This was how she had expected life to be with Peter Mulloney. She was well out of her depth, she knew, but just this brief glimpse served to smother some of her immediate worries. She sipped the champagne, admired the view, and smiled at her husband as if she had lived in this world all her life.
"I wish you'd do that more often."
They stood outside at the rail, watching the muddy river pass beneath the slowly turning wheel. Startled, Janice gave him a puzzled look.
"There, I've gone and done it now. It's gone again. You have the loveliest smile, Mrs. Mulloney. Why don't you use it more frequently?"
The sultry summer breeze licked at her hat, and Janice grabbed it as she turned to him. "My smile?"
There was genuine puzzlement in her voice. Peter had been continually astonished in these last few days by the amount of tenderness he could summon when faced with this extraordinary creature he had married. He had known she was strong and determined and practical. He hadn't known that she was not only completely unaware of her beauty, but innocent of all forms of feminine guile. She was refreshingly straightforward, so that he always knew where he stood with her.
"You have the loveliest smile I've ever seen, but you seldom ever use it. You're not a schoolteacher any longer. You don't need to be stern and forbidding. I like to see you smile."
She still stared at him with more puzzlement than pleasure, but obligingly she managed a smile. Peter laughed at her blatant attempt to please him.
"You're going to be a marvelous wife, Mrs. Mulloney. It will be a pleasure having you to come home to."
Her smile grew more genuine with that, but before she could express her pleasure, a shattering thunder, split the air.
In the dusky sky over Natchez, a dozen skyrockets exploded, and then before the startled eyes of the passengers rushing to the deck, the sky erupted into brilliant red and gold flowers of flame welcoming their arrival.
Chapter 15
"Tyler and some friends just bought a fireworks factory, and he's been eager to find a way to show off for weeks now. I couldn't persuade him that the Fourth of July is just a little way off. He wanted to surprise you and celebrate your wedding. No doubt if you'd married here, the donkey would have kept you up all night with the display."
Hugging Janice, squeezing a surprised Peter, Evie Monteigne chattered unrepentantly. Her magnificently plumed hat had no ribbons to hold it on, and she had to grab it in the breeze off the river. Or allow others to grab it for her.
"Betsy is just a little bit worried," Evie said. "I made her wait in the carriage. I've told her everything I know about you, Peter, and a lot you probably didn't know yourself, just so she would sleep since you sent that telegram. I figured you had already wired Daniel and Georgina, but I sent them another when you said you were coming here. I'm sure they won't be able to travel this close to Georgina's time, but I thought they'd like to know you were going to be with family."
Tyler Monteigne listened to his wife's prattle with a hint of amusement. Some ten years Peter's senior, he still had the lean figure of his youth, only slightly broadened by the years. His golden brown hair glinted in the sun, and the laugh lines around his eyes deepened as he watched his excited wife.
At Evie's mention of her family penchant for telegrams, Peter frowned, but Janice seemed serenely unworried by the news. Tyler had liked the schoolteacher the few times he'd met her. He couldn't imagine anyone being more different from his excitable, story-telling wife than the imperturbable, steadfast Janice Harrison, but he was charmed by the difference. From the few glimpses he'd seen of the newlyweds already, he rather thought the bridegroom felt the same.
Once Evie released the poor man, Tyler held out his hand. "Good to see you again, Peter. It's been a few years, but I remember you well. Someday you'll have to tell me the story of how two residents of Cutlerville, Ohio, had to go all the way to Texas to meet each other."
This time, it was Janice who frowned, and Tyler had the distinct feeling that his words somehow perturbed Peter. He couldn't figure where he'd gone wrong, but he sent a signal to Evie that she interpreted immediately Something was out of kilter here, and they needed to get to the bottom of it.
But for the moment, the Monteignes could only stand back and watch as a child broke through the crowd above the bluff. She was so frail that it seemed she would almost certainly be trampled by the much larger adults around her, but the crowd seemed to part to allow her to sail through. At the sight of Janice, she smiled and waved with delight and the very air around her appeared to shimmer with gold.
Tyler caught the astonishment on Peter's face as he watched this fairylike child approach. As Janice hugged the girl and the two of them swung their hands between them while chattering, the astonishment turned into something very like enlightenment, and it was Tyler's turn to study the two. He couldn't see what the other man obviously did.
Both Janice and Betsy had hair as fair as moonlight but Betsy's had a curl and shine that Janice's straight, straying tresses would never attain. The little girl's eyes were an angelic shade of blue rather than the disdainful gray of her sister's. Janice was small-boned, but in no way as fragile as her younger version.
Peter's expression softened even more as he knelt before the child to take her hand. Suspicion flickered in the girl's eyes at first, but then he said something to her that made her laugh, and the suspicion disappeared as if it had never been. Tyler shook his head as Betsy hugged her new brother-in-law's neck. The child never knew a stranger. He prayed life would never teach her anything different.
"Evie says you're to be my new brother." Betsy said to Peter as he handed Janice into the waiting carriage. She scrambled in to take the place beside her sister without waiting for a reply. She waited expectantly for Peter to sit on her other side, so that she sat sandwiched between them.
Peter hesitated over the answer, throwing his wife's impassive expression a quick look before answering. They obviously had a few things that needed to be discussed. "Yes, yes I am. Shall you call me Peter?"
The child's smile was as bright and winning as Janice's. Again, Peter studied both faces. He could be mistaken. He'd never asked Betsy's age. For all that matter, he didn't know his wife's. It was possible...
He wouldn't speculate. He didn't like to think that his straightforward, honest wife would keep a secret of this magnitude from him—but she hadn't told him she was from Cutlerville, either.
Unable to question now, he smiled as Betsy murmured "Brother Peter" under her breath, as if to taste the sound of it.
"How long will you be staying? We have a real whopper of a fireworks display planned for the Fourth. The town's having a parade, and the women have been planning food for weeks," their host informed them.
"I haven't seen a Fourth of July parade since that one Georgina manipulated back home," Peter replied. "I'm almost relieved I don't own any factories around here so we won't have half the town marching under my windows demanding better working conditions."
His audience laughed, and Peter sent a glance to Janice. The Monteignes knew about that incident. They had been there. Had Janice been living in Cutlerville on that Fourth? It had been one of the worst days of his life, the turning point that had sent him out into the world. Would she have been one of the people storming his father's estate in protest against his unfair labor practices? It didn't matter. If she was from Cutlerville, she had known who he was all along. Everyone in Cutlerville knew the Mulloney family. Why had she never told him she knew who he was?
He sank back in his seat and considered this new aspect to his wife. He had thought her so open, but he could see now that he had only been fooling himself. People were seldom what they seemed on the surface. That didn't mean there was anything wrong with them. It just meant that Janice was a little more complex than he'd bothered to find out. He wished there would be more time to explore before he had to go back to New Mexico, but he would have to wait.
The knowledge that Evie had wired Daniel a
bout their marriage sat uneasily inside him, also. He hadn't bothered even writing a letter telling his family about his marriage yet. There hadn't been a lot of time for writing. He'd wired the Monteignes out of necessity. That was business. Wiring the brother he barely knew.... Peter sighed and turned his attention back to the chatter around him. Common courtesy required that he at least inform his parents of his marriage. He hadn't even done that—but now Evie had. He didn't wish to consider the consequences.
The child between them kept Peter from reaching for Janice. He wanted the reassurance of her fingers in his right now. He felt like he was running along a cliff and one wrong step would send him stumbling over the precipice.
"We cleaned out the bridal suite for you," Evie said, turning dancing brown eyes to Janice. "I've been meaning to have that tower cleaned out for years now. The view is just gorgeous, but there are so many stairs...."
Tyler laughed. "There are so many stairs that only newlyweds would be crazy enough to climb all of them to go to bed. Of course, once up there, who wants to come down again?"
Janice squirmed in her seat and managed a nervous smile that had their host and hostess exchanging laughing glances. "A tower? The house has a tower? Like in a castle?"
"An observatory, actually," Tyler replied. "My grandfather built the house before the war. He had a fascination with astronomy. He kept his telescope up there and could watch the sky even on the coldest nights. But all those stairs even deterred him when he grew older, so the tower just became a place to store things we didn't need right away. It was used as an observation post during the war for a while, but we're too far out of town to provide an effective warning system. The Yankees moved in anyway."
There was still a trace of bitterness in his voice, but it disappeared behind Tyler's white smile and laughing words. "The birds thought it belonged to them for a while, but you don't have to worry. We've put the glass back in the windows."
As the carriage turned up the drive, Janice gasped at a glimpse of the house through a curtain of live oak leaves and hanging moss. Patches of brick and soaring white columns and banks of glittering windows set among riotous blooming bushes and magnolias colored the horizon.
"Oh, my. Daniel told me you lived in a mansion, but I never..." Janice went quiet, unable to say the polite thing.
Tyler chuckled. "It's looking better than it did. We're taking it one room at a time. There used to be chickens nesting in the dining parlor and pigs corralled in the family salon. Now we mostly have kids swarming over every inch of space. Enjoy the pristine aspect you see now. When you get closer, you'll see the real house."
It was almost full dark by the time the carriage pulled up in front of the house, but the gas lights in the yard and on the wide veranda illuminated the front of the house. When Peter stepped out of the carriage, the air erupted with an explosion almost as loud as the earlier fireworks, only this time the racket had almost a musical rhythm to it.
Leaping out of the carriage, Tyler groaned at the racket. "I told those damned boys not to..."
The distinct trumpet of a horn resounded through the night, nearly obliterated by the dissonant racket of drums. Peter thought he detected the rattle of Mexican gourds, a flute, and a guitar intertwined in the riotous rhythm. The music itself seemed to veer between primitive African and provocative Spanish. He shook his head in disbelief as an owl hooted in disapproval and flew off into the night.
Betsy leapt down from the carriage without assistance, running off in the direction of the noise without a word of explanation. Even Janice smiled at the wild music as she took Peter's hand and climbed down. Evie laughed out loud and shook her head at her husband, who rolled his eyes in disbelief.
As the adults started up the stairs, childish laughter burst from overhead in the same instant thousands of tiny colored pieces of confetti exploded in the air. Paper rainbows in reds and blues and yellows fluttered and drifted, coating their hair and clothes, before blowing off to decorate the azalea bushes lining the drive. The music reached new crescendos of delight.
Evie and Tyler laughed and yelled and shook their fists at the balcony overhead. Peter caught Janice's hand and she offered a reluctant grin. A piece of pink confetti clung to her nose, and he grinned back, wiping at the paper adorning his own cheek.
"Do they always live like this?" he asked, indicating the unusual couple now running up the stairs and into the house.
Janice tried to look unconcerned, but the reckless rhythm of the band reduced her to grinning. "I think it's supposed to be a chivaree. I hear the fine sound of a Rodriguez behind this. Be prepared for anything."
Rodriguez. Peter sought the memory of that name as he assisted his wife up the stairs and out of the last spiraling bits of colored snow. Childish laughter echoed above them as they reached the safety of the door. Rodriguez! Of course. Evie's cousins, Daniel's companions in crime. He shivered with the realization that talking with Tyler meant a family affair, and not the quick and businesslike meeting he had anticipated.
The noise of the band crashed down from the open hallway above the sweep of curving stairs in the main floor gallery. Before the visitors could catch sight of their serenaders, a gray-haired black woman in voluminous skirts stalked down the polished hall clutching a wooden spoon she waved like a sword as she advanced up the staircase.
"I told you young beggars not to mess my carpets up there! If you done got any of that there mess in my parlor, I'm agonna wring your necks and serve you up for dinner! Now get yo'selves down here right this minute or see if I don't come after you."
Laughter and running footsteps clattered through the upper hall, accompanied by the occasional toot of a horn or beat of a drum as the culprits scattered. Peter was still staring up the stairs in astonishment when the Monteignes reappeared from the rear of the house, followed by a tall, thin black man and a lovely woman with skin the color of creamy coffee.
"I can't keep an eye on those cretins every minute of the day," the black man was complaining. "That'd be like askin' me to part the Mississippi. Where's Carmen? She's the responsible party here."
As if summoned by the mention of her name, the responsible party appeared at the top of the staircase, followed by her two children and Betsy. Laughing, she lifted her skirt and ran down the stairs to greet Janice.
"There you are! How does it feel to be an old married woman now?" She didn't pause in her speech as she turned to Peter and held out her hand. "Evie tells me you're Daniel's little brother. I had the maddest crush on Daniel when I was just a little older than Betsy."
As Peter's hand enveloped hers, she sent Janice a mischievous look and whispered loudly, "You were smart to wait for this one to come along. He's much better looking than Daniel."
Totally outnumbered and thoroughly at sea, Peter tried to take in the sprawling family associations. The lovely Hispanic woman holding his hand was introduced as Carmen Harding, Kyle Harding's wife and Evie's cousin. The black man and woman were Benjamin Wilkerson the Third and his wife, Jasmine, and the large gray-haired woman was Grandmama Sukey, Ben's grandmother.
Peter assumed the boy and girl clinging to Carmen's hands were the Harding children, and the two young men and a girl slipping into the hall from various directions were some other relation to Carmen—and thus to Evie—although blond Evie bore no resemblance to her cousins' Mexican good looks. He was grateful that Janice knew them all. Maybe sometime in the next decade he would straighten out all the names and faces and relationships.
This was a radically peculiar household, a far cry from the sterile mansion of his own childhood, but apparently the family and home Daniel had been denied.
In the best parlor, Benjamin leaned against the fireplace as if he were as much owner of this house as Tyler. Benjamin's wife consulted with Carmen and Grandmama Sukey and the three of them disappeared into the bowels of the house.
A herd of children ranging from the age of two on up to Carmen's sister's approximate seventeen ran in and out of the parlo
r and up and down the stairs, toting musical instruments and strewing confetti. The children ranged in color from Betsy's pale fairness through the Hardings' tanned bronze to a toddler's gleaming black. Peter knew he didn't have time to straighten out the menagerie, but he was fascinated by the fact that Evie and Tyler treated every one of them as their own. Actually, Peter couldn't quite decide which ones actually did belong to the Monteignes.
Peter gave up the pursuit of knowledge some while later when he noted the lines of fatigue marring Janice's smile. They had sipped rich wines and coffee, nibbled at cakes and breads and meats that would have rivaled those of the best restaurants Peter had known, and the conversation had whirled furiously from the mundane to the outrageous. The time had come to put an end to the welcoming ceremonies. This was their honeymoon. Someone needed to remind the company of that.
Without fanfare, Peter wandered over to his beautiful hostess as she gave instructions to a young girl called Maria he assumed to be Evie's youngest cousin. The girl hurried off to locate the last of the children and send them on to bed, and Evie turned an expectant gaze to her guest.
"Janice looks a trifle weary. You will be wanting someone to show you to your room, won't you?"
If Janice were half as beautiful as Evie Monteigne in ten years, he would be a lucky man. Peter nodded gratefully at his hostess. "The last days have been a trifle hectic, and traveling is always difficult. As much as we are enjoying the company, I think perhaps we ought to think about retiring for the evening."
Evie's laughter bubbled from her lips and into her eyes. "You've spent too much time with your father and not enough time with Daniel, Mr. Mulloney. You're in danger of becoming a pompous man. Come, I will show you the tower stairs, but do not dare to tell me that it is only your weariness that inclines you toward bed. I have seen how you look at your wife."
Texas Moon TH4 Page 13