Moon Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (7 page)

* * * *

      
Rafael could hardly wait to board the
Sea Mist.
He would sail for New Orleans with the morning tide and it wouldn't be too soon! He strode along the wharf, watching ships from around the world unload their cargoes. For all the bustle and color surrounding him, Rafael was unimpressed. It was cold and gray, bleak as all New England. He was depressed despite the good news he had received this morning from Aunt Jolie' s attorney, who had advised him that the estate was finally settled. Everything was done, finished. Then why was he so restless, so desperately unhappy?

      
Deborah's face, pale and delicate, her lilac eyes glistening with tears, materialized unbidden in his mind. He would never forget her, she of the fiery temperament, sparkling wit, and lush body. But she was American. A tall, blonde Protestant. His family would be aghast. He was aghast. He had come within a whisper of losing himself in her sweet silken flesh, damn her!

      
Just then he caught sight of the cadaverous figure of Oliver Haversham moving toward him in deliberate haste. Groaning, he considered crossing the street, then decided it was beneath his dignity to allow the fortune-hunting bully that satisfaction.

      
“Well, Flamenco, I'm surprised you've stayed around, considering the gossip. Old Adam Manchester will deal with you now. It's no longer my concern what anyone says about my former fiancée.” His gray eyes glowed with malice. He moved to pass Rafael but was able to take only a quick sidestep before a steel-fingered grip stopped him.

      
“Exactly what do you mean, Adam Manchester will deal with me now?” Rafael's other hand fastened securely on Haversham's stock and squeezed.

      
Oliver's sallow complexion darkened several shades to the color of aged newspaper. He choked out, “You didn't expect your affair with Deborah to go uncommented upon, not after your blatant tryst at the Beechers' summer house!” He pulled free of Rafael's restraining hands, shrinking from the menacing Creole.

      
“Who told you we had a tryst?” Rafael's voice was soft but steely.

      
Realizing that what had been an irresistible chance to taunt his rival was taking a distinctly dangerous turn, Oliver was immediately at great pains to elucidate. “Allison Smythe was at the Beechers. She said the two of you vanished for hours.”

      
“So, I assume you have spread this tale the length and breadth of Boston.” Rafael swore softly in French and turned to walk away, then whirled back toward Haversham and said in a deadly calm voice, “If I hear another word about Deborah Manchester on your lips, I'll thrust a rapier through your skinny gullet.”

      
Early the next morning, he appeared at the Manchesters' house while Adam was still eating his breakfast. The butler announced him in consternation. No one called on Mr. Manchester at the uncivilized hour of seven a.m.!

      
From her vantage point halfway up the stairs, Deborah heard voices coming from the entry hall, then saw Rafael disappear into the study after her father.
What is he doing here?
Trembling, she picked up the hem of her velvet dressing robe and rushed back upstairs to complete her toilette. She would find out what was going on, at once.

      
She selected her clothes as if girding herself to do battle. In a way she was, for she sensed the two men downstairs were arrogantly deciding her future. By the time she was satisfied with her appearance, Ramsey had arrived bearing a summons. Her father and Mr. Flamenco awaited her in the study.

      
What does he want? Why is he here?
These thoughts had raced through her head all the while she had dressed. Good lord, he might provoke her father into a fight! By the time she reached the study door, she was out of breath and flushed.

      
When she stepped inside, glacial blue and glowing black eyes stared at her. Her father was very angry but was concealing it from his adversary as he always did. Only she was aware of how tightly he held his temper. Rafael's disposition was much more difficult for her to gauge. Was he, too, angry? His expression held a sensual, heated quality, which made her tremble unaccountably. She nodded uncertainly to both men but volunteered no greeting. In truth, she didn't trust her voice not to squeak.

      
Without preamble Adam announced, “Mr. Flamenco has asked my permission to marry you, Deborah.”

      
Surprised at the strength of her own voice, she replied, “Well that signifies nothing since he has not asked me!”

      
“In a proper Creole courtship, Deborah, the man arranges things with the young woman's father,” Rafael said as if that explained everything.

      
“It seems to me, nothing about this ‘courtship’ has in any way been proper,” Adam retorted sourly.

      
“It hasn't even been a courtship!” Deborah glared alternately from her father to her supposed suitor.

      
Now it was Adam's turn to glare from Deborah to Rafael. “Well, if it wasn't a courtship, then why the hell have the two of you created the scandal of the decade? Would either of you care to enlighten me?”

      
Deborah's face went from cherry red to blanched white. “What are you talking about—scandal of the decade?”

      
Rafael replied dryly, “I assume you've spent the past two days without receiving callers. Your ‘friend’ Allison has been a very busy girl. With some help from her friends Judith and Oliver, she has been spreading the story of how we were caught alone in that rainstorm during the Beechers' party.”

      
“Oh... I see,” Deborah replied in a hoarse whisper.

      
“Well, I don't see, but I will and right now. This whole thing has gone far enough.” Adam turned to Rafael, but it was Deborah who replied.

      
“I told you, Father, I am still—intact. We were forced to seek shelter from the storm in a deserted cabin. Rafael built a fire and we...we dried our clothes.”

      
Rafael smiled thinly. “What Deborah is delicately skirting is that we were forced to take our clothes off and lay them in front of the fire to dry them, and keep ourselves from catching pneumonia.”

      
“But we had quilts, two quilts,” Deborah sputtered. “That is, we each wrapped ourselves in a quilt while our clothes dried.” Damn! She was digging herself in deeper.

      
Adam's shrewd gaze roved speculatively around the room, alighting first on his fidgeting daughter, then on the brooding Creole. “It sounds to me as if the situation would have tested the willpower of a saint!”

      
Rafael muttered darkly, half to himself, “Believe me, it did, and I'm no saint.”

      
Stiffening her back, Deborah faced Adam Manchester. “Father, do you think I—I slept with this man and then lied to you about it?” Her face flushed beet red in mortification.

      
Adam shrugged in resignation, then said gently, “No, Deborah, I believe you told me the truth, but it doesn't alter the situation. Yesterday, I heard a nasty rumor. From what Mr. Flamenco has told me, a lot worse has been circulating. Soon, everyone in the city will be privy to the scandal. You will be ruined.”

      
“You must marry me, Deborah. I'm afraid you have no other choice.”

      
There was a taunting quality to his voice that she could not fathom. What game was he playing? The last thing she expected was a proposal of marriage from Rafael Flamenco!

      
Adam sensed her hesitation. “There is another possibility, Deborah. Your cousin Marian in Philadelphia would be happy to have you come to live with her.”

      
“I'm sure she would so I can care for her five small children! I shall simply continue to live here. This is my home and no one will drive me from it.” Her eyes blazed violet fire as she stood rigidly with fists clenched.

      
Rafael walked quickly across the large room and took Deborah's elbow firmly, turning her to face him. Looking intently into her eyes, he said to Adam, “Monsieur Manchester, please allow me to talk with her alone.”

      
Surprisingly, Adam acquiesced. With a terse nod to his daughter, he strode forcefully from the room saying, “Consider your choices very carefully, Deborah. They do not include pretending nothing has happened.”

      
When Adam was gone, Rafael pulled her quickly into his arms and said, “I want to marry you and I think you want to marry me. Why not give in...now...?” He tipped her face up to his, but before he could kiss her, she turned away.

      
“Until you heard those vicious lies you never intended to see me again,” she hissed. “You planned to sail away this morning, forever.”

      
“
Ma Cherie
, I might have sailed away”—he shrugged with Gallic nonchalance—“or I might not. Even if I had gone all the way to New Orleans, time would have brought me back—time and you. I replay our passion over and over in my mind.”

      
“
My
passion, don't you mean?” Her voice was choked. “You had little enough difficulty controlling yourself when you decided your ‘honor’ was involved.”

      
He tightened his arm around her waist and drew her lower body firmly against his. “Does that feel like I am ‘controlling’ myself? The most difficult thing I have ever done in my life was to stop from taking you that day.” She could feel the insistent pressure of his erection, straining into the soft fabric of her skirts, only barely aware of just what it meant.

      
“I have never wanted a woman as I've wanted you, and I am going to marry you.” With that his hand fastened in her hair, holding her head as he swooped down to claim a kiss. He ravaged her lips, crushing his own against hers until she gave in, opening to him, tasting him as he tasted her. She was growing dizzy and warm, losing herself in the riotous sensations his touch evoked, feeling his lean hard body crushed so intimately against hers, as if she had been sculpted to fit there forever.
Forever!
That jolted her back to sanity. Forever meant marriage, and two more unsuited people had never lived.

      
Rafael felt her stiffen and try to push herself free. Unwillingly, he ended the kiss, but he did not release her. Searching her flushed face, he said, “Are you going to tell me you did not enjoy that?”

      
“You know I did,” she answered guiltily.

      
“Then you will marry me.” It was not a question.

      
“No! You're only doing this out of a sense of duty. You don't love me. We know nothing about one another except that we disagree on everything.”

      
His eyes took on a devilish light. “Not quite everything. So we disagree about politics, religion, slavery, a woman's position in society, but we have discussed them. We do understand one another's feelings. That's a great deal more than I would have been able to do if I'd made the usual Creole marriage.”

      
At her puzzled look, he continued, “It is the Creole custom for parents to arrange marriages when the children are very young. It's often done for economic reasons—two plantations adjoining one another that can be merged, or because families have been friends for generations. I might one day have married a girl right out of convent school, about whom I would have known absolutely nothing. Instead, I chose you, all your headstrong Yankee ideas be damned, Deborah. I know what I'm in for and I want to marry you anyway.”

      
“Your parents. What will they say?” She was beginning to want him to win her over. It was crazy, impossible; but maybe he would come to love her as she loved him. Yes, she admitted it finally. She did love Rafael Flamenco.

      
“My parents will accept you. I've already sent word by the ship I was to sail on, telling them I'll be delayed and that I'm bringing home a bride.” He kissed her again suddenly, so that she could not evade his caress. Quickly, she surrendered, melting against him, holding onto him for support.

      
When he finally released her lips, they curved in an impish smile. “Do you always get your way, Rafael?”

      
“Almost always,
Cherie
” He smiled back, kissing the tip of her nose. Then he grew serious. “There is one thing I must ask of you—the marriage must be performed by a Roman priest. Once we've married in church, my parents will be bound to accept you into the family.”

      
Deborah considered how her father, a devout high church Episcopalian, would take that! She looked up into Rafael's eyes, aglow with desire. He drew her into a maelstrom of passion as he held her against his body. Every fiber of her being cried out:
This is where I belong, where I’ve always longed to be, what I've always longed to feel
.

“Any church, Rafael, I don't care,” she said, laughing and reaching up to place her hands on each side of his darkly handsome face. She kissed him quite thoroughly.

* * * *

      
“It's impossible! No daughter of mine will set foot in a papist church!” Adam Manchester was beside himself.

      
Deborah sat calmly across from her father, stirring her coffee. They had been through every argument about the differences between her and Rafael. She had debated him to a standstill until she touched upon the ceremony being held in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

      
“As you pointed out earlier, Father, Rafael's family will be shocked over his sudden marriage to a Yankee. Having the service in their church is the least I can do. Honestly, you sound as bigoted as that rabble that burned the Ursuline Convent last year. The ritual of the Catholics is not so different from our own, it's only chanted in Latin instead of English.”