Natchez Flame (32 page)

“The lady of the house insisted,” Brendan said with a grin and a flash of white teeth. “From now on this place will have a butler and a maid. The dresses will be too big, but Jewel is here to alter them for you.” Brendan spread the clothes out on the bed.

“But I can’t stay here—what will people say?”

“The Bannermans know the truth—all of it—and they’ve agreed to help us. The servants think you’re my wife, and nobody else knows you’re here.”

At this point, what choice did she have? She looked at the clothes and counted several muslins, a gingham, and a calico among the pile, a russet silk day dress, a deep rose moire, a midnight-blue silk, and a forest-green evening gown. “I can’t accept someone else’s clothes—they’re far too costly. How would I ever repay them?”

Brendan turned to face her with pale blue eyes that looked grim. “I told you before, Priscilla. I’m hardly a pauper. I can afford to pay for the clothes. I can afford to take care of you. When will you start believing me?”

She glanced down nervously. “I’m sorry. I keep thinking of you as a rugged frontiersman. Finding you here … playing the part of a gentleman … well, it takes a little getting used to.”

“You’re going to get all of the “gentleman” you can take, remember? Or the rugged frontiersman—
whichever it is you prefer.” Priscilla blushed crimson. “We’ve got a lifetime ahead of us, Sill.”

She prayed he was right, but she wasn’t really sure. There was still so much to sort out, so many problems they still had to solve.

“Can we speak to Mr. Stevens today?” she asked, hoping the subject of her annulment would placate him some.

“The sooner the better,” was all he said.

After they’d both had a bath, and Priscilla spent some time with Jewel, getting her borrowed wardrobe fitted, she and Brendan went up to the main house so she could meet their host and hostess.

“Lord knows what they’re going to think of me,” she mumbled as they approached the back door.

“They’ll think you’re beautiful and sweet, and that we’re madly in love. And you’ll think they’re a delightful family, which they are.”

He was right about that, she discovered. Susan Alice—Sue Alice, she preferred—was a ripe-figured blonde with a cherub face and cupid-bow mouth. Gracious and warm, she never once made Priscilla feel uncomfortable.

“Brendan has told us so much about you,” she said with a soft southern burr as the two of them sipped jasmine tea. “I just know it’ll all work out.”

“I hope so, Mrs. Bannerman.”

“I’d be pleased if you’d call me Sue Alice. I feel like we’re already friends.” She arranged her full silk skirts on the sofa in front of the marble-manteled fireplace. A Queen Anne table sat atop the Aubusson carpet, topped by a bouquet of beautiful yellow roses.

Priscilla smiled, liking the woman already. “I’d like that very much—if you’ll call me Priscilla.”

“How ’bout a brandy, Bren?” Chris Bannerman asked. “Give the ladies a chance to talk.”

She liked Chris, too. He worked hard, she could see by the dusty clothes he’d just ridden up in, and his loss of an arm seemed to bother him not at all.

“Good idea,” Brendan said. He winked at Priscilla and followed Chris out of the richly furnished salon. A few moments later, a noisy whirlwind of activity made up of the Bannerman’s three towheaded children stormed into the room.

“Lawd, you children behave yourselves,” Sue Alice scolded, “we have guests in the house.”

The children, a boy of eight or nine and a matched set of twin girls, looked not the least bit daunted.

“Matthew won’t let me ride his rocking horse,” one of the little girls said, “but Charity got to—so I want to, too.”

“Matthew, I’ve told you before, just because you’re the oldest doesn’t mean you don’t have t’ share.” Sue Alice tried to look stern, then smiled and reached out a hand to him. His small white fingers were dirty, but she didn’t hesitate to grasp them. “Children, I want you t’ meet Miss Wills.” She pronounced it more like
Wheels.
“She’s a friend of Mr. Trask’s—and now she’s a friend a’ ours, too.”

Priscilla felt a rush of gratitude at the way the older woman had handled things.

“This is Matthew, Patience, and Charity,” Sue Alice said. “Matt is eight, and the twins are six.”

“Why, they look so grown up—” Priscilla pulled
her rose silk skirt aside to kneel down beside them, “—I would have sworn they were much older.”

All three children beamed at that. Matt was tall for his age, thin but not skinny, with soft blue eyes and a bright, inquisitive face. The girls would both be beauties: peach complexions, big green eyes, and the feminine cupid-bow lips of their mother.

Just looking at them made some warm, womanly instinct blossom in Priscilla’s chest. “They’re beautiful,” she said to Sue Alice. “I’ve always wanted children of my own.”

Her hostess looked pleased. “If that man a’ yours has anythin’ to do with it, I’m sure you will.” She turned to her towheaded brood. “All right now, you’ve all met our guest; go on outside and play.”

“Can’t we stay and talk to Miss Wills?” Matt asked.

“Miss Wills will be joinin’ us for suppa’. Afterward, Matt can recite the poem he’s just learned, and each of you girls can play a song for us on the pianoforte. How does that sound?”

“Couldn’t she come outside just for a minute?” Charity pleaded. “I want to show her my rabbit.”

Sue Alice started to say no, but Priscilla interrupted. “I’d love to see your rabbit, Charity.” She turned to her hostess. “As long as it’s all right with your mother.”

“Lawd, they can be tryin’ at times,” Sue Alice said, but a warm light shone in her pretty green eyes as she looked at her three children.

“Do you like rabbits?” Patience asked, taking Priscilla’s hand.

“I love rabbits. I used to have one of my own.” For
a moment, the forgotten knowledge stunned her. Where in the world had it come from?

“The cages are out in back,” Matt said, taking charge in a manly way.

Priscilla nodded and followed him toward the door. Being in Natchez had certainly stirred up the past, but in a way she was glad. It felt good to know she had done some of the same things every other child had. She took Charity’s hand. “What did you name your rabbit?” she asked.

“Herbert.”

Priscilla laughed aloud.

The next four days were the most joyous Priscilla had known. She and Brendan spent long, lazy hours making love, went for walks in secluded spots down by the river, and talked far into the night. Brendan spoke often of Texas, of the home they would build on the rugged frontier.

He talked of the land and its beauty, and how he was sure she would love it. And when he held her and kissed her, she was certain she would.

They spoke to Barton Stevens, the lawyer Chris Bannerman suggested that first day. Though she didn’t love Stuart, she knew he would be frantic at her disappearance, and she wanted to cause him as little grief as possible. By the evening of the first day after her disappearance, he’d been served the annulment papers, making her intentions clear.

Brendan continued his investigation of the smuggling ring whose capture would mean his freedom. Several nights he’d gone out, unwilling to tell her where he was going.

“The less you know about this, the better,” he said. “I don’t want you putting yourself in danger.”

“But how could I be in danger? When you’re out there alone, I worry about you. I just want to know what’s going on.”

“You’ll just have to trust me, Sill.” He captured her mouth in a searing bone-melting kiss. Then he turned and strode out the door.

Every afternoon he was gone for several hours, again refusing to tell her where. She spent the time with Sue Alice and the children. She read the girls stories, and played toy soldier with Matthew. They went for long walks, and had tea parties, and she helped the girls dress up their dolls. Miss Wills seemed too distant a name, so they’d decided to call her Aunt Silla, which pleased Priscilla no end.

Sometimes Brendan joined them, surprising her by how good he was with them.

“It’s easy,” he said. “I just remember the things I used to do, the way I wanted to be treated.”

“They think a lot of you,” she said.

“They’ve fallen completely in love with you,” he countered, “but then I don’t blame them.”

Priscilla smiled. For the first time in her life, she knew a little what it felt like to be a wife and mother. It was what she wanted, she realized, more than anything else in the world.

Though they spent most of their time together, on several occasions, Brendan awoke with the sun and accompanied Chris to the cotton fields.

“We’ll be planting cotton of our own,” he said. “Chris is an expert. I couldn’t learn from anyone better.”

“Will we have … slaves?” Priscilla asked.

He shook his head. “Lots of people pouring into Texas. Germans, French, Irish—immigrants from all over the world. They’ll all be lookin’ for work. We’ll have all the help we need.”

Priscilla just smiled.

On Thursday, she and Brendan took a picnic lunch to the country—a secluded spot on Chris’s plantation where they wouldn’t accidentally be found.

After a meal that included cold fried chicken, fresh strawberries, and bread pudding for dessert, they settled against the trunk of an oak tree. It was a quiet, reflective time—until Priscilla asked the question she knew he had been dreading.

Cicadas buzzed in the leaves overhead and the Mississippi sprawled majestically in front of them. Priscilla’s head nestled in Brendan’s lap and he used a curl to tease her cheek.

She sat up and turned to face him, loving the way he looked in his open-necked white linen shirt and black breeches, his back propped up against the tree. He’d gone hatless today, his dark hair ruffled by the breeze.

“We’ve talked about so much,” she said to him, “about Texas, about our future, our hopes and dreams. We’ve talked about friends and family, but there’s a subject we always avoid.” She felt him tense, his fingers growing taut beneath her own. “I know it’s painful for you, but just this once, won’t you tell me what happened in Mexico? What happened during the war?”

He let go of her hand and raked his fingers through his hair. “I’ve wanted to. A couple of times I tried, but, I don’t know … something always seemed to hold me back.”

“Maybe once you’ve told me, you’ll be able to let it go.”

Brendan nodded, but his eyes shifted away, and his face took on a harder, more distant expression. He
looked out at the river, but didn’t really seem to see it.

“It was like Tom Camden said,” he began. “We were fighting the Mexicans on the Yucatan, taking cannon fire something awful. I destroyed the cannon, but took a musket ball in the arm. I ran into a nest of Mexicans in the process. It was terrible, Sill. For three of the longest days of my life they marched us—about half the Texas forces—through the jungle. There were bugs as big as your hand, crawlin’ all over us, stinging and biting. It was hot and steamy-like a Georgia swamp in the summer, only ten times worse. We had nothing to eat and only enough water to keep us on our feet.

“At the prison, things got worse. They kept us in a Mayan ruin a couple days’ march from Campeche. Half the men got dysentery within the first week. I’d lost a lot of blood, and my wound got infected. I was scared to death I’d lose my damned arm…. Then I met a man named Alejandro Mendez.”

“Go on,” Priscilla urged softly, when Brendan seemed reluctant to continue.

“Mendez was a Federalist, one of the rebels the Texians”—he pronounced it the Texas way, with an extra “i”—“were there to support. The Centralists were opposing the Texas Republic—had been since Santa Anna and the battle of the Alamo. The Texians hoped the Federalists, with Texas’s support, would overthrow the Centralist government and be more amenable to a peace that accepted Texas boundaries.”

“So this man, Mendez, was also a prisoner.”

Brendan nodded. “Mendez was wounded and very
clearly dying. But the man was a born leader. You should have seen him, Sill. He had more courage and determination than any man I’ve ever known. He rallied his people and kept them going no matter how tough things got. He was good with doctoring, too. Knew every herb in the jungle, and exactly what it could do. As long as he was able, he treated the injured. He doctored the wound in my arm and stopped the infection. After that we became friends—closer than most, because of the circumstances. He was the oldest man in the prison and like a father to most of us.”

Brendan stared off across the river, watching a flatboat drift downstream, no more than a speck in the distance. A steamboat whistle echoed toward the shore.

“We’d been in prison several months when the Centralists discovered the Texians had sent a rescue party—led by my brother—which, fortunately for me, none of them knew at the time. The Mexicans were furious. They wanted information, and they were determined to get it. They tortured a bunch of us….”

She could see he’d been one of them by his flash of remembered pain. Unconsciously her hand covered his, and she felt it tremble.

“No matter what they did, how badly they beat us, no one talked, so they started killing people.” His voice cracked, then turned flat, lifeless. “A man a day, they said, until one of us broke.”