Night Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (17 page)

      
Santos squinted his black eyes and stared at Lee in amazement. “He let off a thieving Indian, one of those half-breed brats who follow the Yankee soldiers. You, of all people, should want him punished.” He spat on the ground in disgust.

      
“He's still a priest and a foreigner. He doesn't know about Indians. Go home, Santos.” It was not a request.

      
Muttering to himself, the big man shambled off, pulling the goat with him.

      
Looking at the spilled crocks and overturned produce bins, the young priest said in his thickly accented English, “Always trouble seems to follow me. Why, I ask? But never does the good Lord find time to answer me.” He chuckled. “Perhaps because I keep him too busy sending angels of mercy to rescue me, ja? I thank you both.”

      
Lee smiled darkly, looking at Melanie, daring her to dispute his claim to being an angel of mercy. “I'm Lee Velasquez, Father, a rancher. This adventuresome young woman with more gumption than sense is Melanie Fleming—”

      
“Who works for the
San Antonio Star
” she interrupted, casting a quick glance at Lee, daring him to dispute the veracity of the article she had written about him.

      
“I am Father Gustav Schreckenberg—Father Gus, please. It is easier to say, ja?”

      
“You must've just arrived in San Antonio, Father Gus, or else you'd know not to tangle with Santos. Or get your burro stolen by one of those half-breed kids,” Lee added darkly.

      
Melanie bristled. “The boy only took the burro to escape Santos. I'm sure I can get him to return it.”

      
“If his kin haven't eaten it first,” Lee replied.

      
“The boy did look hungry,” Father Gus said hesitantly, appalled that his boon traveling companion might suffer such a fate.

      
‘‘All those children are hungry,” Melanie answered. “The boy said he'd worked all day for Santos in return for some of that goat's milk. Just like that cur to try and cheat a child!”

      
“These children—they are Indians, ja? What tribe?” Father Gus asked.

      
Lee shrugged carelessly. “Actually they're a nuisance more than anything else—scarcely dangerous. They're a mixture of tame Indians—Tonkawas, Caddos, Kickapoos, even a few Lipans. They hang around the soldiers stationed here and move with them. Some of the men, mostly Lipans, act as scouts and meat hunters. The women are camp followers.”

      
“Living off the scraps so generously thrown from U.S. Army mess tents,” Melanie interjected acidly.

      
“But—but small children like that—do the soldiers not care for their own offspring?” Looking from Lee to Melanie, he sighed. “Always it is the same with armies the world over. But these are conquered people who signed treaties. I have read your government is supposed to provide for them.”

      
Lee snorted in disgust. “Try and provide for the wind. They come and go! The men drink up their earnings and the women whore for the soldiers. The children...” He gestured in helpless disgust.

      
“The government back in Washington is corrupt and so are the state authorities,” Melanie countered angrily. “Everyone from the Indian Office to those lousy whiskey-selling traders takes a cut, and nothing's left for those children.”

      
Tiring of the argument, Lee tipped his hat to the priest, motioning to the large church across the plaza. “I have to return to my ranch, Padre. I think you'll be putting up over there tonight with Father Calvo.”

      
“Father Calvo, ja, he is in charge of San Fernando. Bishop Odin told me in Galveston I must report to him. The bishop wants more schools. Already the good Ursulines educate young girls here in San Antonio. Now he wants the boys also to learn.”

      
“But none of the church's schools have ever taught Indians—any more than the government feeds them,” Melanie said indignantly, sensing a potential ally in the young priest.

      
Lee didn't deign to reply but simply said good day to the priest and sauntered back to his big blue stallion without a backward glance at the furious girl.

      
Calling out his thanks once more to Lee, Father Gus turned his attention back to Melanie. “Now, tell me, Fräulein, about the situation with these poor Indian children…”

* * * *

      
As Lee rode, he fumed. Damn that girl! Why did she get under his skin so much more than any other female in memory? Here he was, on his way to luncheon with the Sandovals, to meet that pretty Larena again and all he could think of was Melanie Fleming. Her ridiculous uniform of drab baggy clothes amply disguised her body, and that glorious mane of midnight hair was pulled back in its ugly knot. But when he tried to envision Larena's soft dark eyes and delicately boned face with its sweet smile, all he could see were the flashing golden eyes and scowling countenance of that hoyden. “She's as much a mongrel as those Indian camp followers outside town. Only difference is she's been educated and spoiled rotten by her father and that Boston grandpa!” he muttered aloud in disgust.

      
As he neared the Sandoval house on a quiet, tree-lined street off the plaza, Lee was unaware he was being scrutinized from the
sala
window. “Look at those weapons—a gun and a knife! I tell you, I do not like it.”
      
Doña Esperanza Sandoval looked at the tall man dismounting in front of their house.

      
Her husband, José, watched as Lee carefully placed both pistol and knife in his saddlebags and then handed the horse to their stable boy. “He's ridden from his ranch, dear heart. It is a long and dangerous journey. See, he does not come to the door armed. He is a good friend of my nephew James, and the Velasquez name is an old and honorable one. We have no reason not to receive him.”

      
Esperanza sighed, “I suppose so, but he does have a frightful past to live down, even if he was forced into that desperate life because of a tragedy that touched us all. If only Larena—” Doña Esperanza stopped short when she heard her daughter's very unladylike haste as she came down the hall to greet their caller.

      
Don Jose's dark eyes were soft. “If only Larena were not so smitten with him? But, Esperanza, she is nearly nineteen. Far past the age of betrothal. You cannot keep her at home forever.”

      
“But if she married him and went to live at that terrible place where our baby...” Esperanza’s voice broke and she stopped, hearing the murmur of Larena's soft soprano blend with the deep resonance of Lee's baritone.

      
“It is a new time, and I think a man such as Leandro Velasquez would be well able to protect her,” he whispered, ushering her toward the
sala
door.

      
Larena could hear her parents' footsteps nearing and felt a twinge of annoyance at her perpetual chaperonage. Ever since she'd run into this handsome man in the plaza last month, she had wanted a chance for them to talk privately. But every time they met, someone was with her.

      
Lee looked at her delicately pretty face, flushed and smiling. For all her shy, ladylike ways, she was not manipulative as Dulcia had been. Her clear brown eyes met his straightforwardly and she never giggled or pouted as his wife had.
Am I really considering marriage again?
If so, Larena would make a splendid wife, a true
Tejana
who wanted to make a home in the land of his birth, as he did. He smiled and greeted her parents as they approached.

      
Larena watched Lee as they made small talk during dinner. There was something dark and compelling in those obsidian eyes. They held terrible secrets and a well full of pain.
I am the one to heal your hurts
, her eyes said silently. Did he intuit their message?

* * * *

      
“It was an outstanding article and you know it, Clarence Vivian Pemberton!” Melanie enunciated every syllable of his name with precision, eliciting a smothered chuckle from the printer, Amos, who quickly returned to setting type in the crowded rear of the
Star
office.

      
“Don't get testy with me, young lady, just because you read my private correspondence and found out from my infernally nattering sister about that absurd middle name with which our mother insisted on punishing me!” Pemberton responded.

      
“You're evading the issue, you old curmudgeon you,” Melanie replied doggedly, watching Amos's brown eyes dance with mirth. Few people knew how to get past the intimidating acerbity of the editor, but Melanie seemed to have a special talent. “I deserved to have my name on that story about Lee Velasquez and you know it. Everyone's been talking about it for the past month!”

      
“It got you a job as a reporter. That's all I promised,” he replied.

      
“It sold your newspapers—hundreds of them! And you ran it without giving me credit. Everyone I talk to assumes you wrote it. It isn't fair.”

      
Pemberton sighed in aggravated martyrdom. “Life, my pet, is not fair. Men write news stories and report on danger, politics, the criminal elements. Women write about balls and charity drives and fashions.” He paused and looked disdainfully at her rumpled navy suit and dingy gray print blouse. “A subject about which you are obviously abysmally ignorant!”

      
“Oh, bother fashions and teas!” she shot back. “All right, if you can't sign Melanie Fleming to my stories, how about a nom de plume? You have heard of George Sand, haven't you?”

      
Raising one shaggy white brow, he replied with heavy condescension, “And just what nom de plume did you have in mind, Baroness Dudevant?”

      
Melanie snorted. “I scarcely have a titled family name to protect as George Sand did, only one timid newspaper editor. How about Moses French?”

      
“Has a certain ring to it,” he conceded pettishly. “The surname I ascribe to your Creole ancestry, but Moses?” He flipped the reading glasses from the top of his head down to the lower half of his nose and looked through them at the young woman before him. “Do you propose to be the new law giver for San Antonio?”

      
She shrugged dismissively, not quite ready to tell him about her black or Indian antecedents. Being female was hardship enough! “Let's just say I plan to lead the readers of this fair city out of the desert of ignorance and into the promised land of truth.”

      
“The land of milk and honey, hallelujah!” Amos interjected in his best Baptist-revival voice, his hands never slowing their lightning deftness as he set type.

      
Ignoring the insubordination, Pemberton handed Melanie a sheet of paper with brusque dismissiveness. “Well, Moses French will have to wait while Melanie Fleming writes a column about the social scene in the city. I want to know who's engaged or married, who has recently been blessed with new offspring, with what galas the ladies of our fair city plan to break the pall of midsummer doldrums. You get the general idea.”

      
Sighing, she took the list. “Do you want obituaries, too, or is that too newsworthy for a female to handle?”

      
Smiling at her benevolently, he answered, “Only if the poor unfortunates die of natural causes. Come back for further instructions if you hear about a murder.”

      
After a whole morning listening to Althea Dallman talk her ear off about the big ball to fete U.S. Senator Sam Houston, Melanie had a roaring headache. Dejectedly, she headed back to the
Star
office to make some sense of the piles of scribbled notes she had stuffed in the oversized canvas sack she used as a reticule. In addition to copious information on guest lists, menus, and decor for the ball, she had a pile of pages covering births, deaths, marriages, and engagements. Only one event was of any significance to her, however. Why did it bother her so much that the Sandovals had just held an elaborate fiesta to celebrate the engagement of their daughter Larena to Leandro Angel Velasquez? “Another prim and prissy Mexican sweetheart,” Melanie sniffed, determinedly telling herself they deserved each other.

      
His ranch, which he had renamed Night Flower, was prospering. Lee had overcome his scandalous, bloody past and was taking his place in the elite ranks of San Antonio's wealthy Hispanic community. Small wonder such a pillar of society would choose to wed a Sandoval. Still, for perverse reasons she refused to admit, Melanie felt wounded afresh, but not nearly so painfully as she had been in Austin six years ago when she learned about Dulcia.

      
Rounding the corner on Commerce Street while deep in thought, Melanie suddenly collided with a very solid object. She reeled backward against the hard limestone wall of a building, her “newswoman's possibles sack” flying from her grasp.

      
“
Fräulein
Melanie, so sorry I am! Here, please permit me,” Father Gus said as he reached to help her stand clear of the rough wall, then knelt to retrieve the scattered scraps of paper. Melanie crouched down and assisted him as she struggled to regain her breath.

      
“I'm the one who should apologize, Father. I was woolgathering, I'm afraid,” Melanie said distractedly.

      
“And what is this gathering of—wool? Such as does a shepherdess?” His blue eyes were merry as he rose and handed her the last of her notes. “Here it appears as if you gather news, not sheep.”

      
“It's just an expression, Father Gus. It means I wasn't paying attention to where I was going.”