LAVENDER BLUE (historical romance) (27 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

H
eedless of the stares of the Louvre’s patrons, Cristobal pulled Jeanette along behind him.

“
You can’t do this,” she cried.

He halted at the door and looked around him before meeting her enraged gaze with a quizzical lift to his brow. “
I don’t see anyone making an effort to stop me.”

All the
way back to the wharf, during the longboat trip back to the
Revenge
, while he hauled her up to his cabin, she pleaded with him, entreated him not to go through with his threat. He slammed the door behind them and faced her. How had she ever thought that smile inane? Why had she never seen its mockery? “But I mean to know you—in the Biblical sense, Jen.”

“
You have!” she shrieked.

He grabbed the hem of her buckskin shirt and yanked it up over her head as if he were a parent undressing a reluctant child for be
d. “I knew you as the Frenchman knew an object he had bought,” he pointed out calmly. “There is a difference. I mean to know you as a husband knows his wife.”

She shook her hair free in the manner of an angry bull tossing his head when about to charge. “
Then that’s something you’ll never know! Because I have only one true husband, and it’s not—”

“
And Armand’s dead!”

Furiously he jerked down her pants. She stood passively, hiding her fear, while he knelt before her exposed body and removed her boots. She wou
ld not give in to him. She would not cringe now. To do so would invalidate all the times that had required her courage. Could she be any less brave now because she was being attacked as a woman?

He swung her up against him and stalked to the bunk, where he
deposited her with something less than gentleness. In the darkness of the cabin he purposefully stripped. She waited, her breath shallow. She knew Cristobal was inebriated—but not enough to do this sordid thing, not enough to rape her. If she did not fight him, if she tried to reason with him, maybe she could make him understand.

Nude now, his long, lithe body obviously aroused, he bent over her, his dark face grim. “
It’s not Mark Thompson I’m competing with, is it, Jen?” he asked harshly.

She shook her he
ad in the dark, forgetting that he could not see her clearly. “No,” she murmured.

“
Always it’s been Armand,” he grunted to himself. Then to her, “I mean to make you admit tonight that Armand is dead. Both to yourself and me.”

She met his threatening gaze w
ith a calmness she was far from feeling. In the airless cabin perspiration erupted on her, adhering her body like India glue to his sweaty one. “That’s something you’ll never understand, Cristobal,” she said quietly. “My husband, my true husband, lives on in me—in my mind, in my heart. Neither you— nor your jealousy—can ever change that. Now—go ahead. Get your raping over with.”

His anger leapt into white-hot flame. His mouth slammed against hers. Beneath the force of his conquering mouth, her lips were for
ced apart. She felt his teeth, then his tongue besiege her fortress. Her tongue parried the slash of his. But too late she discovered his offense was only a diversionary tactic. From another front he breeched her defenses, his knee subtly prying open her legs, his hand storming that soft vulnerability. But when he encountered the dryness of fright, his fingers halted their assault.

His head lifted from where it had nestled between the faintly veined globes of her milk-white breasts. In the darkness his glit
tering eyes delved into hers. “You willingly gave yourself to me before—”

“
To the Frenchman,” she corrected tersely.

“
What’s the price now?” he continued.

“
There’s no price great enough.”

He took her then, thrusting in her with a savage force that made her
arch up against him in pain. “No!” she screamed out finally. Fear sizzled through her. Not just for herself. But for the child. Her fingers dug into his upper arms, clutching, shoving at the thing that hurt her, that tore at her. It continued to pump and plunge like some diabolical engine, oblivious of her cries. The pain that ripped through her abdomen cut short her breath. “Cristobal. Listen. No! God, no! The child!”

The Bermudas had been awakened from centuries of somnolence, of sponging, fishing, and turtling for its livelihood, by the advent of blockade running. The people of the islands were strongly in sympathy with the South and the blockade runners; so much so that on at least one occasion the U.S. Consul was attacked in his office. The sentiment on behalf of the Confederacy was further heightened by the increase in revenues blockade running brought to the people.

Life was gay and easy on the islands. St. George
’s was a boom town in every respect, not only for officers and civilians but for common sailors as well. They overflowed the drinking places and filled the streets. Ladies of easy virtue flocked to the town from Atlantic Coast ports, and Shinbone Alley boasted scores of bawdyhouses and iniquitous dives.

Magnolia Hill, the home of Mr
s. Owen Williams, wife of the chief Confederate agent, was always open to Southern supporters. Overlooking beautiful St. George’s harbor, it was constantly filled with Confederate agents and naval officers. Nubile girls of the islands entertained visiting young Confederate officers with all sorts of balls, dances, and festivities. St. George’s had become not only a way station between Europe’s ports and the Confederacy, but a harbor of refuge for the blockade runners, a pleasant resting place after the excitement and fatigue of a voyage.

It was to St. George
’s—to Magnolia Hill and its beautiful mansion built of pink coral blocks—that the blockade runner Cristobal Cavazos brought his ailing young wife.

Barbara Williams sat beside the bed where Jeanette Cavazos slept. The Caribbean sunlight that streamed through the white eyelet cotton curtains was not kind to Barbara. It revealed the faint lines about her eyes and the deeper ones just beginning to show
on either side of her wide mouth. Yet the eyes were a pale blue, like the tropical waters that played about the sandy coves, and just as lovely. And the lips held a soft sensuality.

But her mind was sharp, practical. A woman of forty, she had known the humi
liation of being called white trash. Her father sharecropped cotton on what was little more than a farm outside Atlanta. She had also known she would escape the humiliation of poverty at the first opportunity. It presented itself the day she turned fifteen, when Owen Williams rode into the redneck tenant’s yard filled with her dirty, half-naked brothers and sisters. Owen, nearing forty himself at that time and stocky, had asked directions. Barbara calmly gave them and just as calmly told him she was leaving with him.

She was half afraid he would laugh, but his kind eyes looked down into her dirt-smeared face, and after what seemed an interminable moment he had consented. She had never let him regret that moment. And she had never regretted it herself. Owen
’s business acumen and fairness had made him an affluent merchant; so successful was he that the Confederate Government had appointed him as commercial agent to Bermuda.

Barbara now had all she had lacked as a sharecropper
’s daughter. All but the erotic passion her husband was incapable of. But she found that in the occasional visits of Cristobal Cavazos. For these times she waited. She knew she would risk all she had, including her husband’s love, to go away with the roguish blockade runner if he asked her; but he had never asked her.

And now she knew why. Gazing down at the small¬
boned woman before her, she could understand some of what Cristobal saw in his wife. Despite the mauve shadows about the long-lashed eyes, despite the pinched lips and pale, washed-out skin, Jeanette Cavazos was a very attractive young woman. Not the standard Southern beauty. Even sleep could not rob the face of its strong character, contrasting so with the young woman’s delicate build.

Jeanette opened her eyes now, and Barbara notic
ed with a start their extraordinary shade. “Where am I?” The words were rusty, low.

“
You are at Magnolia Hill in St. George’s, Bermuda. Your husband brought you here this morning.”

Jeanette blinked back the tears. “
Who are you?”

“
I’m—I’m a friend of your husband’s.”

Bitterly Jeanette turned her face toward the wall. One more woman who had shared Cristobal
’s bed.

The old man who sat on the other side of the bed leaned forward. “
I’m Dr. Magee, Mrs. Cavazos. You have been ill—for nearly two days. You were hemorrhaging. You—” he laid a hand flecked with gray hair on the small, knotted fist, “you lost the child.”

“
Cristobal,” Jeanette murmured bitterly.

“
You must understand, Mrs. Cavazos,” the doctor cleared his throat and continued, “intercourse does not normally cause a miscarriage. You must not blame your husband’s . . . attentions. In fact he revealed that you recently suffered a heat stroke. Your body’s poor health, stress, any number of reasons could have caused you to lose the child.”

Jeanette closed her ey
es. “I want to be alone.”

In the evenings, when the sun was still high above the blue line of the Caribbean, the Williamses and their guests would sit on the wide piazza while tea, cakes, and ice cream were served by hovering Negro boys. The women would play croquet on the lush lawn, and the gentlemen would smoke the Havana “long nines” and talk desultorily of cargoes, contraband, and the Confederacy.

That particular evening there were just the two guests, with the men doing most of the talking
. “There,” Owen said, jabbing his forefinger at a copy of
The New York Times
that was only two days old. “The Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court says—” he held the newspaper at arm’s length and read: “‘The ships are planks of the same bridge, and necessary for the convenient passage of persons and properties from one end to the other.’”

“
In other words,” Cristobal drawled, “trans-shipping cargo from ship to warehouse to ship is now looked upon as intentional breaking of the blockade.”

“
And subjects your ship once again to capture,” Owen finished.

Barbara would like to have heard more of the actual running of the contraband
—of the exciting escapes. Cristobal’s reputation held that he was a cool and resourceful leader in moments of acute danger, that he boldly accepted and then expertly overcame risks others wouldn’t consider.

But the conversation continued to revolve around the mundane
—cotton and its cost—with the two men volleying their ideas between each other and enjoying the exchange. Two shrewd minds. The rubicund Owen, the rakish Cristobal. And Barbara was shrewd enough to keep her remarks to herself. She influenced Owen’s opinions in a more subtle way.

Jeanette Cavazos, dressed that particular evening in a charming daisy-yellow dimity that
Owen had procured from one of his warehouses, had hitherto remained quiet. She had convalesced rapidly over the week she had been at Magnolia Hill. Mornings spent sitting in the sun had restored her golden color, the sea breeze her health. Yet the lavender-blue eyes were dull and flat as slate. Except when her gaze locked with that of her husband. Then Barbara saw the spark ignite, the blue eyes take fire. Something was wrong between the two.

Even at that moment Jeanette
’s eyes blazed into an inferno at what her husband was saying. “The Confederate States Government has made a serious error.”

“
How so, Cristobal?” Owen asked.

“
That first year of the war President Davis and his financial advisors made no move to use their one salable commodity, cotton, to finance their war.”

For the first time Jeanette spoke, her voice sharp as a fine-edged Bowie. “
Why should they have? The North needed our cotton; the mills of Lancashire in England— and those in France and the rest of Europe—needed it. Jefferson Davis knew if we held cotton off the world market until the need reached a critical stage, the result would be a fantastic increase in the price.”

“
She has a point,” Owen said, though his ruddy face was careful not to betray his surprise at the young woman’s outburst.

“
Furthermore,” Jeanette said, leaning forward in the white wrought-iron chair, “Davis hoped that Queen Victoria and Napoleon III and others in Europe might find it worthwhile to recognize the Confederate States of America—if Europe expected to continue to clothe its people in cotton fabrics.”

Slowly Cristobal exhaled cigar smoke. “
But the foreign governments haven’t recognized the Confederacy, have they, Jen?” He disregarded the storm that brewed in his wife’s eyes. “Now the Confederacy’s coffers are empty of gold, its currency is suspect, and there is no credit with which to collect and transport cotton for export.”

Barbara diplomatically intervened. “
The air is getting slightly chilly. Perhaps we should go inside. Besides, it’s nearing dinner. ” She caught the glance of appreciation her husband threw her.

Cristobal
’s gaze was shadowed. He took his wife’s elbow to assist her up the shallow flagstone steps and felt her body actually withdraw from contact with his.