Marguerite hiccuped and circled his neck tightly with a small arm, huddling close. She rested her head on his shoulder, heaved a sigh and was silent.
Reine Pingre moved then, coming toward them in a spreading circle of lamplight that cast her moving shadow over the walls, appearing half avenging goddess, half Madonna. Tears filled her eyes and her features were blank with the force of her relief. Kneeling beside the two of them in a billow of fine white fabric, she placed the lamp on the floor, then touched her daughter’s fair hair, smoothing it gently.
“She will be all right, I think,” Christien said in a low tone.
“I believe so.” Reine lifted her lashes, meeting Christien’s gaze while stark gratitude shone in the pure blue of her eyes. “And because of it, you have won River’s Edge in truth, Christien Lenoir. If you can keep her safe, keep us all safe, then I will marry you.”
5
What had possessed her?
Reine could not quite explain it even to herself as she lay staring at the dark ceiling of her bedchamber with her sleeping daughter huddled against her. Circumstances compelled her to accept Lenoir’s offer, of course, but it also seemed imperative that the half-naked swordsman should not leave River’s Edge.
A large part of it was that he had stopped Marguerite’s hysteria with a few soft words, something she could not do. No, nor anyone else in the house. It had been the way her daughter clung to him as to a savior, as well. It had also been her mother’s rambling denunciation, the darkness pressing around them and the terror for Marguerite that had surged along her veins. The memory of his deep voice naming them both as outcasts played into it, as well, as did the feeling that nothing would ever be the same if she failed to give her promise.
It was a desperate gamble. Perhaps she was more her father’s daughter than she knew.
Her decision had not been affected at all by the sight of a broad chest and muscled arms, a hard hand holding a sword or a handsome face set in such steadfast resolve that it seemed nothing could daunt him, nothing defeat him. She had seen a man undressed to the waist before. She was no virgin miss to swoon at her first sight of an abdomen like corrugated iron or a man’s bare feet. She had shared a bedchamber with her husband where they dressed and undressed, bathed, occupied the same bed and all the rest of it.
Seeing Theodore half-dressed had been nothing like the glimpse she had of Christien Lenoir. No, nothing at all.
She pushed the thought from her with determination. They were both men, no more and no less. How different could they be?
Well, yes, Christien’s body was honed by practice on the fencing strip. It had also been sculpted with muscle turned steel-hard with fortitude and protective instinct. He was taller, wider and stronger by many degrees than the man she had married, a stripling who had never lifted a finger except to turn a card or take a drink. It was possible he was different in other ways, as well.
She would not dwell on that. She was also different from the green girl who had accepted the husband chosen for her because it had been expected from childhood, because she had been told her parents knew best. She was a grown woman with a daughter. She had spent two years helping manage River’s Edge, making decisions, ordering supplies, distributing food, care and comfort to all who depended upon her. She had survived the death of her husband, Marguerite’s nightmares, her father’s lax attitudes and her mother’s increasing frailty. She would never again bow to a husband’s will, no matter how he sneered, shouted or rode off to other women.
The wedding would cause a sensation. Little else would be talked of in the neighborhood for weeks, even months. That the woman whose husband had died so mysteriously should take a fencing master of Natchez blood as his replacement, one to whom her father had lost everything in a card game, would be delicious beyond words. How they would whisper and smirk, vowing she deserved no better.
Why, why had she agreed?
It was the hard purpose allied to fierce tenderness in Christien’s eyes as he held Marguerite, so very like the expression on his face that night outside the theater, that had moved her. Yes, that was it. Could he ever wear that look for the sake of a woman grown?
Not for her, of course. She had no expectation of anything other than tolerance. Well, and the sort of coupling in the dark that had produced her daughter—dutiful, uncomfortable and maddeningly short-lived.
She flung a hand across her eyes as she thought of the physical side of her marriage. To be used with scarce a caress or kiss, merely the clumsy lift of her nightgown and fast, hard mounting, had too often left her feeling bruised and bereft. Some deep instinct told her it should be different, a sybaritic feast of passion taken in slow, bone-deep gratification. Theodore had batted aside her small efforts in that direction, grunting as he took what he wanted in such furious effort it seemed he feared to fail before he achieved it. And perhaps he had cause, for he sometimes lost his seed upon the sheets before he could fumble his way into her.
Even with such disappointment, Reine had caught, now and again, the intimation of something just out of her reach. It seemed it might be touched if only she could turn to the arms of another man immediately after Theodore rolled away from her.
Wicked, wicked to think such a thing! She must be utterly lost to grace that she had yearned for more than a single man seemed able to provide. What husband could respect, much less care for, a wife with such wanton imagination, such fervid excess of desire?
She must keep the weakness to herself now as she had before. That should not be difficult. In her brief experience, men neither noticed nor cared what occupied the minds of the women around them, had no interest in their secret longings. If such inclinations should happen to be brought to their attention, they were put down to female irrationality, so of no concern. There was safety in such an attitude, though it was annoying in the extreme.
What on earth was she to say to her future husband when she met him at breakfast? Deciding when, where and how they would marry might occupy them for a short while, but what then?
She had no idea. He was a stranger, after all.
She had agreed to marry a stranger with copper skin and dark, dark eyes. Yes, and splendid shoulders. And a hard fist when he held a sword in his hand. Night-hawk, how barbaric it sounded. And yet there was something in his eyes, some shadow of sadness when he spoke of his vanished people, some isolation of the soul that touched an answering chord inside her.
Sleep would not come. She turned and sighed and adjusted her pillow a dozen times while the minutes ticked away, marked by a small clock on the fireplace mantel. She flung her arms up on the pillow beside her head.
Her alliance ring made a clicking noise as it hit the headboard. She reached with her right hand to finger the familiar shape in the dark, its gold scrollwork and curved shape designed to be paired with Theodore’s matching band. Slowly, she inched it off.
She was to marry Christien Lenoir. She need no longer wear the ring that marked her as Theodore’s wife.
Sitting up with care to avoid disturbing Marguerite, she pushed aside the mosquito netting and eased from the bed. She moved, sure-footed in the dark, to her dressing table and felt for her pin dish, dropping the ring into it. She would lock it away properly in the morning as a remembrance for her daughter.
She was turning back to the bed when she heard the big bloodhound, Chalmette, bark with the sound of warning. Glancing at the bed to be sure the noise had not disturbed Marguerite, she eased from the bedchamber into the connecting sitting room. At its French doors, she drew back the heavy curtains, opened a shutter and peered out.
A horseman rode at a quiet walk from the direction of the stable. Rounding the house, he turned down the drive toward the river road. As he reached the wider roadway, he picked up his pace to a canter.
The man was only a dark, upright shape in the saddle under the dim light of a sickle moon, but that was enough for Reine to identify him. It was her newly betrothed bridegroom, riding out on some business almo
st certain to be clandestine. Why else would he sneak from his bedchamber in the early morning hours, making every effort not to disturb the house?
What was he about? A woman more vivacious and accommodating than she had been, perhaps? Cards, drinking, laughing and talking with his swordsmen friends?
Desolation seeped through Reine’s veins. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the curtain folds that were pulled tight in her hand. So it began again, the lies, the desertions, the betrayals. The aching loneliness. She had expected better of Christien Lenoir, though why she could not have said. Perhaps she had only hoped.
Could she bear it all again? Could she accept glib explanations instead of the truth? Could she smile and pretend everything was as it should be? Could she stand being made to feel again that she was lacking because her husband preferred more amusing company?
It was the fate of women, or so she had been told. Men were men, n’est-ce pas? They must have outlets for their terrible male energy. Whatever excitement they might find elsewhere, they must always return to their wives, yes? It was a woman’s duty to wait on that moment. A wise one took pleasure and comfort in her children and learned to enjoy her occasional freedom from the demands of the bedchamber.
The answer to that, Reine had always thought, was almost childishly simple. If marriage was supposed to be passed in such solitary waiting, then why take a husband at all? And in fact, life had been much more peaceful with Theodore gone. No demands that she come to bed at once, no disparaging remarks about her failure to follow the current modes, no teasing and tickling Marguerite until she was in tears, no wrestling with Paul until he was red-faced with anger over unkind jeers from a man ten years his senior and half again his size.
No sneering at her Américain mother, and no curses if she dared question where Theodore had been, suggested he limit the glasses of cognac he drank after dinner or asked that he refrain from leading her father into the most infamous of the Vieux Carré’s gambling dens.
Much more peaceful, yes.
Now it would begin again.
Releasing the curtain she held, she smoothed the brocade folds with trembling fingers and turned to make her way back to her bed. She didn’t sleep, however. The first breezes of dawn, drifting into the room, stirred the ghostlike folds of her mosquito baire, seeped inside its white tent to cool the tears on her face.
6
Pale lamplight shone from the balcony doors, which stood open to the hot night air. Vinot was still up, Christien thought, or more likely had never gone to bed. He bracketed his lips with his hands and whistled in a soft signal. The old fencing master’s shadow shifted, a gray ghost of movement against the salon’s high ceiling as he picked up the lamp and left the room. A few minutes later, the street door swung open on oiled hinges.
“You’re back, my son,” Lucien Vinot said, his voice as gentle as his eyes were sharp. “I had not expected you so soon.”
Christien stepped inside, took the door and closed it behind him.
“The first part is accomplished. More than that, I’ve been given a bedchamber at River’s Edge.”
“So you are established there. Excellent.” The maître turned and shuffled back down the long hallway that led under the upper floor of the house, ending at a set of stairs that curved their way upward. Over his shoulder, he said, “You had no difficulty with Cassard?”
“None at all. He was expecting me, of course.”
“And his daughter, she was agreeable?”
Christien followed after his onetime mentor, reaching around to take the lamp as the older man grasped the banister to pull himself up the stairs. “I wouldn’t put it quite that way, but she allowed herself to be persuaded.”
“I’ll warrant she did. You have a convincing way about you.”
“She was more taken by the fact that her daughter likes me. It’s a damnable business. I could almost wish it undone.”
The maître stopped at the head of the stairs to look back down at him, his gray hair loose, long and free of pomade, making a silver nimbus around his head and shoulders. “But not enough to undo everything?”
Christien thought of Reine standing like a goddess with the folds of her near-transparent nightgown swirling around her feet and a lamp like a beacon in her hand. He recalled the womanly fragrance of her, and the sheen of her hair as it was burnished by lamplight. He felt again the touch of her hand that seemed a permanent brand on his skin. “No,” he said shortly.
Vinot gave a pleased nod as he stalked into the room that served him as both salon and bedchamber. Gesturing toward the table in the center as a place for Christien to deposit the lamp, he poured two glasses of sherry from the decanter next to it and handed one to him. “Did you have time to look around?”
Christien inclined his head. “For what good it did me. Everything seemed just as it should.”
“Nothing unusual in their manner? No sign of disturbance?”
“Naturally, they were disturbed. I’ve taken everything they own and foisted myself on them as a houseguest and future bridegroom. It would be incredible if they accepted it without kicking up some kind of dust.”
The maître frowned as he dropped into a chair at the table. “You sound as if they have your sympathy. I would remind you that Cassard made our plans possible with his weakness for cards. Moreover, these are the people who helped hide the man who killed my daughter.”
“You don’t know that. Certainly, I saw no sign of it.”
“I know that arrogant, cowardly young scoundrel. He refused to meet me, refused to give me satisfaction after taking my Sophie’s innocence and deserting her in her time of need. He cared not a whit that she died and his bastard with her. She wasn’t good enough.”
“Maître…” Christien began.
“Nor was I his equal, if you please,” the old man went on, unheeding. “He was not required to accept my challenge under the code duello. No, certainly not.” A sardonic laugh shook him. “The truth is, he was so terrified he couldn’t get away from me fast enough. He was petrified I would find a way to force a meeting, positive I would kill him. And so I would, so I would. But now he’s healed and bored with hiding, so has begun to appear here and there in town at night. He thinks I have forgotten him, more fool he.”
“He has been making mischief elsewhere, as well,” Christien said with a scowl. “He prowls around River’s Edge at night, frightening young Marguerite, I think. What can he mean by it?”
“Nothing good, I’ll wager.”
“He must have little ready cash, else fear of your reprisal would have sent him on the run as soon as he was able. The income he once had from Bonne Espèrance is gone as his mother closed the house, shut down crop production and sold off the hands before she left for Paris. If she is sending anything for his support, no whisper of it has been heard.”
“She may also believe him to be dead,” Vinot pointed out.
“Or she may have washed her hands of him. Cassard indicated that she was not a doting mother. Suppose…”
“What?” his old mentor asked, his gaze keen.
“Suppose Theodore thinks to terrorize Marguerite then, when his daughter and his wife are suitably distraught, rise from the dead and demand money for staying away? Well, or for leaving the area, never to trouble them again?”
“It sounds possible if you assume the wife knows nothing. Taking advantage of the fair sex was ever his specialty.”
“It sounds damnable,” Christien said in fierce condemnation, “the act of a madman.”
“Which he may be, if he was struck about the head as it seems from what Cassard told you. Why the blows could not have killed him in truth…” Vinot trailed off with a shake of his gray head. “But no matter. The monster’s luck will not last. I shall see to it.”
Christien tucked the idea of Theodore’s madness into a corner of his mind while he listened to the old sword master’s obsessed ramblings. Vinot was so intent on revenge that he couldn’t sleep, ate littl
e, went nowhere and thought of nothing, spoke of nothing else. He was fading away, losing strength, skill and purpose for living. It seemed something must be done to assuage his grief and settle his mind before he dwindled into insanity himself or even death.
Christien owed the old sword master that reprieve. Vinot had found him shivering on the street when he first arrived in New Orleans, had taken him in, fed him, taught him everything he knew. His daughter, Sophie, bright, vivacious Sophie, had been like a younger sister to him. She had made a game of teaching him how to bow, how to take a lady’s hand, to talk lightly of nothing. His own father had taught him his letters and the rudiments of reading, but there had been few books in the swamp for practicing the skill. Sophie had shared hers, had nagged him into attempting harder words and passages, had made him perfect his hand with a pen and insisted he become proficient in ciphering. In return, he had taught her the march of the seasons, ways of animals, how to tie knots, to swim, catch fish and protect herself in a fight.
He had taught her to trust young men and assume they would always control their passions. He had made her unafraid, even daring. He had been the architect of her downfall if not the instrument of it.
Christien wondered now if he hadn’t been a little mad himself when he had agreed to this scheme of retribution that he and the maître had set in place. Or perhaps he only wished he had that excuse.
“What if you are wrong?” he asked now, his gaze on the red-brown sherry in his glass. “What if Theodore Pingre is dead as they’ve said all along?”
“Then you will be the owner of a fine plantation and have a nice young wife with a new-made family. What could be better than that?”
“And if you’re right, then the lady will be a bigamist and I will be no husband at all. You’ll forgive me if I see that as less than satisfactory.”
“She appeals to you?” his mentor asked, his gaze keen.
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