Merline Lovelace (18 page)

“I understand you made the acquaintance of Colonel Roosevelt and his wife in Tampa.”

“Yes.” Smiling, Victoria offered the bluff New Yorker her hand. “May I congratulate you on your promotion, Colonel? From what I’ve heard of the battle of Las Guásimas, it was quite well deserved.”

Heat and poor rations had taken their toll on the colonel, just as they had on the rest of the Expeditionary Force. He, too, had lost weight, and his skin had burned to dark terra-cotta. But nothing, apparently, could diminish his exuberant spirits. With one of his neighing laughs, Roosevelt dismissed his first trial under fire as a trifling affair.

“Las Guásimas got us bloodied, but Kettle Hill, now,
that
was a battle, eh, Sam?”

“Yes, sir, it was.”

“Would you like a glass of sherry?” Wood inquired. “It’s a particularly fine blend. From an Andalusian bodega, I’m told.” A smile flitted across his face. “One of the spoils of war.”

At Victoria’s nod, he tucked her hand in his arm and escorted her to a massive sideboard. The ornate
piece was encrusted with gilt. Additional gold trimmed the coat of arms carved into its headboard.

“We’re dining informally tonight,” he told her as she sipped the golden, almond-flavored wine from a Venetian goblet. “Just the four of us, if that’s all right with you?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“I’m hoping that what we talk about during dinner won’t go farther than this room. I’m also hoping you’ll give us your opinion on a rather sensitive political matter.”

“As to the former, you have my assurances I won’t speak of it to anyone, sir. As to the latter—” She gave a little shake of her head. “I find it hard to imagine that the heroes of San Juan and Kettle Hill would want my opinion on anything, much less a sensitive political matter.”

“Let’s wait until the first course is served, shall we? Then I’ll explain our predicament.”

Their predicament, Victoria discovered over a dish of roast suckling pig stuffed with plantains, was that the number of yellow fever cases among the troops had been wildly exaggerated in various military reports sent back to the States. As a result, fear of the dreaded yellow jack now ran rampant within the War Department.

“So much so,” Wood told her, “that Secretary Alger has cabled General Shafter with instructions
to divide our forces into two armies—sick and well. The well are to stay in encampments around Santiago until it’s decided where they go next. The sick we’re to send to Siboney.”

“Including those with nothing more than a bothersome boil or infected blister,” Roosevelt put in indignantly.

“Dear heavens! The hospital can’t care for every trooper with a minor indisposition.”

“Exactly.” The former army-surgeon-turned-field commander leaned forward, his face grave. “Nor can we keep the troops in the field much longer. Even if the number of yellow fever cases holds steady, malaria and dysentery are decimating the ranks.”

“I know,” Victoria said with some feeling. “I was at the Red Cross hospital yesterday. The boathouse is filled to overflowing. But I really don’t see how I can help.”

“In three specific ways.” Holding up his hand, General Wood ticked off each item.

“One, you can report the real numbers of fever cases in your dispatches. The weeks you spent at Siboney give you the credibility to know and report the difference between malarial and yellow fever.”

She could certainly do that. Victoria was only sorry that she hadn’t laid more emphasis on the numbers before now.

“Two, you can talk to those members of the
press still in Santiago and encourage them to do the same.”

“Wouldn’t such encouragement be better received coming from you? Or from General Shafter? Your rank and years of experience give you both a much better grasp of the problem than I have.”

Another of his rare smiles flickered across Wood’s face. “General Shafter has discovered that journalists form as tight a band of brothers as soldiers. The incident in the plaza during the surrender ceremony has, shall we say, cooled relations between the military and the press. We’ll pass the word through official channels, of course, but would greatly appreciate anything you can do to assist us in this matter.”

“I’ll do my best. And the third item on your list?”

Wood and his former deputy exchanged glances.

“Colonel Roosevelt has decided to write a letter to Secretary Alger protesting the order to keep our men—both sick and well—in Cuba during the wet months,” the general said slowly. “It’s not a military communication, but a private correspondence from one man of considerable political influence to another. We should like your opinion on the best way to make that private letter public, without causing the colonel to violate the military chain of command.”

Victoria didn’t hesitate. “Leave it lying on a ta
ble where a member of the press can sneak a peak at it.”

“Bully!” Roosevelt gave a loud, horselike laugh. “That’s exactly what we thought, too.”

A
s it turned out, the senior officers in Cuba decided Roosevelt should address his letter to General Shafter rather than Secretary of War Alger.

They all gathered at the governor’s palace on the last day of July to help Roosevelt draft the missive. In it, he voiced their collective concern that the flower of American manhood was being left to rot in the hills around Santiago. Moved by his willingness to risk both his command and his political career, every man present decided to sign a formal petition to Alger as well.

Both documents were left on a table, where an unsuspecting Associated Press reporter noticed them.

“It happened just as you thought it would,” Sam told Victoria with a grin. “After he read the contents, the man couldn’t wait to rush down to the cable office.”

“You watch,” she predicted confidently. “The gist of those letters will appear in tomorrow’s edition of every major newspaper from New York to San Francisco.”

She was right. The letters made the front pages of the
San Francisco Examiner,
the Denver
Ledger,
the
Daily Oklahoman,
the
Detroit News
and at least four of the New York dailies. Publishers clogged cable wires demanding more details from their correspondents in Cuba. At the same time, alarmed citizens deluged the Secretary of War with telegrams urging him to bring their boys home.

On August 3, a mere three days later, Alger cabled General Shafter to prepare his army to depart Cuba.

Given the near-hysterical fear of yellow fever, the order included two specific caveats. One, those troops well enough to travel would be brought back to remote bases and kept isolated until it was shown they weren’t infectious. Two, those already infected with the dreaded disease would remain in Cuba until they recovered—or died.

Late on the afternoon the order came in, Sam searched out Victoria to tell her the news. He found her at the cable office, where she hurriedly rewrote her dispatch to include the latest information. That done, they dashed back to the house on Calle San Giorgio through sheets of rain.

“I should have had the stable boy get out the carriage,” Sam said ruefully, holding his India rubber poncho over her head.

“It’s only a few blocks. I won’t melt.”

Although she tossed the words off with a laugh, Victoria wasn’t completely sure they’d prove true. She’d thought the daily downpours torrential before. Once July had melted into August and the rainy season began in earnest, the brief cloudbursts had stretched to steady, pounding rains. If the sun broke through the clouds at all now, it was only for an hour or two each day.

Alger’s order to bring the troops home had come none too soon. As miserable as the rains now made life in the city, Sam said they’d turned life in the camps into torment. There was no escaping the wet. It swelled creeks into raging rivers that washed through the camps. Seeped through canvas tents. Rotted food, tobacco pouches, boots. Some of the men had built platforms on stilts to escape the soggy ground, but they couldn’t escape the sickness that came with the rains. Malaria raged like the plague among the troops. They had to leave Cuba, and soon!

Victoria had put off facing the fact that their withdrawal also meant hers, but Sam forced the issue when they reached the house they shared with Max Luna. A clucking Señora Garcia took the pon
cho, shaking her head at the folly of
yanquis
who dashed about so foolishly in the rain.

“I’d best go change,” Victoria said, grimacing at the slap of her wet skirts against her calves. “I’m soaked through.”

He caught her arm, staying her for a moment. “There’s a steamer leaving the day after tomorrow. The
Sea Cloud.
I think we should book you passage on it.”

“So soon!”

“It’s time, Victoria.”

As much as she longed to exchange this wet, torpid heat for the cool, clean winds of Wyoming, she hated the thought of leaving Cuba. She’d come into her own here, as a correspondent and as a woman.

Even more, she hated the thought of leaving Sam. Particularly now that she’d finally shed her doubts and hurts and come to revel in his touch. The afternoon he’d found her asleep in the bath had opened the floodgates. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her, or she of him.

“Do you really want me to go?” she asked, searching his face.

“No. Neither do I want to see you shivering with chills or racked with fever.”

“But it could be months or years before you’re released from duty here.”

“It could.” He brushed his knuckles down her damp cheek. “Will you wait for me?”

“Oh, Sam.” Curling her face into his hand, she pressed a kiss against the palm. “I feel as though I’ve waited for you all my life. I’ll wait as long as I have to.”

When he dipped his head and covered her mouth with his, she thought her heart would burst. And when he scooped her into his arms, strode down the hall and kicked the door to the bedroom shut behind them, she shed her wet clothes and tumbled joyously into bed beside him.

The first time was fast and frenzied, driven by a hunger that seemed to grow more insatiable with each day. The second time was slow and languorous and so deliciously, provocatively wicked that Victoria finally pleaded exhaustion. Curling her sweat-slicked body into his, she dropped like a stone into sleep.

Despite their strenuous activities, Victoria came awake before Sam did the next morning. The realization that this was her last full day in Cuba was as heavy as the deadweight of his arm thrown across her middle.

Thinking of all that had happened between them since she’d stepped off the boat at Siboney, Victoria studied him in the dawn light just beginning to creep through the shutters. His dark lashes fanned
against cheeks still hollowed from the weight he’d lost. The night’s growth stubbled the lower half of his face. His brown hair stuck up in spikes from their energetic activities of the night before.

He looked more like a scruffy pirate than an officer, and Victoria didn’t think she could possibly love him more than she did at this moment. Unable to resist the urge to touch him, she traced her fingers along his bare shoulder in a whisper-soft caress.

“Mmm. Nice.”

Her hand stilled. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. Go back to sleep.”

“Too late,” he muttered into his pillow.

“It’s not quite dawn, Sam. Go back to sleep.”

“Not quite dawn?” One brown eye opened. “What woke you so early?”

“Nothing in particular.”

Just the realization that they had only one more night together.

“Ha! I don’t believe that.” A sleepy grin tugged at his mouth. “It usually takes nothing short of a cannonade to get you to stir.”

“Surely I’m not as bad as that!”

“Yes, you are. But now that we’re both awake—”

Curling an arm around her waist, he drew her closer. Victoria snuggled against him, her back to his front, content to lie beside him and wait for the
dawn. It took only the brush of her backside against his groin to realize Sam didn’t intend to waste what was left of the night.

One shift of his hips, and her womb clenched. One probe between her legs, and she was instantly, deliciously wet.

“You know,” he murmured, his breath hot in her ear, “I wouldn’t mind if we greeted every dawn like this for the rest of our lives.”

“Neither,” she gasped as he slid into her, “would I!”

Writhing, she arched her back and thrust her hips against his. His hand came up to torment her breast. The play of his tongue in her ear drove her as wild as his fast, hard strokes.

When her peak came, she almost screamed with the searing intensity of it. Sam had to slap a palm over her mouth to keep her from waking the entire household.

When his came, it left them both drenched in sweat and the warm, sticky residue of their pleasure.

Exhausted all over again, Victoria barely twitched when Sam slipped out of bed, washed and shaved, and pulled on his uniform.

“I’ll swing by the harbor and book your passage on the
Sea Cloud,
” he promised as he bent to brush her mouth with his.

That roused her enough to make a husky plea.
“Come home early tonight, if you can. It’s our last together.”

“I will.”

It was almost noon when Victoria woke the second time.

The realization that she had only a few hours left in Cuba wrapped around her like the dark clouds that wreathed the mountains almost all day now. Sighing, she threw off the tangled bed linens.

She had to go to the market, buy gifts for Señora Garcia and the rest of the staff. Make a final visit to the boathouse hospital to say goodbye to Miss Barton and her staff. Compose a last dispatch from Cuba and put it on the wires.

Yet even as she washed, dressed and consumed the lunch Señora Garcia had waiting for her, regrets pulled at Victoria with sharp, pinching fingers. She didn’t want to board the
Sea Cloud
tomorrow. She didn’t want to miss reporting on the American withdrawal from Cuba.

She didn’t want to leave Sam a day or an hour earlier than she had to.

Surely another day or two wouldn’t matter. Just a day or two. With many ships coming into Santiago to begin the troop withdrawal, Sam could find her a place on one of them. She’d talk to him about it tonight. At dinner.

With that thought in mind, she braved the rain to walk to the harbor.

Victoria stopped at the Red Cross hospital first. Drained from her walk and the stifling heat, she plopped down beside Callie May Morgan. All the shutters were closed against the rain, and the air inside the boathouse was stifling.

Flapping a hand in front of her face, she fought for breath. “You’d think by now I’d be used to this climate.”

“Does take some getting used to,” Callie May agreed, reaching into the basket of just-washed bandages between her feet. With the ease of long practice, she folded one end of the soft cotton rag and rolled it up.

“This constant heat tires me so,” Victoria said with a sigh. “It didn’t seem to bother me half so much when I first got to Cuba, but now I fall asleep at the oddest hours.”

And in the oddest places. Smiling inwardly, she dragged off her wet poncho and sagged back against the wall. Callie May slanted her a considering look.

“Maybe it ain’t the heat, miss. Maybe you’re breeding.”

“Breeding?” Startled, Victoria jerked upright. “Oh, no! I couldn’t possibly be.”

A chuckle rumbled deep in the older woman’s chest. “That’s what we all say when it happens.”

“No, truly. There must be some other explanation for this…this constant fatigue.”

“Well, I’m no doctor, but I have birthed four babies. I near ’bout fell asleep where I stood every day for the first few weeks I was carrying them.”

Victoria stared at her, slack-jawed, while the possibility burst like a rocket in her mind. Then she remembered the care Sam had taken to prevent just such an occurrence.

“You don’t understand.” With an embarrassed glance around, she lowered her voice. “I haven’t—That is, the captain and I haven’t—”

“You sayin’ you ’n’ the captain ain’t crawled under the mosquito netting together?”

“Yes,” she hissed, her cheeks burning. “We have. But Captain Garrett has never— That is, he doesn’t—”

“Ahh. I understand. He doesn’t pour out his juice inside you.”

“No,” she got out in a strangled whisper. “He doesn’t.”

“Me ’n’ my Jake tried that, too,” Callie May said with another chuckle. “It didn’t work for us. Guess it don’t work for you ’n’ the captain, either.” She cocked a knowing brow. “How long since you had your flow?”

Desperately, Victoria tried to recall the last time she’d had her courses.

Dear God! Not since she’d left Cheyenne! Eight, no
nine
weeks ago! Before she took the train to Tampa. Before she and Sam made love for the first time.

“But— But I’ve been losing weight these past weeks,” she stammered. “Not gaining it.”

“Huh! Take a look around you. You see anyone here who hasn’t shed a good twenty pounds since they come to Cuba?”

Dazed, she let her gaze drift over the crowded ward. Every cot was filled with gaunt, emaciated patients.

“No,” she whispered, “I don’t.”

She
must
be pregnant! Either that, or she’d endured such stress during those weeks at Siboney that it had affected her woman’s flow. But stress wouldn’t explain her constant drowsiness. Would it?

When she put the question to Callie May, the woman lifted her big shoulders.

“I can’t say ’bout that. From the look of you, you plumb wore yourself out up there. Maybe your body’s just tellin’ you that you need rest.” Her black eyes were kind. “You’ll know soon enough one way or t’other, won’t you?”

Numbly, Victoria nodded.

“Meantime, you sleep as much as you need to.
And if I was you, miss, I’d take that boat home tomorrow. You don’t need to be around fever if you
are
breeding.”

Her mind spinning, Victoria walked out of the ward and huddled under the veranda’s wide overhang. Blindly, she stared at the white waterspouts dancing across the bay.

Could Callie May be right?

Was she indeed carrying Sam’s child?

She felt like a fool, a complete and utter fool, for not even considering the possibility. How could she have forgotten the unused linen rags still tucked away in the bottom of her valise? How could she have coupled with Sam so eagerly—and so often!—without imagining that a child might quicken in her belly?

Her only excuse was ignorance. Sheer, abysmal ignorance. And the fact that she’d accepted without question Sam’s explanation for withdrawing so precipitously each time they’d joined. Evidently he hadn’t withdrawn precipitously enough!

Gradually, her shock subsided. Bit by bit, a sense of wonder began to take hold. “A baby,” she whispered, crossing her arms over her middle. “Sam’s baby.”

Until this moment, she’d been sure she couldn’t experience any wilder joy than she had in Sam’s arms these past weeks. But now…

A baby!

She had to tell him. Had to share this wondrous possibility! Dragging up the hood of her poncho, Victoria pushed away from the protection of the veranda.