Juanita was in trouble. Now that the governor knew she hadn’t accompanied Brazos to Europe, he’d turn Texas inside out looking for her. And to further complicate matters, now Brazos had to worry that Salezan would learn about the children. He could not allow that to happen. Nope, as much as he hated the idea, somehow he’d get aboard that damned boat. Tomorrow, he’d sail for Texas.
Then he felt it, that tickle at the back of his neck. He looked around. Behind him, a timid, vulnerable expression on her face, stood the beauty. He arched an eyebrow, the question in his eyes.
Without asking his permission, she took a seat at his table. She settled the baby on her lap and looked at him. “Mr. Sinclair,” she said, her voice husky and earnest. “May I ask you a question?”
Brazos nodded.
“Mr. Sinclair, are you married?”
He frowned and shook his head. What was this about?
“I see.” She looked down at her lap. He saw her swallow hard, and when she lifted her gaze, he felt as if he were face-to-face with a wounded doe.
“Then perhaps, Mr. Sinclair” she said, “perhaps you would consent to marrying me?”
Chapter 2
THE RUMBLE OF LAUGHTER shook Brazos’s shoulders long before it burst from his lips. “Lady,” he said, shaking his head, a wide grin on his face, “you’d best stick to speaking French. You’d have a fit if you realized what you just said to me.”
“Mr. Sinclair I’ve spent considerably more than half my life in England, and I daresay I’ve a better command of the language than you. I know very well what I asked.”
Brazos’s expression abruptly sobered. “There must be an asylum near here, huh?”
Madeline leaned toward him and spoke in an earnest and rational voice, “Mr. Sinclair I realize this is an unusual situation—” She ignored his snort and continued, “But hear me out, please. I have something you want, and you can provide something I need.”
Blue eyes swept her with contempt. “I may want it, lady,” he said, clipping his words, “but I’ve seldom paid for it, and I’ve
never
married for it.”
Madeline stared at him in confusion until slowly, his meaning dawned, and she flushed with impatience.
Gracious, the man’s ego knew no bounds!
“You misunderstand me, Mr. Sinclair,” she said, swallowing a surge of anger. “I’m speaking of the
Uriel.
I have a berth, a private cabin. I’m offering you the opportunity to sail with the colonists tomorrow morning.”
Silence stretched between them. Sinclair inclined his head, folded his arms across his chest, and stared at her.
“I’m not doing this very well, am I?” Madeline muttered. The idea had seemed so simple when she’d thought of it. If only she’d had more time to consider the problem, undoubtedly she’d have developed a better plan. But with time as her enemy, Madeline, like any good thief, trusted in her instincts. Her intuition told her to use this man named Sin.
She drew a deep breath and said, “Mr. Sinclair your assumption that I am a married woman is incorrect. The fact that I am not is at this time causing me considerable trouble. What I am proposing is a
mariage de convenance
, a marriage of convenience. At the last moment, Monsieur Considérant denied me my place among the colonists, solely because I lacked a man with whom I could travel. Your earlier outburst led me to believe that sailing on the
Uriel
was of considerable import to you, and I wondered if we might not come to an agreement.”
Brazos’s brow furrowed. “Lady, you’ve got more brass than a church bell. What’s your name, by the way?”
“Madeline, Madeline Christophe.”
“Well, Mademoiselle Christophe, let’s take a walk.” Brazos rose and tossed a coin on the table. “Besides, a tavern is no place for a baby.”
Outside, the wind had calmed and the afternoon sun warmed the air. Brazos bought a hot loaf of bread from a vendor on the quay, and the aroma reminded Madeline of the kitchens at the boarding school in England.
Oh, to be home again
, she wished. Then she clutched the stirring child close to her chest and thought,
No, this is the only place for me
.
Sinclair broke a hunk off the loaf and offered it to her. Madeline declined with a slight shake of her head. He shrugged and took a bite. “Umm, good bakers, these Belgians. You ought to try some. Fresh bread’s gonna be hard to find in the middle of the Atlantic.”
“We’re instructed to bring some with us when we sail tomorrow,” she said absently. Then she halted and looked up at him. “You’ll do it?” she asked.
“Depends.”
Rose’s eyes opened, and she began to cry. Madeline shifted the baby to her shoulder patting the child’s back and watching the Texan anxiously.
He scowled. “Here, let me have him.” Brazos gently lifted Rose and cradled her in his arms, shoving the bread into Madeline’s. “What’s the problem, little fella? Smell of that bread make you hungry?” He frowned at Madeline. “You need to find a place to feed this boy.”
“Girl. She’s on the ship—the nurse, I mean. Rose’s wet-nurse. Considérant will have to let her feed her. Oh, dear! Why does everything have to be so complicated?”
“Lady, you need to start making some sense when you talk. Are you trying to tell me that you’re not providing for this baby yourself? You’re taking a woman along to Texas just ‘cause you can’t be bothered with mothering?”
“It’s not like that—“
“And you folks try to call Texans barbaric. I’ve heard all about these French
meneurs
, these baby brokers, who take infants from their parents and ship them off to the country to be nursed by a stranger. Hell, I can just imagine a child of mine being sent away for two years to live with people I’ve never even met.” Brazos’s mouth flattened into a disgusted frown. “We may have our problems in Texas, but at least we take care of our children.”
By now Rose’s cries filled the air—exactly what Madeline had tried to avoid. Tossing down the bread, she extended her arms to take the baby and spoke through gritted teeth. “I must take my daughter to her nurse. Now. If you can contain your bluster Mr. Sinclair, would you be so kind as to escort us to the
Uriel
? You and I have yet to settle this matter.”
Brazos ignored her outstretched arms, pivoted, and walked briskly toward the ship. Madeline hissed in anger, then followed, almost running to match his long strides.
Before she quite caught her breath, Brazos had brushed past Victor Considérant, asked about and located Lillibet, and deposited Rose in the Brunets’ cabin. Then, with a firm grasp on Madeline’s arm, he’d marched off the ship and over to a dockside bench, where he plunked her down and demanded, “Talk.”
Madeline smoothed the folds of her skirt as she tried to decide exactly what she should say.
Brazos’s boot began to tap against the boards. “Listen lady, I’m not waiting here all day. Let me hear your story from the beginning.”
“Well…” Madeline drew a deep breath, then offered him a version of the truth. “I have embraced the philosophies of Charles Fourier. He was a brilliant man who believed that the people of the world wallow in misery because we have failed to follow God’s Divine Plan.”
“God’s Divine Plan?”
She nodded. “Monsieur Fourier discovered the Plan and has designed a way for it to be put into practice. That’s what the Colonization Society of Texas is all about. In our colony, La Réunion, happiness will replace misery, unity will replace division, and Harmony will replace Civilization.”
Brazos closed his eyes and shook his head. “This is even worse than I had imagined. You folks have about as much sense as my cousin Tilli, and she’s been knitting socks for the family rooster for years.”
Madeline replied with the zeal of a recent convert. “La Réunion will be a safe and wonderful place in which to live and raise a family. You’ll see, Mr. Sinclair. The colony in Texas will provide a perfect home for my Rose. That’s why I am determined to go.”
Scowling, she got to the heart of her story. “When I purchased membership in the Society, the agent said nothing at all about any requirement for a spouse. But when I attempted to board the ship, Considérant declared that as a widowed woman with an infant, my life in the colony would be too difficult, and he forbade my joining the group. He told me that only married couples and bachelor men would be allowed to join La Réunion.”
“No single women?” Brazos interrupted. “What kind of a Utopia is that?”
Madeline ignored his question. “I wish desperately to go to Texas, and I heard you say how imperative it was for you to be on this ship. I can only imagine that your reasons are important, considering the intensity of your argument with Considérant. Am I right?”
His expression hardened, and he nodded once. “Lives are at stake.”
Probably his own
, Madeline surmised. She’d not be surprised if he had a cuckolded husband hot on his trail. She stared him straight in the eyes. “So, we could solve each other’s problem, could we not?”
Sinclair watched her for a long, silent moment before asking abruptly, “When did he die?”
“Who?”
“Your husband.”
“Oh, umm, well…Christmas, yes…poor dear…umm, Francois died at Christmastime.”
Brazos pinned her with a shrewd, measuring look. “You running from somebody, lady?”
Madeline’s heart thumped, and her hands grew clammy. “No,” she denied, a little too quickly.
He lifted an eyebrow.
“I’m not. Truly. I …” As she fought for a believable explanation, the solution burst across her mind. She beamed up at him. “I’m running to someone.”
“Who?”
“Rose’s father.”
“You
do
have a husband?”
Madeline gazed out over the water. “Well, actually no, I don’t.” She straightened her back and leveled an unapologetic look on the Texan. “I couldn’t very well marry you then, could I?”
“Lady, I wouldn’t put anything past you at this point.” Brazos sat on the bench beside her, leaned back, and crossed his arms and legs. “So your…lover is in Texas?”
Madeline nodded. She knew this story by heart, the plot straight from a novel she’d found hidden away at Château St. Germaine. For once her shameful secret of a preference for romantic fiction over more literary works served her well. “Yes, we’d planned to travel together but there was a little matter that forced him to leave without me, given that I was in a family way.”
She clasped her hands to her breast and sighed. “Oh, how he hated to leave me! But he’s there, in a town called Galveston, waiting for me even as we speak. So you see, Mr. Sinclair, all you need do is wed me for the voyage, and then as soon as we reach Texas, you can annul the marriage, you go your way, and I to my beloved Emile.”
He lifted a skeptical brow. “And what caused this paragon to abandon you, pregnant and unmarried in France, while he hightailed it to Texas?”
Madeline closed her eyes and smiled. This had been a heartbreaking twist in the novel’s plot. “A duel—he wounded a powerful man in a duel.
“A powerful man?”
“My fiancé, Denis.”
“By God, lady!” Sinclair exclaimed, sitting up straight and shaking his head. “You’ve got more males after you than a mare in season. I doubt I’d be doing myself much of a favor by getting mixed up with the likes of you.”
Her eyes widened with alarm. “No, no, no. That’s all over now. You must marry me, Mr. Sinclair. For both our sakes.”
Frowning thoughtfully, he slipped his hand into his pocket and withdrew a leather ball. Tossing it repeatedly into the air, he said, “Just for the sake of argument here, why do you think we need to marry? Why don’t we just tell ol’ Considérant we’re sharing space?”
“That wouldn’t get either one of us aboard the
Uriel
. Believe me, sir, I’ve considered all the possibilities. Marriage is the only way.”
“Nah, it wouldn’t work,” Brazos said, shaking his head. “It’d be just my luck to get leg-shackled and still have Considérant refuse to let me aboard that boat.”
“He couldn’t do that,” Madeline stressed, placing her hand on his knee to emphasize her point. “Don’t you see, he’s testing the bounds of his power as it is. My lack of a husband was his lone justification for denying me my place among the colonists. As long as I provide the husband—along with marriage papers to prove my point—he could not in good faith refuse to allow us to join them.”
Sinclair lifted his gaze from where her hand rested on his thigh, and Madeline recognized the gleam in his eye. She snatched her hand back. He said, “Don’t you worry about your reputation? What do you think the other colonists will say when you show up with a brand-new husband so soon after burying the old?”
“Mr. Sinclair, La Réunion will be a colony based upon the philosophy of Charles Fourier. The Phalansterians are freethinkers, libertarians. They won’t—“
His brows lifted in shock, he interrupted, “Phallus what?”
Madeline sighed disgustedly. “Phalansterians. It’s another name for the followers of Fourier. Although this particular colony has voted to retain the institution of marriage, they won’t think ill of me for using the tradition to suit my needs. Besides, it will be a simple marriage of convenience. Everyone will accept that.”
“No marriage is ever convenient,” he absently observed as he tossed his ball and considered her argument. “Freethinkers, huh? And these folks are moving to Texas?” His shoulders shook with a silent chuckle. “Hell, it’d almost be worth getting hitched just to be around to watch.”
“Well?” she asked.
“What about once we reach Galveston? What’s your lover gonna have to say about you tagging a husband along from home?”
“Oh,” Madeline said, waving a hand, “I’m sure we will work around that when the time comes. We’ll obtain an immediate annulment; then you can conveniently disappear.”
“Conveniently disappear,” he echoed as he studied the woman at his side and attempted to see past the beauty of her face into her mind. All right, so maybe he was a bit disappointed in her story. A virtuous widow was much more appealing than a promiscuous miss, but what else could you expect from these Europeans?