Bonds, Parris Afton (23 page)

The crude, dog-run cabin in Houston, Texas was
hardly what one would expect the President of the Republic of Texas to occupy,
but then, Sam Houston had never been ostentatious―only flamboyant.

He sat behind his desk now, dressed in buckskins
much like those worn by the man seated across from him. Inhaling deeply on the
Cherokee peace pipe, he passed it to Brant. "The Indians have a lot more
going for them than the white man gives them credit for," he said, smiling
so that the wrinkles bunched up around the shrewd gray eyes.

Brant accepted the pipe and inhaled, rolling the
smoke around in his mouth. After a moment he exhaled, letting the smoke curl
upward in rings. "Every treaty should be accompanied by the smoking of
the peace pipe."

Houston's hunter's eyes widened. "You already
know of the treaty with Great Britain?"

Brant smiled and shrugged. "Your private
secretary―Miller―left the papers on his desk. You couldn't expect me
not to glance over them, could you, Sam?"

Houston leaned back in the pine chair and laughed,
then coughed as the smoke congested his lungs. "I should've known little
escapes the eyes of a Tonkawa scout―or a privateer." Then, more
seriously, "In spite of your splendid success on the high seas, it appears
the privateering days of the Texas Navy are coming to a halt."

"Then you think the signing of this treaty will
put an end to Mexico's interference?"

"No. It'll only delay our next encounter with
Mexico until we're stronger―or we have the United States backing
us." Houston leaned forward and said, "I don't suppose you'd be
willing to serve under our minister to Britain and France―Pickney
Henderson―as an attaché? We could use someone that can tell the truth
about Texas―not just some glorified dandy."

The squint lines about Brant's eyes crinkled.
"Sorry, Sam. But I'm planning to get back to my ranch. Three years is a
long time to be away."

"You know, don't you, that Donovan's here in
Houston? It's obvious he's angry as hell the treaty passed the Parliament, but
he has no choice but to follow orders and negotiate it with us."

Brant frowned, but all he said was, "No, I
didn't know he was back."

"Too bad we never could prove he was working
for those Abolitionists," Houston said, the regret mingling with the anger
in his voice. "Their pious plot

Cost the lives of a lot of good Texans. Donovan's
kind is certainly unwelcome here, but unfortunately this treaty he carries is
more important." He laid the pipe aside and fixed his eagle-eyed gaze on
Brant. "Will you tell Mrs. Maren of Donovan's presence here?"

Brant's smile was rueful. "You don't miss much
yourself, Sam."

Anne sat at the inn's table, not able to touch the
sizzling steak and creamed peas before her. After two months at sea the fresh
meat and vegetables should have made her mouth water, yet her stomach rolled.
Brant had left for the President's house immediately after the
Seawasp
had dropped anchor in Galveston Bay. That was yesterday, and he had not yet
returned.

She glanced out the salt-streaked window, searching
the bay for the British frigate,
HMS
Victory
. Yes, it was still
there at anchor. Would Brant secure passage for her as he had promised, no,
threatened, that first evening she had boarded the
Seawasp
―or was
he even now plotting another diabolical scheme to keep her his captive? Somehow
she doubted it. Their last verbal exchange in his cabin had succeeded in
convincing each of them of their true feelings.

Anne turned from the window to see Brant coming
toward her. He looked much the same as he had the first time she had met him,
now that he was once again dressed in buckskins. Dark. Formidable. Enigmatic.
She had never known for certain what he was thinking. Even now, as she looked
up at him, she saw no anger in his face―nor pleasure. Only the Indian's stolid
impassiveness. "Your passage on the British frigate has been
arranged," he said. "And I've paid for your room and board here until
the
Victory
sails."

"There was no need for you to do all of that,"
she said, hating to accept anything from him.

"Let's just say it evens things up―that,
and the information that Donovan can be found aboard the
Victory
."
He nodded toward the bay and clapped his hat on low over his eyes. "My
regards, ma'am."

Anne drew back from the lips that claimed hers so
passionately.

"I'm sorry, darling," Colin told her.
"When I'm with you, I forget there are other people around."

Indeed, the people that thronged Galveston's
waterfront―sailors, merchants, and visitors seeking the pleasure of the
sea―stared at the couple embracing, which in itself was not so unusual,
for such a scene was repeated many times with each ship that put in, bringing
loved ones. But this couple made such a handsome pair. The lovely young woman
with hair the color of red gold and the elegant gentleman with the boyish good
looks.

The man hailed a buggy and instructed the driver to
take them to the
Duck
Inn
. Then he turned to take the woman's
hands in his. "I can't believe that you're here in Galveston―and
that we're finally together," Colin said.

So, Brant had told Colin nothing of what had
transpired in the six months' interval. "Within the week, we sail,"
Colin continued. "And you'll sail as Mrs. Colin Donovan, the wife of the
next Prime Minister." He looked at her anxiously. "Does that please
you―because that's all I want from life, darling―the opportunity to
make you happy."

Anne leaned back in the buggy, unable to meet the
enchanting green eyes. She looked instead at the gray storm clouds that rolled
in from the Gulf, bringing with them the summer heat and humidity. "All my
life I've adored you, Colin. To marry you is the realization of my girlhood
dreams. But that's just what it would be―a marriage of dreams. And you
can't build a marriage on dreams."

Colin took her hand gently in his. ''I was afraid
this would happen if I was away too long. Give us a chance, at least, Anne. Let
me make your dreams a reality."

"I've thought about that, Colin. About returning
to England with you. We're both determined people―maybe we
could
make a go of it. But in the process it would ruin your career―and I love
you too much to let that happen."

Colin frowned and opened his mouth in protest, but
Anne touched her fingers to his lips.  "Hush and listen to me, dearest.
How long do you think your career would last when it became known your wife had
lived with the Indians―among other sordid adventures?"

Then she told him what she had been withholding to
the last. "And, Colin―my husband is alive."

She saw the stunned look in his eyes, but he grabbed
her shoulders before she could say more. "That doesn't matter, Anne!
Listen to me. I've been all over the world. Met the most beautiful courtesans
and the most seductive savages. But none of them compared to you! Not just your
beauty―but your spirit. Do you think I'd give you up after all this
waiting, all this planning? Do you think my love's so shallow I'd put my career
first? If Otto won't die, then divorce him. But one way or another I mean to
have you!"

Anne drew back, not fully comprehending the anger
she saw in the flashing green eyes. "It's not that I think your love is
shallow," she said, trying to placate him. "But mine is. I've put you
on a pedestal, and how long do you think that pedestal would stand when I found
that you have to shave like mortal men? And that you sweat and sometimes get
drunk and all the other things normal men do?" Her lips formed a tremulous
smile. "Let me keep my dream untarnished, Colin."

The buggy halted before the inn, but Colin caught
Anne's hand in a painful grasp before she could climb down. His voice was hard.
"You'll regret this decision, Anne. I won't beg you ..." His voice
softened so that it was almost a caress. "Think on it―think of what
you're passing up. You've two days before the
Victory
sails to change
your mind." He bent and planted a kiss on the inside of Anne's wrist that
made her tremble with that old feeling.

All logic, all reason, told Anne to say yes. Colin
was the fulfillment of all her dreams. In England she would be the wife of a
celebrated diplomat. There would be teas, plays, and operas to attend.
Beautiful gowns and costly jewels. Maids to wait on her. And an adoring
husband.

She looked down at the scar that ridged the back of
her left hand, reminding her that she still had a husband―if not Brant,
then Otto. Anne shook her head wordlessly, blinking back tears that threatened
to spill. Colin's eyes, as hard as emerald rocks, moved over her face
unbelievingly. Then he nodded to the Negro driver, and the buggy rolled away.

Two days later Anne watched from her room's window
at the
Duck
Inn
as the
Victory
sailed out of sight,
looking like some gigantic white-winged bird. Ezra had been right―she was
no longer a little girl. She had to make her own life now―she had to stop
following the flash of the firefly. Wasn't that what Delila had once tried to
warn her of?

''You planted the seeds!" Anne said.

Behind her cabin grew row upon row of bright,
green-leafed tobacco plants more than ten inches high.

"Of course," Matilda said. She poked her
cane among the plants. "I knew you would return,
Liebe
. There is
about you―" The old woman paused, searching for the right word in
English, "
Rechte
-
schaffenheit
," she said at last, using
its German equivalent.

"Integrity?" Anne would hardly have applied
that word to the self-centered young girl who had come to Texas more than a
year before.

"
Ja
. A sense of responsibility. Of right
und justice."

Abstractions, Anne thought. All of them. They count
for nothing when the heart is torn by love. How long would the pain of Colin's
absence continue to bind her heart like a tourniquet, cutting off her breath,
her life's blood?

"Even after you found the baby―"
here Anne broke off, closing her eyes against the vision of what Matilda had
told her, of how the yard dogs had discovered the baby's burial place and torn―"Even
after you realized what had happened here, you were that certain I'd come
back?"

"
Liebe
, Otto suffered more than you. On
hiz shoulders he carried hiz own idea of hell. In every pair of eyes he looked
into, there vaz no forgiveness. That killed him, I think, more than the consumption.
After you fled, he lost all reasoning, vandering out into the cold of night to
search for you, calling your name like a lost child. Professor Bern und Peter
und the other men vould take turns looking for him, and they vould bring him
back und feed him, then put him to bed."

"His soul is at rest at last," Anne said
softly. She had not yet brought herself to visit the cemetery to view the two
new graves placed side by side.

When Matilda and Anne returned to the cabin, Una was
at Anne's front door holding a pumpkin cake in her frail hands. "Hungry
and tired we thought you would be," she shouted. "Johanna is making a
venison stew. And the other women are mixing together a casserole for you
later."

"
Danke
schön
," Anne shouted
back after the departing woman.

"Vhat vill you do now?" Matilda asked as she
took her leave following Lina's departure.

Anne sighed. "I don't know, Matilda. I know I
won't go back to Barbados. My life is here now. I suppose I'll begin directing
all my energy to making the tobacco field succeed..."She paused ,then half
to herself said, "At one time I had hoped love would be ..." Her
voice trailed off, as the pain clutched at her heart again. It was becoming a
familiar companion.

Matilda snorted. "
Verliebt
! Romantic
Love! Never did believe in it―und I vas happier vith Jacob than most
vomen I knew―than those that had rebelled against their parents' choices
und married out of sheer fascination. That's all
Verliebt
iz."
Matilda shook her cane at Anne. "Do not be a fool,
Liebe
."

The first year's crop of tobacco was taken by Peter
to Galveston to be auctioned off, and on his return to Adelsolms Anne realized
a healthy profit, though she by no means yet lived the life she had known as a
child growing up on her father's sugar plantation.

The people of Adelsolms could not be kind enough to
her, and she realized that her own initial aloofness was partly responsible for
the mistrust that had been kindled between her and some of the German settlers.
She was finally accepted as one of them. And she in turn was aiding the
settlers indirectly by stimulating the town's trade. For with the spread of the
news of her tobacco farm, people came from San Felipe,
Washington-on-the-Brazos, and even as far as Brazoria to purchase the leaves for
their pipes and cigars. It was from a farmer of Brazoria that she learned
Dorothy and her steadfast Willie had married.

When another year had passed, and the harvest of her
tobacco had made her even more profit than the year before, Anne still knew no
contentment. The memory of Colin no longer hurt her as deeply as it once had,
which surprised her. But there was an emptiness to her life that made each day
a monotonous continuation of the one before.

The monotony was broken, however, one morning in
August by the unexpected appearance of Ezra at her door. The giant swept her up
in his arms, laughing. "It's true," he said. "You really did
stay in Texas!"

"How did you know?" Anne asked, as her own
laughter subsided.

"In Galveston they talk of a Scottish woman who
lives inland and is making a fortune growing tobacco. It had to be you."

"And what brings you here besides my
tobacco?" she asked, smiling fondly at the big man, as she made him sit in
the rocker while she prepared coffee.

"You know Lamar has been elected to succeed
General Sam. And I've been commissioned to help layout the town site for the
new capital―it'll be called Austin. You know, miss, it'll be built near
the old settlement of Waterloo."

Anne heard a deliberate pause in Ezra's speech and
turned to look at him. "And?"

"And―well, it's not too many hours' ride
from Brant's ranch."

There―Ezra had brought Brant's name out into
the open. Anne set the coffee canister down. For more than a year she had put
off thinking about Brant.  "Brant made all too clear his opinion of me. He
always thought the worst of me."

"And you him." Ezra leaned forward in the
rocker. "Tell me, did you ever ask your Irishman where he got the money to
have you abducted?"

Anne's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

"The Kwahadi Comanches were paid to abduct you―and,
if possible, kill your husband. No one else was to be harmed. And you were to
be released a day or so later. To return to Donovan's open arms―or so our
informant, a Kwahadi renegade, told us. Of course, Donovan didn't know that the
Comanches would kill others here in their enthusiasm―or that
Pa-ha-yu-quosh would decide to keep you."

Anne's knees grew weak, and she took a seat at the
table. "But this―this renegade―he could be―"

"Lying? Possibly. But General Sam has suspected
for sometime now that Donovan was behind the Indian uprisings―not just at
Adelsolms, but in several scattered settlements. You see, there's a party in
England, the Abolitionists, who were against recognizing Texas because we still
practice slavery here. They were paying Donovan under the table to stir up
Indian unrest about the country―enough unrest to make us look bad in the reports
that got back to London. Fortunately, some of the other British politicians―General
Hamilton of the British Navy and the British Minister at Mexico, Sir Pickenham
or Packenham, whatever―they brought back better opinions about our
Republic."

She did not―could not―believe it. And
yet she knew the brain behind Colin's boyish face operated more shrewdly than
people realized. Still, she made a halfhearted attempt. "I suppose there
is proof of this charge?"

Ezra shrugged his massive shoulders. "General
Sam has it. But I wouldn't have said anything except it 'peared to me you'd
already made up your mind about Donovan. While I'm still on the subject, I
think you should know that Brant never took any reward money from Donovan. I
don't think you ever understood Brant."

Ezra tugged at his beard with embarrassment.
"Didn't mean to run off at the mouth so. Just sort of wanted to set the
record straight."