Night Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy)

by Shirl Henke

  When they turned down the other wing of the house, where the bedrooms were located, Kai was in the process of setting the last of her trunks in a large bedroom at the head of the hallway, obviously the master suite where Lee slept. The bed was large, made up with a bright blue spread. The masculine room was furnished with a tall oaken armoire and a wide library table spread with papers and books. A gun belt was slung carelessly over one chair and the makings for cigarillos lay spilled on the table. Several butts had been crushed out in a heavy brass ashtray.

  As if he spent a sleepless night here last night, Melanie thought immediately. Before she could frame anything to say, Lee interrupted with a command.

  “The señora will not be using this room, Kai. Put her things in the room at the end of the hall, next to Genia's.”

  The Kanaka's face was impassive, but Melanie knew he was wondering about the sleeping arrangements. Obviously he was under the mistaken impression this is a real marriage, she thought in humiliation. “Are you sure you'll be safe with only three rooms between us?” she muttered when Kai had taken the first trunk down the big hallway.

  “Are you sure you'll be?” he countered darkly.

  “Who is Genia?” she asked quickly, changing the subject.

  “The housekeeper. She came from Mexico City. She worked for my Uncle Alfonso until he died. When I finished this house, I sent for her. She's probably out in the garden, selecting some herbs to sweeten our bridal bed,” he added sarcastically.

  “How shortsighted of you not to have explained the nature of our arrangement,” she replied stiffly, affronted at his temerity.

  “I did, but Kai and Genia believe what they want to believe.”

  Genia was a plump, smiling woman of indeterminate years with a heavy Spanish accent. Lee was right about both his house servants' attitudes. He had married Melanie in church; therefore, the match was sealed; and she was mistress of the ranch.

  As they chatted while Genia unpacked her clothes, the housekeeper said bluntly, “I do not like your being so far from Don Leandro's room. At least you should be in the adjoining one.”

  Melanie colored in mortification. “Genia, Lee must have told you we were forced into this marriage. It isn't—that is, we aren't going to...sleep together.”

  “And the sun will not rise in the east,” the older woman scoffed in disbelief. “You are both young and fine-looking. Put a match to kindling and watch sparks fly! You both have passion. I can tell,” she said, chuckling at Melanie's horrified expression. “Sooner or later it will happen. Not even three walls between you can stop what is meant to be.”

  * * * *

  You both have passion. The old housekeeper's words haunted Melanie as she lay staring at the ceiling in her big lonely bed that night. How true that was! If not for his fierce lust and her inexplicable response to his kisses, they would not be trapped in this travesty of a marriage. Painfully, she reviewed her relationship with Lee Velasquez. Ever since her first encounter with him as an impressionable and frightened twelve-year-old girl, she realized, there had always been an attraction. The chance encounter in Austin just after his first marriage had devastated her. There, she had finally admitted it to herself, aware it was after that meeting that she had first begun to rebel against being female. Boston only gave her a rhetorical vocabulary with which to rationalize her feelings.

  Tears again. They slipped from her eyes and ran down her temples, soaking into her thick ebony hair. “Damn him for making me cry,” she gritted aloud in the silence of the night. Damn him for making you want him, the night whispered back.

  Lee could not sleep either. Visions of his wife's soft, golden body and gleaming ebony hair haunted him. He could still feel her breasts and hips, so generous for a woman with such a tiny frame. He remembered the smell of her, like wild roses. Her wide eyes were the color of the night flowers blooming outside his bedroom window. Rolling over in anguished frustration, he scoffed at himself, “You named your home after her, you fool, and you didn't even know it!”

  Passionate little bitch, he thought angrily, no doubt just like her octoroon mother. All the fancy schools in Boston and the airs Rafe Fleming led her to put on couldn't disguise the fact she was a placée's daughter. She exuded an innate sensuality that drove men to act irrationally. And you, you dumb bastard, want her—just like Fleming wanted her mother—as a mistress, not as a wife!

  But Lee knew he could not take her now, not while they were married. That would shackle them together for the rest of their lives. He desired her, but he knew her accusations that day in the orchard were true. He did not want children of mixed blood carrying the Velasquez name.

  He wanted a woman with a fine old Hispanic pedigree, someone traditional, dutiful, decidedly not like Melanie. Even if she hadn't been an octoroon's bastard with hated Indian blood in her veins, she was still headstrong and spoiled, filled with all sorts of crazy ideas about women being equal to men! Of course, raised by Deborah and hanging around Charlee and Obedience, that was scarcely a surprise. He stared at the ceiling and forced himself to think of Larena. Somehow he would win her back.

  Melanie awakened in the strange bed, hearing familiar noises outside her window. The cowhands were down at the corral saddling up. She could hear muffled curses and shouted greetings echoing across the valley floor. Dim gray light filtered in the window. Sweeping the covers from her body, she sat up and looked around the room. Like all the others, it had roughly plastered whitewashed walls and was innocent of furnishings except for the bed in which she slept and one heavy, low chest.

  Genia had unpacked her combs and brushes and had set up her dressing mirror. A white porcelain pitcher and bowl sat alongside her things on top of the chest. At least she could wash her face and perform a simple toilette. The stone floor was chilly to her bare feet as she stood up and stretched. It was rainy and gray outside, weather that reflected her feelings on the first morning of her married life.

  Although she dreaded it, Melanie knew she must go to town and face Clarence. Of course, with all the gossip, the shrewd old editor would know every humiliating detail about her face-saving marriage. “If only I can convince him to keep me on,” she murmured under her breath. Then, remembering the story about the rustlers who killed Jameston's men and stole his cattle, Melanie knew what she would do.

  Rummaging frantically through her book trunk, she came up with pencils and note pad. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, she began to write.

  Feeling refreshed and self-assured, Melanie walked down the long hall toward the heavenly smells emanating from the kitchen. Dinner last night, for all the strained tension between her and Lee, had been superb. “At least I won't starve to death on his accursed ranch,” she muttered as she inhaled the fragrance of coffee and fresh-baked bread.

  She hesitated on the threshold of the kitchen, half afraid Lee might be there, scowling at his late-rising wife. Wife. She was married to a hostile stranger who wanted no part of her. His feelings had been abundantly clear last night at the supper table when all Genia and Kai's efforts to make the bridal meal festive and special had met with irritation and impatience on his part. He had eaten perfunctorily and quickly, then had excused himself to go outside and smoke a cigar.

  Little hoping his mood had improved with a night's sleep, Melanie had dallied until she was certain he had left the house. She did not relish a fight over her ride to town this morning. It would be just like him to renege on the bargain struck that day in the orchard and forbid her to work at the Star in any capacity. Of course, a voice niggled at her conscience, you're reneging on the bargain. She would not only file Moses French's story about the rustling and murders, but continue to pursue leads to uncover who was working with Lucas Blaine.

  * * * *

  Taking a deep breath to bolster her courage, Melanie opened the door to the newspaper office and stepped inside with a jauntiness she did not feel.

  Clarence scarcely looked up from behind the cluttered barricade of his desk to acknowle
dge her. Without skipping a pen stroke, he continued writing and spoke at the same time. “Are we to assume the honeymoon is over so soon?”

  “As I'm sure you've deduced from the circumstances of our marriage, there was no honeymoon,” she shot back, heading for the small table in the corner that doubled as her desk. “I have the story about a herd of cattle being stolen and the murder of two hands—renegade Comanche did it.”

  “Old news,” he replied. The pen continued its scratching.

  “I have a new angle—Lucas Blaine.” She waited. The pen stopped scratching.

  Clarence's white brows arched sardonically and his eyelids drooped. “Pray continue.”

  “One of my Indian children followed Blaine and overheard him discuss the theft with Seth Walkman. The Indian trader and our illustrious ranger captain are thieves and murderers,” she stated baldly.

  “I assume you can prove this sweeping assertion—that is, other than by the testimony of red urchins from Father Schreckenberg's school? I scarcely think the citizenry would find an Indian a credible witness against such illustrious pillars of the community as Blaine and Walkman,” he said in a voice laced with irony.

  “Well, not yet, but—”

  “I thought not.”

  “I will find proof. In the meanwhile, here's the story about the raid. There are no accusations against Blaine in it, but Moses French was an eyewitness to the theft. I'll get you the rest of the story!”

  “And what will your husband say when you go chasing about the countryside, following charming characters like Walkman?” Clarence leaned back in his chair and regarded Melanie's agitation with a distressingly fatherly air.

  “Lee and I have an agreement. I'll continue to work for the Star,” she replied with bravado, trying to convince herself as much as the cynical old man sitting in front of her.

  “Well, all things considered, I'm glad ‘true love’ hasn't left you soft and dewy-eyed,” he said, reverting to character and once more lowering his head to the pages he was editing.

  Melanie swished briskly by him with her copy and headed to the case boxes. “Where's Amos?” she asked as she began the laborious task of setting her story.

  “Said something about going out to purchase you a wedding present,” he answered with feigned absentness, ignoring the wad of paper she threw squarely between his shoulder blades.

  Amos returned a scant fifteen minutes later, laden with a wooden crate from Cincinnati filled with bottles of ink. Seeing Melanie at work at his compositor's table, his eyes almost popped from their sockets. “Miss Melanie—I mean Mrs. Velasquez, what're you doing here?”

  She looked up at his incredulous face and nonchalantly brushed a curly wisp of hair from her eyes with ink-stained fingertips that left a dark smudge across her cheek. “I happen to work here, Amos, and don't start calling me Mrs. Velasquez. I'm still Melanie.”

  The old man shrugged and placed the crate on the floor. Having heard the same gossip as Clarence, he was aware of the rather unusual and hurried circumstances of Lee and Melanie's marriage. Quickly, he went to work alongside her, as if nothing was at all amiss in a woman spending the day after her wedding working in a newspaper office.

  After a couple of hours, the front door opened and a tall young man entered. Flashing a wide, disarming grin, Adam Fleming introduced himself to Clarence and Amos. “I figured you'd be here, sis, and I wanted to talk to you, away from Papa's eagle eyes.”

  As he turned to Clarence, Melanie was once again struck by his uncanny resemblance to their father. She wondered what he was up to and feared she knew the answer. When Clarence briskly told Adam to get her out of Amos's hair so he could finish setting type for her story, the youth immediately offered to buy her lunch.

  As they strolled down the street, garnering more than a few curious stares, Melanie said uneasily, “Everyone is wondering what I'm doing in town so soon after my marriage. Taking up with a strange man, at that,” she added, trying for a teasing note.

  “Anyone looking at us could scarcely miss the family resemblance, Mellie, but they do have good reason to wonder about why you're here instead of being with your husband.” Adam's black eyes had the same eerie, penetrating power as their father's.

  Melanie suggested a nearby cafe run by a Mexican couple who served adequate meals for those with little money. It was dark and quiet inside, a good place to talk in privacy. In passable border Spanish, Adam ordered their lunch and then turned to his sister.

  When they had first met ten years ago, he had been a jealous boy of six, she a frightened and spoiled girl of twelve. Distrust and rivalry had gradually changed over the years into a genuine love few siblings shared.

  “We never had a chance to talk before you married him, sis. When I found you in the Star office, I knew my guess was right. You only went through with the wedding because he and Papa made you. Is—is he treating you all right, Mellie?”

  Melanie stared into his dear face, so full of love and concern. Of course, if it weren't for all her family's love and concern, she could have refused this marriage, and Lee Velasquez be damned! “I can take care of myself, Adam, as you can plainly see,” she replied waspishly. Then, realizing it wasn't his fault she was in this mess, she quickly amended, “Oh, Adam, I'm sorry. I know you only want to help, but there's nothing anyone can do. We've reached an agreement. He lives his life and I live mine. I'll keep working at the newspaper and he'll run his ranch.” She tried for a bright smile, but it wobbled.

  “You don't really have a marriage, do you, Mellie?” he asked earnestly. “Papa wanted you to marry him so you'd settle down and have children. Be happy like Mama and Charlee. I tried to tell him it wouldn't work with you.” He sighed. “At least not this way, not with him.”

  Melanie felt her face flaming as she realized her brother had guessed at the sterile relationship she and Lee shared. With a start she remembered that their own father had been less than a year older than Adam when she was born! Why was it boys were given the facts of life and turned loose so early while girls were sheltered and deceived? It just wasn't fair, dammit!

  Adam watched her mute misery for a moment, then reached across the table and took her cold little hand. “Mellie, I'm the one who should be sorry for butting in; but I just wanted you to know, if you ever need help—if he ever does anything to hurt you—”

  “No, Adam.” She shook her head, interrupting him. “Thank you, dear, for your offer, but Lee and I will settle this between ourselves.” She had to smile at the way he refused to mention Lee by name.

  “How can you settle it if you go on like you're not married? Say, you're not planning...” He hesitated, uncertain of how to broach such a delicate topic, even with his beloved sister. “That is, he hasn't offered to get the marriage annulled?”

  “I never could keep secrets from you, could I?” she replied with a soft, sad little laugh. “Please don't tell anyone, Adam. I know why Papa and Mama wanted this marriage, and it would break their hearts to know what we're going to do.”

  Adam watched her fidget with her cup and spoon, stirring the thick cream into the coffee until the liquid was too cool to taste good anymore. “I remember back in Austin, at the statehood celebration, when you and Lee,” he forced himself to use his brother-in-law's name, “when you two collided and you acted kinda funny all day afterward. Mellie, you aren't in love with the man after all, are you?”

  The spoon clattered against the side of her cup. “Of course not! Don't be absurd! He was an arrogant bully full of Mexican machismo even then.” She could not meet Adam's eyes. Wanting to change the subject, she looked outside the open door to the busy street. “Looks like we have another ranger in town to add to Seth Walkman's wonderful brigade,” she said disdainfully.

  Adam followed her narrowed gaze to the big man filling the door. He had shaggy tan hair, long sideburns, and a narrow mustache; and he wore buckskins and a yellow neckerchief, a uniform of sorts often affected by the irregularly attired militiamen. But it was hi
s carefully oiled .44 caliber Walker Colt that most clearly marked him as a ranger.

  Adam's face split in a wide grin. “That's Jeremy. I met him at the boardinghouse yesterday.” Quickly, he hailed the stranger who sauntered over to their table. “Jeremy, this is my sister, er, my older sister, Melanie. Mellie, meet Jeremy Lawrence, a friend of Jim Slade.”

  Lawrence was a man in his mid-twenties with keen blue eyes and a dazzling smile that fairly lit up his angularly handsome face. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Fleming,” he said politely with the faintest hint of a Virginia drawl.

  “My name's Velasquez now,” she replied stiffly, hating the way her voice betrayed her. “I was recently married.”

  “Yesterday morning,” Adam put in unhelpfully.

  “Congratulations, ma'am,” Lawrence responded politely.

  Giving her brother a quelling look, Melanie ignored the puzzled interest that flashed across the ranger's face and inquired, “You're a friend of Jim's? I've never seen you here or heard him or Charlee mention you. Are you from far away?”

  “Fact is, ma'am, I just met Jim Slade the other day. We have mutual friends,” he said vaguely, seeming to want to change the subject.

  “Like Sam Houston,” Adam stated baldly. Then at Jeremy's sharp look of curiosity, he added quickly, “I overheard you and the senator late last night out by the ice shed. I—er, that is”—he cast a nervous glance at his sister—“I know this girl who works for Obedience and I had just walked her home. I was returning by way of the back orchard when you two were discussing your new boss, Captain Walkman.”

  Lawrence's expression became shuttered; and he muttered an oath under his breath, then quickly apologized to Melanie. Grabbing a chair, he sat down and leaned forward, speaking intently in a low voice. “Look, what Houston and I were discussing is dangerous for you to know. I want your word it'll go no further than this table. My life could depend on it—and yours, too.”