Woman of Three Worlds Read online

  “The bedding’s clean in the room next to this,” she said. “You must have it. I’ll spend the night at a fisherman’s cabin just a short distance from here.”

  “Miss Laird,” he said brusquely, “pray don’t be ridiculous! It will take me several days at the least to look over Tristesse and decide what to do with it. It may not be practical for you to live here in future, but there’s certainly no need to discommode yourself as yet.” He chuckled winningly. “Why should either of us be uncomfortable because of what people might say when no one but us needs to know?”

  Put that way, it did sound silly to insist on stumbling through the night to spread a pallet on the earth floor of an abandoned hut that was sure to be occupied by spiders, if nothing worse. Before she could say anything, he turned.

  “I’ll get my saddlebags,” he said, and left her to hurry into her clothes.

  II

  Bradley Eustis had eyes the cool shade of sky overcast with a wintry haze, but they danced at Brittany’s amazed wonder at the array he took out of his saddlebags.

  “You might heat up this tinned mutton stew,” he suggested. “Would you fancy oysters, salmon, or French sardines? The truffled woodcock is excellent, and so is the cheese.” He added packets of dried figs and raisins, real coffee, sugar, and tea.

  Jem had brought treats when he could, so she had tasted sardines and raisins, but Brittany was sure that most of these things had been brought from some expensive shop in the East, or even in Europe. While she built up the fire, he opened the stew, and soon they were eating from the Sèvres that Tante had saved even after most of the beautiful furniture had been sold.

  Brittany wasn’t really hungry, but she savored raisins and figs and a wedge of red-gold cheese while Eustis consumed stew, corn bread, oysters, and salmon, topping them off with mayhaws.

  “Delicious,” he said. “And red as your lips.” At Brittany’s startled glance, he chuckled. “Surely we can dispense with hypocrisy under the circumstances, Miss Laird. You must know that you send a man’s pulse hammering.”

  “Sir—”

  He waved aside her protest. “Don’t look so frightened. Northerners can be quite civilized, you know. I promise not to even see if you bar your door tonight.”

  “I’ll bar it,” she retorted. “And if you make another personal remark, I’ll go to the cabin!”

  He rose, yawning behind his hand. “Rest virtuously in your own bed. I’m retiring to mine.” He bowed and went up the hall. By the time Brittany had done the dishes and passed down the hall, no sound came from his room.

  She entered her own and fastened the bolt. As she undressed for the second time that night, she thought she heard faint masculine laughter.

  His door was still shut when she tiptoed past next morning. Resisting the temptation to use his coffee, she made mint tea and breakfasted on mayhaws and corn bread, hurrying. She wanted to be out of the house before he appeared.

  She let the chickens out of the coop, which gave some protection against night predators, and took the overgrown path to the fisherman’s cabin. Bursting through tangles of jasmine and grape vines, she was glad she hadn’t tried to go there in the dark, though if Eustis consented she’d move there today. He’d been weary last night, but his manner had convinced her that she’d be a fool to stay on in the house.

  His house.

  She winced at the pain of the thought, picked up her skirts, and almost ran the rest of the way to the cabin. The door hung crazily open and the single window had lost all but ragged tags of the oiled leather that had served as a pane.

  Weeds grew in the doorway. Toadstools sprouted in dark corners. Cobwebs chained a crude bench to a cruder table. Rodents had gnawed away the rope or rawhide that had been strung between four posts to make a bed. Wrinkling her nose at the dank odors, Brittany tested the posts that were buried in the ground to keep the tops steady. They were sound. And the roof seemed to be all right.

  Eustis ought to pay her something for the remaining furniture, enough to fix the cabin up. She’d better go talk to him right now so there’d be time to clean it and move in before dark.

  She had corn bread baking in the covered cast-iron skillet and coffee brewing when Eustis came lazily into the kitchen. “I thought candlelight had surely flattered you,” he drawled, ice-blue gaze appraising. “But you’re even lovelier by full sun.”

  Flustered, she reached for another skillet. “Would you like eggs for breakfast?”

  “Anything, so long as you join me.”

  “I’ve already eaten.”

  “You make me feel a sluggard,” he laughed, sitting down. “Do you always rise with the dawn?”

  “Yes.” She broke three eggs into the hot skillet, watching them instead of the man as she plunged. “I’ve been over to see the cabin.”

  “What cabin?”

  “The one I hope you’ll let me stay in. I’ll gladly do house or garden work in return.”

  She could feel him studying her before he shrugged. “After breakfast, perhaps you could show me the cabin.”

  He ate heartily, heaping corn bread with marmalade from his saddlebag, insisting that she have coffee with him. “I had expected to sell this house,” he said, “but you make it seem an inviting place to live, at least some of the time.” He sipped a last cup of coffee while she washed dishes and then suggested they go to the cabin.

  When he ducked an oak branch to enter the small clearing, he stopped short, staring at the forlorn little building. “You want to live here?”

  “I don’t want to leave Tristesse.” Pride forbade begging, but she couldn’t keep a tremor from her voice. “It’s always been home. I can’t imagine going someplace else.”

  Without responding, he strode to the haphazard door, peered in, sniffed, and made a face of fastidious disgust. “Impossible, Miss Laird.”

  “But—” Her lip trembled. She bit down on it, hard.

  He wheeled to face her, searching her with those cold, clear eyes. “You’d really live in that hovel and work as a servant in order to stay at the plantation?”

  She nodded mutely.

  A strangely gratified look puffed his lips for a moment before he said, “Let’s go back to the house and talk about it.”

  At his request she escorted him from the empty front parlor, where her mother’s piano and harp had been, to the wine cellar, empty of everything but a few jars of juice squeezed from last autumn’s tangy little mustang grapes. He praised the views, the quality of the construction, oak floors polished to gold, tile or marble fireplaces in each room. There was nothing left in the unused part of the house, not even rugs or draperies, and Eustis’s voice echoed somewhat eerily.

  “All it needs is furnishing to be a showplace.”

  Brittany strangled at the bitterness of hearing this rich Yankee who owned her beloved home speak of its poverty so coolly. It was only with great effort that she quelled an outburst. She was starting down the hall when the man, behind her, set his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him.

  “Brittany.” He spoke her name slowly, seeming to taste it. “How would you like to pick out furniture for Tristesse? Carpets, draperies, pictures? How would you like to see it beautiful again?”

  A wild rush of hope made her forget his familiarity in using her first name and touching her. “You—you mean you’d like me to help you choose new things? Be the housekeeper?”

  “Not a housekeeper.” As her face fell, he smiled. Deliberately, he cupped her chin with one hand. “Mistress of Tristesse—and me.”

  Before she could grasp his meaning and wrench free, he tilted her face and swept her against him, pressing her softness to the hard length of his body as he bruised her mouth. Mistaking shock for consent, he fumbled at her breast.

  She kicked him in the shin and gave him a violent shove. He stumbled backward, swearing. “You little backwoods slut!” He lunged for her.

  Brittany dodged, ran into the kitchen, and caught up the poker. Eustis halted
, flushed with thwarted lust and anger. He seemed to weigh his chance of catching her without encountering the poker before he gave a disdainful hitch of his shoulders.

  “Put down your weapon, Miss Laird. I associate only with sane people. You must be mad to prefer that cabin and drudgery to living in a house restored to luxuriousness.”

  When she continued to grip the poker, he laughed. “If you’re that prudish, you’d probably be useless in love. However, I’ll let you reconsider while I ride around the property.” Pausing in the door, He added brutally, “If you’re here tonight, I expect to be welcomed to your bed.”

  Trembling, Brittany held the poker till he’d unhobbled and saddled his horse, given a mocking wave, and ridden down the lane that led to where the fields used to be planted.

  No choice. None at all. She would have to accept her cousin’s offer.

  Stunned too numb for weeping, Brittany leaned the poker against the wall. She must pack a few things and trudge to Jefferson. Lawyer Hackett would help her. But her father’s books! Her mother’s china, the few mementos!

  Glancing helplessly around the library, she fought back tears before a wave of fury braced her. Bradley Eustis might own her home, but he’d never own her! She’d ask Lawyer Hackett to store the books, china, and small things till she could send for them and sell the furniture to cover those expenses. Right now the important thing was to be gone long before Eustis returned.

  She had filled a sack with clothing, her mother’s jewelry, the Bible in which her parents’ wedding and her own birth were recorded, and Lear’s book of verse. On top was Regina’s letter. It was fifteen miles to town, so she had a packet of corn bread and a flask of water, the last she would drink from that clear, sweet well. She cast a last look at the garden, hoping someone would tend it and enjoy the yield, before she set her bag against the rails protecting Tante’s grave.

  She hurried to a swampy place where she’d seen orchids growing a few days ago, and choosing her footing carefully, she plucked a handful of delicate small blooms that resembled tiny dragons with yawning mouths: shadow witch, lace-lip, crested coral, ladies’ tresses.

  Tante had loved them. Brittany placed the fragile bouquet on the unhealed mound. Overcome, she sank to her knees, wept for her beloved old nurse, her parents, and because she must leave her home.

  Everyone who had loved her was dead, except for Jem. That was a lonely feeling. Somehow she doubted that Regina loved anyone, even her Ned and Angela.

  “Good-bye, Tante,” Brittany murmured, touching the edge of the grave. “I always will remember you.”

  Heaving the bag over her shoulder, she walked to the bend of the lane, looked back quickly, fixed the lovely old house in her mind forever, and hurried on, unable for a long time to see where she was going.

  She was hot, footsore, and weary when, early that afternoon, she dropped her pack at Lawyer Hackett’s door and rang the bell. She knew where it was because she and Tante had always stopped to see the lawyer on their rare trips to town.

  Bruce Hackett, whose bald crown was as rosy as his cheeks, ushered her into his parlor, for he was a widower who kept an office in his dwelling. Mrs. Lansford, his white-haired, sweet-faced housekeeper, brought tea and muffins, clucking sympathetically at Brittany’s much-abbreviated story, which omitted Eustis’s insulting proposition.

  “Still and all,” the motherly woman said, “now that dear old Tante’s gone, you could scarcely stay there alone. Cheer up, love. Why, I daresay every bachelor officer at Camp Bowie is eagerly awaiting your arrival!”

  She rustled off to prepare the spare bedroom for Brittany, since the lawyer had insisted that she stay with them that night and catch tomorrow’s stage. He peered at her now through round steel-framed spectacles.

  “I’m astonished that even a Yankee let you set off on foot with that heavy sack.”

  “He didn’t know. I—I left while he was riding around the plantation.” Brittany’s cheeks burned. She was sure the old family adviser guessed the general reason she’d left so precipitately. “The furniture will have to be sold, sir, but I’d take it as a great kindness if you could use the money from the sale to store the books and china till I can send for them.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Hackett assured her. “Plenty of room in the attic. Where, by the way, I’m sure we can find a proper valise for you!”

  So it was in a proper, if worn, valise that Brittany’s things were stowed on top of the stage next morning. Mrs. Lansford embraced her, whispering encouraging remarks about dashing young officers. Lawyer Hackett handed her into a seat by the window.

  “Have a safe journey, my dear. Write from Camp Bowie.”

  She waved as the stage moved forward, then took her first real notice of the other passengers. Three middle-aged men were in the seat behind, an apparently married older couple shared the middle seat with her, and a very fat, red-haired man sat facing them on the seat turned to the back. His legs had been sprawled in the space Brittany’s feet now occupied. It was with a disgruntled expression that he fitted his knees on either side of the man beside Brittany. Broad legs crushed hers against the door, but she was grateful that at least she wasn’t locked in the position of her neighbor.

  They bumped over roads rutted by spring rains. The red-haired man dozed, mouth falling open till he woke himself with particularly thunderous snores. Brittany’s neighbors argued over the conduct of the married daughter they were going to visit. The men in the rear, it appeared from their conversation, were speculators in railroad stock.

  Brittany sighed and tried to find a more comfortable position. It was going to be a long, long journey.

  By the time she changed stage lines, at San Antonio, Brittany felt she’d been riding forever, squeezed by the fat man’s knee, finding blessed relief when the stage stopped every twenty miles or so for a new team. They had averaged between four and five miles an hour, stopping at night in stage stations where food was greasy and the beds grass ticks spread over laced rope supports.

  Those three days were nothing, though, compared to the stretch to El Paso, especially when the last trees were left behind and they rumbled across a high, seemingly endless plateau broken to the south by barren mountains. Since the stage line carried mail, they traveled nights too, and though Brittany could have stayed to sleep at one of the relay stations, they were so dirty and full of rough men that she kept riding, falling into exhausted stupors between stations.

  It was wonderful to see trees at Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos, where the Comanches used to stop on their autumn looting trips to Mexico till they were forced onto a reservation up in Indian Territory, in 1874, two years ago. After that, it seemed to Brittany that she never saw another real tree till they neared the Rio Grande at El Paso.

  Fort Bliss was located outside the town, and the sleepy adobe settlement seemed to drowse. “Would you believe El Paso had a thousand citizens before the war and was the busiest city between San Antonio and California?” asked one passenger disgustedly. “Most people here were Southern sympathizers. Their houses and businesses were confiscated and sold at public auction. It’ll take a railroad to bring life to this place!”

  At Mesilla, less than a day from El Paso, Brittany got on the Southern Pacific Mail Stage that ran three times a week from that village to San Diego.

  A leathery-faced young man, shotgun in hand and a holstered gun at either hip, grinned at Brittany as he helped her in before climbing up beside the bewhiskered driver.

  “Don’t you worry about Apaches, ma’am. They like easy pickings, not a fight.”

  She found this remark less than comforting, and her uneasiness was increased on another account. Throughout her journey, she had been the only woman traveling alone.

  Now she was the only one, wedged in between a chunky, flashily dressed man with a curly moustache and a gaunt officer, severely handsome in spite of hollow cheeks and dark smudges beneath his gray eyes. He looked too young for the silver hair sweeping back from an
aristocratic forehead. Facing them were a sleek, black-haired man who was Brittany’s idea of a gambler and an odiferous, bald hulk with a gun at his hip whose gingery beard and leather shirt were further stained by tobacco dribbles.

  He was the last one in. Grinning at Brittany, he fitted his knees around hers. “No need to squinch your legs so tight, ma’am,” he chuckled. “Just relax.” He glanced from the curly-moustached man to the officer. “One of you gentlemen lucky enough to be this lady’s husband?”

  Flushing, Brittany said quickly, “I’m not married.”

  Eyes the color of weak coffee peered at her with fresh interest. “Traveling all alone out in these parts? Well, ma’am, Jed Farrow will make it his business to look after you. How far are you going?”

  “Camp Bowie.”

  “Oh,” said the stranger with a roguish wink. “Coming out to marry your soldier? I’m surprised he’d send for you with the Apaches on a big tear. Just led a raid through the San Pedro Valley, killing ranchers and running off livestock.”

  The officer said coolly, “According to my information, sir, the Indian Bureau cut the Chiricahua agency’s beef allotment so drastically that the agent had to let some warriors go hunting off the reservation. Some drifted down to Mexico on a raid, came back with gold, and bought whiskey off a trader. Pionsenay killed two of his sisters while he was drunk. When he sobered up he killed the trader and his cook. It was after that when he led the San Pedro raid.”

  “You seem to know all the ins and outs of it,” Farrow allowed. “Is it true the Chiricahuas are going to be dumped at the San Carlos Reservation with the other Apaches?”

  “They may already be there. The last I heard, Agent Clum had been ordered to bring the Chiricahuas to his agency and relieve Agent Jeffords of his duties.” He added grimly, “Clum has made friends with the Apaches and formed a group of Indian police who do a fine job of keeping order at San Carlos. I don’t think he could bring the Chiricahua in, though, without the support of ten troops of cavalry the department commander just sent to Camp Bowie.”