by Shirl Henke
Samuel felt as if Bullock had slammed a booted foot into his guts. Olivia gasped aloud.
“Of course, I enjoyed reading them before I burned them. So tragic, the pregnant lover left behind by her gallant soldier, so desperate that she invented a husband to cover the embarrassment of her bastard. Your letters were more entertaining than a novel.” At the poleaxed look on Shelby’s face, Bullock gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Of course I failed to mention Don Rafael Obregón was a figment of the imagination when I composed Claiborne’s letter to you. Getting him to sign it concealed in a sheaf of boring government documents was rather easy, too.”
“You kept us apart for three years,” Olivia said, unable to take it in. Samuel had not deserted her! The look of raw anguish on his face spoke volumes.
“You denied my son his father and left Olivia to face the censure of society alone. I know you always hated me but why them? They’re innocent, Richard.” He fought down the rage boiling deep inside his gut, stalling for time, drawing Bullock out.
“Innocent,” he spat contemptuously. “A whore and her bastard.” He jerked Olivia’s arm, painfully jamming the gun barrel against the soft flesh of her breast.
“It’s me you hate, Richard. I was the one you never believed good enough for your beloved Tisha,” Samuel reminded him, moving a tiny step closer.
“You killed her. You’re responsible—both of you.” He glared at Shelby. “You destroyed her dreams of becoming a president’s lady. You left her alone, facing the disgrace of a divorce so you could chase after your whore! I found Tisha sobbing, broken and desperate, my proud, beautiful, splendid Tisha, crying because she’d lost you to this foreign nobody. I tried to comfort her. I did everything for her...”
“Even trying to kill me to prevent the scandal of the divorce?” Samuel was beginning to make sense of the erratic series of attempts on his life four years earlier.
“He was the one who shot your horse out from under you on the Virginia post road?” Olivia asked, but knew the answer to her question.
“But he failed. Just like he failed that night in the inn and then in St. Louis. Tish must have been quite vexed. She always was quite the bitch when she didn’t get her way,” Shelby said softly, inching yet nearer. Bullock suddenly moved the gun away from Olivia’s breast and aimed it at Samuel.
A sardonic smile mercurially flashed across his face. The eerie light in his eyes glowed with utter madness now. “Yes, she was a bitch, the most magnificent bitch on earth. In heat all the time.”
“You were her lover,” Samuel said, damning his own stupidity for never figuring it out before.
“Ever since we were in the schoolroom. You never knew, did you, you pathetic idiot?” His sneer turned to rage then as the memories rolled over him. “She was my first woman...my only woman. The only one worthy.” He jerked Olivia’s arm, glaring at her as he raised the gun to her head. “You actually believed I had a tendresse for you, Shelby’s leavings?”
Olivia could feel the paring knife in her pocket, pressed against her hip but she could not reach it. She struggled to get free of the madman’s rough hold.
When Bullock looked down at her, tightening his grip, Samuel again moved closer. Almost near enough to jump him, but only if he could make Richard lose control and point the pistol away from Olivia, at him. “It must’ve really galled you to have me bed your beloved Tisha,” he taunted with an easy arrogance he was far from feeling. “I remember how you looked at me after she had the abortion. I’d done what you never could—planted my seed in her belly. You wanted to kill me all along, didn’t you, Richard?”
Bullock’s jaw worked, grinding until the veins stood out in his neck. His body reflected the fury of the firing going on a scant mile from them. Then he regained a sudden icy calm, speaking over the boom of the cannonade. “You deserved to die for all you did to her.”
“Especially for upsetting her grand schemes, for leaving her. But she didn’t give up, did she, Richard? She followed me to St. Louis and decided to try again. If you were such a magnificent lover, why did she do that, hmmm?”
“You left her sobbing, you fucking bastard! You destroyed her pride! Tisha never really cried, not until that morning when you left her.”
“And that’s when you killed her. It wasn’t thieves as Senator Soames believed, was it?”
“I...I asked her to come away with me, to forget you.” An almost placid expression flashed across his face for an instant, then the dream dissolved into reality once more. “We could’ve gone abroad.”
“But she refused, of course. Knowing Tish, not in the most gracious terms either,” Samuel said dryly. “You quarreled over a gun and then you shot her.”
“I didn’t mean to! God, I didn’t mean to kill her! It was an accident. When she died in my arms I thought of joining her. I reloaded the gun. I almost did it, but then I realized who was really at fault...the two of you who wrecked her life. And just killing you wasn’t good enough. Too quick, too painless.
“You had to suffer for years just as I did. When I followed you to New Orleans and learned that you’d been forced to leave your doxy behind, my plan crystallized. I disposed of Claiborne’s secretary, then secured the job for myself so I could intercept your correspondence.
“Oh, how I loved reading those impassioned letters you wrote each other, pouring out your hearts, you asking her if she was carrying your child.” He looked down at Olivia. “And you begging him to come and claim it.”
“It must have gotten complicated when I showed up in Claiborne’s office,” Samuel volunteered, breathing tightly as a steel band seemed to squeeze all the air from his lungs. How well Bullock’s sadistic plan had worked!
“Once you nearly saw me coming out of a meeting in the Cabildo, but I slipped away. By then I was already prepared for this, the final act.”
“He’s a traitor, Samuel. He’s been passing information from the governor’s office to the British,” Olivia said, twisting away just enough to reach the knife and close her fingers around the smooth wooden handle.
“And those same obliging British are going to hang you as a spy while your whore and her bastard watch you kick and struggle. Your face will turn black, you know?” he said conversationally, his calm once more restored.
“You’re the one who’ll hang, Bullock. There won’t be a redcoat left in Louisiana after Jackson’s men finish with them.”
As they spoke the loud crashing of artillery continued to rumble from Roderick’s Canal to the west of them.
“Jackson’s pathetic Dirty Shirts will be cut to ribbons by British bayonet charges. They’ll turn tail and run.”
“By the sound of those rifles, they haven’t yet. You’re gambling everything on a British victory, aren’t you?” Shelby asked, striving to remain calm. One of his men has David. I have to lure him into leaving the boy. David, his son, whom he might never live to see.
Olivia saw what Samuel was doing, playing on Bullock’s obsessions and his ego, all the while moving closer to make a desperate leap. But it was too risky—unless she evened the odds. Just as she clenched the knife and started to inch it from her pocket, a blast of artillery, no doubt wide of its mark, shook the house as it landed in the nearby woods. The windowpanes rattled. Then the front door burst open and a breathless man came running into the foyer.
“Sir, Sergeant Matthews reports that General Keane and General Pakenham are both dead. General Lambert’s ordered retreat!”
Bullock emitted the snarl of a cornered animal and jammed the gun into Olivia’s breast again. “Take Shelby to Lambert. See that he hangs!”
“No!” Olivia broke free of Bullock’s punishing hold, driving the small blade into his thigh. He cursed in surprise, then struck the side of her face with his pistol in an attempt to subdue her. The British soldier started to level his musket on Samuel but the American was too quick for him, knocking it away. It discharged harmlessly into the carpet as it fell to the floor with a thud.
The
two men exchanged swift desperate punches, moving together and circling so Bullock could not get a clear shot. Knocked to her knees behind him, Olivia struggled to clear her vision and overcome the buzzing pain in her temple. She still clutched the knife, trying to regain enough steadiness to lash out again at Bullock before he could shoot Samuel. But suddenly he moved away from her, dragging his leg, which oozed a slow trickle of blood.
She wobbled to her feet, her eyes darting between the no-holds-barred fistfight and Bullock. Instantly she knew what he planned. He was headed down the hall to David’s room! Holding onto the wall for balance, she started after him. There could be no mistake this time. He was utterly mad. She veered into the study across the hall just as Bullock opened the door at the end of the long passageway.
Bullock motioned for the soldier standing by the child’s bed to move aside as he raised his pistol and pointed it at the little boy huddled beneath the covers staring at him with wide blue eyes—Shelby’s eyes.
“I want my mama,” the boy said boldly, even though his thumb slipped into his mouth afterward.
The Englishman’s eyes widened in shock as he realized what the American intended. “No, you can’t—”
“Get out there and help Brady, you imbecile!” Richard screamed, reaching down to yank the covers away from the boy who now froze, instinctively knowing terror. Somehow, even over the pounding of cannon, Bullock heard the click of a hammer. And that was the last thing he ever heard. The shot hit dead center, smashing through his spinal column and penetrating his heart. He dropped like a stone. Olivia lowered one smoking dueling pistol and raised the other, pointing it at the soldier’s chest. “Step away from my son. I don’t miss.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed and his face was ashen. Hands raised, he obeyed. “He was bloody crazy, m’am. I’d never hurt a child.”
“The war’s over. Your army’s been beaten. They’re retreating. I suggest you follow them,” she said, ignoring David’s cries, eager to get everyone out of his room. She pointed to the door with her pistol, motioning the soldier out into the hall where the sounds of fighting continued.
A second man had apparently joined the fray against Samuel, who was trading punches with him over the inert body of the first.
“Tell your friend it’s over,” Olivia said, prodding him in the back with her pistol after relieving him of his weapons.
Before he could speak, Shelby came in beneath his brawny opponent’s swing and landed a sharp powerful punch to his stomach, doubling him over, then smashing his clasped hands across the fellow’s neck as he crumpled. He seized the unfired pistols he had been forced to discard earlier and looked frantically toward the man advancing on him.
“Where are they? Where’s my family?” he rasped out, not seeing Olivia behind the tall soldier.
“We’re safe, Samuel. Bullock is dead. It’s over,” she said, standing clear of the soldier.
In the distance the cannonade and rifle fire had fallen silent. Down the hall a child’s plaintive cry echoed softly. Shelby held his pistol steady on the Englishman while one of his companions stirred on the floor. As they regained consciousness, the American said, “Round up the others who came with you and get the hell out of here if you don’t want to end up prisoners of war.”
“Bullock’s dead,” the one by Olivia said to his companions.
“Let’s go. Ain’t bloody nothin’ we can do ‘ere,” the first big brute Samuel had downed replied. “Give me a ‘and with Toomey, mate.”
Once Olivia lowered her pistol, her captive hurried over to do as he was bid. They dragged the third man out with them. Samuel and Olivia could hear them calling to the remnants of the detachment as they rode away.
He stood, bloody and battered, staring at his love with disbelief. “I’m afraid if I blink, you’ll vanish,” he said hoarsely.
“You’re hurt,” she whispered, hurrying across the distance separating them to touch his bloodied lip gently, affirming that he was real and alive and safe here in her arms. “Oh, Samuel, I can scarce take it in...”
He stroked her hair. “Neither can I...I have a son—David. Is he—”
“He’s unharmed.”
Knowing what she had done, he said, “I owe Micajah Johnstone the whole earth for teaching you to shoot.”
Olivia nodded. “Come,” she said, taking his hand in hers, “meet your son.”
He followed her down the hallway like a dream walker, into the small room at the far end. Bullock’s body lay sprawled in a pool of red at the foot of the child’s small bed. Amazingly, David had fallen asleep now that the noises had at last abated. He lay on his stomach with his head turned facing them.
Swallowing painfully, Samuel looked down at a miniature replica of himself. Slowly, almost shyly, he reached out one large brown hand and stroked the boy’s raven hair. “It’s curly just like mine was when I was a boy.”
“He has blue eyes, too,” she said, her voice breaking.
“What must you have thought,” he asked, “when I deserted you—all your letters to me unanswered?”
“I believed you had been killed on some dangerous mission,” she replied simply.
She had believed in his loss even in the face of such overwhelming circumstances, alone and unwed in a strange city, carrying the child of a married man. “You trusted me and protected our son by faking a marriage to give him a name.” He shook his head sadly, letting his hand drop away from David.
Olivia watched as his fists clenched on the wooden railing along the child’s bed. She could feel his anguish. “You believed I really was married when the governor’s letter came, didn’t you?”
Her voice was soft, without accusation, yet it cut him to his very soul. “Yes. I’d spent months waiting for you to answer my letters. Then just after I learned I was free of Tish, I found out you’d supposedly wed a Spanish nobleman.” He turned and looked into her fathomless green eyes with a guilt-stricken expression on his face. “I didn’t believe in you, Livy. And I can never forgive myself.”
Almost of its own volition, his hand touched her face, stroking the cheek where Richard had left an ugly bruise that was beginning to darken the tender flesh. She pressed his hand against her cheek. “I forgive you, Samuel. I knew who you were and what you were when I fell in love with you. Life had given you little reason to trust anyone. The evidence against me was damning.”
He shook his head. “No, it was my damnable pride—I’m only a soldier. You’re an aristocrat and an heiress. I believed you’d choose a nobleman over me. Hell, I already had one rich, ambitious wife. I was afraid of another, even though I knew in my heart you were nothing like Tish.”
Her chest tightened and she felt her pulse begin to race painfully. We can’t have come so far to lose each other now! “I could have married a rich, aristocratic man, Samuel. I had offers. I didn’t want them, even when I thought you were dead. But then I found out you were alive—last spring.” His eyes met hers, startled, as she went on, “I have friends in Pensacola. They passed on the gossip about the ‘Spanish Yankee’ who outsmarted the British and escaped. I knew it was you and I hated you then for deserting us.” Her eyes looked up imploringly then. “But I still couldn’t stop loving you. In my heart of hearts I was glad you were alive.”
“When I came to New Orleans I wanted to see you but I was afraid. They said you were a widow living in seclusion. I knew you were free...but I still couldn’t gather the courage to come to you, Livy. Oh, Livy.” He reached out and enfolded her in his arms. “I’ve been a fool, such a fool.”
Through her tears she whispered against the scratchy wool of his uniform, “No more than I.”
David awakened and looked up at his mother in the arms of a big dark-haired stranger. Although he knew it was not the bad man with yellow hair, he was still afraid, not understanding what had transpired. “Mama?” he said tentatively.
Olivia turned in Samuel’s arms and reached out for the boy. “Come here, darling.” She picked him up and pres
sed his head to her shoulder, shielding him from the bloody mess of Bullock’s body.
Samuel looked into David’s eyes and the primordial shock rocked him again. His son. “Let me have him. You’re hurt,” he said to Olivia as she winced when the child bumped her chin with his head as he wriggled.
She gave him over, saying, “David, this is someone you’ve waited a long time to meet.”
As Samuel carried his son out of the room, the bloodshed and hatred of the past fell away from them all. Outside the fog lifted and clear winter sunshine beamed a benediction through the open front door.
Chapter Twenty Eight
Sounds of jubilation echoed up from Chartre Street as the citizens and soldiers of New Orleans celebrated their incredible victory. The British invaders had been utterly vanquished before the combined firepower of Baratarian artillery and Kentucky long rifles, suffering nearly fifteen hundred casualties to a scant fifty on the American side. Jackson was paraded through the streets as the hero of the hour along with the Lafitte brothers and the leaders of the intrepid Tennessee and Kentucky militias. The city was delirious as church bells pealed out the glorious tidings.
But all was quiet upstairs in the Durand city house where Samuel and Olivia had taken refuge after he reported Bullock’s treachery and death to the general and an amazed Governor Claiborne. David slept peacefully in the room next door with the maid Florine watching over him.
In the parlor a warm fire crackled on the hearth, taking away the chill of January air. Samuel filled two crystal goblets with Madeira and brought one to Olivia, who stood warming her hands by the flames. The fire reflected on her hair, making it blaze in splendor as it fell down her back. Her slender figure, dressed in softly flowing green muslin, was outlined in the light. His eyes traced the soft swell of breasts, the curve of hips, then moved up to her patrician face, so proud and lovely in profile. He ached with wanting her.
Silently he handed her the glass and she took it. Their gazes locked over the rims. Neither one drank. Finally he said, “I just received a letter from my sister. Claiborne’ s new clerk brought it to me when I reported to Jackson. The Santa Fe trade is flourishing. Santiago’s building another warehouse in St. Louis. He wants me to live there and run the American end of the business.”