Night Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (27 page)

      
“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 his 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.”

      
Adam gulped in surprise, but Melanie's gold eyes took on a catlike gleam and she whispered, “This little assignment that brought you from the capital to San Antonio wouldn't have anything to do with a polecat named Lucas Blaine, would it? He and that scum Walkman are thick as thieves. They
are
thieves, in fact.” At the ranger's look of amazement, Melanie quickly told him about the story that would appear in that day's edition of the
Star
.

      
“You mean you rode out after a band of renegades and got involved in those killings?” He couldn't keep the incredulity from his voice. “You could’ve been shot or worse!”

      
“Those possibilities have been pointed out to me,” she said darkly. Glancing over at her brother's wide-eyed stare and not wanting to chance his divulging any of her professional secrets to their parents, Melanie said sweetly, “Adam, didn't you say you and Papa were supposed to go look at some breeding stock out on Bluebonnet this afternoon?”

      
Adam Fleming knew the pugnacious set of his sister's little chin. Sighing, he stood up. “Yep, I did and I am late. You just be careful, both of you.” Uneasily, he nodded and signaled Serefìn, the owner of the place. When the old man had taken his money for the meal, Adam headed back toward the boardinghouse with grave misgivings. Mellie never had answered his question about Lee Velasquez. At times like this, he almost felt sorry for the poor bastard!

      
Once free of Adam's youthful curiosity, Melanie quickly explained to the ranger about Moses French and her article for the
Star,
outlining her contacts with the Indian children. “So you see, I think we can work together, Mr. Lawrence. You want to catch a crooked ranger and stop the whiskey and gun traffic to the renegades, and I want the story. Of course, I won't print anything until you have all the facts and make the arrests,” she added hastily, sensing he was about to refuse.

      
“I don't know, Mrs. Velasquez. This isn't a game. These men are very dangerous,” he said speculatively.

      
“So were the men with Walkman that day they massacred a whole village of Comanche up on the fork of the Guadelupe,” she said quietly.

      
“Moses French was there, too, I take it,” he replied, whistling low in amazement. “You are quite an incredible woman, Melanie Velasquez. Just what does your husband think of all your adventures?”

      
“That they're over,” came the terse reply from behind them. Melanie let out a gasp and whirled to face Lee's set features. “Come on, wife, we're going home,” he commanded while his black eyes bored into Lawrence's blue ones.

      
Jeremy stood up on the opposite side of the table. Although tall as Lee, he was heavier with thickset bones and tightly knit muscles. “I take it you're Lee Velasquez,” he said gravely, sensing the undercurrent of hostility between husband and wife. He did not offer a handshake to Lee, instinctively sensing the
Tejano
would refuse it.

      
“Clarence said you'd likely be here, Melanie, but you were supposedly with Adam.” Lee hated the jealous tone in his voice.

      
Refusing to justify her perfectly innocent actions to the tyrant looming over her, Melanie replied over sweetly, “Adam had to go. Jeremy and I were discussing some
Star
business. Whatever are you doing in town? I thought you had a ranch to run.”