Deep as the Rivers (Santa Fe Trilogy) (62 page)

   
“Samuel is supremely indifferent to me. He wouldn’t come even if I begged him.”
And I already have.

   
“But
I
beg to differ, my pet. He’ll come.”

   
“I will not do it.” She bit off each word, knowing she had to find a way to reach a weapon, but with David in her arms, it was impossible.

   
He slid a small pistol from inside his waistcoat as smoothly as if he were removing a snuff box. “Ah, yes, you will, my pet. That is...unless you want to see harm befall the boy.”

   
“You’re mad!” She shielded David with her body, replacing him in his crib bed, where he began to wail loudly now as she stood in front of him.

   
“Perhaps,” he replied noncommittally. “Now, take a seat at that charming little escritoire and begin composing. Of course, I will assist…”

* * * *

   
Samuel accompanied Jackson on his inspection of the breastworks in the early hours of January 8. They paused at battery thirteen, watching the intrepid Dominique You giving his men final instructions. Thick fog swirled around them, obscuring vision in spite of flickering campfires. The barrel-chested Creole had his own low fire going behind his artillery battery with a kettle of steaming water centered on it, inside which a tin coated iron coffeepot wafted out heavenly perfume.

   
“That coffee smells a damn sight better than the muddy swill we’ve been drinking,” Jackson said to You, then added slyly, “Maybe ye smuggled it in?”

   
You shrugged his broad shoulders and grinned. “Mebbee so,
mon ami
.” He offered Jackson and Shelby each a cup. The other Baratarian artillerymen chuckled when Jackson accepted it and drank with gusto, raising his cup in salute to You.

   
“If I were ordered to storm hell, by the Eternal, with ye, sir, at my side, I would have no misgivings of the result. Carry on, Captain You.”

   
“Jean is commanding the gunnerymen from the
Carolina
, General. Between him and his brother, they have destroyed half of the British artillery,” Samuel said.

   
Jackson nodded tersely. “This is it, Colonel. The final face down. I confess my gratitude for yer privateer friends. They’ve not only supplied the artillery shells to blow the British to perdition, they provided rifles for good Kentucky and Tennessee sharpshooters who know how to use them.” He snorted. “Dirty Shirts. Did ye know that’s what the lobster backed devils call my militia?”

   
Shelby nodded. “Those ragged frontiersmen have rewritten the tactics of modern warfare in more significant ways than Napoleon ever did. Shoot for the gold braid, and shoot from cover and always hit what you aim for.”

   
Jackson chuckled mirthlessly. “Ye know the rules, Colonel—the new rules. By the Eternal, let’s teach them to the British!”

   
Midway through their inspection tour, a messenger caught up to them, breathlessly saluting as he proffered a sealed envelope for Samuel. “For Colonel Shelby, sir.” No sooner had Samuel taken the paper than the youth, dressed in ragged breeches and a homespun shirt, vanished into the fog.

   
Samuel tore it open, squinting to read in the flickering light from a nearby fire.

   
“Go closer to the fire so ye can see, man,” Jackson said impatiently. Neither man had a good feeling about the mysterious missive. Perceiving the stiffening in Shelby’s body, the general said, “Ye look to have seen a ghost, Colonel. What is it?”

   
“I believe the British are holding prisoners at Belle Versailles, a woman...who is very dear to me. And a boy I did not know existed.”

   
“Belle Versailles—that’s scarce out of cannon range.” Jackson looked at Shelby’s dark haunted eyes, almost glazed with shock. “The boy...he is yours?”

   
“So it would seem, sir. I’d heard Olivia had a child by her Spanish husband. I should’ve guessed, should’ve taken more precautions with her in that isolated place. I left two of Jean’s men to guard her. Obviously they failed.”

   
Jackson cocked a shaggy eyebrow. “How can ye be certain? The British would hardly want her to alert ye to their presence.”

   
“She’s encoded a hidden message in the plea for me to rescue her.” Again he scanned the page:

My Dearest Samuel,

   
Please forgive the untimely arrival of this letter. I realize the situation at the battlefront is grave, but I must see you at once. I am alone at Belle Versailles plantation, defenseless against the British invaders.

   
I would not beg for myself, but for our son, David. No matter if you care nothing for me, you must recognize your own flesh and blood. Please do not let us part as we did when I left you in St. Louis. You heeded my letter then. Do not fail to heed this one, I implore you.

Olivia

   
You heeded my letter then.
But she had not written that letter. It was Wescott’s forgery—and they had not parted voluntarily in St. Louis. Someone, most probably British invaders were holding her hostage. As to her mention of a son...his mind simply shut down. Was it possible? Had she found herself pregnant after he left and opted to wed a conveniently gullible nobleman rather than bear an illegitimate child in seclusion while waiting for him to secure an uncertain divorce a thousand miles away?

   
He had to find the truth. “Permission to go to Belle Versailles, General.”

   
Jackson looked at him with shrewd dark eyes, squinting in the miasmic air, then cackled suddenly. “As if I could stop ye in all the pandemonium, Colonel! Go and don’t be gettin’ yer tail shot off by those damnable Lobsterbacks! “

* * * *

   
When he approached the plantation grounds, Samuel reined in his mount and swung from the saddle. No point in riding directly into a bullet. If the British were here using Olivia as a cat’s paw, they wanted him badly. During his little adventure in Pensacola he had rubbed the Spanish governor’s nose—not to mention the British general staff's—in the dirt, then escaped in spite of heavy guard. The last time he’d heard, the agent known as “Spanish Yankee” had a ten thousand dollar price on his head.
   
Smiling humorlessly, he thought it was twice what Lafitte had offered for Claiborne, a prize well worth baiting a trap for.

   
He found the two Baratarian guards in a shallow creek bed several hundred yards from the big house. Their throats had been cut. Judging from the congealed blood, several hours had elapsed since the murders. He was on his own.

   
Inside the house, Olivia prepared breakfast. She had sent the old cook Angeline back to bed, saying the slave was too fearful of the British soldiers around their house. She hoped to be able to secret away a weapon while using the cutlery to slice bread and fry ham for the men. So far no opportunity had presented itself.

   
Down the hall in the study, a pair of her uncle Charles’s British dueling pistols lay primed inside a teak case on the desk. If only she had a way to reach them or the trusty old carbine Micajah had given her. It was hidden beneath her bed. If she could but inflict enough damage with a knife here in the kitchen, she could make a run for the weapons, but Darcy had given her no opportunity…yet. At least she had convinced him to leave David in his room. Darcy had agreed, but one of the soldiers was sent to guard him while another kept watch outside the front door.

   
“You never have explained why you hate Samuel,” she said, forking golden-brown slabs of ham and turning them in the sizzling iron skillet, trying to distract him.

   
“All in good time. Once the colonel arrives, everything will become clear.”

   
The sudden sounds of a scuffle outside caused him to turn and yell for the man with David to hold the boy in his room. When he turned, Olivia used the moment to slip a narrow, sharp paring knife into the pocket of her wrapper. Almost instantly his eyes returned to her. “Come here, my pet.” He took hold of her arm roughly, causing her robe to gape open, revealing her breasts.

   
The lush enticement of golden skin did not hold the slightest interest for him as he dragged her toward the front hall, yelling, “Show yourself, Shelby, or my man will shoot your bastard.”

   
Outside on the porch, Samuel cursed his rotten luck. Just as he reached out to seize the guard and slit his throat, the sentry had sensed his presence. Subduing him had taken only a moment but it was not silent. Now he was discovered.

   
Shelby could not believe his eyes when he stepped inside the door and confronted the slender blond man holding a gun to Olivia’s breast...

   
“Richard Bullock!”

Chapter Twenty Seven

   
As Samuel dropped the brace of pistols at Olivia’s captor’s command, the sharp report of rifle fire erupted down the bayou, followed by the deafening roar of cannon. Jackson’s final battle had at last been joined.

   
Olivia stared hungrily at Samuel, her eyes sweeping up his tall lithe body to his face, to those incredibly mobile lips and the dark blue eyes framed by wavy black hair that still needed barbering. His uniform was wrinkled and muddy and he needed a shave. To her he looked absolutely beautiful. And disbelieving as his eyes narrowed on the man holding the gun between her breasts.

   
Richard Bullock, Samuel called him! At once the name stirred memories. “But he can’t be—this is Edmond Darcy, Governor Claiborne’s secretary,” she said, dreading what Darcy, or Bullock, was about to reveal. She could feel the aura of madness shrouding him as he began to speak.

   
“You poor deluded little slut,” the man she had known as Darcy said with contempt “How pathetically simple it was to play you two fools each against the other. Such sadly unrequited love...or so you thought when I intercepted and destroyed all your impassioned billet doux to one another.”

   
Samuel felt as if Bullock had slammed a booted foot into his guts. Olivia gasped aloud.

   
“Of course, I enjoyed reading them before I burned them. So tragic, the pregnant lover left behind by her gallant soldier, so desperate that she invented a husband to cover the embarrassment of her bastard. Your letters were more entertaining than a novel.” At the poleaxed look on Shelby’s face, Bullock gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Of course I failed to mention Don Rafael Obregón was a figment of the imagination when I composed Claiborne’s letter to you. Getting him to sign it concealed in a sheaf of boring government documents was rather easy, too.”

   
“You kept us apart for three years,” Olivia said, unable to take it in. Samuel had not deserted her! The look of raw anguish on his face spoke volumes.

   
“You denied my son his father and left Olivia to face the censure of society alone. I know you always hated me but why them? They’re innocent, Richard.” He fought down the rage boiling deep inside his gut, stalling for time, drawing Bullock out.

   
“Innocent,” he spat contemptuously. “A whore and her bastard.” He jerked Olivia’s arm, painfully jamming the gun barrel against the soft flesh of her breast.

   
“It’s me you hate, Richard. I was the one you never believed good enough for your beloved Tisha,” Samuel reminded him, moving a tiny step closer.

   
“You killed her. You’re responsible—both of you.” He glared at Shelby. “You destroyed her dreams of becoming a president’s lady. You left her alone, facing the disgrace of a divorce so you could chase after your whore! I found Tisha sobbing, broken and desperate, my proud, beautiful, splendid Tisha, crying because she’d lost you to this foreign nobody. I tried to comfort her. I did everything for her...”

   
“Even trying to kill me to prevent the scandal of the divorce?” Samuel was beginning to make sense of the erratic series of attempts on his life four years earlier.

   
“He was the one who shot your horse out from under you on the Virginia post road?” Olivia asked, but knew the answer to her question.

   
“But he failed. Just like he failed that night in the inn and then in St. Louis. Tish must have been quite vexed. She always was quite the bitch when she didn’t get her way,” Shelby said softly, inching yet nearer. Bullock suddenly moved the gun away from Olivia’s breast and aimed it at Samuel.

   
A sardonic smile mercurially flashed across his face. The eerie light in his eyes glowed with utter madness now. “Yes, she was a bitch, the most magnificent bitch on earth. In heat all the time.”

   
“You were her lover,” Samuel said, damning his own stupidity for never figuring it out before.