Iron Lace

by Lorena Dureau

  Maurice was seated with his family in the pew reserved for them on the other side of the nave, and Monique wished she could get him aside to talk to him again so she could question him about Azema Ducole, but Mlle. Pop-Eyes was watching her too closely.

  The service was just about to begin when suddenly Celeste squeezed her sister’s arm and signaled with wide, eloquent eyes to follow her gaze, which was fixed on the entrance at the back of the hall.

  There, momentarily silhouetted in the archway, with the dazzling sunlight behind him, stood the familiar tall figure of Miguel Vidal de la Fuente, and beside him one of the most beautiful women his wards had ever seen. Her bright red-gold hair shone like a flaming halo around her head, which not even the tiny triangle of black lace atop her cascading curls could quench.

  Vidal had seen them, too, and was coming down the nave now directly to their pew, looking impeccably cool and crisp in his wine-colored riding habit and freshly starched cravat and cuffs, despite the heat of the midsummer morning.

  His tall, willowy companion, apparently equally untouched by such commonplace concerns as the weather, floated gracefully along with him, a slender tapered hand resting possessively on his arm. There was an air of sell-confidence in the young woman’s bearing, and the calm, almost bored expression on that perfectly chiseled, fashionably pale countenance suggested an aplomb born of the knowledge that few could excel her in beauty or poise. Monique bit her lip in vexation as she was forced to recognize that Azema Ducole was everything Maurice had said she was and more.

  “Why, what’s this? My little cousins!” their guardian greeted them with what appeared to be pleasant surprise. “I didn’t know you were coming into town!” He directed himself now specifically to their governess. “I hope there’s nothing wrong?”

  “Oh, no, senor,” she assured him quickly. “It’s just that the girls insisted so much that they needed some last-minute things for their fiesta that Madame Chausson gave her permission for them to come to the city to do some shopping. I hope you have no objections?”

  “Of course not. If their grandmother said it was all right and they are here in New Orleans with you and, I suppose, Gustave, the coachman, as well, they’re well chaperoned.”

  “We came in yesterday and spent the night at the town house. After mass, we plan to go straight back to Le Rêve… if that meets with your approval, Senor Vidal?”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” He turned his dark gaze back to his unusually mute wards, who were sitting with their eyes still glued with hostile curiosity on his lovely companion. “I’m sorry I wasn’t at the town house to see you last night,” he told them without even a hint of uneasiness, “but I was at the Ducole plantation, and they graciously extended me the hospitality of one of their guest rooms for the night.”

  He turned momentarily to the vision in emerald-green silk at his side and added apologetically, “Please forgive me, my dear, but these are the two little cousins I’ve spoken to you about. Seeing them here in the city has taken me so by surprise that I’m forgetting my manners. Monique… Celeste… this lovely lady is Mlle. Azema Ducole, the sister of my friend Henri from Santo Domingo, who has been such a great help to me in converting Le Rêve to sugarcane production.”

  The two girls squirmed uncomfortably in their seats and murmured a polite acknowledgment to the introduction. Monique could feel the vivid green eyes of Vidal’s companion looking curiously down at them along the length of her perfect classic nose, and the young girl suddenly felt as though she were only ten years old. Azema may have only been in her mid-twenties, but as far as Monique was concerned, there was at least twenty years’ difference between her and her guardian’s companion in poise and experience.

  “Heavens, Miguel! I had no idea your cousins were such full-grown young ladies!” exclaimed Azema Ducole in exactly the melodious, well-modulated voice one would expect to hear coming from such delicately molded lips. “The way you spoke of them, I’d have thought they were much younger!”

  For the first time Vidal seemed a little embarrassed. “Perhaps I do think of them as younger than they are,” he admitted with a smile, “but they’ve lived such a sheltered life here in the colony that they really are quite young and inexperienced in so many ways.”

  Monique was glaring at him with such intensity that Vidal was suddenly afraid she might have taken offense from their comments. He sometimes forgot how the very young tend to consider any reference to their youth an insult.

  He was about to add a few words that he hoped would soothe his ward’s ego, but the priest was already entering the hall with his entourage of altar boys on his heels, so everyone was scurrying to his or her respective place. Out of deference to his lovely companion, Vidal escorted her to the pew reserved for the Ducole family and remained there with her throughout the service.

  Monique paid little attention to what was going on around her. During the sermon, which she usually found terribly boring, anyway, she kept her eyes fixed on her guardian’s tall, erect figure sitting across the nave several rows in front of her. Curiously, she studied the proud auburn head of his companion, wishing she could at least find one defect so she could have some justification for the immediate dislike she had taken for Azema Ducole. The latter was probably like those courtesans her guardian had become accustomed to while he was frolicking around Europe’s courts. One thing was certain, there was a sophistication about Azema that came from having been on her own, thought Monique enviously. Mlle. Ducole had probably never had an eagle-eyed governess and a despot guardian to stifle her every womanly impulse.

  After her brief but impressive encounter with her cousin’s mistress, Monique felt shorter and dumpier than ever. She wondered whether she could suck in her cheeks a little to give their roundness a slimmer look… A little more rice powder might at least make them more fashionably pale… And perhaps a henna rinse in her hair… but no, Grandmother would never permit it. As always, she was subject to someone else’s will! Besides, there was nothing whatsoever she could do about that button nose of hers! And although her eyes could reflect green fairly well, they could never reach that height of intensity… the gray would always be there to temper them. No, she had to admit, if only to herself, that Azema Ducole was everything she had always wanted to be but wasn’t!

  As she and her sister exited from mass into the blinding sunlight and opened their parasols to protect their complexions, Vidal joined them once more. His companion had opened a ruffled green silk parasol but was still clinging to his arm with her free hand. Monique sensed that Mlle. Ducole was slightly annoyed over her escort’s continued preoccupation with his wards, but since she always managed to smile prettily every time Miguel looked her way, he seemed completely unaware of any impatience on her part.

  As for Mlle. Baudier, she continued to adopt her complacent attitude, having long ago decided that, if she hoped to be a highly recommended governess, she should do her duty to the letter but question nothing around her that didn’t directly concern her.

  “So you’re returning to the plantation now, is that right?” Vidal asked the governess.

  “Yes, Senor Vidal, unless you would prefer otherwise.”

  “No, no. Do you think you can get off all right, or would you like me to accompany you back to the town house and help you prepare for your departure?”

  “Oh, no, senor. Feel free to go on about your business. Gustave is there waiting for us with the coach and horses all ready to go. There’s no need for you to bother yourself over us.”

  But Vidal vacillated a moment longer. “Are you certain, then, that you need nothing? Do you have enough money? Any problems that require my attention?”

  “Everything is fine, senor,” Mlle. Baudier assured him. “Don’t fret yourself on our account. I’ll tell Madame Chausson that we saw you and that everything is fine here with you, too.”

  “You might also tell my grandmother that, unless something unforeseen happens, I’ll be returning to the plantation tomorro
w sometime before dusk. I need to finish discussing some business with Mlle. Ducole’s brother today, but I should be able to leave here sometime tomorrow. I wouldn’t want to miss the girls’ fiesta. It’s this Tuesday afternoon, right?” He turned with a questioning smile toward his wards, but they only nodded glumly back at him.

  “Well, I’ll be there. I promise. And I hope your governess will have only good things to say about your progress in your studies when I have my weekly report from her.” He seemed to be unaware of their belligerent attitude.

  Azema Ducole, however, was giving signs of becoming restless in the increasingly hot sun and gave a discreetly audible sigh as she shifted her parasol on the bare shoulder that the low sweep of her décolletage so prettily exposed. Monique wondered why her guardian hadn’t insisted that his mistress put some extra ruffles or a fichu on her neckline!

  Vidal immediately apologized to his companion for having kept her standing there in the sun for so long and brought his conversation with his cousins and their governess to a hasty close.

  As he walked away from them, still offering apologies to Azema for the delay, Monique caught the latter’s melodious voice sweetly suggesting that perhaps he was “spoiling” his little wards with “too much attention”.

  With an angry pout, Monique pushed apart the two sides of the white starched fichu tucked discreetly into the décolletage of her tightly laced bodice. Even if she had taken her collar off altogether, her neckline wouldn’t have been quite as low as the one Azema Ducole had been flaunting without any adornment at all. But Monique consoled herself with the thought that at least she could hold her own with that long-legged, green-eyed cat where bosoms were concerned, although no one would ever know it the way her elders had her muffled up to the chin with fichus and ruffles!

  She twirled her frilly white parasol almost defiantly and, with a swish of her flounced skirts, turned to follow her sister and Mlle. Baudier across the square. But suddenly she froze in her tracks, for there was Padre Sebastian standing only a few yards away from her in the shadowy recess of the arched columns in front of the guardhouse. She realized with horror that he must have been silently watching her all along and colored to the roots of her hair at the thought that the monk must have witnessed her little act of defiance with the fichu. What a shameless hussy he must think she was!

  Quickly pulling the two sides of her double collar closer together again over her partially exposed bosom, Monique shielded her crimson face from the accusing eyes of the monk with her open parasol and hurried after her sister and Mlle. Baudier in a delicate mist of white flounced organdy skirts.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Miguel Vidal couldn’t imagine what had possessed his young wards these past few days. Although they had never really been easy to control, he had always been able to reach them sooner or later, and recently he had even begun to hope he had been making some definite progress toward bettering his relationship with them.

  Now, all of a sudden, they were more incorrigible than ever. Even gentle Celeste had been acting strangely toward him since he had returned for the fiesta, and Monique, who had always been as unpredictable as those delightfully changeable eyes of hers, had become openly hostile again. He had expected to find his young cousins in a party mood when he arrived that Monday afternoon and had even hoped they might be more kindly disposed toward him after he had given them permission to put all the servants on the plantation, if need be, to work helping with the preparations. But there was a prolonged sullenness in Monique now that couldn’t be dispelled, and this surprised him, for although the girl might be given to frequent rebellious outbursts, she was basically too good-natured to nurse them for long.

  He asked Grandmother Chausson and Mlle. Baudier if they knew what might be ailing the girls, but the two women admitted they were as mystified as he was over the latest unexpected change in them.

  It did occur to him that they didn’t like the idea of his having a lady friend. Young girls their age with so little experience in life could sometimes be overly prudish. But he had been very discreet, simply presenting Azema as the sister of a business associate, which, after all, was the truth. Why would the girls think there was something more between the two of them? And if they did, why should they care? They couldn’t be so naive as to think he was a celibate.

  For a fleeting moment he found himself wondering whether Monique might like him more than she pretended, but he immediately dismissed the thought, laughing at his own foolish vanity. How could she know how much she meant to him… how his desire for her was mounting with each passing day until he feared he could no longer control it? How could she possibly imagine the burning knot he carried in his loins for her that only she could relieve? He could lie with a dozen women and it would still be there, yearning for her.

  In a way, it had been mostly because of her that he had let himself slip into a light relationship with Ducole’s sister. After that incident in the vegetable patch, he had realized how easy it would be for things to get out of hand, especially if there was no other woman in his life to fill at least his carnal needs.

  Those intimate moments he had accidentally shared with his ward had only served to increase the desire he had already felt for her and, until then, been fighting to control. But the feel of that voluptuous little body soft and yielding in his arms had only fanned the flame all the more. For he had glimpsed the passionate woman lying so close to the surface of that as yet childlike innocence. Despite the girl’s naiveté, he had felt the fullness of those splendid breasts responding to his proximity and the curves of that sweet young body arching instinctively against his. God as his witness, he didn’t want to seduce the vulnerable child that inhabited that delightful body of a woman!

  As her guardian, he had been entrusted with the child, and he dared not betray that trust, but what he longed to be was the lover, the mate, of the woman he knew she could be if given just a little more time to ripen.

  Meanwhile, it was best to distract himself elsewhere before his increasing desire for his ward might lead him to do something he would undoubtedly regret afterward.

  The arrangement with Azema was pleasant enough. She had openly flirted with him from the very beginning when he had first begun to visit the Ducole plantation back in the spring seeking her brother’s advice on converting the Chausson plantation to sugarcane, and she most certainly was beautiful enough to appeal to any man. He knew he wasn’t the first lover she had had, nor would he probably be the last. But then, he had never led her to believe that he was offering her his undying love, either.

  Of course, she was no tavern slut and had every right to expect certain niceties from him, but that was all. He had no intention of marrying her, and he doubted she would have accepted the idea had he suggested it. No, Azema Ducole was the perfect mistress in every sense of the word.

  Her brother Henri had long since accepted her as she was and even seemed to find a certain amount of humor in his sister’s amorous caprices. They made quite a pair, those two. With their fiery red hair, intense green eyes, and delicately chiseled features, they could have almost passed for twins, although Azema was really several years younger than her brother. Like two peas in a pod, both were graced with extremely sharp wits, exquisite taste, and complete sensuality. They loved life and seemed determined to enjoy it to the fullest, with little regard for the rules that bound most people.

  When Vidal had first begun to visit them, Henri had immediately suggested to him that he buy himself a young black slave girl to keep on hand for his pleasure, or perhaps even set up some free “woman of color” in a discreet little house near the ramparts where he could visit her whenever he wished. Many of the men in the colony—French and Spanish alike—had such mistresses and recommended them highly to Miguel, for their beauty as well as for their loyal and docile dispositions. Henri readily confessed that he had one himself and found her highly satisfactory; although he added with a sly wink that he seldom limited himself just to one woman,
since he found “too much repetition of anything rather boring”.

  When Miguel had protested that he preferred to have nothing to do with slaves or prostitutes, Henri had laughingly assured him that those “free women of color” were far from being either one or the other. A class unto themselves, those quadroons, as Henri had gone on to explain, were mostly the offspring of rich Spanish and French colonists and their Negro concubines. Often supported and educated by their white fathers, such women were, consequently, extremely cultured and proud. The more beautiful ones were usually reared in strictest morality, each carefully trained and groomed from the cradle up to become the exclusive mistress of some fortunate Creole gentleman, who had to approach the girl first through her mother and meet with the latter’s approval before any liaison could be established. Furthermore, it was the custom for a lover to give such a faithful mistress either a legacy or some cash settlement when he died or decided to break off with her, either to get married or simply because he was tired of her.

  Henri warned Miguel that the men of the colony often vied for the favors of such women and even fought duels over them. “Of course, the prudish white women here are terribly jealous of their quadroon rivals,” Ducole had added with a chuckle. “I understand that several years ago they became so furious when they began to see the colored wenches strutting about town in their jewels and plumes, often more elegantly dressed than they were and sometimes better-looking to boot, that they went and complained to the governor—I’m talking about Miró, naturally… the one before the baron. Well, to make a long story short, they finally got Miró and the council to pass a law forbidding any woman of color to wear her finery around in public. As a result, the quadroons have taken to wearing their hair bound up a special way in a kerchief—a tignon, they call it—in accordance with the law, so you can’t miss them. Those headdresses are like badges that you can spot from blocks away… all in all, rather convenient, I’d say, since we can tell who’s who right away! Personally, I think the old biddies did us a favor!”