.

The unspoken words were so intense and violent in
their longing, they seemed to fill the clearing, to still the chatter of the
squirrel and the clicking castanets of the cicada. Yet there came only the
continued sound of steel striking wood. In the simmering heat the man's
weather-browned face streamed with perspiration―just as it had done two
years earlier when he had chased her through the sprawling ruins of a Spanish
mission that had once ministered the Faith to the Kwahadi Comanches.

He could still visualize her waist-length hair the
color of the terra cotta adobe brick, flying behind her, rippled by the wind
like burnished summer wheat on the Texas prairie. In and out among the tumbled
stones of adobe he had pursued her; her long, swift legs slowly giving ground
to his muscle-corded ones. And then there was that fleeting glimpse of her
terrified face, even lovelier with the streaks of dirt to soften the once
haughty contours.

As he recalled, however, it seemed that she had
always eluded him just when he thought he finally had her within his grasp,
just as it seemed to him he had always loved her and always would through the
long stretches of eternity.

The man's head canted, and he paused in the swinging
of his axe as if listening to a distant sound―the sound that stretched
from beyond and through the dust-filled wind around him. The way it did that
first evening... that cold, blustering evening when her laughter had rung
through the inn's smoke-congested room like the beckoning peal of silver altar
bells.

Colin

February, 1838

The young lady, dressed in the white velvet cloak―an
expensive and stylishly cut wrap but hardly serviceable for the winter storm
that raged the coastline outside Velasco's only inn, threw back her head and
laughed ...a pealing, intriguing laugh that made the stranger in the darkened
corner glance up in spite of himself before he returned to the thin tobacco
paper he rolled.

Anne's laughter ebbed, but a hoydenish smile of
merriment still curved the provocative, childlike lips as she raised smooth
cream-colored hands to catch the warmth of the fire blazing before her.
"Delila," she whispered, compressing her lips into a mocking line of
sternness, "it's tarred and feathered we'll be if you try to use your
spells here."

The black woman of ample girth adjusted the red
polka-dotted bandana about her wiry gray hair with a grunt of disgust.
"Don't make no matter, baby. Ah done tole yo' pappy and mammy ah'd see you
safely all de way to Adelsolms. An if'n ah has to use obeah, dhen ah
will!"

With that pronouncement, Delila removed the hamhock
fists from her hips and lumbered over to the wet baggage piled before the door.
Anne's amusement at the woman's determination changed to concern, and her
straight dark brows drew together over the bridge of her finely sculptured
nose. If the well-meaning but stubborn old woman began rummaging through her carpet
bag for her bamboo sticks, there would be no end to the outrage she would raise
among the people seated at the tables. Black magic on a tropical island was one
thing, but Anne suspected Delila's obeah would be frowned upon there in that
small Texas seaport.

But the black woman left the baggage alone, and Anne
drew closer to the stone hearth with relief, once more holding up her long,
tapering fingers as if to absorb the heat for the journey to come. The journey―and
not Delila's obeah―was the real cause of her concern.

Secretly Anne was jubilant the Pelican had put into
the shallow port three days too late to join the party of German immigrants, by
now well on their way to the new land grant, Adelsolms. Secretly jubilant
because she would delay that first meeting with her husband since the afternoon
of their marriage in Bridgetown, Barbados five months earlier.

True, the thin, fair Otto had been the very soul of
consideration that day, not forcing himself upon her―even urging her to
remain at the plantation with her parents until he, as pastor of Adelsolms, had
established a home for them in that new frontier town and sent for her. But
then he had always behaved with the utmost propriety toward her in their
courtship. He was so proper, so virtuous, that she suffered twinges of guilt
when he pecked her on the cheek, and confusing desires darted through her
thoughts.

Desires fleshed out by the lusty scenes of the
voodoo drums. Sights and sounds Anne was as familiar with as the sugar cane her
father grew ...incidents she unwittingly witnessed in spite of her parents'
insistence she be raised as a refined young girl would be, had she been born in
Scotland rather than Barbados.

Perhaps that was why her parents had been so pleased
when they learned and spiritually minded Otto Maren came to the island for six
months to improve health impaired by consumption. Pleased enough to have the
German pastor court and marry their only daughter ...in hopes he would
interpose his dignified and conventional way of life between Anne and the
unorthodox surroundings of Barbados.

Anne sighed. Could she possibly hope to measure up
to what the people of Adelsolms would expect from a pastor's wife? Did she want
to? To give up the cultured life she had known―the theater, the museum,
the book shops, and the fine restaurants of Barbados?

But her parents had done the same when they left
Scotland. How often had she heard them talk of the early barbaric days of
Barbados? From the same stock, could she do less? Could she not forsake the
frivolity of the island life for a life at Otto's side as his helpmate?

Unconsciously Anne drew herself up into a determined
stance that etched her profile against the orange light of the fire. And once
again, the stranger, as dark almost as the shadows he sat in, paused in
lighting his cigarette to let narrowed eyes rest on the haughty figure.

The hood of the velvet cloak had fallen back to
reveal russet hair massed in curls atop a head held regally on the long,
graceful neck. The cloak was thrown back over her shoulders, displaying the
willowy figure that was quite out of keeping with the more fashionably
curvaceous ones. Only the high, taut breasts, which the sheer, bottle-green
batiste dress did nothing to conceal, conceded somewhat to the dictates of
feminine fashion.

If Anne had singled out that particular traveler in
the corner from among the other patrons of the inn―men who eyed her with
curiosity and admiration, and servant wenches who watched her with envy―she
would have seen the smile of contempt that fleetingly curled the chiseled lips.
Contempt for an object as useless as it was pretty on the Texas frontier.

But it was not to the stranger that her gaze turned
at that moment, but to the roguishly handsome man who suddenly appeared at the
inn's doorway, letting in the icy rush of air to fill the room. As a compass
points toward a magnetic field, so almost every gaze in the room was riveted,
as was Anne's, on the elegant gentleman. He was dressed in excellently cut
gray, pin-striped trousers and black, blanket frock coat with a silken maroon
cravat to set off the snowy shirt of fine linen. His hazel eyes were made
greener in contrast to the golden mustache over his full lips and the sunlit
curls which framed his face in the Byronic fashion. Casually his gaze swept
over the room's occupants to alight on Anne. Their gazes locked, and Anne felt
as if she had been hit in the stomach.

A perplexed frown creased the bridge of the
gentleman's nose. He had seen women more beautiful in William IV's court. But
there was an intrinsic quality about this woman that was immediately obvious to
him. A vitality, a spirited intelligence, not to be found among those vacuous
faces of Windsor Castle. And yet there was something else about her that eluded
him. The wide gray eyes had gazed upon him with what he was certain was
surprise. Now they were partially shielded by a tangle of thick, black lashes
that seemed to mutate the irises' color to a beguiling silver, and he seized
the opportunity to study her openly, searching to identify what it was about
the young lady that intrigued him.

Still puzzled, he crossed to the counter where the
inn's owner, a portly, baldish man, cleaned the myriad glasses. ''The young
lady before the fire, Boswell―do you know who she is?"

The innkeeper paused in rubbing a muslin cloth over
the chipped glass and glanced at the woman before he answered in a respectful
tone that he reserved for the few titled gentlemen who occasionally patronized
his place. "Only that she's off the
Pelican
, Sir Colin."

A slow, boyish smile touched. Colin's face, making
him appear nearer Anne's age of nineteen than his nearly thirty years. As if the
clue had been found, he turned decisively from the counter and threaded his way
through the crowd, mostly seamen and the few passengers who had not yet been
met by relatives and friends.

"Pardon me," he said to the woman whose
back was now to him. "At the risk of offending you with a trite phrase,
have we not met before?"

Anne turned, her features a carefully controlled
mask of composure. "If I say yes, it would put you in a most unfavorable
light, would it not? And if I say no―"

"Then I would take the advantage to introduce
myself," Colin said and executed an adroit bow. "Your most obedient
servant, Sir Colin Donovan, British Diplomatic Service."

Two dimples formed beneath Anne's full cheekbones.
"Also," she added, "former colonial secretary under Governor
John Mac Davitt before you were transferred from Barbados."

"Then I was right! We've met before. In
Barbados. But to my poor credit I cannot recall the occasion, mistress―"

"Mrs. Maren," Anne corrected. "And several
times we've met―through a mutual acquaintance." She was tempted to
say no more, to prolong Colin's embarrassment, but she yielded to the mute but
appealing plea in the green eyes. "The place was always the Governor's
Palace, and our mutual acquaintance is my godfather, Sir John."

Bewilderment held sway over the expressive face for
a moment. Then he exclaimed, "You're Anne McLennan! Why, you were no more
than a girl in short dresses the last we met."At that he laughed, his
dazzling smile an indication of his equally dazzling charm. "I remember
once―in Sir John's office―when I was ushered in, you were wearing
His Excellency's quill pen in your hair like some wild Indian. Then you
disappeared behind his desk and would not come out until I took my leave."

How well she remembered that mortifying incident.
But of the other times Anne was certain he had no recollection. There were the
mandatory teas in the palace courtyard. Colin had been constantly besieged by
the matrons demanding to know the latest styles and most provocative gossip of
London life. And Anne had sat rigidly in the wicker chair, her teacup trembling
in its saucer, for fear she would commit some social blunder which would draw
the attention of the elegant and worldly young Irishman to her gauche
ten-year-old person.

There were also the infrequent balls for which she
had lived. From her position as spectator in the darkened gallery above the
ballroom, she had stored away each precious moment to be relived later in the
dream world of her bedroom. How many times she had watched Colin waltz past
below her with some lovely lady in his arms, the woman's skirts swaying to the
strains of a waltz as he bent to whisper some no doubt delightful compliment.

Then, when Colin was dispatched three years later to
another place and position higher on the political ladder, the heart in her
thirteen-year-old budding woman's body seemed to shrivel. The golden light of
Colin's presence was gone from Barbados. Intuitively, Anne knew that things
would never be quite the same for her. And curiously enough they were not.

"Have you had anything to eat or drink?"
he asked now, drawing her back from her girlhood dreams.

Anne shook her head. "No, I only just
arrived."

"Then let's take care of that, Mrs.
Maren."

"Anne," she told him with a smile, grateful
to have someone take over for her. "After all, you are a childhood
friend."

"Anne," he echoed, his lilting Irish
brogue imbuing her name with the quality of liquid gold.

He signaled to the innkeeper and ordered tea before
he took her elbow and propelled her toward a clapboard table that had been emptied
by its patrons. Anne found herself trembling with excitement at his touch, and
it was with sharp regret she reminded herself she would have to remember she
was a married woman now. No longer could she flirt from beneath the shade of a
lacy parasol or from behind the folds of a silk fan.

"After you've had some hot tea," Colin
said, then paused, inclining his golden head near the pale fire of her own, and
added in a conspiratorial whisper, "poor tea, it is ...then we can see
about arranging to have you settled here."

Anne spread out her full skirts awkwardly on the
long wooden bench. "But I don't know how long I shall be―"

"Not long if'n ah has anything to say 'bout it,
Miz Anne," Delila interrupted with a scowl. The woman turned on Colin.
"An who might'n you be?"

Anne laughed. "Don't let Delila intimidate you,
Colin. She thinks her lamb has walked into a wolves' den by coming to Texas."

"Ah sho, does, baby. And the quicker we gits
you to Adelsolms and Mr. Maren, the better fo' both of us."

She thrust Anne's parasol at her charge. "Let's
git ourselves to bed, Miz Anne. Tomorrow we can see that gen'ral the innkeeper
tole you 'bout."

"We were told General Green might be able to
assist us in getting to Adelsolms," Anne explained to Colin. "We
arrived too late to leave with the wagon train."

"And this Adelsolms," Colin said.
"Where is it, and why are you going there?"

"It is a settlement some hundred and fifty
miles inland, I understand. My husband is pastor there, and I am to join him―or
was to join him―traveling with the other German immigrants bound for
Adelsolms."

Colin was silent for a moment then turned his
green-eyed gaze on Delila. A devilish smile flashed beneath the well-trimmed
mustache. "Give me a few moments alone with Anne before you deliver her up
to the dragon, Delila. I promise you I will not harm your mistress."

Delila fixed the Irishman with a baleful eye, but
Anne knew Colin had won the black woman over, for Delila's opinion of Otto
Maren was much the same as Colin's expressed imagery.

The old woman moved away with a snort to take up her
post near the baggage once more, and Colin stretched out a slim, well-formed
hand to cover Anne's. "Now that I've found you again, do you think I will
let you go as easily a second time?"

Anne drew her hand away as the innkeeper set two
mugs of tea on the table. She was unsure if Colin's words were a sample of the
famed Irish flattery or if he was serious. As if he sensed her doubt, Colin
reached out to clasp her hand between his, holding it firmly so she could not
pull away. "Anne, I know General Green. Tomorrow I will introduce you to
him. And one way or another I will see to it that you get to this bloody
Adelsolms. But I want you to know now I am not giving up. My assignment should
keep me here in Texas another six months at least. If you should change your
mind―"