The Desires of Her Heart

  The Desires of Her Heart

  Texas: Star of Destiny

  Book One

  Lyn Cote

  Dedicated to my faithful readers.

  Your e-mails and letters inspire me. Thank you!

  “I am free and not bound by marriage or slavery.”

  Isabel de Olvera, a free mulatta (sic), in Queretaro, Mexico, in a signed affidavit before Don Pedro Lorenzo de Castillo and Baltasar Martinez, royal notary

  January 8, 1600

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  With tiny sharp teeth, worry ripped and gnawed at Dorritt…

  One

  “You wish to marry well? By that, Jewell, you mean…

  Two

  From inside the inn on the outskirts of the village,…

  Three

  Quinn was proved right by afternoon. This was no ordinary…

  Four

  The hurricane finally gave up late the next afternoon. Dorritt…

  Five

  Panting, Dorritt half-carried Jewell up the bank to the mule.

  Six

  Quinn’s disgust with this cheat and liar nearly made him…

  Seven

  Dorritt entered the church. She pulled the shawl up over…

  Eight

  Just before dawn the next morning, the day they would…

  Nine

  After the caravan started for the day, Dorritt walked beside…

  Ten

  Much later, Dorritt sat opposite Reva at the rear of…

  Eleven

  Though her knees felt crushed like storm-flattened grass, Dorritt managed…

  Twelve

  “The Andersons left early to get away from us,” Reva…

  Thirteen

  Kilbride’s frayed temper broke at twilight. Quinn had watched Kilbride…

  Fourteen

  Late the next morning to the distant sound of orders…

  Fifteen

  Quinn’s head must have been split in two. And he…

  Sixteen

  Enduring the hot afternoon of his new freedom, Quinn finally…

  Seventeen

  Dorritt found she could not breathe and looked away. No…

  Eighteen

  If what Eduardo had said was true and Dorritt was…

  Nineteen

  Reva’s question pierced Dorritt’s heart like an arrow into a…

  Twenty

  In the graylight just before dawn, Dorritt, restless and wakeful,…

  Twenty-One

  The October sun was high and fierce. Quinn walked beside…

  Twenty-Two

  At last morning came, and after searching the area and…

  Epilogue

  With a feeling of unreality in the hacienda at Rancho…

  Historical Note

  About the Author

  Other Books by Lyn Cote

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  New Orleans, early August 1821

  With tiny sharp teeth, worry ripped and gnawed at Dorritt Mott’s peace of mind. Her stepfather, Mr. Kilbride, had been up to something for months. But what exactly? And how would it affect Dorritt’s private plan? Today the colorful and chaotic gathering of the crème de la crème of New Orleans society buffeted Dorritt like the whirlwinds of a hurricane. But she’d come because attending the amateur race at the horse track outside the city would give her a chance to pick up a few more clues, to see what Mr. Kilbride was doing away from their plantation.

  Scanning the elegant assembly for her stepfather, Dorritt saw that the race had drawn more than just the gentry. Westerners in buckskin with long rifles slung over their backs and sailors who might be pirates in Jean Laffite’s crew dotted the crowd. Then she glimpsed a knot of beaver-hatted gentlemen—some jovial and all excited—gathered around a bookmaker who was taking bets near the horse stable. Of course, Mr. Kilbride was in the midst of them. The man never learned.

  She began moving through the crowd, nodding and smiling when addressed. Present but apart. Ever since she had debuted, she had watched New Orleans society in a detached manner, as if watching an absurd, sometimes aggravating, play.

  Two overly perfumed ladies in feathered bonnets—one gray and one brown—stepped in front of Dorritt, blocking her. Behind their fans, they were of course gossiping. Gray bonnet said, “Did you hear about the Dorsey chit marrying the Hampton heir?”

  “Didn’t her father forbid him to court her?” the brown bonnet objected.

  Dorritt didn’t blame the father. The Hampton heir was a rake. But of course, to some, wealth covered a multitude of sins.

  “Hampton lured the girl away and took her driving in a closed carriage—” Gray bonnet lowered her voice. “—and they didn’t come home until well into the night.”

  “Well into the night? Didn’t her mother warn her about such indiscreet behavior?” Brown bonnet sounded aghast.

  Dorritt started to move away. Some women embraced the calculated destruction of reputations as their lifework. Dorritt had no doubt the Hampton heir had ensnared a green girl who would put up with his dubious behavior. All to give him an heir. Men must have their sons at all costs. And people wonder why I’ve chosen to remain a spinster.

  Pushing ahead, Dorritt managed to navigate within hearing distance of the men around her stepfather. They were discussing the merits of the horses scheduled to run today. From the corner of her eye, she noted that a few of the Westerners were coming up to put down bets too. Mr. Kilbride was touting the merits of his entry in today’s race and placing a bet on it to win. The staggering amount he’d just wagered with a smile made Dorritt blanch. She kept the books for the plantation. If their horse lost, which of their people would he have to sell to recoup this bet?

  Feeling panicky, Dorritt turned blindly and nearly walked into her half-sister’s admiring all-male court. Fifteen-year-old Jewell, with her curly black hair, large brown eyes, pale complexion, and graceful figure knew exactly how to enthrall men. Her most favored and fervent admirer at the moment was sole heir of a wealthy family.

  Dorritt edged away as her sister purred, “I do hope no one will be hurt today. Horse races can be so perilous.” Jewell was fluttering her white egret feather fan against the heavy air already smothering them, the reason that the races were held early in the morning.

  “Will you favor me with one of your ribbons to wear?” the wealthy young heir named André asked Jewell. “I’m sure I will win if you bestow your favor on me.”

  Dorritt felt the urge to gag. Most of the conversations she overheard were romantically exaggerated, devoid of any content. But she had a sudden insight. While most girls didn’t debut until sixteen, Mr. Kilbride had insisted Jewell debut this year. Why? Was this part of his scheming?

  Hastily, Dorritt turned, came face-to-face with the man she should have been watching out for. A recent widower with two children still in leading strings, he thought Dorritt was the answer to his need for a wife and stepmother. But she didn’t want to get tangled up in those long ribbons on the toddlers’ dresses. She tried to smile, repressing the urge to pick up her skirts and run.

  Before he’d lost his wife, Dorritt had hoped she could persuade him to back her financially in her secret plan for independence. But now he viewed her as the quick solution to his problem of raising children alone. After all, Dorritt, at twenty-five, was on the shelf, a spinster. How could she afford to refuse an honest man’s proposal?

  She was saved by the horn announcing the start of the first race. She turned toward the track and hoped she could drift away from the widower before she was forced again to discourage him.

  T
he persistent worry over what her stepfather was up to, the worry that had begun waking her up nights, tried to catch her, clench her again within its sharp teeth. She hurried forward, her pulse racing. I can’t think of that now.

  One

  Belle Vista Plantation

  New Orleans, late August 1821

  “You wish to marry well? By that, Jewell, you mean marry a wealthy man?” Dorritt sat in her stepfather’s lavish ivory and gilded parlor, the heavy afternoon heat weighing her down.

  “There can be no other meaning, sister.” Fanning herself, her younger half-sister took another promenade around the parlor.

  Dorritt ignored her mother’s shocked disapproval. She sensed that today was the climax of months of planning by her stepfather.

  Dorritt’s tambour frame and stand sat in front of her at hand level. Placing tiny artful stitches helped her conceal how her heart skipped and jumped. How would it all play out today? Dorritt looked up at her half-sister, her opposite in everything, from Jewell’s olive skin and wavy blue-black hair to Dorritt’s fair skin and straight golden hair. “I believe love is necessary to marry well.”

  Jewell made a sound of dismissal, her high-waisted white dress swayed with her wandering. “These odd humors, your peculiar comments all come from books. You read too much, Dorritt. Father always says so and mother agrees.”

  “Then it must be so.” The heat of the afternoon was squeezing Dorritt like a sodden tourniquet. She put down her needle and pinched the bridge of her nose. Over the past months, she had stood back and read the signs of her stepfather’s devious manipulation of facts and circumstances. Of course, Jewell had no idea that the culmination of these might come today. But Dorritt knew well what red ink in a ledger meant.

  With a handkerchief, her mother blotted her rosy, perspiring face, which still retained a faded beauty. “Please, Jewell, you must sit down and relax; compose yourself.”

  “Why hasn’t André come yet?” Jewell attacked the lush Boston fern sitting on the stand by the French doors. She pulled off a frond and began stripping it. “He told me he would be asking my father’s permission today.”

  There is many a slip between the cup and lip. “Perhaps he has been delayed.” Dorritt set another tiny stitch with rigid concentration.

  Would her stepfather manage to work his trickery once more, bend reality to his selfish and greedy will? And more important, could Dorritt use it in her favor? Her hands stuttered and she had to pull the needle back out.

  The sound of an approaching horse drew Jewell to the French doors that led to the garden. “I can’t see the rider. He has already dismounted under the porte cochere. That doesn’t look like André’s horse,” she added fretfully, and tossed the mangled frond back into the pot.

  They all turned their heads to listen to the swishing of the grand front doors being parted, the murmur of their butler, the hum of another man’s voice, footsteps down the hallway to her stepfather’s den. If it wasn’t André, who could it be?

  “It could be Philippe.” Jewell beamed and gave a little skip. “Maybe I will receive two offers of marriage today.”

  One proposal would achieve your doting father’s goal, dear sister. Dorritt took a deep breath and began an intricate French knot.

  “Do you think it might really be Philippe Marchand?” Their mother sounded awestruck. “Why he is worth nearly half a million.”

  Jewell did a pirouette and swirled her hands in the air. “And I would be mistress of Marchand Plantation and eat blancmange every day.”

  Dorritt imagined herself decorating her sister’s face with the white jellied dessert. She bent farther over her embroidery so neither her sister nor mother would see her unaccountable amusement. More of her odd humors.

  “Come away from the window, Jewell,” her mother said in a low voice. “You must not appear as though you’re aware of any of this.”

  For once, her younger half-sister obeyed. Jewell went and sat in the Chippendale chair beside Dorritt, lifting the needle from Dorritt’s hand and moving the tambour frame in front of herself.

  Their mother uttered a soft scold for Jewell’s theft. But Jewell ignored it as usual.

  Dorritt stopped to blot her face with her hankie. She could only hope that André had come to propose. If not André, then Philippe. If Jewell were married, this might ring the first bell of freedom for her.

  “Don’t you dare take one stitch,” Dorritt ordered in an undertone, holding her own nervousness in strict check.

  “I embroider just as well as you do,” Jewell lied with a mocking smile. Her bitter chocolate eyes flashing, she boldly stuck the needle into the design.

  Dorritt stood up. You need your face slapped, Jewell. But not by me. “I have work to do.” She strolled the length of the room, fanning herself with a woven palm fan. Glancing out the windows, she glimpsed the horse hitched in the shade of the porte cochere. She halted in midstep on her way to the hall. Surely it wasn’t he who had come and gone into her stepfather’s den. Surely not.

  Just as she reached the door of the room, she heard footsteps coming toward the parlor. It was what she feared. The widower who was pursuing her, Job Wilkinson, strode beside her stepfather. Job looked like a white crane, and her stepfather waddled like a balding, plump self-satisfied gander. Not a good sign. The urge to flee nearly overcame her. But she composed herself, arranging her face into a sweet false smile. “Good day, Mr. Wilkinson. Won’t you come in and I will order tea to be served.” She turned in time to see her sister’s flushed, irritated face.

  If only Dorritt could have enjoyed this experience of for once flouting her sister’s conceit. But I thought I made myself clear… How like a man to ignore her stated wishes.

  “No tea,” her stepfather ordered. “Jewell and Mrs. Kilbride, come with me. We will leave these two young people alone.”

  Pouting, Jewell threw down the needle and rose. Their mother quickly led Jewell out. Her stepfather closed the pocket door to the parlor, and they were alone.

  Dorritt watched her abandoned needle sway, dangling on its silk thread tether. “Tell me that you didn’t….” She faced Mr. Wilkinson and read the truth. Her voice faded.

  “Yes, I did seek your stepfather’s permission to pay my addresses to you. I thought it over many times since our last conversation. Dorritt, you are just the wife I need. And just the mother I need for my little orphans. You are thrifty and good with children.”

  Dorritt knew that she should be flattered by these words, but she wasn’t. You’ve just insulted me and you don’t even know it. “I told you, dear sir, that I don’t really wish for marriage.” Not a marriage of convenience. She knotted her hands together to keep from slapping his earnest face.

  “Dorritt, I’m afraid that you may decide that you should change your mind.” He hesitated a moment. “I’ve heard some disturbing news about your stepfather’s…”

  I’ve heard rumors too. And she knew more than the rumor-mongers did. “Talk is cheap and gossip is untrustworthy.” She turned away dismissively, trying to ignore the way her pulse suddenly galloped as if over rough turf.

  “Belle Vista is about to be foreclosed.”

  She stopped where she was. She wasn’t good at avoiding the truth. But she had been trying hard to avoid this particular truth, which had been bearing down on her for weeks. Cold liquid desolation trickled through her heart and then on through each vein.

  “I am not unaware of my stepfather’s financial difficulties.” Her murmured words were so inadequate to the situation.

  The widower laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Dorritt, I know you’re not in love with me. And my sweet wife has only been gone for about nine months. But I’m certain there’s no one who will look askance if we married.”

  She stiffened herself bit by bit against her sudden weakness. “You know I don’t consider marriage as my purpose.”

  “You don’t need to think of it. Just say yes. Dorritt, we are old friends. I’ll be a kind and indulgent
husband.”

  From outside, Dorritt heard another horse arrived. No doubt André was arriving to offer for Jewell—she hoped. The fingers of despair slipping around her heart, Dorritt looked at her suitor. He was an honest man. But marry him? She couldn’t ignore how she felt…a sense of wrongness, that this wasn’t the path God had for her. “Thank you. But I just can’t.” Dorritt was aware of a new arrival at the door, now speaking to their butler.

  “I feared that you would give me that reply. But I will merely say that my offer stands.” He stepped forward, lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “You need only send me a message.”

  She accepted his homage with a curtsy and a soft “Merci.” He left her and clutched in a terrible lethargy; she returned to her chair and the tambour frame. The needle still hung by the thread, tethered just as she was to this place, these people. But she had barely lifted her needle to set a new stitch when the butler showed André, Jewell’s suitor, into the parlor.

  André greeted her with a bow. She rose again, trying to look pleased. “I’m sure, sir, that you haven’t come to see me. Ah, I hear my sister’s footsteps.” Dorritt walked to the door and started to pass her sister. Jewell was entering the room, her face sparkled with welcome.

  “Don’t leave us, Miss Dorritt,” André said, “I can only stay a moment. I’ve come to say farewell.”

  “Farewell?” Jewell echoed him, shock vibrating in her tone. “Where are you going?”

  “I only learned today that you will be leaving New Orleans. You will be sorely missed,” André said these words in a rush as if he’d rehearsed them over and over.

  Dorritt almost pitied her sister. Of course, Jewell had not noticed anything, not picked up any troubling clues from her father’s behavior over the last critical month.