Brazos had made no mention of the marriage or, for that matter, of why Madeline was visiting St. Michael’s with him. At the time, Sister Cecilia had been so wrapped up in welcoming her brother home that she’d not bothered to pursue the topic.
That ended quite abruptly when she joined Madeline on the front porch, carrying a pitcher of lemonade, two glasses, and a burning curiosity in her eyes.
Madeline sat in a white wicker chair, rocking Rose to sleep for her afternoon nap. She eyed the look on the nun’s face and stifled a groan. The interrogation was about to begin.
At thirty-seven, Sister Cecilia was an attractive woman with eyes the same brilliant blue as her brother’s. She lived at the children’s home, serving God by teaching the orphaned children, and in no way fit Madeline’s perception of a nun.
Except for the determined stare intent on gaining information. Madeline, however was no slouch herself in a battle of polite conversation. Within ten minutes, Madeline had learned how a young girl growing up in a family of staunch Methodists managed to hear the calling to become a Catholic nun. Despite Sister Cecilia’s best efforts, Madeline gave away nothing more than insignificant information about herself.
Talk turned to Brazos, who, having declared a holiday from school, played in the yard with the children. Madeline watched him scurry up a rope to inspect a treehouse, settle onto a swing with a little girl named Sarah who squealed with delight as he swung them high, and run two footraces, winning against the boys and losing against the girls. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a grown man play the way Brazos does,” she commented.
Sister Cecilia sipped her lemonade and sighed. “You think he’s difficult now, you should have seen him as a boy. He wore the rest of us ragged—always begging us to play some silly game, more often than not, one he made up on the spot.” She sniffed disdainfully and grumbled, “And his rules were never fair. They always gave the advantage to the boys. Unless I was on his team, I never won anything playing with Brazos.”
Madeline smiled wryly. She had yet to win against Brazos Sinclair herself. His rumbling laughter captured her attention as he sat on one end of a seesaw, sending the five children straddling the other side high into the air. “He does seem to thrive on challenges,” she commented, thinking of how he was determined to solve the mystery of Rose’s birth.
“He loves challenges of all kinds,” Brazos’s sister confirmed. “And he forces them on other people. You should have seen what he’d planned for his wedding. He’d arranged horse races for the men, and he’d purchased puzzle boards for the women. For his wedding reception! Lana was quite put out, I tell you.”
Madeline almost dropped her lemonade. “Wedding?”
“I don’t suppose you know about Lana,” Sister Cecilia reflected, a frown marring the serenity of her expression. “Oh, dear. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Of course, I have no way of knowing for sure, since I don’t know what is between you and my brother.”
“That makes two of us,” Madeline said beneath her breath.
A wife
. He’d been married before. And he’d never told her. Anger flared red-hot inside her as she thought,
Why, who does he think he is, going on about my lies? He’s been doing the same thing the entire time
.
Sister Cecilia encouraged her with a smile. “Please tell me, Madeline. Are you and Brazos more than friends?”
“I think it best if Brazos explained our situation,” Madeline replied stiffly, trying to picture the mysterious Lana. She imagined sea green eyes, red hair, and a bosom to put Madame Trixie’s to shame.
“Well, if you think it best,” Sister Cecilia said. “But if my brother has done wrong by you, it’s best the family knows. We’ll make sure he accepts his responsibilities.” The nun leaned forward and whispered, “Is he little Rose’s father?”
“No.” Madeline replied, unwilling to stir that particular pot of trouble. “Pardon me if I speak out of turn here, but for a religious woman, you appear awfully prone to gossip.”
Sister Cecilia nodded sadly. “I do so fight it, but it is such a struggle. And where family is concerned, my tendency to indulge in idle chatter is especially difficult to resist. I love them all so very much, you see. I will allow some justification of my actions in that it is impossible for me to pray that they be delivered from their trials if I know not what those trials entail.”
“You are good,” Madeline said, admiring Sister Cecilia’s strategy. She liked this woman.
Brazos’s sister smiled and sipped her drink. “In the interest of effective prayers, would you tell me what is between you and my younger brother? Then I’ll know whether I should share with you the details of Brazos’s relationship with Lana.” Offhandedly, she added, “Lana will be here within the hour most likely.”
“Here? At St. Michael’s?” Madeline asked. Sister Cecilia’s devilish grin looked exactly like Brazos’s. Madeline bit her lip. It was tempting. He really should have told her about his first wife. Sister Cecilia’s eyes glowed like sapphires as she waited for Madeline’s reply. “Why is this Lana woman coming here?”
“She lives here.”
Madeline made her decision. “You go first.”
The nun nodded, then heaved a wistful sigh. “It was going to be the social event of the season—despite the fact that Brazos was involved. I had returned home from St. Ignatius Convent, and—well, you’re probably not interested in my travels, I daresay.”
Madeline repeated dryly, “I daresay.”
“Anyway, the wedding was to—” Sister Cecilia broke off and frowned as realization dawned in her eyes. “Oh, dear. I should probably begin in another spot. Brazos didn’t tell you about Lana, so you must be worried. You want to know about her.”
She patted Madeline’s knee. “Not to worry, Madeline. I wouldn’t tell Lana this, but I never did believe Brazos truly loved her. I thought then and I do today that he was in love with the idea of love. More than anything else, he wanted to have his own home and family. He purchased a plantation—”
“This is your brother Brazos we are talking about?” Madeline asked incredulously.
Sister Cecilia nodded her head. “Out of all my brothers and sisters—there are fourteen of us, by the by, in case he hasn’t told you that, either—Brazos was the one who always played with the babies. He told my twin brother, Stephen, who told me, that one thing that had helped him settle on Lana was her wide hips. He wanted someone big enough to birth his babies, what with him being so large and all.”
“Large.” Madeline repeated, a flush stealing up her neck.
“He’s well over six feet you know, biggest of all my brothers.”
“Oh, large.”
Sister Cecilia eyed her cautiously. Madeline plunged ahead. “So, Brazos bought a plantation?”
“Yes. In fact, the land is not far from here. It’s pretty, a mixture of meadow and wooded area. It backs up right alongside the Brazos River.”
“The Brazos River. He’s mentioned that to me.”
Sister Cecilia smiled. “He gives Mama such a hard time about his name. Papa did her no favor when he allowed it to become known that the baby had been conceived on a sandbar in the middle of the Brazos. Anyway, my brother was all set to marry Lana and build this fine plantation house when Father Miguel asked him to make a trip south to search for the silver.”
“Silver?”
“From El Regalo de Dios. It’s a silver mine once worked by Franciscan friars.” Sister Cecilia reared back. “Don’t tell me he hasn’t told you about the silver either!”
“Uh, actually, he hasn’t.”
Sister Cecilia’s brow crinkled in confusion. “Maybe I should be more discreet then. But in all honesty, I don’t see why. None of it is secret, except for the mine’s location, and even Brazos doesn’t know that. I wouldn’t tell secrets, Madeline. I’m quite firm about it.”
Madeline lost all patience. She held up her hand and, when Sister Cecilia paused, asked, “Has Brazos been divorced?”
“Divorced! Oh, perish the thought. That would never do, never do. No, no, no. Brazos would never do something like that.” Madeline smiled grimly as Sister Cecilia explained, “Brazos is not divorced. He’s never been married.”
“So, he didn’t marry this Lana?”
“No. He went with Miguel—Father Miguel, I mean. I confess, at times it’s difficult to remember that the ornery little boy who put a live frog in the milk crock grew up to become a priest.”
Madeline couldn’t help smiling. She’d done the same thing at Mistress Poggi’s.
“Anyway,” Sister Cecilia continued, “they needed one more load because Father Miguel had decided to build an orphanage and they needed the funds. That’s when they got captured.”
“Captured?”
Sister Cecilia nodded. “Some of this part of the story is secret. I don’t even know it. If my twin does, he’s not telling. That always annoys me, too. Twins are supposed to share everything, but just because he’s a boy and I’m a girl—”
“Sister Cecilia!” Madeline exclaimed. “Please go on with your tale.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Actually, the story’s just about over. Brazos was held in this awful prison in Mexico for years. When he came home, he was different. Very different. Oh, on the outside he was the same, except for being so thin, but inside…” Her voice trailed off, and she shuddered. “I don’t know what happened. Brazos came home. Father Miguel never did.”
She was silent for a moment, her face slack with grief. Then she said, “Lana had waited for him, but by the time Brazos returned, Mason had the sweets for her. Brazos brought that Juanita woman home with him, and he and Lana called off the wedding. She married Mason a month later. They’re the ones who actually oversee the orphanage. You’ll get to meet them later. They went into town for supplies this morning, but will be back before dark.”
Wonderful
, Madeline thought,
I get to meet another of Brazos’s women
. “They all remained friends?”
“Yes. Brazos really liked Mason, and Lana’s so kind, she even was friendly to that Spanish woman.”
“Juanita.” Madeline voiced another question that had nagged her for some time. “Brazos never married her?”
Sister Cecilia shook her head. “He told our brother Tyler—they’re closest, you know—that he’d never marry.” She gave Madeline a speculative glance. “Has he changed his mind?”
Madeline wasn’t about to go into that. Softly she asked, “How did he end up in Europe?”
Sister Cecilia shrugged. “I don’t know. For months, he worked on this orphanage, designing it, getting the supplies, and finally starting to build. But every few weeks, he’d take off. Just disappear. No one knew where he went. He told Tyler he needed to wander that he couldn’t bear the thought of remaining in one place. He said he’d never build a home.”
She sighed and sipped her lemonade. Sadness filled her voice as she continued, “Then one time, he never came back. Tyler and my parents finally received letters from him. From Italy! We couldn’t believe it.” Her smile was filled with tenderness as she gazed at her brother and added, “I’m so glad he’s come home. We’ve all been terribly worried.”
Madeline’s chest ached.
He had wanted a home and a family, just like me
. “My God,” she mused, eyeing her husband, “whatever did they do to him in that place called Perote?”
PEROTE PRISON, MEXICO
RATS TERRIFIED the woman who knelt between Damasso Salezan’s thighs. The prison commander had recognized her fear a week ago when he’d had her brought to the guard house to service him while he gazed out over his kingdom—the fortress, outbuildings, and surrounding battlements that fashioned the Castle of San Carlos, better known as the hellhole, Perote. A rodent had scurried across the floor eliciting a scream she’d previously denied him, even beneath his whip.
Since terror always heightened his pleasure, Salezan had arranged for today’s rendezvous to take place here, in the gloom of a sparsely lit dungeon. The rats grew larger in the pits of Perote, and more bold.
Torchlight flickered along cold stone walls, and Salezan watched the shadows as the woman took his sex into her mouth, whimpering in fear even as she stroked him with her tongue. Lust heated his blood, and his gaze unerringly found the pair of iron shackles hanging against the wall.
Sinclair and his priest. Nothing since them had brought near the delight.
Salezan’s hips pumped, and he used his whip on the woman’s back. Her screams echoed off the walls as he took his pleasure, his eyes shut tight, remembering another time, another woman, another prisoner. “Ah,
bestia
,” he said, sighing, “always you were the best.”
Later that afternoon, summoned by a call from the guard tower, Salezan watched the movement along the rocky road that wound its way toward the castle. A cloud of white dust billowed from the heels of a galloping horse, and as it drew closer he recognized the messenger Winston Poteet.
Salezan’s lips twitched in a faint smile when wood groaned and chains rattled with the lowering of the drawbridge. He watched as Poteet spoke with a guard and then looked up toward the tower. Their gazes met and held, and the newcomer’s slow nod answered the question that sizzled like lightning through the air between them.
Pleasure flooded him, a warm, heavy wave that stirred his loins in a manner that surpassed the sexual. It was power—food for his body and drink for a soul long claimed by the devil.
Poteet’s boots scuffed against the steps. Salezan turned toward the door and waited.
A plain man with sandy hair and light gray eyes, Winston Poteet was wanted for murder in Tennessee, Kansas, and Georgia, and for lesser crimes in a dozen other states. Salezan bought his allegiance with gold and by providing victims for his other, darker activities. For the past year, Poteet had supervised the search for Juanita and Brazos Sinclair.
“You have found her?” Salezan asked as Poteet’s shadow darkened the doorway.
The newcomer moved into the room. “Better than that, Captain. Sinclair has returned to Texas.”
Salezan’s eyes narrowed. “He is yours?”
“Not yet, but soon,” Poteet replied, sitting at a desk in the center of the room. He searched through drawers as he continued, “He and the brother who practices law in Galveston traveled together to their parent’s plantation. My men watched the house closely, but somehow the two brothers eluded them. We will find their trail, Governor. It is only a matter of time.”