Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  “It wasn’t too hard, knowing Neville’s leanings, the amount of money involved, and the secret nature of the project, to guess what was in the air. John told Neville he wanted no part of it. He told him to get somebody else, but then he got to thinking about it, and he began to be afraid Neville would find somebody who could do what he wanted. John has no liking for Walker — or any kind of authority, for that matter. Hasn’t had since he was in the thick of the fight between the mine owners and the miners attempting to band together in unions for better conditions. But it went against the grain to stand by and see a man murdered when he could prevent it. He got to thinking too about who else beside William Walker might be on that grandstand today, maybe even you and Grant, and he decided he had to tell somebody what was going to happen.”

  Slowly Eleanora moved to take the chair across from Mazie. “Neville is going to — blow up the grandstand this afternoon — with the general on it?” The general and Grant, certainly Grant.

  “Is it to be this afternoon? Thank God I’m not too late. I was afraid they might try to get it over in the morning cool,” Mazie said.

  “No, it will be toward evening. There is still time,” Eleanora answered, though she was hardly aware of what she was saying. What should she do? Tell Grant, of course, but how was she to convey the warning without letting it be known that she was responsible for the assassins knowing the date scheduled for the ceremony?

  “I am so relieved. I was afraid I might find you gone already when I got here. I swear I aged ten years,” Mazie declared, inclined to laugh now that the urgency was passed and she had shifted the responsibility to other shoulders.

  “I can’t tell you how grateful I am,” Eleanora, recalled to her manners, told her. “I am sure Walker will wish to thank you, also.”

  “No, no,” Mazie said, alarm sounding in her voice. “I don’t want thanks. In fact, I would rather not have my name, or John’s either, mentioned in it. The less I have to do with the high-ups, the better I like it.”

  Eleanora could not blame her. She felt much the same way, but she could see little chance of keeping aloof from it. There was a single possibility.

  No dispatch riders kicked their heels outside the Government House; no sutlers or tradesmen waited, no petty municipal officials strode about big with their complaints. All was quiet, a certain sign that the general was not in. In her gratitude for the mercy, Eleanora did not stop to question his whereabouts. She asked at once for Niña Maria. A junior officer in a red tunic without epaulettes took her name and asked her to wait in an antechamber. She entered the room he indicated with the greatest reluctance, afraid Grant would appear at any moment and demand that she account for her presence there.

  A small mirror hung over a table on one wall. Eleanora, walking about the room, caught sight of herself in it. She had thrown a mantilla over her hair. Now she pushed the triangle of black lace down upon her shoulders as a fichu, smoothing the carefully arranged waves and curls, thinking with distraction of how unlikely it was now that she would have need of such an elaborate coiffure. Her eyes were dark green with apprehension, and lavender shadows smudged the skin beneath them, giving her a look of fragility that was not unappealing, though she could not appreciate it. Turning from the mirror, she began to pace the small room. She had just forced herself to be seated in an uncomfortable armchair, striving for at least the appearance of composure, when the young officer returned to lead her upstairs.

  The apartments occupied by William Walker and Niña Maria were opulent, hung with brocade and velvet in rich colors and furnished with heavy, ornately embellished furniture which, Eleanora suspected, had been confiscated from the homes of some of the aristocrats who had quit Granada when Walker captured the town. The bedchamber was done in black and gold with an almost oriental attention to comfort in the profusion of cushions and pillows and the velvet-like softness of the Persian rug that lay upon the floor. Niña Maria sat before an enormous dressing table built with several levels, inset boxes for jewelry and cosmetics, and a towering mirror which reflected the entire room, including the brocade-and-satin-draped four-poster bed.

  That bed was covered with gowns and petticoats, chemises, and pantaloons and bonnets. Trunks and boxes sat about on the floor, and tissue paper lay in drifts over everything. With a hairbrush in her hand, Niña Maria was scolding her maid, a stolid, middle-age Nicaraguan woman, instructing her in how to fold a silk petticoat. She did not acknowledge Eleanora until she had finished her tirade. Then she waved her to a small slipper chair, saying without ceremony, “I hope this isn’t merely a social call. As you can see, I am busy. I must get this packing done and out of the way before the general returns.”

  “You are leaving?” Eleanora asked, momentarily diverted from the reason for her visit.

  “There is a possibility. That can’t interest you, however. Tell me what I can do — no, you stupid cow! Put the slippers in a box by themselves, not on that velvet mantle.”

  As Niña Maria turned back to her, Eleanora said, “I would like to speak to you alone. It is most urgent.”

  “There’s no need, I’m sure, to be melodramatic. My woman has been with me for years. Whatever you have to say can be said in front of her.”

  “I would rather not,” Eleanora insisted.

  “I assure you, she enters into my every sympathy; my thoughts are hers. Furthermore, I have no intention of delaying my departure from here for your sake. If you wish to speak to me, speak. If not—” She shrugged.

  Eleanora lifted a brow at the tone of the woman’s voice, her face hardening. “Very well,” she said. “I have learned of a plot to assassinate William Walker, and whoever might be with him on the grandstand, during the inauguration this afternoon.”

  “What do you mean? What is this plot?” Walker’s mistress demanded.

  “There is a possibility the grandstand will be blown up with explosives,” Eleanora told her, explaining briefly how she had gained the knowledge.

  “Madre de Dios! Why wasn’t I warned? I might have been killed, the imbeciles!”

  “Precisely,” Eleanora said in her driest tone.

  The maid had stopped what she was doing to stand listening. With an irritable gesture, Niña Maria waved at her to continue with her work. “This may change my plans,” she said, half to herself.

  “We must do something to stop this thing,” Eleanora said, her patience growing thin.

  “We? You mean I must, don’t you? But what? Tell me that?”

  “Warn the general. Tell him what has been planned so he can be on his guard, so he can set his men to watch for those who will set the explosive charge and stop them.”

  “Why?” Niña Maria asked, turning cool black eyes on Eleanora.

  “Why?” she repeated blankly. “To save the man’s life, that’s why! His, and that of all the others who will be on the grandstand.”

  “It is a matter of indifference to me,” the other woman said with a careless gesture. “I had nothing to do with this plot, but if the arrangements have been made I have no fault to find with them.”

  “I thought you said you could defeat the general without resorting to cold-blooded murder?” Eleanora reminded her.

  “That is still my belief, but if the others are not in agreement, what can I do?”

  Her helpless attitude grated on Eleanora’s nerves worse than her refusal to act. “You could go to Neville if you object to exposing the people you are working with to danger. Go to him and threaten to tell Walker if he doesn’t call the plan off.”

  “Now there is a thought,” Niña Maria said as if much impressed. “I congratulate you on it, and recommend that you act on it at once. Not that he will listen to you. He will be hard to convince that you would lay yourself open to a charge of conspiring with the enemy. The general will want to know how you came by your information, you understand, and what are you going to tell him? Do you think you can explain without implicating Major Crawford? It will not be easy. Think of the co
nsequences, too. Major Crawford, if he were arrested, would feel little compunction in revealing the part you have played since returning from Honduras. The people he is working for might not look on his arrest with favor either. That could be tragic for your brother, could it not?”

  “That is a chance I will have to take. I can’t just do nothing,” Eleanora said with deadly quiet. “Though perhaps it would be better if I went to Grant and the general directly.”

  “By all means, if you are determined to ruin yourself. I would hurry about it, if I were you. It may be nearly time for the ceremony before those two return. The general received a message this morning that General Ramon Belloso of Honduras was marching south within striking distance of León. It is too late to put an army in the field in time to save León, but William and Colonel Farrell are out now inspecting the fortifications of Granada with a view toward reinforcing them. I wish you much luck in running them to earth.”

  Undecided, Eleanora sat without speaking. Niña Maria watched her with narrowed eyes, her fingers gripping the hairbrush going white at the knuckles. Becoming aware of the other woman’s tension, Eleanora searched her mind for the reason. Niña Maria seemed confident that she would be ruled by self-preservation and the force of circumstances, but was she in truth that sanguine? If not, what could the woman do about it? She might call the guard, have her arrested on some trumped-up charge. There would be repercussions, of course, but with any luck, not until it was too late. She must take care, Eleanora thought, not to fall into that trap. “That settles it then,” she said aloud, adding for good measure a movement of her shoulders which might have passed for a shrug. “I suppose General Walker will have to take his chances.”

  “There,” Niña Maria exclaimed, relaxing visibly. “I knew you could not be so stupid. We must both of us have our excuses ready as to why we refuse to mount to the grandstand. What shall it be? Modesty, for you, I think; you have the face to get away with such a tale. I, perhaps, have sprained my ankle and cannot stir a step more than is necessary to have a good view of the proceedings. It might be wisest to postpone my departure until tomorrow. And I must have mourning clothes. It will be expected.” Already oblivious to Eleanora’s presence, the woman turned to her maid, instructing her to search for a gown of black lawn, describing it in minute detail while abusing the woman for her slowness in unearthing it. She did not notice when Eleanora got to her feet and slipped from the room.

  As she left the Government House and crossed the plaza, Eleanora noticed that the work had stopped on the scaffolding of the grandstand and the carpenters were resting under the dusty-leaved trees near the market place. It was still unfinished, and to her untrained eye it looked as if there was too much to be done before evening for lying in the shade, however hot it might be. Someone would have to drape bunting to cover the bare wooden railings that surrounded it also, but no doubt a detail of soldiers had been assigned that duty. It was not like William Walker to leave this sort of thing to the last minute. Still, perhaps he had his reasons, even something to do with his fear of an attempt on his life. That fear had proven to be well grounded. He was entitled to take whatever precaution he pleased.

  What was she to do? The question was pulling her apart. She had thought that Niña Maria might like to take full credit for discovering the danger to the general, allowing her to keep out of it. That was not to be. She must choose, then, between sacrificing Jean-Paul, or watching William Walker and Grant and, perhaps, Colonel Thomas Henry and a score of other men, mount the steps of the grandstand to their deaths. Her brother, or the man she loved? It could be put as simply as that.

  Was there another solution? There was still her first impulse, to tell Grant. Surely if she explained everything to him, he could prevent the assassination attempt and do it in such a way that no one could guess that she was involved, thereby preserving Jean-Paul from danger. He had to. There was no other way she could take and still live with herself.

  First, she had to find Grant, no easy task. As a beginning, she retraced her footsteps to leave a message for him with the riflemen on guard at the door of the Government House, then she walked away with a quick, half-running stride. She would quarter the town. Someone, somewhere, must have seen him.

  She visited the guardhouse, the barracks, and the hospital first, on the chance that Niña Maria had tried to direct her to a false scent. She did not find him, but she left word with everyone to whom she spoke. Making her way down to the wharf, she ran into Colonel Henry on horseback, and when she explained, mendaciously, that her urgent need to see Grant was connected with some unsatisfactory arrangements for the inauguration, he offered to make a circuit of such fortifications around the city as were in existence. Failing that, he told her, laughing, he would be glad to make a round of a few of the cantinas on her behalf. That was where he would expect to find any sensible man on a day as hot as the one they were having—

  Eleanora, grateful to him both for his help and for lightening her mood, gave him her leave to visit as many as he chose. She stood for a time after he had gone, enjoying the suggestion of a breeze off the lake on her heated face, wishing she dared submerge herself, clothes and all, into the cool gray-green water. After a while the comments and importuning of the loafers around the pier grew too bold, and she made her way tiredly back toward the palacio.

  As she turned into the Calle Santa Celia from the street which ran along the lake, she saw a man on horseback in an officer’s tunic making his way from the far end through the street vendors and the crowd of other men and women who had decided, unanimously it seemed, to make the quiet street a thoroughfare. Eleanora began to hurry, taking that uniformed figure with a campaign hat pulled low on his forehead for Colonel Henry coming already to report to her. Then as the man drew nearer, she paled, her footsteps slowing once more. It was Grant, and as he looked up and saw her making her way toward him, she fancied she could see already the condemnation in his stern-lipped face.

  Dismounting, he turned to walk back toward the palacio with her, leading his horse. “They told me when I reached the Government House just now that you wanted to see me,” he said. “What in heaven’s name is so important you have to wander about the streets in this kind of weather, and alone?”

  “I — I have to talk to you,” she said, glancing at him, then looking quickly away again.

  He studied her averted face for a moment, then said more quietly, “All right.”

  The distance to the palacio seemed incredibly short. They tied Grant’s mount to the hitching ring set into one of the posts on the lower galería and stepped inside. Eleanora led the way into the patio, deliberately turning away from the stairs to the bedchamber. She needed no reminders of past ecstasy to weaken her resolve. Moreover, in the shade of the orange trees was seclusion enough for her to say what needed saying without it being so isolated that she need fear the full release of his anger.

  These thoughts skimming the surface of her mind, Eleanora turned to face him, and was nearly demoralized by the look of concern which clouded his eyes. With one hand, he gestured toward one of the wrought-iron chairs, waiting until she had seated herself upon it before taking the one beside it. “Tell me,” he commanded.

  Simple words, plain, fatal sentences that must be spoken. She dragged them one by one from her unwilling tongue. “Please don’t ask me how I know,” she begged when she was done. “Just accept that I do, and do something to stop this terrible crime before it is too late!”

  His concern was gone, seeping slowly away to be replaced by a brooding anger, edged with regret. Running his fingers back through his hair, he lifted his hat from where he had placed it on his knee, and got to his feet. The blue of his eyes had the metallic hardness of steel as he looked down at her. “I’ll do that, for now,” he said slowly, “because I’ll have to move fast if I want to catch these men in the act, and put a stop to their game. But I’ll be back, and I’m going to want to know a lot more than I do now. If you are going to make up a story
to tell me,” he ended with soft bitterness, “make sure it’s a good one!”

  22

  A hot gust of wind billowed the curtain that had been hanging so straight at the windows. From where she lay on the bed with her hands behind her head, Eleanora looked in the direction of the movement. She had been lying for hours without feeling the slightest draft between the open door onto the inner galería and the window. A rumble like distant thunder came to her ears, and she went still. No, the sound was too soft to have been an explosion. It must be thunder. Was the rain coming at last? Straining her eyes, she watched for the flash of lightning in the evening sky. She saw nothing, perhaps because it was still too early, the storm too far away. Wind swirled the curtains again, drawing them in and out of the long opening of the window in a tired kind of dance, a dance which ended abruptly as the bedchamber door was closed.