“When I first heard the news, it took me down with the miseries, too,” he observed. “But once I got to thinking about it, I decided it might not be so terrible after all.” Shrugging, he stated, “Our marriage was not annulled.”
Madeline lost what little color she’d regained. “That can’t be! I signed the papers. You told me you signed them. We can’t still be married.”
Around them, the crowd began to buzz, and a corner of Brazos’s mouth lifted in a crooked smile. There were times when it mattered not at all what nationality a person might be. Folks all over the world were alike when it came to enjoying a right juicy bit of gossip. “It seems that my brother neglected to file the papers, Madeline. By the time I found out about it…”
He saw from her expression that she’d made the connection. It would serve her right if he announced right here in front of God and everybody that by then, the grounds for an annulment no longer existed. But Brazos resisted the temptation. These Free Love Europeans wouldn’t give a damn, and it went against the grain to air all of his private life in public.
Madeline stared at him, wide-eyed and silent. The color flooded back into her face as she puffed up like a spitting hen. “Well, why didn’t he simply file the bloody things anyway?” she snapped.
He quirked a brow and said in a disapproving tone, “Cursing in public? Really, wife.” And when he smiled at her, the light didn’t reach his eyes. “Why, Tyler couldn’t do that. It would be illegal. You wouldn’t want to participate in any activity on the hot side of the law, would you, Madeline?”
Closing her eyes, she swallowed hard. Softly, she asked, “What do you want, Brazos?”
“Well, I’ve come to talk with you about our marriage. But first, I think, I’d like a dance.”
“D…d…dance?”
The crowd of colonists shuffled as Lillibet waved them back from the riveting scene. Brazos pulled Madeline into his arms and waited for the music to begin again. He held her gaze, and they stood without speaking until the lilting strains of a harmonica began to play “The Lost Child” waltz. Damn that Tyler, Brazos thought as he stepped into the song. He has a wicked sense of humor.
With the show apparently over, the Europeans’ fiddler—or violinist, as the man was too new to Texas to be a real fiddler—took control of the music making. Brazos waltzed his wife beneath the bower of cedar and the sparkling Texas sky, and to his shame, he enjoyed the experience.
For the first time ever he acquired an understanding of why the evangelists preached about the evils of dancing. Resting at her waist, his hand developed an itch to drift lower. The fragrance of roses teased his nostrils, and against his own good judgment, he pulled her closer and felt the brush of her bosom against his chest. Damn, but it made him want to sin.
Madeline wasn’t thinking about sin. She couldn’t think. She was too afraid to think. But she had to think. What was Brazos up to? She doubted she really wanted to know.
So she danced with him, her mind whirling as fast as her feet. It must have something to do with the coffin and the widow, she told herself. She prayed it was so. Otherwise, he might be here on account of his threat. His words echoed in her mind,
Your nightmares are only just beginning
. “Brazos, why have you followed me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. If I came after anybody, it’s the poor little baby you kidnapped.”
Madeline tripped. His hold on her tightened, preventing her from falling. “You tired, wife? All that dancing and flirting can plumb wear a woman out, huh? Come on, let’s rest a spell. Maybe you know a nice place in the woods where we could stretch out? Bet your pretty-boy wagon master showed you one.” Stopping only to grab a lantern, he all but yanked her into the cover of the forest.
Inside the woods, the night was black, the only light the small flame Brazos carried and a few stray moonbeams that pierced the canopy of leaves and branches above them. Unerringly, he led her to a spot beside a narrow creek where a dead campfire, trampled grass, and wagon ruts in the earth gave proof of recent habitation. The cane pole, its line left dangling in the water, made her guess the camper had been Brazos.
Setting the lamp atop a flat rock, he hunkered down beside the stream and checked the line. “Damn. Stole my bait. You know, I do detest stealing, I truly do.”
Some people tolerate anxiety better than others. Normally, Madeline managed to deal with stress better than most. But everyone has limits, and Brazos’s snide remark pushed her over the edge. She tugged the pole from Brazos’s hand, slung it over the creek, and cried, “That’s enough. Why are you here, Brazos? Tell me what you want. I demand answers.”
He stared after the fishing pole, frowning. “Well, Madeline,” he drawled. “What makes you think I’d even consider answering your questions? You certainly didn’t reply to mine last time we spoke. I don’t think I owe you anything when it comes to answers.”
He was right. Madeline realized she’d taken the wrong tack. “I apologize.” She sank to the ground, knowing he’d get around to his business in his own good time.
Which turned out to be after he’d retrieved his pole, dug for worms, baited his hook, and dropped it into the water. “I’d like to hook a big ol’ catfish tonight. You could fry it up for us for breakfast in the morning.”
“I could?”
“Yep. Nita really likes catfish, but she hates like hell to clean them. It’ll be nice for her to have you around to do that sort of stuff for her.”
“It will?” Beneath her fear of his intentions, an ember of anger sparked to life.
The nerve of the man
, she thought. Her tone dripped sugar when she asked, “The widow? Is she another cousin?”
He’d a gleam in his eye as he answered, “I’ll let you in on a secret, here, wife. Juanita is not my cousin.”
She wanted to push him into the stream. “Is she even a widow?”
Like a chameleon, Brazos changed. If earlier she’d thought him cold, now he was a block of ice. She shivered when he bit out, “No.” He laid his pole down. “I’ve introduced Juanita as my widowed cousin. We are taking the dearly departed to his home north of here a ways for burial. Being as we’re all family, you are going to offer her a place in your home at La Réunion.”
“I’m what!” Madeline exclaimed.
“Listen, my blushing bride, Juanita is a very dear friend of mine. In fact, she’s the reason I was so anxious to get aboard the
Uriel
that I married a lying, thieving witch like you. Now, she needs a place to hide until I have taken care of a certain situation, and you are going to provide it.
And
you’re gonna be as sweet as a watermelon’s heart while you’re about it.”
The unspoken threat hung between them like a fog. Rose. They both knew she’d do whatever he wanted. “It’s blackmail,” she mumbled beneath her breath.
Brazos heard her, “Not near as bad a crime as kidnapping. I said as much to Tyler.”
She ignored that, asking instead about the marriage. “Your announcement back at camp. It was a lie, wasn’t it? Our marriage has been annulled. It was only an excuse to rejoin the colonists.”
“ ’Fraid not, Madeline. That much was true.” Brazos lunged for the pole as something yanked the line, nearly dragging it into the water. He pulled a large, scaly fish out of the stream. “Damn crappie. Too bony to mess with.” Without looking at her, he said, “I know that your Emile is waiting for you at La Réunion, but I figure since he’s waited for you this long, a little extra time won’t matter. You see, there’s a part of this plan I simply haven’t been able to work another way. As distasteful as the idea is, you and I are gonna pretend to reconcile.” After removing the hook from the fish’s mouth, Brazos tossed the crappie back into the water, where it landed with a
kuthunk
.
The fish sounded the way Madeline’s stomach felt. “What do you mean, ‘pretend to reconcile’?”
Brazos grimaced. “I know. Gives me the willies to think about it, too. Look, I need a good reason to rejoin the colonists, and I figure you’re the best I have to work with. You and I are going to make believe that our recent separation has proven how much we grew to care about one another on the trip over from Europe. Now that we’ve seen the error of our ways, we’ve decided that ‘for better or for worse’ means for good.”
“No one in their right minds would believe that tale,” she scoffed, staring at the spot where the fish had disappeared.
“They believe you are Rose’s mother. You’ve pulled off one bald-faced lie, Madeline; I’m sure you can manage another. You dance with the facts well enough to put ‘em to music.”
“Brazos.” Madeline rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “We don’t need to do this. You are a member of the Society, if you want to take a guest to La Réunion, no one will stop you. There’s no reason for you and me to be involved any further.”
Brazos baited his fish hook and said dryly, “I realize this may interfere with your romance with the wagon master, but in all honesty, I don’t give a damn. I’ve thought this through, Madeline. The colonists will demand an explanation for my return, especially since I made such a to-do over our separation in Galveston. For my plan to work, we need to blend with the Europeans like butter on hot cornbread.”
He ignored her broken moan, saying, “Most of them wanted us to stay together and I figure we’ll be less conspicuous as lovers than we would be as estranged mates. You and I are gonna be so happy and boring that any gossip that gets started and works its way across the Trinity River to Dallas won’t have a thing to do with us. I can’t have outsiders knowing that Brazos Sinclair and a couple of his women are traveling with the Colonization Society of Texas. Got it?”
Couple of his women! Madeline’s gaze snagged on the new Colt revolver holstered at his thigh, and her fingers itched to steal it. “Brazos, this simply will not work.”
“Sure it will. If you’re concerned about that poor fool waiting for you at La Réunion, you needn’t worry.” Brazos rinsed his hands at the edge of the stream, then lobbed the hook into the water. “That’s another one of the reasons I brought Tyler along. Once we get close to Dallas, I’m going to send him on ahead to find your fiancé and warn him we’re coming. Tyler can take care of any trouble Emile might try to give us.”
Madeline’s fingers rubbed her forehead. He was sending Tyler to find Emile? Whatever else could go wrong? “You have, I assume, begun divorce proceedings?” she asked, feeling sicker by the minute.
“Not yet. A divorce is a bit harder to get in Texas than is an annulment, but as long as you cooperate, I figure Tyler can work it out by the time I come back for Nita.”
“What do you mean, ‘come back for Nita’? I thought you were going to La Réunion.”
“I’m going, I’m just not staying. I’ll be there long enough to see Nita settled, and then I’ll be about business.”
Madeline shut her eyes and tried to think. This would probably ruin her chance of marrying Ben Litty. Rose would still be without a guardian, and…Madeline groaned silently as a new thought occurred. Rose does have a guardian. She has Brazos.
A divorce must be Madeline’s main priority.
“I want it first—the divorce, I mean. I won’t cooperate unless your brother sees to the divorce immediately.”
His features could have been carved from the rock beneath them. “We’ll get the divorce when I see fit to do it. And you might like to know, Madeline, that kidnapping is a hanging offense in Texas.”
With false bravado, she said, “You’ve no proof.”
“I’ve hired an investigator to find Rose’s father. I’ll have my proof before long.”
“You’ve what?” For the first time in her life, Madeline almost swooned.
“I told you I’d have my answers. Remember, Madeline? Nightmares? I’ve a feeling that whatever my man discovers is gonna cause you plenty of bad dreams.”
Biting the inside of her lip, Madeline thought hard. He must call off his spy! She couldn’t risk Julian’s learning anything about Rose.
Tell him the truth, here and now
, a voice within her urged. She considered it, even opened her mouth to speak, but hesitated. She couldn’t forget the dark side of Brazos. Grabbing his shirtsleeve, she begged, “Please, Brazos, call this man off.”
“Why should I?”
“He could endanger Rose.”
“How? What’s he going to discover Madeline—maybe Rose’s true identity? Perhaps it’s not Rose he’d imperil, but you. Is that nearer the truth?”
Shaking her head furiously, Madeline said, “No, Brazos, you don’t understand!”
“Then tell me, damn it! Who
is
Rose? Who are her true parents?”
She hesitated, and the memory of a beastly Brazos Sinclair choking her in the
Uriel’s
hold rose in her mind. She couldn’t give that Brazos the truth. “Madeline?”
“Gypsies.”
“What!”
Her mind swept back to another novel she’d found hidden in Celeste Desseau’s bedroom at Château St. Germaine. “Gypsies stole Rose from a manor house near my boarding school in England. I’d tended the nursery, and the authorities suspected me, but I knew it was the gypsies, and no one believed me. I escaped right before they came to arrest me. I tracked her down, Brazos, and found her. When I took her home, I learned that her parents had grieved themselves to death. There was no other family, so I took her with me. If your investigator tracks Rose back to England, they’ll arrest me and throw me in jail and take her away from me. She’ll live in a workhouse, Brazos. Have you ever seen an English workhouse?”
“Madeline, that tale is as shy of the truth as a pig is of feathers.” For a long moment, he was silent. Then he said, “Look, obviously this is important to you. It’s just as clear that you’d rather not tell me why. Because my needs as far as Nita is concerned are immediate, and because it would make my life easier if you’d simply cooperate without a fuss, I’m willing to do a bit of dealing. The man I hired is only collecting information at this point. He’s not to contact anyone until I give him the nod.”
She looked at him, her gaze filled with hope, as he continued, “Now, if you do as I say and help settle Nita among the colonists, I’ll give you my word to pay you a visit once I receive the truth about Rose. I’ll give you a chance to explain yourself, Madeline, and if you ask me, I think that’s being pretty damn generous.”