Deep as the Rivers (Santa Fe Trilogy) (64 page)

   
“When I came to New Orleans I wanted to see you but I was afraid. They said you were a widow living in seclusion. I knew you were free...but I still couldn’t gather the courage to come to you, Livy. Oh, Livy.” He reached out and enfolded her in his arms. “I’ve been a fool, such a fool.”

   
Through her tears she whispered against the scratchy wool of his uniform, “No more than I.”

   
David awakened and looked up at his mother in the arms of a big dark-haired stranger. Although he knew it was not the bad man with yellow hair, he was still afraid, not understanding what had transpired. “Mama?” he said tentatively.

   
Olivia turned in Samuel’s arms and reached out for the boy. “Come here, darling.” She picked him up and pressed his head to her shoulder, shielding him from the bloody mess of Bullock’s body.

   
Samuel looked into David’s eyes and the primordial shock rocked him again.
His son
. “Let me have him. You’re hurt,” he said to Olivia as she winced when the child bumped her chin with his head as he wriggled.

   
She gave him over, saying, “David, this is someone you’ve waited a long time to meet.”

   
As Samuel carried his son out of the room, the bloodshed and hatred of the past fell away from them all. Outside the fog lifted and clear winter sunshine beamed a benediction through the open front door.

Chapter Twenty Eight

   
Sounds of jubilation echoed up from Chartre Street as the citizens and soldiers of New Orleans celebrated their incredible victory. The British invaders had been utterly vanquished before the combined firepower of Baratarian artillery and Kentucky long rifles, suffering nearly fifteen hundred casualties to a scant fifty on the American side. Jackson was paraded through the streets as the hero of the hour along with the Lafitte brothers and the leaders of the intrepid Tennessee and Kentucky militias. The city was delirious as church bells pealed out the glorious tidings.

   
But all was quiet upstairs in the Durand city house where Samuel and Olivia had taken refuge after he reported Bullock’s treachery and death to the general and an amazed Governor Claiborne. David slept peacefully in the room next door with the maid Florine watching over him.

   
In the parlor a warm fire crackled on the hearth, taking away the chill of January air. Samuel filled two crystal goblets with Madeira and brought one to Olivia, who stood warming her hands by the flames. The fire reflected on her hair, making it blaze in splendor as it fell down her back. Her slender figure, dressed in softly flowing green muslin, was outlined in the light. His eyes traced the soft swell of breasts, the curve of hips, then moved up to her patrician face, so proud and lovely in profile. He ached with wanting her.

   
Silently he handed her the glass and she took it. Their gazes locked over the rims. Neither one drank. Finally he said, “I just received a letter from my sister. Claiborne’ s new clerk brought it to me when I reported to Jackson. The Santa Fe trade is flourishing. Santiago’s building another warehouse in St. Louis. He wants me to live there and run the American end of the business.”

   
“What about the army?” she asked hesitantly, half-afraid to dare hope his words indicated what she prayed they did.

   
“The war’s over. I’ve read the dispatches from Jemmy. It’s only a matter of time until the negotiations in Ghent are worked out—if they haven’t been already. I’m resigning my commission as soon as I make a final report personally to the president.”

   
She took a sip of wine to fortify her courage, then said, “I didn’t tell you how afraid I was when I first learned you were in New Orleans, afraid you’d come to take David away from me.”

   
Her words stung him. “I can understand why you’d feel that way, Livy, but I would never have done that even if I’d known about him.”

   
“Now you do and I know you love him.”
Do you still love me, Samuel?

   
He set down his glass on the Pembroke table and took hers, placing it beside his. “Yes, I love him. Thank you for our son, Livy,” he said gravely, then hesitated, combing his fingers through his shaggy hair, searching for the right words. “I’ve done you grievous wrong, Livy, over and over. You’ve never done anything but good to me in return. I’m no bargain, just an ex-soldier with a modest income, living in a frontier town that’s rough and small compared to all of this. I have no right to ask—”

   
“Damn you, Samuel Sheridan Shelby! I’ve had enough of your guilt and your stiff-necked Virginia pride to boot! If you don’t love me enough to marry me, then I’ll just take David upriver to his Grandpa Micajah to raise. And damn the Durand fortune, too! It can rot for all I care. I’ve scarce spent a sou of it in the past three years and I don’t plan to start now.”

   
She was spitting mad. Her green eyes blazed darkly and that small pink mouth...oh lord, that mouth. Smiling tenderly, he cupped her face with his hands and centered his own over it, murmuring against her lips as he brushed them with his, “What I’ve been trying to work up to, Madam Obregón, is a clumsy proposal of marriage. But you, with your usual fiery temper, have beaten me to it. Yes, I will marry you. Of course, I will! I love you more than life.”

   
Olivia threw her arms around him with a cry of pure joy. “I’ve waited so many years to hear that! We can go to the cathedral in the morning. Father DuBourg can interrupt his work on the great Te Deum he’s planning long enough to perform a simple marriage.”

   
He pulled her closer to his body, holding her tightly as he murmured, “Tomorrow we get married, but tonight...I’ve waited three years for this, Livy.”

   
She held tight as he swung her up into his arms and carried her from the sitting room into the bedroom beyond, placing her on the high tester bed, then sitting down beside her. When she started to slip her gown off, he stopped her with gentle hands.

   
“Let me be your ladies maid.” With that he reached down and slipped her dainty kid shoes from her feet, then peeled her silk stockings from those deliciously long slender legs. Raining soft kisses on her shoulders and throat as he pulled her up, he attacked the gown next. “It’s been years since I’ve worked these accursed things,” he murmured, unfastening the stubborn hooks holding together the frothy concoction of dark green muslin.

   
When he slid it off her and reached for the lacy camisole, her arms came up, covering her breasts. “Samuel...I...I don’t want you to be disappointed,” she said softly.

   
He groaned. “If you want to wait until we’re married, I’ll understand, Livy.”
It damn well may kill me, but I’ll understand.

   
She shook her head. “No, I don’t want to wait. It’s just…”

   
“What, love?” He tipped up her chin and gazed into those liquid emerald eyes, dark mysterious gypsy eyes.

   
“I gained weight when I was carrying David. My body isn’t the same.”

   
He smiled, letting his fingertips graze along the edge of the lace covering her breasts. “So I can see.” Then he cupped the heavy globes as his lips brushed the tops, searching for the hard nubby points of her nipples through the sheer lace. “You’re perfect to me, no matter what,” he said hoarsely, peeling the camisole down to suckle one breast, then the other.

   
Olivia moaned and dug her fingers into his heavy black hair, pressing him closer. She accommodated him as he finished stripping her of the rest of her lacy undergarments. When he lay her back and sat up to study her from head to toe, she felt a flush of shyness. Did he find her thicker? Stretched? Less attractive?

   
“You’re even more beautiful than before. I left a girl. I came back to a woman.” He worshipped her with his eyes and his hands, caressing and kissing her. Then he reached down to pull off his boots.

   
“Now you must let me be your valet,” she said, sliding to the edge of the bed and slipping to the floor. When she turned her rounded buttocks to him, straddling his leg to tug off a boot, she could hear his strangled gasp of desire.

   
“Hurry,” was all he could choke out as his hands caressed the smoothness of her bottom and skimmed inside her pale thighs.

   
Olivia turned to find he’d already pulled his tunic off while she was finishing his boots and hose. When he stood up, she knelt to unbutton his fly. He fisted his hands to hold himself under control when she freed his aching staff and tugged his breeches down his legs.

   
Kicking them away, he reached for her and brought her up into his arms. “I...will...try to go slow, Livy...to make it good for you...but it’s been so long...I don’t know if I can.”

   
Her heart turned over. “How long?”

   
He looked into her eyes and was lost. “A moonlit night on the Mississippi in December of 1811,” he confessed.

   
She wet her lips. “Samuel, a certain Spaniard’s wife described your...your body in great detail...she said it made her swoon with delight.”

   
Shelby looked puzzled, but then chuckled bitterly. “Swoon, huh. Well, she must have had strange tastes. When the British caught me, they turned me over to the Spanish who decided to have a little sport with me...to humiliate me, soften me up. Hell, they stripped me and put me on public display in a cage...along with two monkeys. We drew some very large crowds.”

   
Olivia was torn by guilt and horror. “My darling, I’m so very, very sorry. Please forgive—”

   
“So, my little cat was jealous,” Samuel interrupted, grinning. “I like that...very much...but you have no cause. In all those accursed three long years, no cause at all. But I must admit after several days in that cage one of the monkeys was beginning to look somewhat attractive.”

   
“Samuel! You wretch!”

   
“Oh, I’ve been very, very wretched for a long time.”

   
Olivia laughed in joyous relief. There had been no other woman for him since he left her. “No wonder you were furious to hear about Rafael Obregón,’’ she said with a low wicked chuckle that ended on a sob. “Oh, Samuel, we’ve lost three years but now we have everything back and all the rest of our lives together.”

   
He pulled her onto the bed beside him, then rolled on top of her. Looking down into her eyes, he slowly slid into the welcoming warmth of her body. “Let’s not waste another minute of it,” he whispered hoarsely as he struggled to remain still, willing himself not to spill his seed before he had brought her along with him.

   
Olivia held him buried deep within her, not moving, understanding his struggle, thrilled by how deeply he still desired her, how splendidly they still fit together after so long a separation. When he began to move in long slow strokes, she accommodated his gentle rhythm, tightening her legs around his hips, arching up to meet each thrust. She, too, had been without this since their last night together on the Mississippi.

   
Gradually as their hands caressed and their mouths tasted of each other and kissed, the pace of their mating began to increase until soon they were in a frenzy, bucking and rolling together. Sweat poured off them in the cool night air. Her choked gasps and sobs of pleasure mixed with his muttered endearments and curses, which were endearments, too. At last when she felt the crest shimmering over her like a crystal cloth, she cried out and arched high, her nails digging into his hard buttocks as he rammed into her fast and furious, crying out exultantly as he joined her in the long denied surfeit.

   
They trembled in the aftermath as he collapsed on top of her, cradling her in his arms while she clung to him. Then at last, he chuckled, nuzzling her ear. “That just might start another earthquake right here on the delta.”

   
“I thought I felt the earth move, didn’t you? Say, did you ever think, maybe we started the quake in 1811?” she murmured, then looked into his eyes and asked, “How long will it take us to travel upriver to St. Louis?”

   
He shrugged. “A week if we can get a berth on a steamer, a month by keelboat.”

   
“Let’s take the keelboat, Samuel,” she whispered conspiratorially.

   
“Then let’s pray we don’t start another earthquake,” Samuel whispered back.

Epilogue

   
She sure does cry a lot, Grandpa,” David said as Father Louie poured cool baptismal water on the forehead of Elizabeth Louise Shelby.

   
Micajah Johnstone chuckled at the boy perched on his shoulder. “Wal now,” he whispered, “she’s jist a leetle mite, not all growed up like yew. Yew’ll have ta learn her.”

   
“Like you did me?” the boy asked, receiving an affectionate nod.