Moon Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (57 page)

      
Foreseeing yet many ups and downs in this sibling relationship, Rafe suddenly knew it was going to work out. Tousling Adam's curly black hair, he said gravely, “I think that's a very good idea, son. Maybe you could show your mother, too. After all, she might not know which ones to look out for either.”

* * * *

      
“I think we have a truce between Adam and Melanie,” Rafe said to Deborah as they prepared for bed the following evening. “She actually petted his favorite garter snake and he really seemed happy to have her call you Mama. How did you accomplish that incredible feat, my amazing wife?”

      
“It's scarcely to my great credit. Oh, Rafael, with her grandma and aunt gone, she was so starved for a woman's love.” Her eyes were luminous with unshed tears.

      
“Not many women would take the child of their husband's mistress as their own. You are a wonder, Moon Flower.” Fresh from bathing and clad only in a robe, he padded barefoot across the floor to take her in his arms. Nuzzling her neck he whispered, “I was so afraid of losing you, Deborah.”

      
“Don't be,” she said, placing her fingertips on his lips, “don't ever be afraid of losing me again. You've given me so much—two beautiful children, our home here at Renacimiento, and most of all, yourself. Now I know why my father wanted you to find me.”

      
His eyes measured her face as he took it delicately between his hands. “And you're not afraid of me anymore?”

      
“No, not anymore. I mistrusted you back in San Antonio and I didn't understand about Flores and what he'd done—but Lucia told me.” She slid her fingers down his neck, tracing the scar on his jaw, then down to the one on his chest, then whispered against his neck, “Since we've been at Renacimiento, I've watched you with Joe and Lucia, with the men who work for you, with your son and now with your daughter.

      
“The old Rafael in New Orleans would never have formed a partnership with a half-breed or turned over the management of his house to a woman who had been a Comanche squaw. And he never would have treated Adam and Melanie as you have—equally.” She looked up into his eyes and said simply, “I'm proud of you, Rafe Fleming, and I love you with all my heart.”

      
He crushed her to him with a fierce, sealing kiss. “Oh, Deborah, my Moon Flower, the only thing that kept me alive all those hard, dangerous years in Texas was my belief that I'd find you! You are my life, my soul! I love you and I need you.”

      
As if to prove his words he held her tightly to him so she could feel the pounding of his heart. With trembling hands she slipped her arms down from his neck, sliding his robe open while he groaned and swept her into his embrace, carrying her to the bed. Her hair spread across the quilts like silver gilt moonbeams and the sheer lavender night rail revealed the tautening points of her breasts. He shrugged his robe off and knelt in splendid nakedness on the edge of the bed to drink in her loveliness. Watching his eyes on her, she sat up and sensuously shed the lavender silk gown from her shoulders, down to her waist. Quickly, he helped her slip it free from her hips.

      
Deborah clasped his shoulders, pulling him down on top of her. She wanted this to be a slow, savoring, special sharing of their new life together. Her soft palms rubbed small, circular patterns on his chest as his hands lifted and teased her aching breasts. Each could feel the other's heartbeat pounding as they lay caressing and kissing in gentle exploration. When his hard shaft prodded against her soft belly, her hips gently undulated beneath his stroking hands. With a soft moan, she reached down and delicately grasped the rigid phallus, running her fingers up and down its swollen length. He emitted a gasp of pleasure.

      
“Violet-eyed witch,” he moaned as she teased him softly, but he made no move to plunge into her despite his body's desperate ache for release.

      
“Black-eyed devil,” she whispered back raggedly as his hand closed gently over hers and guided his shaft lower to rub softly back and forth across her wet swollen nether lips.

      
Unable to endure the tortuous promise for another minute, he pulled their hands away and slid deeply into her. “Soft and slow,” she whispered.

      
“To make it last all night,” he whispered back.

      
All night was a long time, but they strove mightily, stroking and undulating, rolling over with him on top, then her on top, stopping a hair short of breathless completion again and again, until sweat slicked their bodies despite the chill night air. The coals in the bedroom fireplace were faintly glowing embers when Rafe felt her tightening spasms of blissful orgasm enwrap him. He plunged deeper and faster, glorying in her cries of ecstasy and even more in the way her eyes held his as he spilled himself deeply inside her. Their souls were never so closely linked as they were at that moment.

      
When he could speak again, he said in that soft, silky voice she loved, “It has never lasted so long before, Moon Flower. Perhaps we've just made a new little brother or sister for Adam and Melanie to unite against.” He kissed her softly and rolled them to their sides, still joined.

      
He could feel her chuckle as she kissed his eyelids, then the tip of his nose. “We did that some time ago. They won't have long to wait. About October, I imagine.”

      
His fingertips grazed her cheek tenderly. “How long have you known?”

      
“I've only been sure for the past few weeks, since I missed my second flow. Are you pleased, Rafael?”

      
He smiled, happy to hear his old name on her lips, a seal on the good part of their earlier life together. “Yes, I'm pleased. More than I can ever express.” Wonderingly, he placed a hand on her belly as if to feel the new life there. “This time I'll be here to watch our child grow, to help you through the birth, to share everything with you. Yes, it pleases me very much,” he said simply. “My dreams were big when I reclaimed Renacimiento from the wilderness. We'll raise our children and grandchildren here, Deborah.”

      
She nestled closer to him and replied, “I always hated being an only child. Let's have a dozen more babies!”

      
He laughed. “Then I'll have to build a larger house! Last night Joe told me he and Lucia plan to build their own place across the creek and start a family, too. Pretty soon, we'll have a whole city right here on the ranch. I'd like your father to come here and see this for himself. Think you might persuade him?” He arched one black brow at her.

      
Deborah laughed musically. “Offered a chance to meet his grandchildren, watch how soon he arrives!”

      
As she sat composing a joyous letter to her father that next morning, Deborah told him all about Melanie and Adam and the new baby on the way. She was certain he would arrive for a visit before summer's end. When she had written the last lines, she called to her husband, wanting to share them with him.

      
He read with a catch in his voice:

Like the name of our new home, Renacimiento, Rafael and I have had our love reborn. Together we are building a glorious life in this new land, for ourselves and for our children.

With all my love,

Deborah

With tears glowing in his eyes, Rafe laid the sheet of paper on the desk and leaned down to kiss his wife.

Author’s Note

      
Because it spans such diverse cultures,
Moon Flower
was a research challenge. The heroine is a Boston abolitionist who migrates to Texas during the chaos of the Revolution. The hero is a New Orleans Creole who survives Comanche captivity and ultimately becomes a Texas rancher. The vivid panorama of mid-nineteenth century ethnic history unfolds in their story as they adapt to life in the new Republic of Texas.

      
When I began background reading on Creole and Comanche cultures, I was fascinated by the parallels between these two diverse groups and that of the Anglo-Texan society. Comparisons of violence between the Texians and the Indians were not so surprising. But Creoles were supposedly the epitome of civilization, while Comanches were supposedly the most barbarous of Native Americans. Yet, as I investigated, I was increasingly convinced that they shared many human frailties as well as strengths with the Texians.

      
All these were incredibly male-dominated systems in which warrior honor was all too often validated on the field of combat. The distinction is a fine one between bloodletting on the dueling field and bloodletting on a scalping raid. Texian frontiersmen dueled with rules and without. They were often brutal to each other, and were now and again known to abuse Mexicans and Indians.

      
The cruelty of slavery existed in the Louisiana bayous and on the Texas plains alike. What occurred at the Masparo Exchange may have been more orderly than what occurred when the Comanche enslaved men and women; but in defense of the horse barbarians, it might be argued that they occasionally adopted captured children into their society, something both Creole and Anglo color bars strictly forbade.

      
The position of women was in all cases lamentably unenviable. The “racial layer cake” of white and black families in New Orleans can well be compared to the plural marriage system of the Comanche. Women like Lily and Lucia struggled to survive under equally tragic circumstances. For that matter, so did Deborah and Sand Owl.

      
Despite their vices, which loom large in twenty-first century eyes, Creoles and Comanches scrupulously observed their own rigid codes of honor. Both were overwhelmed by a more flexible Anglo society that ironically combined their more civilized refinements and more barbaric practices. The Texians were a violent people. They were also a strong one. From these bright and dark threads, the rich tapestry of Texas history has been woven.

      
For an excellent overview of Texas history, I once again recommend the Time-Life Old West Series volume,
The Texans
; John Henry Brown’s
History of Texas
, Volume II; and, of course, T. R. Fehrenbvach’s
Lone Star
. In addition, I feel Fehrenback’s
Comanches
is the most evenhanded and astute commentary I’ve read about the racial war between Anglos and Indians. He pulls no punches and glamorizes neither side. For superb details about Comanche life and customs,
The Indians of Texas
by W. W. Newcomb, Jr. is a fine resource.

      
In creating my cast of characters, I used a number of excellent primary sources. Among those men and women who chronicled their turbulent times are Noah Smithwick,
Evolution of a State
; Mary A. Maverick,
Memoirs
; and Z. N. Morrel,
Fruits and Flowers
. No firsthand accounts are more vivid than those complied by Jo Ella Powell Exley in
Texas Tears and Texas Sunshine
.

      
So many excellent resources are available on early nineteenth-century Creole society that it is as difficult to narrow down my recommendations as it was to limit my own reading while researching
Moon Flower
. I found the following books to be particularly helpful: Albert Fossier’s
New Orleans: The Glamour Period 1800-1840
; Herbert Asbury’s
The French Quarter
; Hamett T. Kane’s
Queen New Orleans
; and a fascinating compilation by Liliane Crete,
Daily Life in Louisiana
, translated from the French by Patrick Gregory.
 

      
For the research on actual historical figures such as Sam Houston, Jack Hays, and Adrian Woll, see the Author’s Note in the first book of the Gone-to-Texas Trilogy,
Cactus Flower
.

About the Author

SHIRL HENKE lives in St. Louis, where she enjoys gardening in her yard and greenhouse, cooking holiday dinners for her family and listening to jazz. In addition to helping brainstorm and research her books, her husband Jim is “lion tamer” for their two wild young tomcats, Pewter and Sooty, geniuses at pillage and destruction.

      
Shirl has been a RITA finalist twice, and has won three Career Achievement Awards, an Industry Award and three Reviewer’s Choice Awards from
Romantic Times.

      
“I wrote my first twenty-two novels in longhand with a ballpoint pen—it’s hard to get good quills these days,” she says. Dragged into the twenty-first century by her son Matt, a telecommunication specialist, Shirl now uses two of those “devil machines.” Another troglodyte bites the dust. Please visit her at
www.shirlhenke.com
.