She felt that same sensation herself. That heat that flamed in the center of her belly. The itch that Cristobal seemed to cause. God help her, what kind of woman was she—wanting to bed with the man who had betrayed her time and again?
But a little voice whispered it could not be wrong—after all, he was her husband.
She took another drink of the dark stout to quench the fire that burned inside her. The drink really did not have such a bad taste, after all. With her tongue she licked the foam from her mouth. His smoldering eyes followed the movement. She felt a moment of feminine superiority— until that gaze rose to lock with her own. Its intensity could almost have knocked her over. “I know what you want,” she said weakly.
“And you don’t?”
Her teeth gnawed on her bottom lip. “No.”
“Liar.”
She wanted to wipe the self-assurance from his handsome face. His male superiority was challenging her. Her eyes smiled coolly. “I won’t deny that you can arouse me. But then I have found that ability is not peculiar to you. Mark Thompson is also quite capable of stirring passion in a woman.”
Frost opaqued his eyes before his lids half-drooped over them. “Good. Now that I know your . . . passions can be stirred, I feel it my duty as your husband to satisfy those passions.”
Across the width of the table his hand caught her wrist and dragged her from the booth. “What do you think you’re doing?” she hissed. All about them, men looked up from their drinks or plates to stare.
With his free hand Cristobal tossed a few coins on the table. “I intend to make you my wife—in every sense of the word.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Heedless of the stares of the Louvre’s patrons, Cristobal pulled Jeanette along behind him.
“You can’t do this,” she cried.
He halted at the door and looked around him before meeting her enraged gaze with a quizzical lift to his brow. “I don’t see anyone making an effort to stop me.”
All the way back to the wharf, during the longboat trip back to the Revenge, while he hauled her up to his cabin, she pleaded with him, entreated him not to go through with his threat. He slammed the door behind them and faced her. How had she ever thought that smile inane? Why had she never seen its mockery? “But I mean to know you—in the Biblical sense, Jen.”
“You have!” she shrieked.
He grabbed the hem of her buckskin shirt and yanked it up over her head as if he were a parent undressing a reluctant child for bed. “I knew you as the Frenchman knew an object he had bought,” he pointed out calmly. “There is a difference. I mean to know you as a husband knows his wife.”
She shook her hair free in the manner of an angry bull tossing his head when about to charge. “Then that’s something you’ll never know! Because I have only one true husband, and it’s not—”
“And Armand’s dead!”
Furiously he jerked down her pants. She stood passively, hiding her fear, while he knelt before her exposed body and removed her boots. She would not give in to him. She would not cringe now. To do so would invalidate all the times that had required her courage. Could she be any less brave now because she was being attacked as a woman?
He swung her up against him and stalked to the bunk, where he deposited her with something less than gentleness. In the darkness of the cabin he purposefully stripped. She waited, her breath shallow. She knew Cristobal was inebriated—but not enough to do this sordid thing, not enough to rape her. If she did not fight him, if she tried to reason with him, maybe she could make him understand.
Nude now, his long, lithe body obviously aroused, he bent over her, his dark face grim. “It’s not Mark Thompson I’m competing with, is it, Jen?” he asked harshly.
She shook her head in the dark, forgetting that he could not see her clearly. “No,” she murmured.
“Always it’s been Armand,” he grunted to himself. Then to her, “I mean to make you admit tonight that Armand is dead. Both to yourself and me.”
She met his threatening gaze with a calmness she was far from feeling. In the airless cabin perspiration erupted on her, adhering her body like India glue to his sweaty one. “That’s something you’ll never understand, Cristobal,” she said quietly. “My husband, my true husband, lives on in me—in my mind, in my heart. Neither you— nor your jealousy—can ever change that. Now—go ahead. Get your raping over with.”
His anger leapt into white-hot flame. His mouth slammed against hers. Beneath the force of his conquering mouth, her lips were forced apart. She felt his teeth, then his tongue besiege her fortress. Her tongue parried the slash of his. But too late she discovered his offense was only a diversionary tactic. From another front he breeched her defenses, his knee subtly prying open her legs, his hand storming that soft vulnerability. But when he encountered the dryness of fright, his fingers halted their assault.
His head lifted from where it had nestled between the faintly veined globes of her milk-white breasts. In the darkness his glittering eyes delved into hers. “You willingly gave yourself to me before—”
“To the Frenchman,” she corrected tersely.
“What’s the price now?” he continued.
“There’s no price great enough.”
He took her then, thrusting in her with a savage force that made her arch up against him in pain. “No!” she screamed out finally. Fear sizzled through her. Not just for herself. But for the child. Her fingers dug into his upper arms, clutching, shoving at the thing that hurt her, that tore at her. It continued to pump and plunge like some diabolical engine, oblivious of her cries. The pain that ripped through her abdomen cut short her breath. “Cristobal. Listen. No! God, no! The child!”
The Bermudas had been awakened from centuries of somnolence, of sponging, fishing, and turtling for its livelihood, by the advent of blockade running. The people of the islands were strongly in sympathy with the South and the blockade runners; so much so that on at least one occasion the U.S. Consul was attacked in his office. The sentiment on behalf of the Confederacy was further heightened by the increase in revenues blockade running brought to the people.
Life was gay and easy on the islands. St. George’s was a boom town in every respect, not only for officers and civilians but for common sailors as well. They overflowed the drinking places and filled the streets. Ladies of easy virtue flocked to the town from Atlantic Coast ports, and Shinbone Alley boasted scores of bawdyhouses and iniquitous dives.
Magnolia Hill, the home of Mrs. Owen Williams, wife of the chief Confederate agent, was always open to Southern supporters. Overlooking beautiful St. George’s harbor, it was constantly filled with Confederate agents and naval officers. Nubile girls of the islands entertained visiting young Confederate officers with all sorts of balls, dances, and festivities. St. George’s had become not only a way station between Europe’s ports and the Confederacy, but a harbor of refuge for the blockade runners, a pleasant resting place after the excitement and fatigue of a voyage.
It was to St. George’s—to Magnolia Hill and its beautiful mansion built of pink coral blocks—that the blockade runner Cristobal Cavazos brought his ailing young wife.
Barbara Williams sat beside the bed where Jeanette Cavazos slept. The Caribbean sunlight that streamed through the white eyelet cotton curtains was not kind to Barbara. It revealed the faint lines about her eyes and the deeper ones just beginning to show on either side of her wide mouth. Yet the eyes were a pale blue, like the tropical waters that played about the sandy coves, and just as lovely. And the lips held a soft sensuality.
But her mind was sharp, practical. A woman of forty, she had known the humiliation of being called white trash. Her father sharecropped cotton on what was little more than a farm outside Atlanta. She had also known she would escape the humiliation of poverty at the first opportunity. It presented itself the day she turned fifteen, when Owen Williams rode into the redneck tenant’s yard filled with her dirty, half-naked brothers and sisters. Owen, ne
aring forty himself at that time and stocky, had asked directions. Barbara calmly gave them and just as calmly told him she was leaving with him.
She was half afraid he would laugh, but his kind eyes looked down into her dirt-smeared face, and after what seemed an interminable moment he had consented. She had never let him regret that moment. And she had never regretted it herself. Owen’s business acumen and fairness had made him an affluent merchant; so successful was he that the Confederate Government had appointed him as commercial agent to Bermuda.
Barbara now had all she had lacked as a sharecropper’s daughter. All but the erotic passion her husband was incapable of. But she found that in the occasional visits of Cristobal Cavazos. For these times she waited. She knew she would risk all she had, including her husband’s love, to go away with the roguish blockade runner if he asked her; but he had never asked her.
And now she knew why. Gazing down at the small¬boned woman before her, she could understand some of what Cristobal saw in his wife. Despite the mauve shadows about the long-lashed eyes, despite the pinched lips and pale, washed-out skin, Jeanette Cavazos was a very attractive young woman. Not the standard Southern beauty. Even sleep could not rob the face of its strong character, contrasting so with the young woman’s delicate build.
Jeanette opened her eyes now, and Barbara noticed with a start their extraordinary shade. “Where am I?” The words were rusty, low.
“You are at Magnolia Hill in St. George’s, Bermuda. Your husband brought you here this morning.”
Jeanette blinked back the tears. “Who are you?”
“I’m—I’m a friend of your husband’s.”
Bitterly Jeanette turned her face toward the wall. One more woman who had shared Cristobal’s bed.
The old man who sat on the other side of the bed leaned forward. “I’m Dr. Magee, Mrs. Cavazos. You have been ill—for nearly two days. You were hemorrhaging. You—” he laid a hand flecked with gray hair on the small, knotted fist, “you lost the child.”
“Cristobal,” Jeanette murmured bitterly.
“You must understand, Mrs. Cavazos,” the doctor cleared his throat and continued, “intercourse does not normally cause a miscarriage. You must not blame your husband’s . . . attentions. In fact he revealed that you recently suffered a heat stroke. Your body’s poor health, stress, any number of reasons could have caused you to lose the child.”
Jeanette closed her eyes. “I want to be alone.”
In the evenings, when the sun was still high above the blue line of the Caribbean, the Williamses and their guests would sit on the wide piazza while tea, cakes, and ice cream were served by hovering Negro boys. The women would play croquet on the lush lawn, and the gentlemen would smoke the Havana “long nines” and talk desultorily of cargoes, contraband, and the Confederacy.
That particular evening there were just the two guests, with the men doing most of the talking. “There,” Owen said, jabbing his forefinger at a copy of The New York Times that was only two days old. “The Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court says—” he held the newspaper at arm’s length and read: “‘The ships are planks of the same bridge, and necessary for the convenient passage of persons and properties from one end to the other.’”
“In other words,” Cristobal drawled, “trans-shipping cargo from ship to warehouse to ship is now looked upon as intentional breaking of the blockade.”
“And subjects your ship once again to capture,” Owen finished.
Barbara would like to have heard more of the actual running of the contraband—of the exciting escapes. Cristobal’s reputation held that he was a cool and resourceful leader in moments of acute danger, that he boldly accepted and then expertly overcame risks others wouldn’t consider.
But the conversation continued to revolve around the mundane—cotton and its cost—with the two men volleying their ideas between each other and enjoying the exchange. Two shrewd minds. The rubicund Owen, the rakish Cristobal. And Barbara was shrewd enough to keep her remarks to herself. She influenced Owen’s opinions in a more subtle way.
Jeanette Cavazos, dressed that particular evening in a charming daisy-yellow dimity that Owen had procured from one of his warehouses, had hitherto remained quiet. She had convalesced rapidly over the week she had been at Magnolia Hill. Mornings spent sitting in the sun had restored her golden color, the sea breeze her health. Yet the lavender-blue eyes were dull and flat as slate. Except when her gaze locked with that of her husband. Then Barbara saw the spark ignite, the blue eyes take fire. Something was wrong between the two.
Even at that moment Jeanette’s eyes blazed into an inferno at what her husband was saying. “The Confederate States Government has made a serious error.”
“How so, Cristobal?” Owen asked.
“That first year of the war President Davis and his financial advisors made no move to use their one salable commodity, cotton, to finance their war.”
For the first time Jeanette spoke, her voice sharp as a fine-edged Bowie. “Why should they have? The North needed our cotton; the mills of Lancashire in England— and those in France and the rest of Europe—needed it. Jefferson Davis knew if we held cotton off the world market until the need reached a critical stage, the result would be a fantastic increase in the price.”
“She has a point,” Owen said, though his ruddy face was careful not to betray his surprise at the young woman’s outburst.
“Furthermore,” Jeanette said, leaning forward in the white wrought-iron chair, “Davis hoped that Queen Victoria and Napoleon III and others in Europe might find it worthwhile to recognize the Confederate States of America—if Europe expected to continue to clothe its people in cotton fabrics.”
Slowly Cristobal exhaled cigar smoke. “But the foreign governments haven’t recognized the Confederacy, have they, Jen?” He disregarded the storm that brewed in his wife’s eyes. “Now the Confederacy’s coffers are empty of gold, its currency is suspect, and there is no credit with which to collect and transport cotton for export.”
Barbara diplomatically intervened. “The air is getting slightly chilly. Perhaps we should go inside. Besides, it’s nearing dinner. ” She caught the glance of appreciation her husband threw her.
Cristobal’s gaze was shadowed. He took his wife’s elbow to assist her up the shallow flagstone steps and felt her body actually withdraw from contact with his.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The voluminous skirts bunched and anchored about her waist by her dress’s sashes, Jeanette wandered along the white, sandy beach. She recalled that evening she watched the Ethiopian Minstrels perform. She had wished—no, ached to feel again. Now she did. With a startling clarity. She saw—really saw—the moonlight that ribboned the sea with silver. She really noticed the water that rippled about her ankles, how deliciously cool it was. And she felt the pain that knifed through her soul.
Cristobal was responsible for restoring these sensations.
His very presence seemed to trigger something in her. Like the argument earlier in the evening. The two of them could not be together without provoking a response from each other. She had always thought that she and Armand had been forthright in their conversations. But, reflecting on their stimulating talks, she recalled now that never had they touched upon anything intimate. Always impersonal issues. Had she ever dared to utter what she truly felt about herself and others? Only Cristobal had been capable of goading her beyond the most superficial of subjects.
Heated debates were typical in their conversations. And their lovemaking had been just as heated.
The result of their lovemaking—her hand dropped to her stomach, mounded now with her bunched skirts. She had not thought that the loss of the child could make her heart hurt so much. The days and nights she had lain in the Williams’ bedroom, recovering—she had tried to tell herself that the miscarriage had been for the best. With a child, Armand’s child—she would never have attempted to break out of the mold prescribed for the proper woman. But, o
h, she never did want to go back to her old self. No, never would she submit again to society’s constraining ideas of a proper wife in a proper marriage.
But the loss of the child—all her logic could not make up for the emotional pain she suffered. Everything Cristobal had done—his deception, his philandering in their marriage, his blatant taking of her money to run the cotton—were nothing compared to his rape of her. His total disregard of her pleas, of her as a human being, of his destruction of his own seed.
For that she could never forgive Cristobal.
As if summoned by her condemning thoughts, he appeared before her, his black shirt and britches almost blending with the shadows cast by the arching palms that lined the shore. She looked up into his taut face. For one naked moment their eyes met; then she continued on along the beach. He fell into step with her, his hands jammed into his pockets.
“Jen, I—”
“I came out here because I wanted to be alone.”
He grabbed her arm and jerked her around to face him. The moonlight showed the agony that twisted his features. The blood that soaked the sheets—the vision was still vivid in his mind. When he realized what was happening, that she was losing the baby she carried, he was like a man demented. What if he lost her, too? The only thing that had brightened his life. Her laughter, her thought-provoking statements, her warmth, her challenging smile . . . the way she touched his soul, as no other woman had, when the two of them met and blended in lovemaking. And those torturous twenty-four hours of waiting to see if she would survive—he was responsible for all the pain she endured. Even Solis, Alejandro, and the others had looked at him with the greatest reluctance.
LAVENDER BLUE (historical romance) Page 23