Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  The gold flecks were bright in her green eyes as she raised them to Grant’s. “Would you consider — taking me and Michael with you — wherever you go?”

  “Take you with me? What about all this?” he asked slowly, indicating the house and its furnishings, “and what of the damnable money Luis left to you?”

  “The house I would like to keep as my own place to come to when we are in need of civilization. The servants are free men and women of color hired for a wage — except for Michael’s nurse, who will have to come with us, I’m afraid.”

  “The three of you?”

  She nodded meekly. “As for the money, I seem to have squandered it in a remarkably short time—”

  “You needn’t think you can fool me,” he said, lifting one eyebrow. “Henry told me what you have been doing for the men coming home from Nicaragua.”

  “They were all so hungry—”

  “I know,” he answered shortly. “Are you certain that’s all? No walking, wounded, or stray cats or—”

  “I forgot Colonel Henry!” she exclaimed.

  “To the devil with Henry. He can find himself another nurse — and another bivouac, for that matter.”

  “Oh, Grant,” she said, her eyes unaccountably filling with tears.

  Coming toward her, he dropped to one knee beside her chair. “All right, if it means so much to you, Henry can come too,” he said.

  “It’s not that,” she said, smiling, “It’s just that I’ve loved you so long, and I was so afraid.”

  “Of what?” he asked, gently touching the tears that stood like jewels on her cheeks.

  “That you wouldn’t want me — that you wouldn’t believe that my child was your son.”

  “I will always want you,” he said, his eyes steady upon hers. “I will keep you near me all the days of my life if you will let me — and if you can bear to be wed to a man of Indian blood.”

  “I can think of nothing I would like more,” she answered, pronouncing the words with grave emphasis.

  The expression in his eyes held the warmth of a caress before he glanced down at Michael in her arms, awakened by their voices, staring at Grant with solemn curiosity. Tucking his forefinger into the baby’s small hand, he said, “As for this being my child, you never had the honor of meeting the Apache chief, Running Wild Horse. If you had, you would know I could never deny his great-grandson.”

  The baby, unimpressed by his illustrious ancestor, unerringly carried the finger in his grasp to his mouth. Tasting the salt of his mother’s tears upon the calloused tip, he gnawed hungrily at it with the two teeth just breaking the surface of his gums.

  Grant winced, though he made no move to retrieve his finger. Looking up at Eleanora, he said with a crooked smile, “For such a fierce little warrior, I think the only place is Texas.”

  Author’s Notes

  Although Notorious Angel is fiction, William Walker was a real historical personality, one of the most fascinating, if little known, in the era in which he lived. His campaign in Nicaragua, along with his early life and his attempt to annex Lower California, occurred substantially as given. His determination to fulfill what he conceived to be his destiny in Nicaragua did not end with his initial defeat by the Central American coalition. He mounted four additional expeditions to Nicaragua between 1857 and 1860. On his second try, he was stopped and turned back by Commodore Hiram Paulding of the American steam frigate Wabash, who was acting on the orders of President Buchanan. On his third and fourth attempts, he failed to make a landing due to storms at sea and other adverse circumstances. The fifth try in August of 1860 was more successful He landed in Honduras and proceeded to capture the fortress of Truxillo, the first step in a plan to make the Honduran island of Roatan a base from which to launch his attack on Nicaragua. This was a mistake. Truxillo, being mortgaged to the British government due to a debt, came under the protection of Great Britain. On August 19 the British sloop-of-war Icarus, under Naval Commander Norvell Salmon, entered the harbor. Training the ship’s guns upon the fortress, Commander Salmon ordered Walker to surrender.

  Walker, playing for time, put off his answer until nightfall. Under cover of darkness, he abandoned the fort and his wounded, including Colonel Thomas Henry, who died a few days later of his injuries. Walker marched overland, driving off his Honduran pursuers, and turned toward the coast. His escape was cut off, however, at the Rio Negro by the Icarus and a schooner bearing two hundred and fifty Honduran reinforcements. In the face of overwhelming odds, Walker surrendered once more on being assured of safe conduct for his men and himself. They returned to Truxillo where Commander Salmon, violating his given word, gave Walker into the hands of the Hondurans. After a fiasco of a trial, held on September 11, 1860, William Walker was sentenced to be shot. The sentence was carried out at daybreak of the following morning.

  In the decade after Walker’s death, the Nicaraguan transit route was owned by a series of different companies. The continuing political upheaval within the country made profitable operation of the route impossible. The route, as the single asset of value in the country, was seized and resold at each change of government. Due to the constant interruption of service and resulting lack of reliability, the route never regained its competitive position with the Panama passage. The completion of the transcontinental railroad, assuring fast and inexpensive transportation from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, effectively sealed the doom of the Nicaraguan transit route. It ceased official operation in 1868. Fifty years later there was some revival of interest in the transit route at the time of the discussion of the best location for the construction of an interoceanic canal. In the end Panama was selected and the Nicaraguan route sank back into obscurity.

  For those who are interested in such details, the real people other than William Walker in Notorious Angel were the New Orleans recruiting agent, Thomas Fisher; Colonel Thomas Henry; his opponent in the duel in New Orleans, Major Joe Howell (the brother of Varina Howell Davis, second wife of Jefferson Davis) and, of course, Cornelius Vanderbilt. All others are fictional. The characters of Mazie Brentwood and, to some extent, Eleanora, were based on a passing reference found in my research to a true heroine of the Nicaraguan campaign, Mrs. Edward Bingham. The wife of an invalid actor, she came with her husband and children to take up one of the land grants issued by Walker to American settlers. She won the deepest gratitude of the soldiers of the Phalanx for her services in the military hospital at Granada. During the siege of Guadaloupe Church, she ministered unceasingly to the sick and injured until, tired and weak, she succumbed to cholera.

  Patricia Maxwell

  aka Jennifer Blake

  Sweet Brier

  From The Fourth Printing, 1986, Edition

  Notorious Angel has been called the best book I’ve written. It may be; I couldn’t say since as the author it’s impossible for me to be objective. Readers have their favorites among a writer’s works that often seem to have more to do with the sequence in which they read them or their own personal situations at the time than with essential merit. I always feel that the book just completed is best, though I will admit to having favorites myself, usually because of a fondness for the characters, for memories connected with the setting, or for some plot detail that represents a minor brainstorm. Notorious Angel is one of them. Published originally in 1977 under my own name, it was released within a month of my first Jennifer Blake title, Love’s Wild Desire. It did not have quite the same impact, perhaps because it was associated with the romantic suspense novels that I had previously written under the Maxwell name. My affection for it stems partially from this “stepchild” status, but also because in writing it I discovered the fascination of complicated political situations, and because it keeps alive in my memory the moment in St. Francis Hospital, Monroe, Louisiana, where my father-in-law lay dying of cancer, that I discovered the prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel that appears in the text. Of such things are writers’ lives, and books, made. It gives me great pleasure to se
e Notorious Angel reissued in this new edition.

  1

  The dry evening wind rustled across the plains. It flapped the canvas of the wagons, the ancient Conestogas, the Pittsburgs and flatbeds, and swirled the dust of the milling horses and livestock, mingling it with the rising blue-gray smoke of cook fires. It ruffled the tops of the sage and buffalo grass, sweeping over the ground to where the girl stood on the slight rise, lifting the curling edges of her blue-black hair, making her narrow her eyes against its grit-laden breath.

  Serena Walsh drew her faded shawl closer around her. The wind was from the mountains lying like a soft lavender cloud on the horizon. It was cool and fresh after the heat of the day, holding the feel of autumn in its ceaseless embrace despite the prairie daisies of summer that nodded about her blowing skirts. Soon, within two or three days more of travel, they would reach the mountains, reach the towering landmark called Pikes Peak, the Shining Mountain of the Spanish explorers who were the first white men to see it. At its base was a town, almost a city, filled with normal, happy people; religious people, yes, but not fanatics who followed the creed of plural marriage forbidden by the church they claimed to revere. There, please God, she would leave this plodding wagon train with its harsh-spoken men, its women with downcast eyes, and its children who never smiled.

  Serena flung back her dark hair in a gesture of freedom. Her finely molded features were set in a look of defiance, and there was a determined expression in her blue-gray eyes. She was not a Mormon. She would not be a Mormon. Let them frown at her unbound hair and uncovered head, at her unseemly independence and solitary habits. Let them purse their lips at her bright-colored, close-fitting dresses. She did not care. It was true that her dresses hugged her a little too well; her shape had taken on added fullness in the years since her mother had made them for her as a girl of sixteen. It could not be helped. There had been no way to replace them. Three years. As incredible as it seemed, it had been only three years since she had known a home, a settled way of life. It seemed forever.

  From the direction of the wagon train came a call, a shrill demand for attention. At the sound of her name, Serena turned her head a fraction. A woman stood with her hands on her hips, staring in Serena’s direction. Even at that distance, Serena thought she could see the spiteful frown that twisted the woman’s sallow, vindictive face. Elder Greer’s second wife, Beatrice, considered it her duty to chasten the gentile creature her husband had foisted upon her, to recall her to a sense of a place as a woman. She could see no reason why Serena should be allowed to escape her portion of the tasks that had to be done before supper was ready for the men. Doubtless, in Beatrice’s tainted view, Serena was making a deliberate spectacle of herself; certainly she had hinted as much often enough. Serena could not see how she could be blamed for the attention she attracted. It was only because she was so different from the drab, submissive women of the train that the men watched her from beneath the brims of their sober black hats. No idea of enticing them had ever come into her head, no matter what anyone said. Look at Elder Greer, pausing in his task of pouring out a meager ration of water for his saddle horse, shielding his gaze by a pretense of wiping sweat from his brow with a grimy rag. Even the leader of the train could not seem to become used to the sight of her. From all indications, the story of the temptress Jezebel and her bitter end seemed likely to crop up again in the elder’s sermon tonight.

  Beatrice called again, a goaded, strident shout. Serena gave a small sigh, pretending not to hear. As far as she was concerned, she had no obligation to the Mormons, men or women. She had not asked to be one of the Greer party when her father and mother had died of typhoid three weeks out from Missouri. Indeed, she had flatly refused to accept that dubious hospitality. The elders, meeting in council, had ignored her objections. She needed protection, they said. She was not capable of seeing after her own livestock or driving a wagon. She must have someone older and more learned to tell her what she must do, to guide her steps toward righteous womanhood and shelter her immortal soul from evil. They had appointed Elder Greer to that post, or rather, he had appointed himself, since he was the leader of the Saints. She was to join his “family,” his aging, gray-haired wife of twenty years, Agatha, humble and soft-spoken; his second wife, Beatrice, with her mousy brown hair and round hazel eyes filled with fear and spite; and his third wife, Lessie, a simple girl with pale-blond, almost white hair, and washed-out blue eyes that held not a flicker of understanding though her body beneath her shapeless gray gown was ripe and yielding. Serena was a year or so younger than Lessie, of the same age as the elder’s firstborn son. Despite her age, she was not treated as a child, but as one of the older women, a fact that made her more than a little nervous, especially when Elder Greer sought her out, bending his silver head over her, speaking to her in rich, unctuous tones of how her body and soul were in his keeping, touching her arm with his damp, insistent fingers. As soon as she accepted the tenets of the Mormon faith, he said, she would achieve oneness with him and his family. She would lie safe in his bosom, sanctified by a holy union. All he had would be hers; all she had would be his. She would be pierced by the divine power of God in man, the flower of her maidenhood would be plucked in its early season, and he would rest at peace in the sweet temple of her womanly grace. In contrast to his fair words and reverent tone, the look in his eyes had been so searingly bestial that Serena had twisted from his grasp and run, leaving him rigid with anger behind her. From that day she had made her own cook fire, cleaned her own dishes, and slept in her own wagon with the canvas ends tightly tied shut.

  Still, she was often forced to endure the elder’s company as he rode along beside her wagon in the noonday heat, or commanded her presence at a Sabbath gathering where he spoke long and with fulsome earnestness, laboring to make her accept the superiority of the Mormon creed. It did not serve, and as the weeks went by there was a growing mood of resentment against her among the Saints for her failure to recognize the honor that was being accorded her.

  Serena, compelled by some demon of pride and perversity, had taken lately to doing those things she knew the elder and their wives would not like. Holding herself aloof, apart from the other women, was an example, though by no means all. She had loosened the collar of her dress when the sun was high, unbuttoning her sleeves and rolling them well above her shapely elbows. Sometimes on an evening she would change into the silk gown that had belonged to her mother, put on her mother’s satin slippers with their gilt heels, and sit on the wagon seat, leaning her forearms on her knees so that the firelight played over the creamy curves of her shoulders in the low-necked gown, revealing the shadowed valley between her breasts. Strange how the sly looks of the men and twitched skirts of the women could make of her shy and gentle mother’s evening gown a garment of shame.

  With her hair dressed high on her head, cascading in shining ringlets over her shoulders, Serena looked not unlike the miniature of her lovely French-Creole mother, painted when she had been a New Orleans belle. The difference was in the willful set of the mouth and in the eyes. Her mother’s had been soft sherry brown, while Serena had inherited her smoky-blue peat-bog Irish color from her father. How odd to think that if Félicité Crèvecoeur had not fallen in love with a despised Irish laborer, a mere carpenter on her father’s plantation acres, and married him in the teeth of her family’s opposition, Serena would not be standing on the prairie at this moment. Sean Walsh, her father, unable to find the respect his soul craved or the wealth he felt his wife deserved, unwilling to stay in one place long enough to earn either, had made wanderers of the woman he loved and his only child. They never complained. Their stability had been in the man who had made of life a wry joke and sang to relieve the monotony of the miles they traveled.

  Serena drew a deep breath against the pain of remembrance. They were gone, her mother and father. Her desolation went too deep for easy tears, something the Mormons did not understand or readily forgive, one more thing they held against her. Her
father had thought to find all he longed for at the foot of the shining mountain called Pikes Peak, in the new gold-mining town of Cripple Creek. Gold, how it had drawn him, leading him to sell all they owned, pawn his wife’s few remaining ornaments, even to beg from his formidable French-Creole in-laws. With his stake in hand he had set out for a new life, not caviling even at the necessity of joining this band of religious pilgrims when he found he did not have the resources to pay the rail fare for his wife and daughter across the dusty plains. How much better it would have been if he had waited, taken work over the summer to make up the difference. They would have arrived nearly as soon, and no doubt avoided the contaminated water that had caused the death of himself and his wife. But no, Sean Walsh had been too impatient to stand the delay in setting out; he had ever to be moving.

  Swift, noisy, relentlessly modern, the railroad rattled through the evening somewhere to the north of the Mormon wagon train. Serena could picture it in her mind, rumbling, swaying, trailing a dark cloud of smoke that swirled about the lamp lighted windows. Aboard would be men and women laughing, eating, drinking, or making ready for the night. There would be merchants, bankers, and mine owners, men who had already made their fortunes in the silver boom towns of Colorado, returning to Denver or perhaps taking the spur to Colorado Springs, then on to Cripple Creek itself to add to their holdings. And with them would be their wives and daughters dressed in the latest fashions from New York and Paris, women petted and pampered and showered with a thousand small treasures.

  At the thought of such swift, luxurious travel, Serena knew an onrush of restless impatience with the plodding progress of the wagon train. Little though she might relish the idea, she could not deny that she had something more of her father than his temper and his eyes. If there was any merit in his vision of wealth and respect to be had in Cripple Creek, then perhaps there was a fortune of some design there for his daughter as well.