Free LAVENDER BLUE (historical romance) by Parris Afton Bonds

to a boil.
    “ Some lemonade to cool you, Jen?”
    She looked up again at Cristobal, who held out a porcelain cup to her, and had to laugh at his devilish expression. They bot h were recalling the last time they were together with a cup between them. It had almost cost them their freedom. “No, thank you, Cristobal. I don’t dare chance you dropping a handkerchief in my cup again.”
    She rose from the grass. “ Where is Annabel?”
    “ Elizabeth Crabbe cornered her.”
    “ That I don’t have to worry about.” She straightened her full skirts over her hoop. “In Elizabeth’s eyes I have become a pariah since she caught you with your hand—” She colored and caught the silly grin that played about his lips. “I think I shall leave early with Aunt Hermione. It’s a long way home, and I’m a little tired.”
    Actually, she would need the siesta that almost everyone observed in that semitropical climate when, come two o ’clock, awnings were pulled down and shutters closed for the afternoon. Rarely did she feel the need for a siesta, so restless was her nature these days. But she knew there would be no sleep for her that night. Nor the next two nights after that.
    She and Trinidad would be following the stagecoach ro ute north to the railhead of Alleyton. The two of them would be stopping off along the way to talk to the owners of remote ranches that she hoped to enlist as way stations. With luck, when she was finished, an overland route would be set up for Confederate cotton unloaded at Alleyton to reach the neutral port of Bagdad and eventually European markets.
    Her campesinos would work as teamsters to shuttle the cotton. In return she would receive forty percent of the profit—half of which she wanted in arms and ammunition. But still it would cost her. For each shipment of firearms that arrived in Bagdad—a night with the Frenchman!
     
     
    The reins held loosely in her hand, Jeanette slouched in the saddle and tried to get what sleep she could as the bay picked its way over soil too poor to sustain even prickly pear. There were only a few greasewood with devil’s pincushions embedded in the sand drifts around their roots. A rustling in nearby chaparral snapped Jeanette’s chin up. With a small cry, she hauled in on the reins, almost rearing the bay. But the moonlight disclosed that it was but an armadillo and not one of the savage Kickapoos or marauding Mexican bandidos who gave Aunt Hermione palpitations of the heart.
    At her side Trinidad scowled. “ Thees ees no job for a woman,” he muttered.
    She sighed. “ Not you, too, Trini.” How ironical that only the Frenchman—only Kitt, as Rubia had called him— was indifferent to the absurd idea that a woman could be a gun runner. And a good one, it would appear. For the few loyal rancheros with whom she had spoken along the road to Alleyton were willing to act as way stations for her for the cotton wagons moving south to Mexico and the ammunition wagons that would be rolling north to the Alleyton railhead.
    As it was, Trinidad was incensed that she had had to bargain with the rebel Frenchman for his aid. According to Trini, it should have been given freely. Sh e knew if she had told Trinidad what her bargain would be costing her, her overseer would readily murder the Frenchman. And that puzzled her—the price the Frenchman demanded. His blockade running surely earned him enough money to buy the charms of any number of women. Indeed, something about the young woman Rubia indicated that she was quite willing to share the Frenchman’s arms without payment if she weren’t already doing so.
    So why me? Jeanette asked herself. Oh, she knew she was attractive, if she listen ed to the soldiers who were openly courting her now that her period of mourning was officially over. But there were women more attractive. And, as she pondered it further, it occurred to her that the day the Frenchman stated the terms of the bargain she looked very disreputable—a