He folded his arms across his chest as he added, “You’ll get a little something out of this deal, too. I can’t leave Nita stranded at La Réunion without a place to live. Seeing how she’s not actually a colonist, I can’t in good conscience allow the Europeans to provide for her. Before I leave La Réunion, I’ll build her a house. You can have it for yourself once this business is over. You’ve always talked about wanting your own house. Now you’ll have it.”
He’d build a house for that woman, then give it to her by default. Brazos was giving Juanita something Madeline had always dreamed of having. Only he was doing it for another woman. Who was this Juanita? What peril did she face that she needed a place to hide? Madeline voiced the thought the instant it arrived, “Will this Juanita’s presence in any way be a threat to Rose?”
Rising to his feet, Brazos said, “Madeline, I’m watching out for Rose.” In the light from the lantern, his eyes glowed with promise. “You can rest assured of that. Nothing or no one is gonna hurt that little girl in any shape, form, or fashion. I’m making sure of it. Now, have we reached an agreement?”
Madeline realized that it was the best she could do. “All right,” she said softly. “I’ll be your loving wife.”
Brazos grimaced and said ruefully, “I’m thrilled.” He pulled the fishing line from the water and rested the pole against a tree. “Come on. Let’s get back and start the show.”
They’d almost reached camp when Madeline realized Brazos had not identified the body occupying the coffin in his wagon. “By the way,” she asked, “who died?”
His soft chuckle floated through the night. “That’s no corpse; it’s my golf clubs. Good place to store ‘em. Those and a few other items I want to keep private. People won’t often go to snooping in a coffin.”
Golf clubs in a coffin. Madeline shook her head. Somehow, with Brazos, it fit. “Why are you doing this? You’ve gone to so much trouble—why?”
The firelight flickered just up ahead. Brazos took Madeline’s hand and said, “Because of her.”
The ill sensation in Madeline’s stomach intensified. “Rose?”
“Well, her too. I have made my plans with Miss Magic in mind. Actually, though, I was thinking about Nita. You see, Madeline, there’s something special between me and Juanita. You ought to know by now that I’d do just about anything for the woman.”
TWO HOURS later, Brazos was strung tight as a fiddle at a San Jacinto Day Ball. He’d known when he’d proposed this idea that he’d be forced to spend a portion of his nights with Madeline Christophe. The colonists would never believe he and Madeline had reconciled if he didn’t join his wife in the semiprivacy of her wagon for at least a little while. Lillibet had even insisted Rose spend the night in the Brunets’ wagon, totally ignoring Brazos’s objections that he’d missed his Miss Magic and wanted to spend time with her. Everyone in camp assumed his protest had been feigned.
“Everyone in camp is damn sure sawing the wrong limb,” he grumbled beneath his breath. Lying in the darkness as far from his wife as he could get in the confines of the heavily loaded wagon, Brazos replayed the evening’s events in his mind. He tried to ignore both the subtle scent of roses hanging in the air and the electric awareness that sizzled between him and his wife.
She wasn’t asleep, either. Every so often, he heard a snivel from her direction. Probably still crying over the emotional scene she’d had with ol’ pretty-boy Litty, he said to himself. After their return to camp and Brazos’s announcement of pending wedded bliss, she had asked for privacy to speak with her insulted former beau. Brazos had allowed it to a point. He knew Litty had been aware of his eavesdropping, but Madeline had been oblivious. She was too busy being devious.
The story that woman had told the wagon master was almost as dumb as the gypsy tale she’d run by him. What was it she’d said, something about forgiving Brazos for his other women and the thefts he repeatedly committed? The woman had a nerve.
Nerve succeeds
. The words echoed in Brazos’s mind. Well, he guessed Pa had it right. Madeline Christophe Sinclair was certainly one successful, nervy witch. She managed to make men fall all over her. Litty had dared to offer the sobbing woman both the comfort of a shoulder to weep wet and a promise of eternal help should it ever be needed, aware all the while that Brazos observed the entire sappy scene. “Nervy bastard himself,” Brazos muttered.
At least, Lillibet had been glad to see him. She’d taken the news right well, hugging him and clapping her hands. When Lillibet started crying with delight, Madeline’s complexion had taken on a greenish hue. It reminded Brazos of the early days aboard the
Uriel
, and he thought it appropriate that someone wicked enough to kidnap a baby would walk around feeling nauseated.
Scowling into the darkness as a particularly loud cricket chirped beneath the wagon, Brazos told himself to be on guard against the ugliness hidden within one so beautiful as Madeline. At times tonight, when he’d seen the firelight glimmering in her hair, or watched her cuddling Rose, or heard her singing a lullaby as she put the child to sleep, he found himself forgetting just how sinful a person she had turned out to be.
The murmured voices coming from outside the wagon stilled as the colonists settled into their beds for the night. Brazos decided to wait a few more minutes before escaping to the bedroll lying on the ground between Madeline’s wagon and the buckboard fixed up with a bed for Juanita. But when the regular breaths of the woman beside him indicated she’d fallen asleep, he relaxed. He stayed where he was and eventually drifted off to sleep. Curled like a spoon against his wife, Brazos suffered no nightmares that night.
Chapter 12
A GUSTY BREEZE WHISHED through the treetops as Brazos chopped a thick branch of an elm into chunks for a fire and waited for the women to awaken and the show to begin. He was feeling mean as eight acres of snakes, the result of waking up entangled with a beautiful, blackhearted woman. It shamed him that his body continued to want her so fiercely when his mind knew what an evil woman she was. He wanted to strike out at her; make her feel just as rotten as he felt. So he waited with gloating anticipation for Madeline to get a good look at Juanita in the daylight.
She’d be as green as the pine trees touching the sky, greener than her face when she’d hung over the railing of the
Uriel
. He wasn’t setting out to make her jealous—only women resorted to those infantile games—but Madeline would react like any other woman when she caught sight of Nita. And he had noticed the way her expression had taken on that sour lemon look when he’d told her how he felt about the Mexican beauty.
He tossed the wood onto the crackling fire and grinned. After he’d watched Madeline flirt her way across the Atlantic, he figured she deserved to be on the receiving end for a change. Besides, he’d told the truth last night. He cared deeply for Juanita, and she felt the same way about him. She was a kind, beautiful, exceptionally brave woman. A survivor. He liked that about hen Nita had taken some of the worst life had to offer and turned it plumb around.
Madeline would misunderstand the relationship between them. Hell, his own family couldn’t figure it out. But how did a man explain the bond that developed between two people who had shared a nightmare together?
Brazos didn’t even try. Actually, he’d come closer to explaining to Madeline last night than he had to anyone in quite some time, and a blind man couldn’t have missed her reaction. The woman was jealous. Brazos tossed a handful of wood cuttings into the fire and said softly, “Isn’t it a hoot?”
Truth be told, he’d never felt much of a hankering for Juanita. Considering that general consensus held her to be the most stunning woman ever to walk the face of the earth, no one would have believed him had he attempted to claim a lack of lust. Even Tyler believed them to be lovers.
Nita understood, though, because she felt the same way he did. Oh, she might try to tell herself she wanted him as a lover, but it wouldn’t be the truth. Their feelings for one another were all tied up with Perote. Even had they wanted to, neither could ever get beyond that. She’d been the one to secure his escape. She’d seen him at his very worst. He, in turn, knew her secret shame.
He loved Juanita as the dearest of friends, but not as a lover, a distinction he failed to mention to his wife. Perhaps he could have been a little more forthcoming, but then he wouldn’t have enjoyed the anticipation of watching Madeline get her comeuppance. A minor victory, true. But under the circumstances, every little bit helped.
After filling a pot with creek water, he tossed in a handful of coffee and set it over the fire to boil. Morning coughs and yawns signaled the stirring of others around the campsite as he crossed the small space between Madeline’s wagon and the buckboard he’d brought along.
Brazos spied his brother’s form lying between the bois d’arc wagon wheel and the coffin made of pine, which they hauled out of the buckboard every night to make room for Juanita to sleep. He nudged his brother with his foot. “I swear Ty, you could sleep through a stampede. See if you can’t pry your eyelids open. Coffee’s about done, and the day’s a-wastin’.”
A mockingbird sang a subdued morning song as he walked back to the fire and splayed his fingers wide above it to absorb the warmth. Tyler stood, yawned loudly, and twisted his back, stretching the kinks from his muscles. Brazos ignored his brother his gaze darting between the pair of wagons where the two women slept.
Madeline poked her head out first. Her braid had loosened during the night, and a pair of feathers had escaped her pillow to tangle in her yellow tresses. She resembled a scruffy barn cat, right down to the angry hiss. Brazos nodded a hello, but didn’t bother to speak.
Juanita emerged looking as if she’d stepped off an artist’s canvas. The blue-black hair that was her one true vanity remained neatly in its braid, and as she smiled sleepily at Brazos, her jade green eyes softened with love. “Good morning, my Sin,” her husky voice rolled.
Brazos smiled tenderly and bent to kiss her cheek. “Good morning, love. I trust you slept well?” From the corner of his eye, he witnessed the widening of Madeline’s eyes and the paling of her complexion. Yep, he thought, some days it’s just pure pleasure to be alive.
“Hmm, I slept fine,” Juanita replied, loosening her braid and finger-combing the luxurious lengths of hair that tumbled to her knees.
Brazos clicked his tongue. “I tell you what, Nita, a man looks at you and can’t help imagining that hair of yours spread across his pillow. I can see why you’re so particular about it.” He turned to his wife and said without a trace of emotion. “Good morning, Madeline.”
He filled a tin cup with cold water and poured it into the coffee, settling the grounds. Then, filling the cup from the pot, he handed it to Juanita with a smile. As she sipped her drink, Brazos looked at Madeline and said, “With our arrival creating such a stir last night, I never found the opportunity to introduce you to the people traveling with me. I believe you have met my brother?”
Madeline nodded and said a subdued, “Hello, Tyler.”
“And also,” Brazos continued, “I must introduce you to my…special friend. Madeline, this is Juanita, who, besides being an exquisitely beautiful woman, has a voice pretty enough to make an angel cry.”
Juanita nodded, accepting his praise as though it were her due. When Brazos opened his mouth to carry on, she held up her hand, looked Madeline in the eyes and said, “And you are the one who has so foolishly attempted to trap my Sin into marriage.”
“No,” Madeline snapped. “You have it backward.”
“Hmm.” Juanita folded her arms and walked around Madeline, studying her from head to toe. She blurted a rapid sentence in Spanish.
“No,” Brazos answered. Then, because he found he didn’t much like the peaked look on Madeline’s face, he added, “A little extra on the hips, maybe.”
That put the whalebone right back in her corset. She sputtered. She huffed. She lifted her chin regally and sniffed with disdain. The rest of the morning she spoke only with Tyler and the other colonists.
The exchange set the tone for the next week. Brazos learned real quick to keep Juanita and Madeline separated as much as possible. They spat and hissed at one another like a pair of whampus cats—part wildcat, part badger, and a little wolf thrown in for good measure. At times he doubted the wisdom of forcing Juanita and Madeline to share a house at La Réunion, but he didn’t want to spare the time to build more than one house.
To make matters worse, Madeline had taken it into her head to play the loving wife to absurd extremes. The woman touched him all the time. Anytime he got within reach, those fingers whipped out to stroke his arm, brush his chest, or rest against his thigh. The one that really got to him was when she’d play with the ends of his hair at the bottom of his neck.
And through it all, Brazos had to smile and act loving, when what he wanted to do was to push her away. Or pull her to him and give her what she asked for.
A couple of times, he attempted to turn the tables on her and match her stroke for stroke, brush for brush. But the frustration wasn’t worth it. The streams they crossed were just too damned cold to be swimming in this time of year.
The wagon train had stopped to make camp a little over an hour ago. Brazos sat alone atop a cottonwood stump, firewood stacked at his feet, his axe blade buried into the ground beside him. He watched a big red-brown butterfly light on the topmost log, pump its wings, then take flight in a drunken, illogical path. Brazos found himself wanting to follow.
Thank goodness, he’d be getting a couple of days’ break from this sensual siege when he left the wagon train tomorrow. They were less than a day’s ride from St. Michael’s, and he was leaving Madeline behind when he took the load of silver to the orphans’ home. He lifted the logs one by one into his arms and headed back to camp, grumbling as he walked, “Maybe at the children’s home, I can get a decent night’s sleep for a change.”