Bonds, Parris Afton Read online

  Anne laughed. "Don't let Delila intimidate you, Colin. She thinks her lamb has walked into a wolves' den by coming to Texas."

  "Ah sho, does, baby. And the quicker we gits you to Adelsolms and Mr. Maren, the better fo' both of us."

  She thrust Anne's parasol at her charge. "Let's git ourselves to bed, Miz Anne. Tomorrow we can see that gen'ral the innkeeper tole you 'bout."

  "We were told General Green might be able to assist us in getting to Adelsolms," Anne explained to Colin. "We arrived too late to leave with the wagon train."

  "And this Adelsolms," Colin said. "Where is it, and why are you going there?"

  "It is a settlement some hundred and fifty miles inland, I understand. My husband is pastor there, and I am to join him―or was to join him―traveling with the other German immigrants bound for Adelsolms."

  Colin was silent for a moment then turned his green-eyed gaze on Delila. A devilish smile flashed beneath the well-trimmed mustache. "Give me a few moments alone with Anne before you deliver her up to the dragon, Delila. I promise you I will not harm your mistress."

  Delila fixed the Irishman with a baleful eye, but Anne knew Colin had won the black woman over, for Delila's opinion of Otto Maren was much the same as Colin's expressed imagery.

  The old woman moved away with a snort to take up her post near the baggage once more, and Colin stretched out a slim, well-formed hand to cover Anne's. "Now that I've found you again, do you think I will let you go as easily a second time?"

  Anne drew her hand away as the innkeeper set two mugs of tea on the table. She was unsure if Colin's words were a sample of the famed Irish flattery or if he was serious. As if he sensed her doubt, Colin reached out to clasp her hand between his, holding it firmly so she could not pull away. "Anne, I know General Green. Tomorrow I will introduce you to him. And one way or another I will see to it that you get to this bloody Adelsolms. But I want you to know now I am not giving up. My assignment should keep me here in Texas another six months at least. If you should change your mind―"

  Anne's smile was rueful. "That sounds like a highly improper offer toward a married woman, Colin Donovan."

  "I promised Delila I would not hurt you. And I meant it. I will keep my word now and leave you ...after I have obtained a room for you and Delila."

  At the foot of the inn's stairs he kissed the back of her hand and Anne realized that Otto had never done that. How could she have been so foolish as to marry Otto on a whim―why could she not have waited? Somehow―somewhere Colin's path would surely have crossed hers. But not this way!

  Reluctantly Colin relinquished her hand. "Arranging for you to go to your husband will be one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do."

  For me also, Anne thought. But she said, "I won't be forgetting your kindness, Colin."

  II

  "I am in effect stranded here," Anne told the pompous-looking man who sat across from her behind the pine-paneled desk. "It is imperative I join my husband in Adelsolms."

  With a ring-laden hand Green fingered his Vandyke beard. "I see, my dear. But I don't know what I can do to help you."

  Colin came around from behind Anne's chair. "But I think you can, General Green. I understand there are two scouts with the Texas militia in Velasco at the moment. Could you not arrange for them to take Mrs. Maren to Adelsolms?"

  Green grunted with disgust. ''They work for Sam Houston."

  Colin leaned both hands on Green's desk, fixing the man with an implacable gaze. "Then perhaps you could impress upon them the importance of her request. Surely President Houston would not mind one of his men's aiding a future citizen of the Republic."

  The general ran his hand through his Napoleonstyled hair.

  Then he smiled for the first time. "Maybe you have something there, Sir Donovan."

  Now Anne understood why Colin was a diplomat. On the way over to the dilapidated cabin that served as the general's headquarters, Colin had explained to her that Green and Houston were rumored to be political enemies. Colin was presenting the man with an opportunity to thwart Houston, even if in a circuitous way. It was no wonder, she thought, that the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, had appointed Colin to serve in Texas. The Irishman was thorough in his homework.

  While they waited for the scouts to be summoned, Colin questioned the general closely on the affairs of the Republic. "You see," he said smoothly, "my mission here is to contribute my opinion as an eyewitness in the Texas Republic to larger deliberations going on in London."

  "And is recognizing the Republic such a problem?" Anne asked, knowing full well Colin would not divulge much.

  "It is like this," Colin explained. "England's commercial interests are urging immediate recognition of the Texas Republic. But our government also feels obliged to satisfy the loudly expressed objections of our English abolitionists."

  "Humph!" Green snorted. "We're a slave-holding nation―and we'll stay one!"

  "So I understand," Colin said with a smile that struck Anne as noncommittal. She wondered if Colin realized that she, too, was a slaveholder, though Delila would never had considered herself a slave. Instead the black woman dictated to the rest of Anne's family, as if she were its matriarch.

  There was a knock at the door, and a sloppily dressed soldier ushered in a tall, lean man whose narrowed eyes seemed at once to take in everything in the room while revealing nothing. "Brant Powers," Green said," may I present Mrs. Maren. She is in need of your services."

  Anne's gaze traveled up the drab, buckskin-clad figure to encounter eyes, paler than the brown molasses of Barbados, regarding her steadily. There was something lethal about the scout, but she attributed it to the pistol he wore at his hip and the long knife sheathed at his waistband.

  His face was so expressionless that she would have guessed his age at anywhere from twenty-five to forty. The man's skin was tanned to the color of leather by the elements. Like the other Texians she had seen in the previous two days, he wore his saddle-colored hair long so that it lay in unruly curls at the nape of his neck. But there the man's resemblance to his countrymen ended.

  For in a horizontal stripe across the jutting chin ran a tattooed line of vermilion.

  She shuddered inwardly, and, as if the man sensed her repugnance, the long lips curled in amusement, lending a feral quality to the craggy features. When he said nothing, she moved restlessly in her chair. "I need to get to Adelsolms, Mr. Powers. I am hoping that you can help me."

  "Yes," Green said. "I understand you and Reed are headed for Comanche Territory soon on an errand for Houston. You'd pass near the Adelsolms settlement, wouldn't you? I'm sure Mrs. Maren would appreciate your escorting her to Adelsolms."

  "Aye, I would," Anne agreed, feeling uneasy sitting while the scout's rangy frame towered over her.

  "Afraid not, ma'am."

  "Now just a minute!" Green snapped to his feet. "Your rudeness won't be―"

  "One moment," Colin said. He watched the scout over the pyramid of his fingertips. "Powers, I cannot see why you are unable to accommodate Mrs. Maren. It is important that she join her husband, and surely a slight delay cannot tax your mission that much."

  The scout's stony gaze swept over the occupants of the room. "The answer is still no."

  He turned toward the door, and Green said, "Your insolence will be reported, Powers."

  "You'd best get someone else as escort for the bridal journey, Green," Brant said, swinging open the door.

  "Wait," Colin said. He rose from his chair. "As I understand it, Powers, you are not an officer in the regulars."

  The scout said nothing.

  "And I realize General Green cannot command you," Colin continued, "but ..." He paused and glanced toward Green.

  Immediately Green picked up Colin's cue and said, smiling, "I could waylay your mission, Powers―have you thrown in the calaboose for drunken disorderliness."

  There was a hard silence in the room, and Anne did not dare look at the scout's face unt
il he said, "Ma'am, be ready at dawn!" She saw the muscle in his jaw flex slightly and knew she had already made one enemy in her new homeland.

  Anne and Colin stepped outside the inn to escape its reek of smoke, alcohol, and unwashed bodies. The swaying light of the inn's lantern illuminated the dingy gray of the weathered frame building. For a moment they remained in the pool of light that starkly revealed the forlorn desperation in their faces.

  "Do you think we escaped your jailer?" Colin asked with a forced lightness, but his smile warmed her against the cold, salty sea wind.

  "I put Delila to packing our baggage," Anne confessed. It would be the last time she would ever see Colin, and she told herself that a few moments alone with him were little to ask. As if by mutual consent, they turned their steps toward the sound of the waves that pounded the sandy beach, careful not to touch each other.

  For a while they talked of old acquaintances, and Anne told Colin of the things that had happened in Barbados since he had left. "Sir John has become impossible," she said with a laugh. "At his last dinner party he had an aide announce he was confined to bed with a fever, then he appeared moments later masqueraded as a French sea captain, asking the guests their opinion of Barbados' governor. You can well imagine the guests' surprise when Sir John revealed himself."

  Colin chuckled. "Sir John was always a rascal. The last time I attended a dinner party given by your godfather, the ..." he broke off, as his gaze took in the lovely contours of Anne's upturned face, the sensuous curve of her lower lip, and the seductive innocence in the forthright gaze. Why had he not perceived that the ungainly child with the thin face and extraordinarily large, smoky-gray eyes would emerge into such an enchanting creature?

  Against his better judgment his arms slipped around her waist. "What a bloody fool I was," he murmured in her ear. "Not to have seen―" But the sentence went unfinished as his lips claimed hers.

  Though Anne was almost twenty years old, had had many suitors, and was now a married woman, it was nevertheless her first kiss, and she was shocked by the wonder of it. Her knees were like cotton, and she found her arms slipping about Colin's neck for support. Then, as the warmth of his kiss drove away the weather's chill, an infinitesimal spark flared somewhere in the hidden recesses of her mind. With a gasp she pulled away, her fingers flying to her lips.

  "Anne, don't go to Adelsolms!"

  Anne knew if she remained on the bench a second longer with Colin all her high intentions would dissolve before his bewitching charm. "Why now, Colin?" she cried and, backing away from his outstretched hands, turned and ran the little distance to the safety of the inn. Her kid slippers bogged down in the sand with each step, so that on reaching the unexpectedly firmer ground before the inn she lost her footing and would have fallen on her face had not a pair of arms caught her.

  She looked up into the taciturn face of the scout. Had he seen her kissing Colin so brazenly? It did not matter. What did matter was that she leave Velasco immediately. She had to place distance between herself and Colin, to get to Adelsolms and restore her life to its proper perspective.

  "Mr. Powers," She clung to his arm as if it were a life buoy.

  "Ma'am?" The dark face was expressionless. The eyes, almost lost in the forest of lashes, regarded her fixedly, and Anne stumbled on, unsure before a man for the first time since she had developed the physical attributes of a woman.

  "I'm sorry about this afternoon―at General Green's office. It's just that ..." Confused, she released the leather-fringed sleeve. She had spoken impetuously. But there was nothing else to do but continue. "You wouldn't have to take us all the way to Adelsolms. Just help us catch up with the wagon train that left four days ago. By us I mean myself, of course, and Delila, my maidservant." Finished at last, she looked up to find the fathomless eyes as impassive as ever.

  "Just one time you fall behind, ma'am―and I'll leave you there." He clapped a brown, weatherbeaten sombrero low over his eyes and turned to leave.

  "Wait, Mr. Powers!"

  He paused and half turned. This time impatience furrowed a ridge at the bridge of the hawklike nose.

  Anne strove to curb her own impatience. "If it is money you want, I would be most willing to reimburse you for your trouble. Not the Texian bank note, of course, but Spanish gold pieces―or the United States silver dollar, if you wish." It would be the last of the money her mother had pressed upon her before she had sailed, but if the money would better assure her safe arrival at Adelsolms it would be worth it.

  However, when she looked up into the craggy face, it seemed to her that a look of disgust flashed in the scout's acorn-colored eyes. But it had come and gone so quickly she was not sure that she had not imagined it.

  Then, unexpectedly, a slow smile that displayed slightly uneven white teeth changed the expression of the man's normally stony countenance. The half-closed eyes roamed from Anne's beseeching gaze, past the wide mouth, down the smooth neck, to come to rest at the twin rising mounds that heaved beneath her cloak. A blush crept over her creamy, finely textured skin that every woman in Barbados went to such trouble to protect from the tropical sun. Involuntarily Anne's hand rose to the frog fastenings of her cloak.

  "I don't barter with money, Mrs. Maren. Few do. Out here money's useless. You would have to make it worth my while."

  At first his allusion did not dawn on Anne. Then incredulity took hold. "Why, you're insufferable."

  The smile flashed once more. "Yes, ma'am. Good night." He stepped back and moved past her just as the inn's door swung open.

  Delila' large form blocked the yellow light that spilled through the doorway. "Where's you bin, Miz Anne? What's you bin doing? You know you're not suppose to―"

  "I've been learning about Texas's wildlife!" Anne snapped.

  III

  An ashen sun rose above Velasco's low, sandy beach to give dim light to the four mounts and the lean pack mule that was burdened with Anne and Delila's baggage. As the party picked its way over the flat, shrubless prairie that stretched beyond Velasco into the jungle wilderness of the interior, huge flocks of water and marsh birds cawed raucously. As though, Anne thought, to warn her against the journey.

  She could still visualize how Brant Power's hard eyes had passed over her in the dawn's gray light, his keen gaze seeming to take in everything at once―from her frivolously plumed hat to her ridiculously dainty boots―before lingering contemptuously on her burgundy riding habit and matching rose blouse of thin silk.

  What had been worse was the way he had flatly ignored her as she paused beside her horse, accustomed to a gentleman's assistance in mounting the sidesaddle. It had been his middle-aged partner, Ezra Reed, who had lumbered over to aid her. "We ain't used to having ladies ride with us, Miss," he explained, offering her a hand the size of a shovel in which to put her foot.

  "Thank you, Mr. Reed."

  "Ezra," he said. He opened his brush jacket, revealing a red woolen shirt held together by locust thorns, and withdrew a tattered Bible. "My maw said Ezra was the easiest book of the Bible to spell." He grinned sheepishly. '''Cept for the Book of Ruth. Never did git around to reading my maw's book, but one―"

  Brant's rough "Move out," put an end to the conversation, and Anne was forced to drop into line behind her unwilling guide, who looked prepared for trouble with the bullet bag suspended from his neck and a Plains caplock rifle protruding from his saddle boot.

  More accustomed to horses than she was to needlepoint, to her mother's disappointment, Anne could not help but admire the way he controlled the lively, prancing piece of horseflesh that he rode―a rangy sorrel gelding with a good roomy chest, open flanks, and wide nostrils. For her he had chosen a deep-chested, dapple gray gelding which Ezra told her had plenty of Kentucky breeding.

  Behind Anne rode Delila, mounted on a Spanish mule that was built as solidly as the black woman. "'Dis here animal give me any trouble," she warned Ezra, who brought up the rear, "ah'll lay it out as flat as a Sunday pancake!"

&nbs
p; Ezra let out a rumble of laughter that began deep in his barrelchest. "Miss Delila, you remind me of my maw." He doffed his fur cap to the woman, revealing gray-streaked chestnut curls. "You and me are gonna get along right nicely."

  Delila screwed her round face into one of her infamous looks she would direct at laggard house slaves. "You just makes sure we gits to Adelsolms, mister― and den we'll get along all right."

  At first Anne found the raw country interesting. The tall marsh grass and tangled wildwood and Spanish oaks gray-bearded with moss, the salt cedars and morass―this was vegetation new to eyes more familiar with the mahogany, rosewood, and palm trees of the tropics. But as the landscape gave way to encroaching walls of pines and cordons of willows, she became restless. Yet Delila seemed to be enjoying herself as she bantered with the highspirited Ezra.

  Though the sun climbed higher, the day grew no warmer. Near noon a chilling air current Ezra called a "norther" blew in, and the winter wind poured through Anne's lightweight cloak. Her frame shook with the cold that chilled to the bone, and her stomach rolled in protestations of hunger.

  "Mr. Powers," she called to the silent rider ahead of her.

  "Ma'am?" he answered, never turning around.

  "Can't we stop? I'm famished ...and exhausted."

  "No, ma'am, we can't."

  She waited for an explanation ,but, when none was offered, she lost all patience. She reined her horse along side the scout's. "Now just one moment, Mr. Powers. I realize you're a backwoodsman and have no conception of the way a civilized man behaves. But this is carrying your trivial vendetta a little too far! I demand you make camp!"

  The brown eyes he turned on her froze her through in a way the wind had failed to do. "I thought you were in a hurry to reach your husband, Mrs. Maren."

  "My husband is none of your business, sir. Your business is to see that we catch up with the Adelsolms wagon train. Now will you make camp ,or do I have to report you?"