Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  She managed to nod, though she thought she would strangle on the knot of tears dissolving in her throat. Abruptly he pulled her against him, kissing her throat, the softness of her cheek, her eyes, searching with a passionate prayerfulness for the sweetness of her lips.

  “Dear God,” he said, and lifted her across the bed, taking her in a tangle of skirts and petticoats, and loosened coils of hair. And when it was done he dressed quickly, buckling his belt with a savage finality. He returned for a last, snatched kiss on lips and breasts, and then was gone without looking back, leaving her with dry eyes and the anguishing comfort of his husky groan, “I should have loved you more—”

  The wounded from Santa Rosa began to arrive by morning, walking wounded, riding wounded, white with the narrowness of their escape. Some burned with rage and the lust for revenge, railing on of friends who had been slaughtered by Mora. Others were quieter, their enmity a cold and bitter thing, but there was little doubt that for the Falangistas the war had become a blood feud overnight.

  As Eleanora worked with the surgeon, removing lead, cleaning and repairing the damage done by sword and bayonet, her thoughts were with Grant on the march south as she tried to picture what he was doing, whether resting beside some dusty trail, or eating some hastily concocted meal scrounged from the pole-and-thatch house of an Indian farmer. Late in the morning it began to rain, a sullen downpour that sluiced the dust from the houses and ran in rivers along streets that could not absorb it into their hard-baked surfaces. Inside the hospital the lamps had to be lit against the gloom as batten blinds were closed to keep out the wind-driven rain. Still the moisture penetrated, combining with the muggy heat of the low-ceiling rooms to turn them into steam baths. It would not make marching easier.

  Opening a blind to throw a basin of red-stained water out into the rushing, open gutter, Eleanora stood a moment, breathing in the fresh air. She watched the rain stream from the red tiles of the roof, wondering for the dozenth time if Grant had thought to carry his slicker, wondering if the wetness would aggravate his shoulder. The bullet hole had healed to a reddish purple scar, but there was still some deep stiffness.

  With the sound of the falling rain in her ears, she did not hear Luis approaching until he was directly behind her. She swung around, startled, as he took the basin from her and handed it to a passing orderly.

  “You didn’t go with them,” she said stupidly, after she had greeted him.

  “I am left to defend Granada,” he said with a grimace, “and to perform all the more unpleasant tasks.”

  “Oh?” She stopped in the process of wiping her hands, her fingers clenching involuntarily on her apron.

  “Such as — telling you, Eleanora, that your brother was arrested at dawn this morning on charges of supplying information to the enemy.”

  She stared at him, the color draining from her face. Such an offense meant the firing squad.

  “Why? How?”

  “Information has been placed against him. He is accused of securing information from the palacio, of going through Grant’s papers and selling what he found to Vanderbilt agents, who are supporting Costa Rica monetarily in an effort to oust the general.”

  “But — who accused him? Was it—” She could not go on. All too clearly she remembered Grant saying that Colonel Schlessinger and his men had been expected by the Costa Ricans. Had he known when he left her that Jean-Paul was to be arrested?

  “It was not Grant, I promise you. The order came from the general’s office, based on a complaint lodged by the woman your brother was living with, Juanita.”

  “It can’t be true,” she said, staring into the concerned brown eyes of the Spaniard. “Jean-Paul wouldn’t — couldn’t have done such a thing. He never once looked at the papers Grant left at the palacio. I was with him every moment.”

  “I knew you would say as much, mi alma, that is what worries me. This thing, it has the smell of betrayal to me. I am afraid for you.”

  “What?”

  “Consider. The woman, Juanita, hates you. She becomes involved with your brother, who has access to the colonel’s quarters. She informs on him. Why? I fear a plot—”

  He broke off as a commotion began near the front entrance. Major Neville Crawford entered, followed by a detail of eight men with bayonets fixed, at the ready. He searched the room with his eyes until he spotted Eleanora. With a wave of his hand, he indicated that the men should follow him as he made his way down between the beds to where she was standing. His face sober, he came to attention.

  “It is my duty to inform you, Miss Eleanora Colette Villars, that you are under arrest. You will come with me.”

  “What is the charge?” Luis rapped.

  “Treason. Giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the Republic of Nicaragua.”

  “Who signed the orders?”

  “The signature is that of General Walker, if you must know.”

  “When? He has left Granada,” Luis pointed out through clenched teeth.

  “I’m only following orders,” Major Crawford said, the heat of an uneasy anger rising in his face.

  “With quite a back-up force,” Luis grated, glancing significantly at the men standing rigid behind him. “What did you expect her to do, attack you?”

  Major Crawford had no ready answer. He flung a look around the hospital ward grown suddenly still as the men in the beds became aware of what was happening. The boy with the cornsilk hair, three beds along the line, threw back the sheet and made as if to get up. The major swallowed. “I am sorry, but if you will, Eleanora — Miss Villars?”

  Another man wrenched over in bed, searching for his makeshift crutch that leaned against the wall. She could not allow a confrontation between sick, weaponless men and the soldiers standing with guns in their hands and the blank sheen of determined obedience in their eyes. In the dim light the bayonets had a deadly gleam.

  “Very well,” she said through the stiffness of her throat, “I’ll go.”

  “Try not to worry, pequeña,” Luis said, touching her arm in reassurance. “There must be something that can be done — and whatever it is, I will do it.”

  She had time to do no more than smile in gratitude. The detail fell into place about her. They began to move at a smart pace toward the door while the muttering of disapproval broke out from the four corners of the room.

  Beyond the opening the rain came down like the silver lances of an ancient tilt-at-arms, smashing into the mud of the street. Without pausing, they stepped out into it.

  13

  The cell door closed with a clank and the rattling of keys. Eleanora took a hesitant step into the noisome dimness. As her eyes adjusted to the lack of light, she saw the scabrous walls with designs, messages, and doggerel scratched into their whitewash, the suffocatingly low ceiling, and rusty sleeping shelves with only a tangled rag of a blanket to add comfort to their hard planks. The air was dank with the rain falling past the small, high, barred window, and thick with the stench of the slop pail sitting in one corner. The one advantage was the fact that the barred cubicle was empty of other occupants.

  “Eleanora—”

  Stark, vibrant with horror, the whisper came from the next cell. Eleanora turned slowly, her skirts dragging wet around her ankles, to face her brother. He got to his feet like an old man, holding to the chain that supported the sleeping shelf on which he sat.

  “Why?” he asked, a frown of bewildered anger between his eyes. “Why?”

  “They — didn’t tell you?” she ventured after a moment.

  He looked away. “I can’t believe it. After all, Juanita and I — I can’t believe it.”

  “Then why else?” Despite herself, her voice had the flat timbre of weary defeat.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know! That’s what is driving me mad. Everything has gone wrong, everything, from the instant we left New Orleans. You were right, Eleanora. Does it please you to know you were right?”

  “Hardly.” To cry at this moment might
relieve her feelings but it would do no real good. Looking away she began a cautious circuit of the tiny room. Four shelves, two per side, hinted at a capacity of four in the cell where there was barely room for two to stand with ease. It was a cage, no more, no less, a cage at the end of a row of cages. There were three such cells. Beyond her brother’s cubicle was another occupied by a figure rolled in a blanket and snoring with the sodden monotony of the drunkard. The men who had locked her in had retreated out of sight. She could still hear them in the outer room, however, hear the bark of orders, and then the good-natured murmur of men relieved of the presence of authority. Presently there came the slap of cards and the smell of coffee brewing.

  ‘The rain continued without letup, blowing in upon the unprotected sill of the high window and running in a thick, dark stream down the wall. As she paced, Eleanora had to avoid the growing puddle in the far corner near the slop pail.

  “I didn’t spy on the colonel, Eleanora. I don’t care what they say. I wouldn’t do a thing like that, on my sacred honor.”

  “I believe you,” she answered in soft tones, fully alive to the undercurrent of desperation in her brother’s voice.

  “I — don’t suppose you—”

  Anger swept over her, then died away. “No,” she replied as steadily as she could. “What scruples I still possess prevent me from stooping to that level also.”

  “Forgive me. I don’t know what I am saying. It’s just that—” He sank back down upon the shelf, burying his face in his hands.

  The feeling of unbelief he was trying to convey was not lost on Eleanora. She would have liked to have believed Luis’s assurances that Grant was not responsible for the imprisonment of Jean-Paul and herself. She could not quite. It was too convenient, his sudden departure followed by their arrest. Had he been so reluctant to face her, to listen to her pleas for Jean-Paul? Could it be that he did not trust himself to see his orders put in force if he had to watch her being carried away? The logic was inescapable — as inescapable as the fact that it was near impossible for such a momentous matter as the arrest of two spies to have been planned and carried out without the knowledge of the provost marshal, Colonel Grant Farrell.

  Tiring, Eleanora sat down at last. A flea hopped from the dingy blanket to her skirt and she brushed at it in quick disgust, pushing the excuse for a coverlet to the floor before settling back. She pulled her knees up, leaning with her back to the wall. The drumming of the rain, the voices of the men, her brother’s occasional outbursts provided a background for her thoughts.

  One thing was obvious. Someone had betrayed Lieutenant Colonel Louis Schlessinger and his men, arranging for them to walk into a trap at Santa Rosa. If it was not Jean-Paul or herself, then who? Someone with access to the information concerning troop disbursements. Someone either at the Government House or the palacio, then. The general, Grant, Luis; none of them seemed remotely capable of treason. But at the palacio was Señora Paredes, and through her, Juanita. Eleanora could not feature the señora executing such a plan herself. It was always possible she had helped Juanita only by her failure to report the other woman’s actions, but she could not be entirely innocent. The younger woman had both reason and opportunity, and she alone was responsible for the arrest which provided her own best protection. Anything she and Jean-Paul might say against Juanita would be weakened by their position, whereas she, by taking Jean-Paul as her new lover, had provided excellent camouflage for her own motives.

  If William Walker had been there, Eleanora thought, he might have listened to her explanations despite his signature on the order for her arrest. It was possible a message might still reach him in time, if she could persuade someone to take it. For that she needed money. A dead end. Luis would go if she asked him. Perhaps he was already gone.

  Failing that scheme, there was Niña Maria. She was certain to have some means of contacting the general. Surely she would not allow her personal dislike of Eleanora to weigh in the balance against two human lives, would she?

  Eleanora clenched her hands together in her lap. She could not sit and wait, doing nothing until they came for Jean-Paul and herself. There had to be some way to escape this terrible coil. Against her will she thought of the deserted corner of the plaza where the executions were performed. Did they shoot women? She did not know. And if they did, who would give the order to fire with Grant gone? Who would perform the coup de grace?

  She gave herself a shake, shivering a little in her wet clothes. Her hair felt plastered to her head and she loosened it with her fingers, taking a deep breath to steady her nerves. She had to think. Daydreams wherein Grant returned to release her, to hold her close and tell her it was all a mistake, were of no use to her. She must put such thoughts behind her. Forever.

  Evening descended imperceptibly behind the dark curtain of rain. A bowl of watery chili con carne was brought with a tough flour tortilla. The smell of it was not appetizing even though Eleanora’s stomach cramped with hunger. She had not eaten anything for breakfast nor at the early luncheon served to the patients. Apparently she and Jean-Paul arrived too late for the noon meal at the guardhouse. Nothing had been offered to them until now.

  The man who brought their supper wore suspenders over his red shirt, suspenders of rattlesnake skin. His eyes were small and set close together, and his unshaven cheek bulged with an enormous cud of chewing tobacco. When he handed the warm bowl to Eleanora through the door his fingers touched hers. They were dry and scaly and covered on the backs with black curly hairs. Long after she had retreated to the sleeping shelf he stood watching her, tossing the key to her cell in his hand. Only the sound of his name called from the outer room drew him away. He went with reluctance and a last backward glance that made her flesh crawl.

  Lamplight blossomed in the front room, shedding a faint glow into the back cell. Eleanora sat staring at the flickering shadows it cast as the men moved back and forth. After a time her clothing ceased to drip. The rain slackened. A horse trotted past outside, slowing to a walk. The card game broke up, leaving two men to stand the midnight watch. Their voices and the acrid smoke of their brown Mexican cigarillos drifted back to where Eleanora crouched against the wall. She would have liked to call out to them, to ask them to send for Luis or possibly take a message to Niña Maria at the Government House. Some instinct that went as deep as the desire for self-protection prevented her from drawing that much attention to her presence. Setting her teeth into her lip she remained silent.

  In the next cell Jean-Paul stirred, calling her name.

  It was a moment before she could force herself to answer him, and then her voice was a whisper of sound. “Yes?”

  “What about your friend, the Spaniard? Do you think he will testify for us at the trial?”

  “I’m sure he will if it comes to that.” She was not at all certain, but it would not hurt to allow Jean-Paul this small hope.

  “He has influence at the Government House. He might do us a lot of good.”

  Eleanora agreed. Luis also knew more than he had ever said of Juanita. It was just possible that he could discredit her story enough to win for them their freedom. She would not depend on it, however. The officers who served under William Walker were not known for their mercy. Arrest usually meant certain execution.

  In her mind she pictured Grant and the general slogging through the mud and misting rain, uncaring of what was happening to her or her brother. A suffocating pain moved in her chest and for an instant she could not breathe. Her teeth began to chatter as she lifted her chin. Rubbing the chill, goosefleshed skin of her arms and shoulders beneath her damp clothing, she struggled to her feet. Moving might bring warmth to her body; nothing could thaw the frozen core of her heart.

  As she passed the open side of Jean-Paul’s cell, he loomed out of the shadows, his hands fastening on the bars. “What have I done?” he cried in a voice of self-loathing. “What have I done to deserve this? All I ever wanted was a new start, a place to begin to build back what we had los
t. Is that so terrible?”

  She could not bear the sight of his face contorted with the effort to hold back his tears. She moved closer, curling her fingers about his tight fists upon the bars. “Don’t, she whispered. “Oh, don’t.”

  “I can’t stand it. Not Juanita, not my Juanita. God, but she was sweet. She — she danced for me, laughing, daring me to — dear God!”

  He leaned his forehead on his clenched hands, his eyes squeezed shut. Helplessly, Eleanora touched his hair, smoothing the curls tight with the dampness.

  “I don’t believe — I can’t make myself believe she did this to me, used me, planned all the time, even when — when—”

  He flung himself away across the cell landing on the sleeping shelf with a force that set the chain to creaking. He left Eleanora with a fresh, new pain. Had Grant, holding her in that farewell embrace, known what was to happen to her? I should have loved you more — She had hoarded those last words, seeing in them a promise. Now they had the ring of a death knell.

  Quiet descended. The rain stopped except for an occasional drip from the eaves. In the front room a chair scraped and the lamplight swung in an arc and flowed toward the cells as one of the guards made a late round. He walked slowly down the narrow corridor, the lamp held high. Stopping, he peered at Jean-Paul, rolled in his blanket with his back to the door. The man was thin and tall with a graying walrus mustache, not the man with the rattlesnake suspenders. When he moved toward her Eleanora transferred her gaze to the dark corner of the far wall and kept it there the long moments he stood staring in at her.

  The air left her lungs in a long sigh when he had gone, and she let her head fall back to rest on the wall behind her. Her eyes burned and her head throbbed, but she could not bring herself to stretch out on the hard board. The hours were too precious for sleeping.

  It could not have been much later when she heard the horses. From the sound there were seven or eight at least, traveling at an unhurried walk. They halted outside the guardhouse, and through the open bars of the high window Eleanora caught the creak of saddle leather and jangle of bits as the men dismounted. A horse snorted through his nostrils, stamping. The soft tinkle of a spur had a musical sound in the humid quiet of the night.