Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  “Lorna?”

  “Uncle Sylvester—” she gasped.

  The call had come from below, channeling upward through the still house. With a muffled cry, she dived into her camisole, pulling it down in trembling haste, searching for the waist of her riding skirt. The wide circle of cloth was snatched from her hand, righted, and thrown over her head. With no more than a wan smile for the man who had helped her, she stood up, settling the folds into place and, at the same time, looking for her stockings and boots.

  She had found her shirtwaist, turned wrong side out and smeared with mud, when she heard heavy footsteps on the stairs. They sounded like an army; her uncle was not alone then. A glance showed her that the man pushing his shirt into his trousers beside her was also aware of the import of so large a party. His face was grim and, as he caught her anxious gaze, the smile he gave her was tinged with self-mockery.

  “I suggest,” he said softly, “that you scream rape.”

  Hard on the words came the thud of booted feet in the outer room. Lorna’s uncle appeared in the doorway, only to be shouldered aside by Nate Bacon. Behind the two men crowded a half dozen field hands, one of whom carried a lantern.

  Lorna swung to face them with the shirtwaist she had just righted clutched to her breasts. Moments before, she had felt no self-consciousness in being half-dressed. Now, shame rose in a hot red wave as she stood with her hair swirling like a pale golden curtain around her, through which could be glimpsed the pearl-like sheen of her skin. Even if she had wanted to take the advice so quietly given, she could not have forced the words past the tight knot in her throat.

  “Son of a bitch!” Nate Bacon’s voice was choked with rage as he stared past Lorna. “Son of a bitch. Cazenave!”

  “Lorna!” her uncle exclaimed at the same time in tones of relief and gladness as he moved around his host, coming a few steps into the room. Then, as the circle of lantern light edged forward, revealing the disheveled state of his niece and the man behind her, he stopped short.

  “Ramon Charles Darcourt Cazenave, at your service, M’sieur Bacon.” The man who had held her in his arms so short a time before gave his name, stepping forward to sketch a bow that was far from deferential. He inclined his head also toward her uncle. “Sir.”

  “Cazenave,” Nate said again, the word freighted with loathing.

  “I am surprised that you recognize me.”

  “I would have to be blind not to see your old man in you.”

  “I am happy to think so.”

  “A proud man, and an honorable one, your father. Do you think he would be happy to see his son now, a rapist?”

  Ramon allowed his gaze to brush over Lorna where she stood rigid near the fireplace. A darker tone seeped under the bronze of his skin, but his features were unreadable as he answered. “He is dead.”

  Nate followed the direction of his glance, his protuberant eyes moving with hard greed over Lorna’s soft white shoulders veiled by her hair, and the tender curves of her breasts above the neckline of her camisole. He gave a tight grunt. “It’s a good thing. For what you’ve done to my son’s future bride, I mean to see you pay the full price. Take him, boys!”

  With a savage gesture toward Ramon, he stepped back. The field hands waiting in the doorway surged forward, the man with the lantern setting it on the floor before he joined the others. They fell on Ramon, reaching to pinion his arms. He stepped back, swinging a hard blow at their leader that rocked him on his heels, then ducked under a punch, driving his elbow into the man’s solar plexus even as he spun to meet an attack from behind. The field hands closed in, grappling, grunting, cursing, while Nate Bacon shouted encouragement.

  Ramon fought like a demon, but, outnumbered, with no room to maneuver, he could not hope to fight free. A moment later, he went down in a flailing blur of fists and kicking feet.

  “No,” Lorna whispered, then cried louder, “No!” She swung toward her uncle, reaching his side with swift steps, clutching his arm. “Stop them, Uncle Sylvester. He didn’t hurt me, he didn’t!”

  Sylvester Forrester frowned, dragging his gaze from the melee. “You mean he didn’t … harm you?”

  “I mean it wasn’t … he didn’t … there was no.…” The sternness in her uncle’s face, the condemnation in his eyes, allied to her own embarrassment and fear of what might happen to Ramon Cazenave, robbed her of coherent speech for precious seconds. She drew a deep breath. “What I mean to say is, he didn’t—”

  “She means he didn’t force her,” Nate said, his voice harsh as he interrupted.

  “But, my dear Lorna, I don’t understand,” her uncle said, the hardness of his voice indicating far otherwise.

  “She means there was no rape, because there was no need, don’t you, Lorna, my dear future daughter-in-law?”

  Lorna stared from Nate to her uncle. It seemed such an ugly thing, an animalistic joining tainted by sin, when seen through the eyes of the two men who waited for her answer. It hadn’t been like that. It hadn’t been like that at all.

  There came the sudden thud of flesh on flesh behind them; then all was quiet. As they turned, they saw Ramon Cazenave being hauled to his feet. He stood swaying with blood trickling from the corner of his mouth and one eye slowly swelling shut. His shirt was torn, failing open, stripped of its studs, which littered the floor. His breathing was ragged, as if every rise and fall of his chest caused him pain. The men who held so grimly to his arms had not escaped punishment. Only four of the six who had jumped him were left standing around him. The fifth nursed a broken hand, while the last man sat on a cotton bale, spitting out loosened teeth.

  Nate walked slowly up to Ramon until his face was within inches of the dark-haired man’s. “Is that right, what she says, Cazenave? Did she let you—”

  The term he used was offensive in its crudeness, but descriptive. Though Lorna had never heard it before, she grasped the meaning immediately. She lifted her chin as Ramon turned his head by slow degrees to meet her gray gaze. There was blank surprise in the depths of his dark eyes, and also a flicker of what might have been regret.

  He looked back to Nate, his bruised mouth curving into a deliberate smile. “She feels sorry for me, it seems. Isn’t that flattering? But, all the same, if she says she was willing, she’s lying.”

  “Quite the gentleman, aren’t you,” Nate said, “but I don’t see any sign of her having been manhandled.”

  Lorna stepped forward. “Because I wasn’t, no matter what he says.”

  The penalty for the crime Ramon was claiming so nonchalantly to have committed was death by hanging. It was possible that the sentence might be carried out at once, given the vicious and arrogant temper of Nate Bacon. Under the circumstances, there were few who would blame him.

  “What do you say, Cazenave?” the owner of Beau Repose inquired. “Will you tell us what we want to know, or shall we look into the matter more thoroughly? Maybe a better way of getting at the truth would be if we put the girl on her back on a cotton bale and threw her skirts over her head for a closer look at the evidence?”

  Ramon tried to strike out at Nate, but was wrestled to stillness once more. “You wouldn’t do it; her uncle wouldn’t let you.”

  Nate flung a glance over his shoulder at Sylvester Forrester. “Oh, I don’t think he will object, all in the name of justice’s being done, of course.”

  Lorna looked at her uncle, but he would not meet her eyes. It was true, she thought in dazed disbelief. So afraid of Bacon was he, so much in the man’s debt, that he did not dare protest, even if he were not in agreement. But, he was, she could sense it in the stiffness of his manner. It was painful to think that such a thing as this could be more important than years of knowing her as a person, more important than kinship and affection, and yet it was so.

  “You would enjoy that, wouldn’t you?” Ramon flung at Nate. “You can’t wait.”

  The master of Beau Repose licked his lips before he mustered a frown. “I would not hesitate to do my duty
.”

  “Don’t you see that would be more of an assault than anything I might have done?”

  “So, you admit it; she did give it to you!”

  Ramon stared at him. “Think what you like. You will anyway.”

  His words were not an admission, but their pensive quietness could be taken as such if a man desired. Nate Bacon did.

  “It strikes me this meeting is a little odd,” Nate said, satisfaction oozing from his tone. “Maybe it isn’t the first time, maybe I bought soiled goods for my son’s bride.”

  “No, I only saw her once before, for a moment, on the Biloxi Belle that brought us both upriver.”

  “You expect me to believe that the minute she saw you, she fell into your arms?” Nate said, his formless mouth twisting in a sneer.

  Ramon smiled. “Considering who, or should I say what, she is marrying tomorrow, can you really blame her?”

  Nate’s hands knotted into fists. He flung a quick look at Lorna, seeing the Confirmation stamped on the pale oval of her face. His mouth twisted, and an expression of malicious calculation rose into his light-colored eyes. Swinging back to Ramon, he said, “She may have let you do it to her, but you seduced her in cold blood, knowing she was Franklin’s promised wife. You took her, slipped under her skirts with a lot of sweet talk for no other reason except revenge, revenge against me and mine. That’s the truth, isn’t it, Cazenave? That’s all there was to it!”

  The purpose of the charge was to humiliate her, to degrade her for her disloyalty to his son by showing her what kind of man she had presented with her first tender kisses, her virginity. Lorna felt the curling pain of sickness in the center of her being as she waited for the answer that must come.

  Ramon swayed, his dark eyes bright and his cut lip curling in a sardonic smile. “For that,” he said softly, “and because she offered such untouched sweetness, so lovely and irresistible a surrender—”

  Nate struck out at him then, a blow with all of his boar-like strength behind it. Held by his captors, Ramon could not avoid it. It landed where it was aimed, directly upon the blue shadow and puffed swelling beneath his heart that indicated a damaged rib.

  Ramon gave a choked gasp. His knees buckled, so that he sagged in the arms of the men who held him, his dark head falling forward. Lorna cried out, starting toward him, but her uncle caught her arm and dragged her to a halt.

  Nate stepped back, rubbing his knuckles with his other hand. “Take him to Beau Repose and lock him up,” he grunted. “I’ll attend to him later.”

  The rain that had soaked them during that cold, strained ride back to Beau Repose was still falling the following afternoon. Lorna stood at the window of her bedchamber watching it sift relentlessly from the gray sky, streaking the window like unceasing tears of grief. A bad omen for a wedding day, the maid who had brought her coffee and rolls a short while ago had said, crossing herself. To Lorna, it seemed only fitting.

  They had found Ramon’s horse tied at the back of the old house the evening before. He had recovered enough to sit his saddle, reeling, but with his back straight as he was led away. They had not returned his jacket to him, however, or his broad-brimmed hat. Lorna, chilled in her still damp habit jacket, could not prevent herself from thinking of how wet and wretched Ramon must be in the rags of his shirt.

  She and her uncle, along with her future father-in-law, had not ridden with the others, but followed at some distance behind. Still, they had reached Beau Repose, coming upon it from a back road, in time to see the field hands push Ramon into the plantation jail and lock the door upon him. He had staggered, falling inside, and it had been all she could do not to protest, to demand that medical treatment be provided for him. But, so forbidding were the attitudes of the two men with her that it seemed any intervention on her part might only make matters worse, if such a thing were possible.

  She had half expected some further inquisition once they reached the great house, but none had been forthcoming. Her uncle had ordered her to her room, and together he and their host had watched her ascend the stairs toward the second floor. As she had moved down the hallway, she thought she had heard their voices, her uncle’s apologetic, Nate Bacon’s jeering. She had been too exhausted from the upheaval of the evening to care.

  She had rung for a hot bath and, trying to be sensible, had even drunk the hot milk laced with brandy offered by the maid who had brought the bath water. One or the other had stilled the trembling inside her, but neither had been effective in helping her to sleep.

  Lying wide-eyed in the dark, she had gone over and over the events that had taken place, from the moment she had left her bedchamber to go riding, until the time she had arrived back at Beau Repose. She had writhed inwardly, aghast at her conduct, unable to reconcile what had happened, the desire and intense sense of communication she had shared with a strange man, with the way in which she had been brought up and the ideas she held of proper behavior. Finally, near dawn, she had slept then awakened far into the day with heavy, red-rimmed eyes and weighted spirits. With her still had been the same sense of disbelief.

  It haunted her now, as she stared at the rain. After a life of dutiful obedience, how had she dared defy convention and go riding off alone? What had possessed her that she had allowed a man, one she had never seen before, to take her in his arms, to kiss her, and more, much more? And yet, if there had been no consequences, if no one had found them, if she could have donned her clothing again and ridden away, even without discovering the name of the man who had seduced her, she did not think she would have felt regret. That was the most shocking thing of all.

  Behind her, the door swung open. She knew without turning that it was her Aunt Madelyn. The maid who had brought her coffee had given her the message that her aunt would be with her shortly to help her dress for the wedding. In addition, her aunt had never believed in privacy for either her offspring or her niece, and so never knocked.

  “Have you bathed?”

  The words were without preamble, the tone of voice without warmth or basic courtesy. Her aunt knew.

  Lorna turned, her expression deliberately calm. “Good morning, Aunt Madelyn. Yes, I have bathed.”

  “Then, why are you standing about in your dressing gown? The minister is here. The guests are already beginning to arrive, and you would not believe the mud on the front steps, or the sopping rain capes in the entrance hall. The men are downstairs already, demanding juleps on the gallery. I myself have been in my gown for two hours.”

  “I thought … I thought it might be called off.”

  Her aunt’s lips, naturally thin, almost disappeared as she pressed them together. Her head, with its cap of muslin edged with Valenciennes, shot up. Moving with jerky steps that made her three-year-old gown of plum-colored silk dip and sway on her hoop, she went toward the bed where the wedding gown had been laid out along with the necessary undergarments. Over her shoulder, she said, “It would be no more than you deserve. Thankfully, Mr. Forrester was able to persuade Mr. Bacon that you must have lost your head and were only very little to blame. If you are wise, you will endeavor to prove that it is a fact. It would not be a bad thing, also, if you were to show yourself grateful for the forbearance of your groom and his father.”

  “Franklin has been told?” Why the idea should be so disturbing, she could not have said.

  “I cannot be certain, but so I would imagine. It is not something to be kept from one’s future husband.” Taking up the corset of plain cambric threaded with whalebone stays, she turned, holding it out to Lorna.

  “It is doubtful he would know the difference,” Lorna pointed out, her tone shaded with bitterness.

  “You have always been secretive, Lorna. It was not an attractive habit in you as a child and will be even less so in a wife. You will soon be made one with Franklin and will, of course, strive to make his happiness your sole object. That means, you will have no thought that is not his also.”

  It was an unfortunate reference. “And suppose,”
Lorna inquired dryly, “that dear Franklin never has a thought of his own the rest of his life?”

  “Do not be impertinent! I am speaking to you for your own good. Another thing, it is a mark of respect, and a most becoming one, to use your husband’s surname. I have done so for twenty years, and I’m certain that Mr. Forrester appreciates it.” Once more, she proffered the corset.

  Privately, Lorna was doubtful, but it would do no good to try her aunt further. Releasing the satin bow that held her dressing gown closed in the front, she let the cotton wrapper fall from her shoulders before placing it over a chair at the dressing table. Taking the corset, she stretched the strings laced back and forth in their eyelets, stepped into it, pulling it upward over the camisole and pantaloons she had already put on. Holding it to her, she turned her back, then fastened her hands around the bedpost.

  Her aunt tugged vindictively at the corset strings, pulling them tight. Lorna had felt little appetite in some time, however; it was not difficult to close the gap that gave her the eighteen-inch waist decreed by fashion. Knotting the strings, Aunt Madelyn reached for the hoops and petticoats that came next. When they floated like the layered petals of a great white flower around Lorna, the woman took up the wedding gown of Swiss muslin with its pleated ruffles at the neckline and sleeves, its trimming of white silk bows, and the deep pleated flounce around the hem. As she threw it into the air, so that it settled lightly over Lorna’s head, her face mirrored impatience, and she pulled at the fine muslin, placing the fullness of the skirt with sharp tugs.

  “You need not have done this,” Lorna said. “One of the upstairs maids could have helped me dress.”

  “I hope I know my duty as your nearest female relative.”

  If her aunt had owned a woman trained as a ladies’ maid, then it might have been she who had dressed Lorna while her aunt merely looked on, or the same might have been true if Lorna herself had been provided with a female servant. There had been no money for that sort of thing in her uncle’s household. They had felt lucky to be able to keep a cook and general housemaid, plus a butler and yardman who also tended the stables. This was felt as a hardship by Lorna’s cousins, the four daughters of Aunt Madelyn and Uncle Sylvester. They had learned to put up each other’s hair, however, and to become adept at wielding a curling iron. There was always someone, too, to do up buttons. In fits of pique, they were apt to declare that it was their mother’s parsimony that kept them from having personal attention.