Night Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (34 page)

      
As the tears overflowed, she refused to consider why his bigotry could hurt her so much. She focused instead on what giving in to his physical demands would mean.
I’ll be tied to him, enslaved as surely as my African ancestors were.
Even if she were of impeccable Hispanic lineage, she would still be a possession to a man like Lee Velasquez, a woman to preside over his household and bear his children.

      
I can't live that way, I can't....
Frightened and confused by all the new needs and emotions awakened in her that night, Melanie finally fell into an exhausted sleep.

      
Lee woke up the following morning with a foul hangover throbbing at his temples and a long-unfamiliar sensation prickling at his consciousness. He was in bed with a woman. For all the plenitude of whores he'd used in the past six years, Lee had never slept with one after she dispensed her services. He had deliberately paid them and sent them on their way.

      
The soft warmth curled beside him was definitely feminine. The sweet fragrance of night flowers filled his nostrils. He turned his head and was almost glad for the hammering agony inside his skull. It was a penance for his stupidity. The preceding evening came back to him in shadowy-edged visions—visions of the ebony-haired beauty lying so innocently asleep in his bed. She had driven him wild with jealousy, a golden butterfly flirting and dancing with all those besotted men, especially that damned ranger. He had watched and seethed and drunk. Drunk. Yes, that described it. A dangerous combination—fury and liquor.

      
He looked at her sleeping face, framed by the billowing clouds of black satin hair. She was so young and vulnerable with those wicked gold-coin eyes closed, their thick brushy lashes fanning her cheeks. The night had been cool and she snuggled near him for warmth, pressing her lush curves tightly to his body. What man, drunk or sober, could resist Melanie Fleming? No, he amended, Melanie Velasquez. His wife. He supposed it was inevitable that she become his wife in fact. But not the way it had happened—in a fit of liquor-sodden lust. Although he knew her passion matched his own, he despised his roughness in taking her; and even more, he despised the naked hunger, the need that he had revealed in his drunken weakness last night.

      
Suppressing that thought, he brushed a lock of silky hair off her cheek with his fingertips, grinning as he remembered her cries of passion and the startled expression on her face when she climaxed.
So unlike Dulcia,
the thought flashed traitorously into his mind. He scowled darkly, feeling a renewed surge of guilt when he remembered the comparison he'd made between her and Melanie last night.

      
Melanie was certainly unlike Dulcia; and had he a choice, he would never have married this fiery, passionate little she-cat sleeping beside him. But all that was behind him now. For better or worse, he had taken an irrevocable step last night, and now he must make the best of it and try to build a life with his Night Flower. First, he must apologize for his drunken temper, he thought with a sigh, wishing the pounding misery in his head would abate so he could think more lucidly. She stirred.

      
“Good morning, I think,” Lee whispered, wanting to keep noise at a minimum in deference to his splitting skull.

      
Melanie sat up, then, realizing she was naked, yanked up the tangled mass of sheets from the foot of the bed and pulled them defensively around her body. She had been cuddled up to him like a damn lapdog and he had been watching her, no doubt with a self-satisfied male smirk! She heard a slight rumble of baritone laughter and scooted across the narrow bed, turning to confront her nemesis with as much dignity as she could muster.

      
“Why the qualification? Aren't you sure it's a good morning? Could your fondness for whiskey perchance have something to do with your doubt?” she inquired with acid sweetness, trying desperately not to look at that dark, hard body, so virile with black curly hair set in cunning patterns. She had caressed every inch of him last night! Now, just the thought of looking into his fathomless black eyes made her quake.

      
He swung his long legs over the other side of the bed and stood up gingerly, rubbing his head as if it were made of fragile crystal.

      
“A temperance lecture—just what every man needs in the morning,” he groused. Seemingly unconcerned with his nakedness, he walked slowly over to where a pair of buckskin breeches lay, tossed carelessly across a chair. Lee slid the soft old leather up his lean, hard legs and over his narrow hips, standing in profile to her as he buttoned the fly. She blushed and looked away. Did he notice?

      
“Mellie, we have to talk about last night.” He hesitated, looking at her, so small and lovely, huddled on the bed like a doll. She gasped in affront at his use of her family's pet name. He knew she disliked it on his lips, for some perverse reason. Shaking his head very carefully, he was rewarded with a slight clearing of his vision as he walked over to the bed. He sat down and looked at her. “Look, what's done is done. I'm sorry I drank so much. I didn't want—”

      
She bounced off the bed like a coiled spring. “You're sorry! Too bad it means the end of your plans with Larena Sandoval! Get drunk and rape me and then beg pardon!”

      
Lee's face first went blank in amazement, then hardened like granite as she finished her tirade. “Raped you! Why you vicious little slut! You cried my name and clawed my back, clung to me and met me thrust for thrust. You found your release as surely as any hot-blooded Creole belle kissed by the tar brush ever did!” He stood up and glared down at her, fists clenched at his sides.

      
Melanie was struck by a knifelike pain squeezing the breath from her, blinding her to all reason. Unthinkingly she dropped the sheet and reached up to slap him with all the strength her tiny hand could muster. “Yes, I'm kissed by the tar brush—a
placée's
daughter, a dirty Indian breed! All those filthy inferior things you despise, and yet you want me! You desire me and you hate yourself for it. You'd take a woman like me in any bordello and never think twice. But I'm your wife—I bear that vaunted Velasquez name, and now I might even be carrying your child! Something to be sorry for, indeed,
Don
Leandro!”

      
He almost struck her back; he was shaking so badly his teeth chattered. “Bitch—you beautiful little bitch!” he ground out as he struggled to keep his arms at his sides. “You know all the tricks to tease and torment a man, just as surely as your Creole mother ever did. But she was more honest—she just wanted a man to support her in return for her favors. You—you don't want me. You don't really want any man, just your goddamn causes. I hope you find temperance and suffrage comfort you in bed at night, madam. I can assure you, you will sleep alone. No other man will touch my wife, and I don't choose to!”

      
Melanie stood trembling and breathless through his diatribe, afraid he would strike her. Wasn't he a scalper, a man who had killed, maimed, lived outside the law for years? She had never seen such hell as those tormented night-dark eyes revealed. But Lee spun on his heel and grabbed his boots and shirt, leaving the room in a few stiff, controlled strides.

      
When she heard the door to the outside hall slam, it sounded painfully final, like closing the door to a crypt. She was young and alive, yet shackled for life to a man who despised her, a man who had just sworn to hold her in a cruel travesty of a marriage with no care for her feelings, her dreams, her self. She ached but refused to give in to another self-pitying bout of tears. With the same rigid control Lee had exhibited, she began to dress for the day.

Chapter Seventeen

      
That same morning Jim Slade sat watching the sunrise at Bluebonnet. It was a magic time, especially on a cool, crisp fall morning as the golden rays touched the dew-drenched grasses and shrubbery surrounding the front veranda, setting everything ablaze like a million fragments of diamond. Slade reclined on a sturdy oak bench, sipping a cup of coffee, surveying his land from the veranda. This was a morning ritual of his from early spring when the wildflowers turned the hillsides to riotous blue violet, to late fall when the mustard weed made them blaze yellow and bronze. Born and raised on this piece of land, he could imagine no life elsewhere.

      
“This is one of the loveliest spots in the Almighty's creation, I do believe.” Sam Houston's sonorous voice interrupted Slade's ruminations. Cup in hand, he walked out the front door and sat down beside his younger friend. The two men sipped their coffee, drinking in the morning as much as the scalding black liquid.

      
“Your friend should be here soon,” Jim said, finally breaking the companionable silence. They had important matters to discuss, matters that related to the very beauty and tranquility surrounding them.

      
Houston shrugged. “I don't really know a good deal about Jeremy Lawrence personally. I met him in Washington last spring for the first time. When this matter first came to my attention, I, er, investigated his background and decided he was the right man for the job.”

      
Jim grinned and took another sip of coffee. “With your usual thoroughness, I'm certain you know what he eats for breakfast and who his maternal grandmother was.”

      
Houston threw back his leonine head and laughed. “As always, Jim-boy, you ascribe more virtue to me than I possess. Still, I did find Lawrence has lived off and on in Texas since leaving Virginia as a youth. He has several years' experience as a peace officer and rode with the rangers during the war. Jack Hays spoke highly of him, and the few men in the Indian Office I trust also think he's honest and capable.”

      
Slade nodded. “Sounds good to me. How long has he worked for the office?”

      
“He was an agent for the superintendent in St. Louis for one year. In fact, that's why he was in Washington—to speak before Congress when they passed the Indian Office Appropriations Act last winter, reorganizing and expanding the office. He worked closely with the special investigating commissioners Campbell and Temple, whose mission in Texas was all too brief.” Houston swore and pounded his big, meaty fist on the smooth oak bench. “If only those fools in Congress had extended the financial support for that commission, we might not have the mess we have now.”

      
Well acquainted with his mentor's political frustration in the nation's capital, not to mention its state counterpart in Austin, Jim sighed. “Well, we do know we've got some traders selling whiskey and guns to Comanche renegades, and their raids are getting pretty close to San Antonio. Any idea if these scum are licensed traders or just illegals who've slipped in to meet with the Comanche?”

      
Houston laughed mirthlessly. “Despite the fact that the idea of licensing traders to deal with the Indians was my own, I must confess it a dismal failure in practice. All the licenses have done since our illustrious Whig administration took power is serve as a form of spoils. We might as well have the army give them their military issue to sell to the renegades! I'm afraid the licensed traders are hiding behind corrupt deals with highly placed people in Congress and in the Interior Department. I know for certain that Lucas Blaine is getting direct payments from the Indian Office for alleged debts run up by half the Comanche Nation—who all conveniently seem to purchase goods on credit from his post.”

      
“Convenient—eliminate the middleman,” Jim said disgustedly.

      
“One way or another, those white carrion get government money and deliver nothing but inferior goods and pestilence to their red brothers,” Sam added sadly.

      
“You think Blaine is one of the whiskey traders?” Jim asked.

      
Houston scoffed. “As my old friend Chief Bowl used to say, ‘Does a bear shit in the woods?’ The trick is going to be catching him actually dealing with the renegades. He may be defrauding the government by taking Comanche allotment money for inferior or nonexistent pots and blankets, but the real danger is that he's also selling them guns and spirits. Obviously the Indian Office can't reimburse him for those items.”

      
“And since he isn't in this for philanthropy, we can be sure the renegades are trading him something in return—horses and cattle stolen from ranchers around this area,” Jim supplied.

      
“And if Blaine is operating this close to San Antonio, he has to have the cooperation of someone with the rangers,” Houston said.

      
“No way would this go on if Jack Hays was still in charge,” Jim agreed fervently.

      
“Let's just hope our undercover ranger will be able to nose out everyone involved before the whole of west Texas erupts into full-blown war,” Houston added, then looked up. A horseman was approaching the house.

      
Jeremy Lawrence swung down from his mount with the careless ease of a man who has spent a lifetime on horseback. His tan hair blew free in the breeze and his mustache gave his face a hard-edged look, like a Texas ruffian, the perfect sort to fit in with Seth Walkman.

      
He ambled up to the porch and shoved the flat-crowned hat to the back of his head. Reaching out his hand to Houston, he said, “Mornin', Senator. Mr. Slade, a pleasure to see you again.”

      
As the two men shook hands, Jim smiled and said, “Call me Jim, Jeremy. Sam here's been telling me all about you. You know this is going to be a hell of a dangerous job. But first, let's go in and get breakfast. Be grateful Charlee's cooking this morning, not Weevils.”