Triumph in Arms

by Jennifer Blake

  Christien gave him a satirical look but made no answer. Let the old man make of that what he would. Some things were private.

  “It’s to be hoped the final sacrifice, that of actually marrying the Pingre woman, will not be necessary. Have I expressed my gratitude to you for carrying the matter to this point?”

  “There is no need.”

  “But there is. My indebtedness is so great I can hardly express it. This whole affair—” Vinot paused for a brief, encompassing gesture “—none of it would be possible without you.”

  “Please. I have my reasons.”

  “The Brotherhood and its tenets against such conduct as Pingre’s, yes, of course. Nighthawk on the wing without the cover of darkness.”

  Christien shrugged away the name that was connected to both his childhood and exploits for the Brotherhood. It had its uses, but he had ceased to feel any attachment to it long ago. “For Sophie, as well,” he said. “She was dear to me and did not deserve her fate. But I do wonder about Reine Pingre.”

  “If the woman and her family are hiding Theodore Pingre, then she deserves to lose what good name remains to her, just as my Sophie lost hers. If not, then you may make it up to her in any way you please. Or not at all, it’s up to you. Either way, you’ll still have River’s Edge.”

  Vinot made it sound so simple. Christien had known it would not be from the moment he set eyes on Reine outside Davis’s theater. Since then, he had spoken to her, smiled at her across a table and heard her promise to be his wife. He had caught a glimpse of the place, and the family, he might have had if things had been different.

  It could well turn out impossible to do either of the things his old mentor suggested, he thought, impossible to hold Reine Cassard Pingre, impossible to let her go.

  7

  Christien had not returned by the time Reine descended to breakfast. Everyone else seemed to be sleeping late after the night’s excitement. She had her morning repast of warm rolls and café au lait on the lower gallery with only Chalmette at her feet for company. She ate slowly, sipping from her cup, watching over the rim as squirrels chased one another up and down the live oaks, breaking off a crust now and then for the hound, who caught them in the air with a snap of large white teeth. Birds sang in the trees, insects hummed and voices called from somewhere behind the main house.

  After a time, she realized she was waiting, that she was unconsciously listening for something more, possibly the sound of hoofbeats from the river road. She was listening for Christien’s return.

  Chalmette growled in warning an instant before a footstep scraped on the pathway that led from the rear of the house. The tread was familiar enough. She turned to face the man who appeared around the corner, coming to a halt, hat in hand, at the edge of the gallery’s brick floor. “Monsieur Kingsley, good day.”

  “Might be for some,” Kingsley, sometimes known as King, answered in harsh tones. “Don’t much look that way to me.”

  He was a burly figure with thick shoulders and neck, a belly that hung over the top of his trousers, sandy hair plastered to his head above a broad, bland face and pale eyes somewhere between gray and green. Their expression just now was less than pleasant.

  “You refer, I suppose, to the arrival of Monsieur Lenoir.” Another time, she might have called for an extra cup and invited him to be seated to share the last of the brew in its silver pot. His pugnacious manner affected her with such annoyed unease that she withheld the gesture.

  “I hear you’re to marry him.”

  “How did you…?”

  She stopped as she recalled the shadowy form of Alonzo on the dark attic stairs the night before. He had told the cook, no doubt, as she was his sister, and Cook had related it to the kitchen maid. The maid had found the knowledge too deliciously important to keep. While drawing water at the well or some other errand, she had passed on the story to others. And why should they not be interested, after all? Anything that happened in the big house affected them, as well.

  “Never mind that,” Kingsley said with a scowl. “What I’d like is the straight of it. Is it so?”

  “You forget yourself, monsieur,” she said, her voice even. She reached at the same time to put a staying hand on Chalmette’s big head as he rose with a low rumble in his throat to stand at her knee. The dog had never cared for the overseer, or for Theodore, either, for that matter.

  “Do I, now? I think it’s you that’s forgettin’, Madame Pingre.”

  “Would that I could.”

  He watched her a long moment, then looked away with a wag of his head. “We can’t, neither one of us. What’s done is done. Thing is, you taking a husband makes it harder. That’s unless you told him about that night.”

  “No.”

  “Thought as much. So what are you up to?”

  “The alliance was arranged by my father,” she said, her lips as stiff as her tone. “I have no power to refuse it.”

  “You tried, did you?”

  She declined to answer such an insolent query, could hardly believe it had been put to her. The overseer had always been respectful and eager to please. That had not changed even after Theodore disappeared. Since leaving off her black, however, she had begun to notice a certain familiarity in his manner and a disturbing, almost possessive look in his eyes.

  Kingsley had been at River’s Edge as long as she could remember, had been born there, she thought, the son of the Américain who had held the position before him, a man come from Virginia with her grandfather. Others whispered a different tale of his birth, one concerning his mother and old Monsieur Pingre, Theodore’s grandfather. If true, that would make Kingsley the uncle of Reine’s dead husband.

  Her own father had always put the greatest faith in the overseer’s knowledge of growing methods, management and his loyalty. So had she, particularly the latter. It was possible their trust had been misplaced.

  “It came from a gambling debt of my father’s, if you must know,” she told him. “Either I marry Monsieur Lenoir or we will all have to leave River’s Edge. Which would you have me do, if you please? Particularly as there’s no guarantee you would be kept on as overseer once my family and I departed.”

  Kingsley narrowed his eyes, lifting a hand to rub his knuckles over the bristles of his unshaven chin. “I see the problem.”

  “I thought you might.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  She gave him a swift look. “What can I do?”

  “Well, you can’t go through with it.”

  “I have no choice. It’s out of my hands. Can you not understand?”

  He frowned at the wall above her head. The rasping noise of his hard knuckles across his chin tore at her nerves until she thought she must order him to stop. Then he lowered his hand, spreading his fingers wide.

  “Somebody needs to make this joker see he’s not welcome in these parts.”

  “I don’t recommend the attempt. He’s a master swordsman, you know.”

  “Wouldn’t have to be a sword anywhere in it.”

  “In what? What are you thinking?”

  “Never you mind, Madame Pingre. I’ll take care of it.”

  “You can’t just…just attack him. Besides, I don’t believe he’s a man who can be frightened off with crude force. He will retaliate, you may be sure of it.”

  “He can try.”

  “Monsieur Kingsley…”

  “King. Whatever happened to you calling me King?”

  She had never done such a thing, and well he knew it. The petit nom had begun with Paul as a sly jest, then her father had taken it up as a habit. “Monsieur Kingsley, I must ask you to have nothing more than the most necessary contact with my…my fiancé. He will eventually be made privy to everything that happened here, but in the meantime…”

  “Oh, he will, will he?”

  “Naturally. A wife should not have secrets from her husband.”

  “What if he gets on his high horse, maybe takes off when he he
ars?”

  It seemed a distinct possibility, given the pride she had seen in every line of Christien Lenoir’s body. Reine swallowed hard, unaccountably disturbed by the thought. “That will be his choice.”

  “The way I see it, then, the sooner you tell him, the better.”

  “Even if his next move is to send the sheriff to evict us?”

  “It won’t come to that. I’ll see to it.” The overseer didn’t wait for a reply. Ducking his head in a crude bow, he slapped on his hat and strode away back down the path that led eventually to the plantation outbuildings.

  Reine watched him go with a frown between her brows. What had he meant, he’d see to the matter? She didn’t like the sound of it, no, not at all.

  Still, he was correct in saying she should explain what had taken place at River’s Edge on the night Theodore died. It would be best done before the wedding so as to have a clean start between the bridegroom and herself.

  She couldn’t risk it, she realized as she turned her gaze to Chalmette, who had flopped back down beside her, reaching down to smooth a hand over his big head. Others were involved, and there was no way to say what having the details of the incident made public would do to them. She must wait until she knew her betrothed better, until she could trust he would not expose everything, wreaking the kind of havoc she had sacrificed so much to avoid.

  She wondered when that would be, if ever.

  “That man, he be trouble.”

  The comment came from a shadow that hovered just inside the French door beyond Reine’s table, a dark figure in a white apron over a dress of solid black. Reine lifted her head with a jerk that said as much about the state of her nerves as it did her surprise. An instant later, she relaxed again.

  “Alors, you’ll give me a heart attack one day,” she said. You never knew where old Demeter would turn up, for she had a habit of slipping in and out of the house unnoticed. Chalmette paid her no attention beyond giving a single thump of his tail.

  “Not so. You are strong and I am old. My heart will stop its beating before yours.”

  “Don’t say such things.”

  “Why not, when it’s so?”

  Reine didn’t like hearing it, had no wish to face the possibility of another death. Nonetheless, it was true that Demeter was withering away like a leaf of tobacco, becoming ever more brown, wrinkled and bent in body with each passing year. Her hair was white in sharp contrast to the dusky color of her skin, and the opaque look of cataracts dulled her eyes. Her full apron, once kept stiffly starched and sun-bleached, was wrinkled from long wear and dusted with the snuff she used.

  Demeter had tried to continue as nursemaid to Marguerite after Theodore’s death, but it had been too much for her. Grief had taken its toll, for she had loved him as if he were her own; she had lain down on her bed and refused to get up for weeks after he disappeared. She had never lived at River’s Edge, but had taken possession years ago of the small cabin on the Pingre property built as a playhouse for Theodore’s sisters, who had died as children. There she took in stray cats and grew herbs and vegetables, especially the greens she claimed she must have at every meal. Some few went to her for potions of one kind or another, but she was so very witchlike in her tiny gray house, like something from a dreary fairy tale, that she was left alone in the main.

  “’Tis true, so why not?” she said now with a shrug. “Though I worry.”

  “About what?”

  “Never you mind. I come to tell you that you do wrong. You must not marry wi’ this man.”

  “I thought you spoke just now of Monsieur Kingsley, saying he was troublesome.”

  “So I did, me, and so he be. He strut like a rooster, that one. But now I speak of the other, this big and so handsome man with his sword and his promises.”

  It was ever so with older slaves, Reine knew; they had lived so close within the family circle for so long, were so intimately acquainted with all its details, that they felt privileged to speak their minds. “How can you say we should not wed? You’ve not met him.”

  “Don’ matter. You must not marry.”

  “I’ve been a widow more than the two years required, Demeter. Isn’t it enough? Would you have me mourn forever?”

  “Sometimes it must be. I mourn still.”

  “But as you pointed out, you’re not young.” It was an unkind thing to say, perhaps, but so was Demeter’s attitude unkind, unaccountably so. “Besides, you don’t know everything. I must marry Monsieur Lenoir.”

  Demeter listened to the tale of the gambling debt with her head cocked to one side and her rheumy, half-blind eyes on the flashing movement where a pair of wrens swooped and dived at a blue jay to drive it away from their nest. When Reine was done, she shook her head. “This be bad.”

  “I’ll admit I was taken aback at first. Still, Marguerite likes the man. Can you believe she went to him last night when she had her nightmare, instead of to me?”

  “Little ones be wise in these t’ings sometimes. But she saw the loup-garou again, yes?”

  Reine gave an unhappy nod. “She was terrified until she ran to Monsieur Lenoir and he put his arms around her. She quieted at once, and you know it’s always taken hours to calm her.”

  “You t’ink he take away her fear.”

  “I saw him do it. He was there when she needed him. I suppose…I suppose a man with a sword in hand must seem a better match against demons than a mere mother. Perhaps a father is what she needs.”

  If the old nursemaid heard the catch in Reine’s voice or noticed her distress at the thought of being supplanted, she chose to ignore it. “She have one.”

  “But he’s gone. She doesn’t remember Theodore at all.”

  “Don’ be saying that!”

  “She was barely three when he died. Children that age have little recall, and then there was that terrible night. It’s best that she doesn’t remember.” Reine preferred to think so, anyway.

  “He gave her life, did M’sieur Theodore,” Demeter insisted with a quaver in her voice.

  Reine’s smile was a little crooked. “I rather thought I did that.”

  “She be the only one of his line, his only child and he an only child, too. Better that she’d been a boy.”

  Theodore had also made clear his disappointment that Marguerite was not a son. Being reminded added a cool edge to Reine’s voice as she replied. “You will not say that in her hearing, if you please. As she is my daughter, she can be of my line.”

  “For shame, that you would take that from M’sieur Theodore.”

  “I take nothing from him that he didn’t give up of his own accord. He wanted nothing to do with Marguerite. I recall that, even if you don’t.” Demeter had always been on Theodore’s side in any dispute. Nor could she ever be brought to see any wrong in him.

  “He was young, hadn’t settled himself.”

  “So was I young, but had to be settled enough for both of us.”

  Demeter turned her clouded gaze in Reine’s direction, a cunning look on her features. “You did fine. I always be sayin’ that, I do. You don’t need a husband.”

  “Nor do I want one, but I’m telling you I must marry and that’s an end to it.”

  The finality in her voice seemed to have the desired effect, for Demeter said no more. With a thrust-out lower lip and wagging head, she wandered off in the direction of the kitchen.

  Reine watch her go with a sigh. The old nursemaid would sit for a while with the cook, she knew, graciously accepting sugar cookies or a slice of pie as her due and downing them with a glass of buttermilk fresh from the churn. The two of them, old friends for years, would discuss what was happening with the people of the big house. After a while, Demeter, having a formidable sweet tooth, would gather up whatever extra cookies and cake she could beg and take herself back to her little house, her greens and her cats.

  Reine wished she could leave her own doubts and fears behind as easily.

  8

  The only member of the f
amily at hand to greet Christien on his return to the plantation was Paul Cassard. A brooding look lay in the boy’s hazel eyes as he came down the steps toward him. Before he spoke, he waited until Christien’s black stallion had been taken away and Alonzo had carried the box and carpetbag he had brought back with him into the house.

  “I hear you and Reine are getting married.”

  “She has done me the honor of agreeing to my proposal, yes,” Christien answered in wary precision. The boy must be a heavy sleeper that he had missed the excitement of the night before. Thinking back, he realized he had not appeared in the hallway while it took place.

  “Some proposal, marry you or get out.”

  “I hope it was not put so crudely.”

  “Did you have to make Reine marry you?”

  That was a good question, though the answer was not one Christien cared to share with his future brother-in-law. “It was the best way to allow her and everyone else to remain here, maybe the only way.”

  “You might have courted her.”

  “And you think it would have served?” Christien asked with a dry note in his voice.

  “Maybe not, but she deserved more than she got. She deserved the right to decide, and maybe to refuse.”

  “Oh, agreed.” What Madame Pingre deserved was a different matter from what he could have allowed.

  Paul stared at him in keen assessment of a kind that could easily have come from a gentleman much his senior. “You’ll be good to her?”

  “I give you my word.”

  “She’s had enough of bad husbands.”

  A frown drew Christien’s brows together as he considered the reason her brother might have for making such a statement. He didn’t much care for where it led him. “I shall strive not to be one.”

  “Do that, and it may be all right,” Paul said with a slow nod. “Best you not rush her into anything.”

  “Meaning?”

  “She’ll do what’s expected, but she won’t be pushed into being a wife to you. Try it and you’ll be the loser.”

  He was talking, Christien thought, about what would take place in the marriage bed. He could hardly blame the boy for being concerned, though he resented the implication that he might be capable of forcing himself on a woman. “The fencing strip teaches patience,” he said with deliberation, “also the trick of reading a partner’s emotions and intentions. And the maîtres d’armes who live longest make a habit of learning from other men’s mistakes.”