Night Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) by Shirl Henke Read Free Book Online Page B

that's her problem. It's the other that's unfair to Lee.”
           “You're not making sense,” Jim countered.
           Charlee sighed. “I don't guess I'm violating the sanctity of the confessional if I tell you about our conversation when she told me she was expecting—actually, I told her, after she asked a bunch of very euphemistic questions. Then, she was overjoyed.”
           “Well, that seems natural enough. She does love Lee in her own shy way.”
           “She loves him all right, as long as she doesn't have to make love with him. Her first question to me after she was sure she was pregnant was how soon she could tell Lee it wasn't safe for her to ‘submit’ to him.”
           Jim burst out laughing, then sobered. “Come to think of it, that isn't really very funny, is it? I can just imagine what you told her,” he added with a glint of devilment in his cougar eyes.
           “I was the soul of tact and patience,” Charlee replied primly, “but I don't think I convinced her. She's so young and full of claptrap and aristocratic pretensions, I'm afraid she's never going to make Lee the kind of wife he deserves.”
           “Well, if sheer devotion and youthful romance have any value, I wouldn't sell their chances short,” Jim consoled her, hoping that it was only Charlee’s inherent dislike of the snobbery she'd encountered from some of San Antonio's best Hispanic families that had shaped her judgment of Dulcia.
     
    * * * *
     
           “Oh, Gertrudis, I am so lonely for Leandro,” Dulcia practically wailed to her friend, the eldest daughter of the Sandoval family, at whose lavish estancia she stayed while Lee was gone hunting a last elusive bunch of wild mustangs.
           Knowing that San Antonio was a recruiting point for western militiamen who were forming very irregular companies of volunteers to ‘‘whip the greasers,” Lee had feared leaving his wife alone with a handful of elderly servants at El Sueño Grande. Since she had disdained to stay with Charlee and had made friends with Jim's cousins, the Sandovals, Lee had left her in Don José and Doña Esperanza's safekeeping.
           However, after two weeks of embroidery and gossip, Dulcia was restless. Her morning sickness had finally abated and she showed only the slightest evidence of being pregnant. Suddenly, after months of melancholy and crying spells, she wanted to see her husband. Lee's gentle charm and humor could lighten her flagging spirits.
           Gertrudis, a pretty, flighty young woman of eighteen, engaged to a neighboring rancher's son, was instantly sympathetic. “I know how difficult it must be, dear Dulcia, but in order to build his ranch, Leandro must chase the mustangs. My father did it and so did my Cousin James' father.”
           Dulcia still found it difficult to accept the fact that Jim Slade's mother had been a Sandoval, part of this proper and elegant family. “I know gentlemen work here in Texas, but must it be at such wild and dangerous things? Oh, Gertrudis, I wish to be there when he returns. Don't you see, if I am here, he will wait and work those dreadful wild beasts before he comes for me. He said two weeks. It is that and past already. I know if he isn't at the ranch, he will be by the time I return home. I could have the servants prepare his favorite foods and have the house readied for him if I left today. Ask your mother to see if your father would give me an escort home. It isn't that far. Please?”
           Caught up in the romantic spirit, Gertrudis made one of her characteristic snap decisions. “Oh, posh, Mama and Papa will never agree to let you leave without Leandro's permission; but I could get Rosario and Lorenzo to escort us. They are very capable and very devoted to me. We'll have you at Great Dream Ranch for Leandro' s homecoming by tonight!”
           True to her word, Gertrudis got her father's vaqueros to