Louisiana History Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  The tub, of English manufacture, was of painted tin and to Elene looked like nothing so much as a large baby’s bootie. The bather climbed into the top and sat down with legs extended into the covered foot. The main advantage of the style aboard ship was that the water was unlikely to splash out of it. In addition, it took little of that precious fluid to fill it up and, when entered, the water rose to the shoulders for luxurious soaking.

  Elene washed away the accumulated grime from her skin and hair, then sat for a long time, letting the tightly held fear and the tiredness seep from her bones. Her mind drifted as she refused to order her thoughts. Ryan had gone out again after ordering the bath and food, she thought, to give her privacy. It was considerate of him.

  The motion of the ship changed, rising higher, falling deeper. They were not only moving, they had left the sheltered curve of the shoreline where the ship had been anchored. They were on their way to New Orleans.

  How incredible it was. Who would have dreamed a week ago that she would be here on this ship tonight, with everything she owned gone from her, everything she knew dropping away behind her.

  Except Durant.

  Just for an instant when she had first seen him — the fiancé her father had chosen for her — he had represented everything that was normal and right and orderly. It had seemed that she must go to him, that she could not do otherwise. Then something inside her had revolted. Nothing was as it had been. Nothing compelled her to act now except her own desires, her own needs. Nor would she.

  Where that left Durant, she was not sure. He must be made to understand that he could not take up where he had left off. She would not be pressed into a marriage she did not want. For now she needed time to look around her and see what this new life that had been thrust upon her had to offer; time to think, to plan, to discover what it was she really desired, what she needed.

  How ironic that Durant should be on Ryan’s ship. It had happened because the Sea Spirit was one of the few ships near Saint-Domingue at this time of upheaval when trade was nearly at a standstill. She could have wished, however, that he had chosen another vessel, any other vessel, to take him away from the island. If she had seen him weeks from now in New Orleans, when the past few days had had time to become no more than a terrible memory, she might have felt more like dealing with him, might have had a better idea of what to say and do. As it was, she would have to rely on luck and instinct.

  She was still in the tub when a knock came on the door. Devota had just left the cabin to see what was taking so long to get something to eat. Elene struggled up, not without difficulty, and reached for the strip of Turkish toweling. Wrapping it around her, she stepped from the tub and moved to the door.

  “Who is it?”

  “Hermine Bizet. I have a few things for you, since I understand you could bring nothing of your own and we are much the same size.”

  There was no mistaking the lovely voice of the red-haired woman. Elene opened the door. “It’s very kind of you, but I wouldn’t want to deprive you of what you were able to save.”

  “Don’t give it a thought,” the woman said, her smile roguish. “Theater people are used to leaving places at a moment’s notice. They are always packed and ready.”

  “You’re an actress?” That must be the secret of the intriguing quality of the other woman’s voice.

  “Not one of my recent admirers, I see. I’m with Morven Ghent.” She paused expectantly.

  “Oh, yes,” Elene said. There had been discussion of the performances given by the brooding English tragedian of that name in Port-au-Prince the week before the wedding. Elene had been too involved with the last stitching on her trousseau to think of attending.

  “Everyone remembers Morven, particularly the ladies,”

  Hermine said with a wry grimace. “Well, I won’t keep you standing at the door, or we’ll have every sailor on the ship down here hoping for a peek. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Hermine pushed a bundle of clothing under Elene’s arm that was not in use to hold her towel, then gave her a warm smile and turned away.

  “Thank you,” Elene called after her retreating back.

  The actress merely waved and kept going.

  The bundle, when unrolled, revealed a nightgown, also a pair of stockings, soft kid slippers with ribbon ties, and a day gown of tan poplin trimmed with gold-green braid. How very observant of the actress to notice her ruined shoes, though, on second thought, the bloodstained tracks she had left on the floor from her cuts must have been hard to miss. Walking was not really painful now, but would be worse by morning when the soreness set in. The new slippers would offer more protection.

  Elene tossed her towel across the foot of the tub and pulled the nightgown on over her head. It was made of muslin in a simple design with small cap sleeves and a shoulder yoke edged with ruching from which fell the fullness of the floor-length skirt. It appeared to be missing a ribbon tie to hold it closed, however. The front gaped open nearly to her navel.

  Elene looked up as the door opened to admit Devota bearing a cloth-covered tray. “Only see what the woman with the voice has brought.”

  “The actress?”

  “You already know? I thought I would have something to tell you.” Devota had an uncanny knack for collecting bits of information. She seldom asked a direct question, but she listened extremely well.

  “There are two actresses,” Devota answered, “and an actor who thinks himself something indeed. There is also a planter, amazingly fat, and his daughter who is as thin as a stick, along with the girl’s maid who is a quadroon. We also have a petty official and his wife who is a woman with a tongue like a serpent, wicked and forever wagging. And there is Serephine.”

  Elene’s gaze met that of her maid in a long look. Serephine was Durant’s mistress, an octoroon, and quite lovely in a languid and careless fashion. The arrangement was one of more than fifteen years’ standing; Serephine had been bought for Durant by his father when he was sixteen and the girl no more than fifteen. She had moved into the house, since Durant’s mother was no longer alive to protest, and had served the function of housekeeper, and sometimes hostess, to the all-male gatherings of father and son, though not of course when there were ladies present. Serephine and Durant had a child, a son who was being educated in France.

  “He could not have left her behind,” Elene said. “In any case, it makes no difference.”

  “You are determined not to wed Durant?”

  Elene gave an irritable shrug. “I don’t care to marry anyone.”

  “That’s all right then.”

  Devota was correct. It was all right. Elene had wondered often enough before the wedding what she was going to do about Serephine. She had been by no means sure that Durant meant to put his mistress aside. They had never discussed the situation; it was one most white women refused to acknowledge, much less bring into the open. There had always been the possibility that Durant would expect the two of them to reside under the same roof. Elene would not have consented, of course. The battle of wills would have been most unpleasant. Lacking real power, since there would have been no affection between Durant and herself, Elene knew she might have been reduced to such tactics as making matters so difficult for Serephine that she would be happy to remove to another establishment. It had not been a test to which she was looking forward.

  Devota was setting out the food she had brought on the table. The portions of ham and beans, bread and fruit cobbler were more than adequate for two. Elene asked, “Will Ryan be returning to eat?”

  “He said not to wait for him, that he would have something in the captain’s cabin. Captain Jean detained him with questions, I think.”

  “Then sit down and tell me what else you learned about the others while we eat.”

  But Devota, as always, refused to step out of what she considered to be her place. “You forget, I had dinner tonight even if you didn’t. I’ll just rinse out your underclothing in the bath while I talk. Then i
t will be fresh for you in the morning.”

  By the time Elene had eaten, her eyelids were so heavy she could barely keep them open. She wanted to help Devota drag the tub from the room then tidy it up, but could not seem to summon the will. No bed had ever looked more inviting than the bunk against the wall with its tightly tucked sheets. The only thing that kept her from it was that she was not sure it was for her. No one had mentioned anyplace else, and yet if she took his bed, what was Ryan to do?

  “Do you think,” she said to Devota after slow consideration due to the fuzziness of her mind, “that I am to sleep here?”

  Devota looked at her. “I would say so.”

  “What about you? The bunk there isn’t very wide, but there’s room for two if we sleep close.”

  “I’ve been provided with a place, don’t you worry.” There was affection and a curious amusement in the woman’s voice. “Go on with you now. I’ll douse the light.”

  “What about—” Elene stopped to yawn before going on, “—about Ryan?”

  “I expect he can take care of himself.”

  “Yes.”

  Devota was standing beside the whale oil lamp in its gimbal, waiting to turn it out. In one hand she held Elene’s wet underclothing, well wrung but still dripping a little. No doubt she would take them and hang them out somewhere, near a hatch, or even on deck where the sea wind could flap them dry. Devota was always busy, always thinking of her comfort, always — devoted. Elene rose to her feet with the help of both hands on the table edge. She hesitated a moment, her gaze on the familiar soft brown face of her maid, her aunt who, at thirty-four, was not so much older than herself. At last she said, “Would you tell me something, Devota?”

  “Anything, chère.”

  “I overheard something at Favier’s house. Is it true that you … went to bed with that man for my sake?”

  Devota pursed her mouth, a roguish look in her eye. “Need it have been for your sake?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I am a woman, he is a man. We were thrown together. These things happen.”

  Devota was not a simple person; she was perfectly capable of telling a cheerful lie to ease Elene’s mind. “He can’t have been much of a man. You still had to signal the ship.”

  “Ah, well, we were at least two of a kind. It doesn’t happen often.”

  Two of a kind. Devota meant that she and Favier were both mulattoes, of mixed blood, neither black nor white. That knowledge lay in the maid’s liquid brown eyes, a shimmer of rueful bitterness, slowly fading. Elene flinched from it. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “It’s your right, chère.”

  “No, not really.”

  Devota shook her head. “You worry too much. Here, I was nearly forgetting this.”

  The maid pushed her hand into her apron pocket and took out a small glass bottle. Stepping to Elene, she handed it to her, then moved once more to the lamp.

  Elene looked down at the bottle. Her fingers tightened around it. The jade bottle of perfume Devota had made for her. Her maid must have been carrying it in her apron pocket all this time. Elene was reluctant to use it, but Devota had gone to such trouble to save it that she also hated to refuse. She would use only a little then, just a little.

  She removed the stopper and quickly smoothed a few drops into the bends of her elbows, the hollow of her throat, and between her breasts. At once the mind-swimming fragrance surrounded her. She pushed the stopper back into place and set the bottle on the table.

  “Lovely,” she said, forcing a smile as she walked to the bed and sat down on it. “Good night.”

  “Good night,” Devota said. The lamp made a soft popping sound as it went out. The door closed. Elene lay down and shut her eyes.

  She came awake slowly. It was the brightness that had disturbed her. She considered it through slitted eyelids in a species of wonder. It was sunlight, pouring into the cabin, glowing with life, dancing in the brilliance of water reflections on the ceiling and walls. Beautiful. It seemed years since she had seen it. Never had she appreciated it as she should, until now.

  Somewhere behind her, just above the bunk, the porthole must be open. The warm, soft breath of a sea breeze stirred her hair and gently fluttered the folds of the sheet that lay across her. She could hear the slap of waves and the steady swish of the boat’s keel cutting through the water. As grace notes to these steady sounds was the hum of wind in the rigging far overhead, the occasional snapping flap of a sail, and the creaking of the wood of the hull as the ship rose and fell. That movement was soothing, and so soporific it seemed that if she just closed her eyes, she could go back to sleep again.

  She easily might, except that there was something about her position there in the bunk that was disturbing. The pillow on which she rested her head was too firm and too warm to be the same one she had pulled beneath her neck the night before. Moreover, there was, just under where her hand lay, a steady throb, exactly like a heartbeat.

  It was a heartbeat.

  The fact should not have surprised her. She had awakened in a fashion not unlike this two of the past three mornings. Except for the fact that her left arm, on which she was lying, was numb, it was not uncomfortable. There was even an unexpected feeling of security in it. The muscles that lay under her cheek and her fingers, though relaxed in sleep, had a sense of quiescent power, and the thigh on which her bent knee lay supported her with easy strength.

  She lifted her lashes in a slow sweep. Ryan’s chest was bare, the sheet cutting across its bronzed expanse just above the waist. Fine dark hairs curled over it, a soft pelting that narrowed to a thin line as it disappeared under the light covering. A pulse beat in the hollow of his throat, throbbing in a vein that climbed the smooth column of his neck to his chin. His jaw and cheeks were only faintly shadowed with beard; sometime the night before he had found time not only to bathe but to shave away the three-day growth of beard he had accumulated while in hiding. The skin of his face was brown and smooth, the bones underneath well formed, rather prominent under the eyes. His nose, as she had noticed on that first night, had been broken, but was still a bold feature. His brows were heavy, as were his lashes. His mouth was deliberately defined, generous in its molding, with fine smile lines curving on either side. There were also lines radiating from the corners of his eyes, perhaps from laughing, but more likely from gazing through bright sun over endless reaches of blue water. His eyes were as blue as the deep sea far from shore.

  He was watching her, suffering her slow inventory with humor and patience. As she met his gaze he said, “Don’t tell me. You’ve forgotten what I look like.”

  “I’m not sure,” she said with studied attention, “that I ever knew.”

  “I not only knew what you looked like, I held the memory well.”

  His voice was quiet, his gaze only a little teasing as he reached to pick up a pale gold tress from her shoulder and let it drift in shining filaments from his fingers. He did not think he would ever forget the way she had faced him, as regal as a queen in the moonlight, after her mauling by the brutish pair who had found her. It had taken the exercise of rare inner fortitude to overcome that shock so quickly and to submit to the incarceration that had followed. It was not to be expected that she had been too conscious of him as a man at the time.

  She spoke carefully. “If you remember, why this morning visit? It can’t have been curiosity.”

  “This isn’t a visit, as you well know.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  The corner of his mouth quirked. “Elene, ma chérie, did you really think that after sharing your bed for three nights I would let you sleep alone now?”

  She tried to shift away from him, but his grasp tightened, holding her where she was. Her temper flaring, she said, “You might have given me a choice!”

  “I didn’t think you would appreciate being awakened to make it.”

  “What you thought was, if you woke me I would refuse.”

  “And I was right
, wasn’t I?” He raised himself to one elbow, hovering over her, watching the silver dustlike flecks in her eyes flash with anger.

  “Indeed you were.”

  “Then aren’t you glad I didn’t?”

  He whispered the words as he lowered his head to set his mouth to hers. His hand, while she was distracted, had closed gently upon her breast. The onslaught of sensations and the turbulent longing his touch engendered was strange in these surroundings, and yet so piercing and sweetly familiar that her defenses were breached before she knew.

  How had it happened that she had become so enslaved to the desires he aroused in her? That was not the way it was supposed to be. The perfume. The perfume was to blame, both for Ryan’s presence in her bed and her own response to him. Nothing else made sense. It was the perfume.

  Oh, but the cause did not matter. Only the magic of soft caresses and the sweet mingling of breaths, the fervor of the joining and the storm and fury it brought to the blood had reason or existence. The plunging of the ship was a counterpoint of delight to their movements together. The fresh glory of the day, gilding their damp bodies with sunlight, added rich and new dimension. Ignoring time and puny prohibitions, they disported themselves in the joy of their renewed hope, and found not only bliss, but beatitude.

  Lying on her stomach with eyes closed and her cheek against the rumpled sheet on the bunk sometime later Elene thought: If only things were always this simple, if only people could disclose themselves to each other as readily as they gave themselves, how easy it would be. The problem was, they kept their deepest wants and truest needs hidden away even from themselves. She knew, for she was the same.

  The bunk mattresses canted for an instant as Ryan heaved himself up. She heard the pad of his bare feet on the floor, moving in the direction of the table, but before she could decide to move, he was returning. The sheet that covered her hips was flung aside.