Bonds, Parris Afton Read online

  CROSSROADS OF THE HEART

  Anne first glimpsed Colin Donovan when she was but a girl and he a dazzling young envoy from the Royal Court of England to the lush island of Barbados.

  She next saw Colin when she was a new bride, about to sail to a husband she barely knew and a land she already feared. It was then that she first knew Colin's kisses, and the ungovernable feelings they stirred within her.

  Now Colin had entered her life again ...now that she was no longer an innocent girl or a blushing bride, but a woman in the fullness of her beauty and in the power of a lover as irresistible as he was arrogant ...

  ...and now Colin was demanding that she choose―between the man whose strength she had come to adore or a tantalizing promise of tender love that well might be a deadly trap....

  Also by Parris Afton Bonds

  and available from Popular Library―

  SWEET GOLDEN SUN

  SAVAGE ENCHANTMENT

  THE FLASH of the FIREFLY

  by Parris Afton Bonds

  Published by Fawcett Popular Library, a unit of CBS Publications, the Consumer Publishing Division of CBS Inc.

  Copyright ©1979 by Parris Afton Bonds

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 0-445-04497-7

  Printed in the United States 'of America

  First Fawcett Popular Library printing: December 1979

  For friends who make life special... Chris, Irene, and Lou.

  My gratitude to the Lewisville Public Library and especially Addie Armstrong for their assistance. Also, to Sara Arnold.

  "Theirs was the trouble life,

  The conflict and the pain,

  The grief, the bitterness of strife,

  The honor without stain."

  ―Inscription on cornerstone of the Vereins-Kirche, Fredericksburg, Texas

  Prologue

  They were like the swooping buzzards of a century earlier that had avariciously searched the desolate prairie for carrion.

  The sightseers crowded greedily into the mustysmelling bedroom of the Spreading Oak House. They sweltered in the un-air-conditioned room and hardly heard the monotonous drone of the tour guide, a young college student whose carefully plotted mask of make-up hid her boredom. Instead, the sightseers fingered the rough-hewn cradle, handled the cracked porcelain pitcher and its chipped washbasin, or rotated the small spinning wheel in the room's far corner. A few surreptitiously eyed the incredibly high bedstead, wondering what moments of passion had transpired there, what hours of agony had been endured in childbirthing there.

  "As you can see," the tour guide intoned, mechanically gesturing to one wall, "the Spreading Oak House was built to last. The heavy timbers of the main rooms were sawed and cleverly fitted together, aging to a flinty hardness. Now, if you'll follow me, I'll show you the golden oak desk where Milam County's first Senator worked with Sam Houston on the draft of the Texas State Constitution."

  Sixty-three minutes later the tour guide wound up the tour beneath the enormous oak for which the historic house had been named. The oak's spreading branches reached out above the thirty some odd heads of the sightseers, giving shade from the hot August sun to almost a hundred times their number. "And now the Milam County Historical Commission bids you good-bye and hopes that you have enjoyed our Ninth Annual Pilgrimage."

  Taking her cue of dismissal, the sightseers began to disperse, heading down the rocky incline toward the newly paved parking area. Around them the towering skyscrapers loomed like massive sentinels, casting their twentieth century shadows over the oasis of a time long gone, a time never to be repeated. And the cacophony of the surrounding city drowned out the faint echo of a young girl's rich laughter, laughter coming down through the years, as out of date as the Spreading Oak House.

  Long before the tall, cold buildings sprang up across the prairies and rolling hills, a sunburned frontiersman, nude to the waist, worked beneath the giant oak tree. In the area he had cleared of wild grapevines and scrub oaks was the first tier of logs that would constitute the Spreading Oak House. The chopping of his axe against the pine logs produced long, curling, pleasant-smelling shavings even as the lithe, easy movements of his body produced muscled ridges that glistened with a patina of sweat beneath the blistering summer sun.

  While that part of his mind conditioned by perilous years on the Texas frontier was alert for the slightest noise or cessation of noise, another part of his mind searched backward over time to encounter pain-filled thoughts, bittersweet memories that, like the worms in the earth before him burrowed through his brain.

  He was a man trained to patience, accustomed to waiting for the sight of the deer before his rifle barrel, the cautious approach of the channel cat to his baited hook, the nigh―invisible shadows of the Kiowas stealthily moving along their war trail beneath the waxing of an Indian moon.

  And yet this waiting―waiting for the woman who scorned him, who might never come―was the most agonizing of all. He wanted to shout aloud, to curse himself for seven kinds of a fool. And, perversely, to whisper aloud her name upon the hot, dry wind, as if to summon her image across the miles that separated them ... to tell her of the love he bore her, the love he had been too proud to profess.

  The unspoken words were so intense and violent in their longing, they seemed to fill the clearing, to still the chatter of the squirrel and the clicking castanets of the cicada. Yet there came only the continued sound of steel striking wood. In the simmering heat the man's weather-browned face streamed with perspiration―just as it had done two years earlier when he had chased her through the sprawling ruins of a Spanish mission that had once ministered the Faith to the Kwahadi Comanches.

  He could still visualize her waist-length hair the color of the terra cotta adobe brick, flying behind her, rippled by the wind like burnished summer wheat on the Texas prairie. In and out among the tumbled stones of adobe he had pursued her; her long, swift legs slowly giving ground to his muscle-corded ones. And then there was that fleeting glimpse of her terrified face, even lovelier with the streaks of dirt to soften the once haughty contours.

  As he recalled, however, it seemed that she had always eluded him just when he thought he finally had her within his grasp, just as it seemed to him he had always loved her and always would through the long stretches of eternity.

  The man's head canted, and he paused in the swinging of his axe as if listening to a distant sound―the sound that stretched from beyond and through the dust-filled wind around him. The way it did that first evening... that cold, blustering evening when her laughter had rung through the inn's smoke-congested room like the beckoning peal of silver altar bells.

  Colin

  I

  February, 1838

  The young lady, dressed in the white velvet cloak―an expensive and stylishly cut wrap but hardly serviceable for the winter storm that raged the coastline outside Velasco's only inn, threw back her head and laughed ...a pealing, intriguing laugh that made the stranger in the darkened corner glance up in spite of himself before he returned to the thin tobacco paper he rolled.

  Anne's laughter ebbed, but a hoydenish smile of merriment still curved the provocative, childlike lips as she raised smooth cream-colored hands to catch the warmth of the fire blazing before her. "Delila," she whispered, compressing her lips into a mocking line of sternness, "it's tarred and feathered we'll be if you try to use your spells here."

  The black woman of ample girth adjusted the red polka-dotted bandana about her wiry gray hair with a grunt of disgust. "Don't make no matter, baby. Ah done tole yo' pappy and mammy ah'd see you safely all de way to Adelsolms. An if'n ah has to use obeah, dhen ah will!"

  With that pronouncement, Delila removed the hamhock fists fro
m her hips and lumbered over to the wet baggage piled before the door. Anne's amusement at the woman's determination changed to concern, and her straight dark brows drew together over the bridge of her finely sculptured nose. If the well-meaning but stubborn old woman began rummaging through her carpet bag for her bamboo sticks, there would be no end to the outrage she would raise among the people seated at the tables. Black magic on a tropical island was one thing, but Anne suspected Delila's obeah would be frowned upon there in that small Texas seaport.

  But the black woman left the baggage alone, and Anne drew closer to the stone hearth with relief, once more holding up her long, tapering fingers as if to absorb the heat for the journey to come. The journey―and not Delila's obeah―was the real cause of her concern.

  Secretly Anne was jubilant the Pelican had put into the shallow port three days too late to join the party of German immigrants, by now well on their way to the new land grant, Adelsolms. Secretly jubilant because she would delay that first meeting with her husband since the afternoon of their marriage in Bridgetown, Barbados five months earlier.

  True, the thin, fair Otto had been the very soul of consideration that day, not forcing himself upon her―even urging her to remain at the plantation with her parents until he, as pastor of Adelsolms, had established a home for them in that new frontier town and sent for her. But then he had always behaved with the utmost propriety toward her in their courtship. He was so proper, so virtuous, that she suffered twinges of guilt when he pecked her on the cheek, and confusing desires darted through her thoughts.

  Desires fleshed out by the lusty scenes of the voodoo drums. Sights and sounds Anne was as familiar with as the sugar cane her father grew ...incidents she unwittingly witnessed in spite of her parents' insistence she be raised as a refined young girl would be, had she been born in Scotland rather than Barbados.

  Perhaps that was why her parents had been so pleased when they learned and spiritually minded Otto Maren came to the island for six months to improve health impaired by consumption. Pleased enough to have the German pastor court and marry their only daughter ...in hopes he would interpose his dignified and conventional way of life between Anne and the unorthodox surroundings of Barbados.

  Anne sighed. Could she possibly hope to measure up to what the people of Adelsolms would expect from a pastor's wife? Did she want to? To give up the cultured life she had known―the theater, the museum, the book shops, and the fine restaurants of Barbados?

  But her parents had done the same when they left Scotland. How often had she heard them talk of the early barbaric days of Barbados? From the same stock, could she do less? Could she not forsake the frivolity of the island life for a life at Otto's side as his helpmate?

  Unconsciously Anne drew herself up into a determined stance that etched her profile against the orange light of the fire. And once again, the stranger, as dark almost as the shadows he sat in, paused in lighting his cigarette to let narrowed eyes rest on the haughty figure.

  The hood of the velvet cloak had fallen back to reveal russet hair massed in curls atop a head held regally on the long, graceful neck. The cloak was thrown back over her shoulders, displaying the willowy figure that was quite out of keeping with the more fashionably curvaceous ones. Only the high, taut breasts, which the sheer, bottle-green batiste dress did nothing to conceal, conceded somewhat to the dictates of feminine fashion.

  If Anne had singled out that particular traveler in the corner from among the other patrons of the inn―men who eyed her with curiosity and admiration, and servant wenches who watched her with envy―she would have seen the smile of contempt that fleetingly curled the chiseled lips. Contempt for an object as useless as it was pretty on the Texas frontier.

  But it was not to the stranger that her gaze turned at that moment, but to the roguishly handsome man who suddenly appeared at the inn's doorway, letting in the icy rush of air to fill the room. As a compass points toward a magnetic field, so almost every gaze in the room was riveted, as was Anne's, on the elegant gentleman. He was dressed in excellently cut gray, pin-striped trousers and black, blanket frock coat with a silken maroon cravat to set off the snowy shirt of fine linen. His hazel eyes were made greener in contrast to the golden mustache over his full lips and the sunlit curls which framed his face in the Byronic fashion. Casually his gaze swept over the room's occupants to alight on Anne. Their gazes locked, and Anne felt as if she had been hit in the stomach.

  A perplexed frown creased the bridge of the gentleman's nose. He had seen women more beautiful in William IV's court. But there was an intrinsic quality about this woman that was immediately obvious to him. A vitality, a spirited intelligence, not to be found among those vacuous faces of Windsor Castle. And yet there was something else about her that eluded him. The wide gray eyes had gazed upon him with what he was certain was surprise. Now they were partially shielded by a tangle of thick, black lashes that seemed to mutate the irises' color to a beguiling silver, and he seized the opportunity to study her openly, searching to identify what it was about the young lady that intrigued him.

  Still puzzled, he crossed to the counter where the inn's owner, a portly, baldish man, cleaned the myriad glasses. ''The young lady before the fire, Boswell―do you know who she is?"

  The innkeeper paused in rubbing a muslin cloth over the chipped glass and glanced at the woman before he answered in a respectful tone that he reserved for the few titled gentlemen who occasionally patronized his place. "Only that she's off the Pelican, Sir Colin."

  A slow, boyish smile touched. Colin's face, making him appear nearer Anne's age of nineteen than his nearly thirty years. As if the clue had been found, he turned decisively from the counter and threaded his way through the crowd, mostly seamen and the few passengers who had not yet been met by relatives and friends.

  "Pardon me," he said to the woman whose back was now to him. "At the risk of offending you with a trite phrase, have we not met before?"

  Anne turned, her features a carefully controlled mask of composure. "If I say yes, it would put you in a most unfavorable light, would it not? And if I say no―"

  "Then I would take the advantage to introduce myself," Colin said and executed an adroit bow. "Your most obedient servant, Sir Colin Donovan, British Diplomatic Service."

  Two dimples formed beneath Anne's full cheekbones. "Also," she added, "former colonial secretary under Governor John Mac Davitt before you were transferred from Barbados."

  "Then I was right! We've met before. In Barbados. But to my poor credit I cannot recall the occasion, mistress―"

  "Mrs. Maren," Anne corrected. "And several times we've met―through a mutual acquaintance." She was tempted to say no more, to prolong Colin's embarrassment, but she yielded to the mute but appealing plea in the green eyes. "The place was always the Governor's Palace, and our mutual acquaintance is my godfather, Sir John."

  Bewilderment held sway over the expressive face for a moment. Then he exclaimed, "You're Anne McLennan! Why, you were no more than a girl in short dresses the last we met."At that he laughed, his dazzling smile an indication of his equally dazzling charm. "I remember once―in Sir John's office―when I was ushered in, you were wearing His Excellency's quill pen in your hair like some wild Indian. Then you disappeared behind his desk and would not come out until I took my leave."

  How well she remembered that mortifying incident. But of the other times Anne was certain he had no recollection. There were the mandatory teas in the palace courtyard. Colin had been constantly besieged by the matrons demanding to know the latest styles and most provocative gossip of London life. And Anne had sat rigidly in the wicker chair, her teacup trembling in its saucer, for fear she would commit some social blunder which would draw the attention of the elegant and worldly young Irishman to her gauche ten-year-old person.

  There were also the infrequent balls for which she had lived. From her position as spectator in the darkened gallery above the ballroom, she had stored away each precious moment to be r
elived later in the dream world of her bedroom. How many times she had watched Colin waltz past below her with some lovely lady in his arms, the woman's skirts swaying to the strains of a waltz as he bent to whisper some no doubt delightful compliment.

  Then, when Colin was dispatched three years later to another place and position higher on the political ladder, the heart in her thirteen-year-old budding woman's body seemed to shrivel. The golden light of Colin's presence was gone from Barbados. Intuitively, Anne knew that things would never be quite the same for her. And curiously enough they were not.

  "Have you had anything to eat or drink?" he asked now, drawing her back from her girlhood dreams.

  Anne shook her head. "No, I only just arrived."

  "Then let's take care of that, Mrs. Maren."

  "Anne," she told him with a smile, grateful to have someone take over for her. "After all, you are a childhood friend."

  "Anne," he echoed, his lilting Irish brogue imbuing her name with the quality of liquid gold.

  He signaled to the innkeeper and ordered tea before he took her elbow and propelled her toward a clapboard table that had been emptied by its patrons. Anne found herself trembling with excitement at his touch, and it was with sharp regret she reminded herself she would have to remember she was a married woman now. No longer could she flirt from beneath the shade of a lacy parasol or from behind the folds of a silk fan.

  "After you've had some hot tea," Colin said, then paused, inclining his golden head near the pale fire of her own, and added in a conspiratorial whisper, "poor tea, it is ...then we can see about arranging to have you settled here."

  Anne spread out her full skirts awkwardly on the long wooden bench. "But I don't know how long I shall be―"

  "Not long if'n ah has anything to say 'bout it, Miz Anne," Delila interrupted with a scowl. The woman turned on Colin. "An who might'n you be?"