Please what? she wondered in her dizzy confusion.
His lips came down hard on hers. With a fierceness that demanded response, he forced her flesh, tasting the moist depths of her mouth. Nikki clung to him as much for support as because she had no control over her eager arms and lips. She knew at last! She was sure she loved him!
His release came as such a shock that Nicolette almost fell backward. Her confused desires blurred her thoughts, but not her senses, which still remained filled with the taste, the feel, and the sight of him.
“Not here!” he said. “You’ll dress. We’ll go to a secret place I know where we can be completely alone. Hurry!”
“Alone?” She parroted the word as if he spoke some foreign tongue which she had never heard before.
“Here, put this on,” he ordered, thrusting a thin peasant blouse into her hands. “With this,” he added, indicating a flowing cotton skirt of azure and scarlet print.
Nicolette obeyed without a word. This change in him seemed incredible. Never had any man ordered her about this way. His glittering green eyes watched her every move, never looking away to protect her modesty. Yet she felt no embarrassment.
When she was fully clothed, he came to her and drew the pins from her hair, releasing the dark tresses to cascade down to her waist. He smoothed the ebony ripples with his fingers, sending new chills of longing through her.
“You’ll wear your hair down from now on. I like it this way.” The order was given as if she were his slave or one of his crew members.
She was about to make a sharp reply about wearing her hair any way she pleased, when he grasped her hand and hauled her along through the length of the mansion to the veranda.
The sound of singing voices, the smell of pork roasting over slowly burning hickory, and the freshening salt wind assaulted their already aroused senses when they stepped outside.
Laffite started down the stairs to the oyster shell path, but Nicolette pulled away. He turned to her, glaring his .disapproval of her balking.
“You didn’t give me time to get my slippers,” she explained, raising her skirt to show her bare feet and nodding toward the sharp shells. “I’ll go back for them.”
“Never mind,” he answered.
Swinging her up into his arms, Laffite strode down the path between the Spanish dagger hedges, their white bell flowers ringing soundlessly in the breeze.
“Where are you taking me?” Nicolette asked, suddenly wary of his actions.
“You’ll find out.”
“I want to know now,” she demanded. “I have some say in what’s done with me!”
When he didn’t answer, Nicolette began to struggle in his arms. He laughed and tightened his grip on her.
“Put me down!” she cried. “You have no right to do this! I’m not your personal property!”
“I haven’t done anything yet. And I don’t feel like putting you down. As for whose property you are, I could claim you by right of salvage. I did rescue you from a sinking ship, remember? But even that isn’t necessary. You see, as long as you remain on Grande Terre, you answer to the Boss, the same as anyone else.”
Angered by his sudden, imperious attitude, she beat wildly on his chest, yelling, “Put me down, I say!”
He did… immediately, unceremoniously, without warning. Nicolette landed in a tousled heap in the white sand.
“Happy?” he growled down at her.
She glared back, ready to attack him physically as well as verbally. But the sudden change of expression on his face stopped her. His eyes had gone deadly as he looked out to sea. His lips drew together in a hard line.
“Damn!” he muttered. “The Philantrope! Gambi! That black-hearted scoundrel’s come back!”
His words were interrupted by an angry roar of many voices from down the beach. Nicolette looked in the direction of his gaze and spied a strange ship in the channel. Rowing into shore were a dozen or so men in small boats. The ruffians landed and advanced toward them. Each one was cursing and yelling to feed his mates’ rage and courage.
“Quick, Nikki, run hide in those trees. Stay there, no matter what happens!”
Laffite shoved her toward a line of tortured oaks, their branches and trunks twisted inland by the never-ceasing ocean winds. She crouched in tall sawgrass, concealed just beyond the beach, watching and listening.
“Laffite, you bloody bastard, you had no call to do in Browne and the others!” The man speaking stood at the head of his motley crew, a sneer on his bristled face and so much accumulated filth on his clothes and body that he looked all over a grayish-brown. He choked the handle of a broad-axe in his beefy fists.
“They knew the law as well as you do, Gambi. I won’t abide piracy!” Laffite answered. “We have no quarrel with the Americans and no letter of marque to legalize the taking of their vessels. Browne paid the price for defying my commands.” He narrowed his eyes and strode to within a pace of the man with the axe. “But I suspect Browne was acting under another’s orders and paid more than his share of the price.”
By the time Laffite finished speaking, the Italian pirate, Vincent Gambi, wore a thundercloud on his swarthy face.
Nicolette held her breath, watching the two men challenging each other’s authority with cold, murderous stares. Gambi was the first to give way.
“By the fires of Vesuvio, Laffite, will you kill every man-jack of us? Browne was an unholy sonuvabitch and and idiot to boot! But my men are my men! You had no right to deal him a rope!”
“You’re wrong, Gambi.” Laffite’s voice held the cold, quiet force of command. “All the men of Grande Terre are my men. Either we work together or we’ll hang separately. We all voted, fair and square. I am the Boss! What I say goes!”
Nicolette felt her own fury at Jean Laffite’s treatment of her replaced by a peculiar surge of pride as she watched him turn his back on the band of grumbling pirates, proving himself their one and only leader—a man who scorned fear.
She gave a sigh of relief that the confrontation was over and started to go to him. Then the glint of the sun on a pistol barrel and a figure pushing his way to the front of the milling crowd caught her eye.
“Jean, watch out!” she screamed.
The action went like clockwork. Laffite whirled and crouched. Dominique Youx, who had been approaching, yelled and tossed a gun to his unarmed brother.
Just as a pirate broke clear and yelled, “The men of Gambi take orders only from Gambi!” two shots rang out.
The pirate dropped to the sand, a jagged hole in his forehead, looking like a third bloodshot eye. Laffite stood erect.
“Anyone else?” His words cut with the deadly edge of a rapier. “Gambi?”
The challenging leader turned without a word and motioned his band to follow.
The sight of the dead man bleeding into the white sand made Nicolette feel sick. She was shivering, but she knew she wouldn’t faint. Her overriding emotion was one of soul-deep relief. Laffite was safe!
Then he was beside her, taking her into his arms and turning her away from the gory scene. He held her close until she stopped trembling, tilting her face up to look into her eyes. She hadn’t realized she was crying until he wiped the tears gently from her cheeks. A new kind of thrill ran through her at his touch.
In a horrible instant, the whole scene flashed back through her mind. She could have lost him! She clung tighter to him, praying for his kiss.
But instead of kissing her, Laffite cupped her face tenderly in his two hands and made love to her with his eyes. She couldn’t move… couldn’t speak. She was aware of his gaze caressing her very soul.
“You saved my life, Nikki,” he said softly.
A new roar rose from the beach, but this time from Laffite’s faithful followers. Nicolette listened, then realized what they were chanting: “Mam’zelle Boss! Mam’zelle Boss! Mam’zelle Boss!”
Confused, she looked from the men back to Laffite, pleading silently for some explanation.
He gave a quiet laugh. “It’s their way of saying, ‘You’ll do,’” he told her. “They want you to stay here with us. Will you, Nikki?”
She couldn’t take her eyes from his face. It seemed to her that the rest of the world and everyone in it had ceased to exist. Her whole being and reality lived in this man alone.
“Do I have a choice?” she whispered.
He took her hand in his and slowly brought her fingertips to his lips, kissing each in its turn. The feel of his warm breath on her flesh sent tingles of pleasure up her arms and awakened a throbbing ache in her heart’s most secret chamber.
“A woman always has a choice with me, Nikki.”
But she doubted it as he closed his arms around her and sought her lips.
Chapter Five
The island sang that night—cicadas, spring peepers, and crickets blending their choruses to match the song in Nicolette’s heart.
She understood at last. Her aunt’s words made sense. The whole world was suddenly in tune for the first time, and there seemed to be a rhyme and reason to everything.
Jean Laffite hadn’t simply happened into her life the night Octave Castaigne died. The fates had sent him to teach her the true meaning of love. The attack on the ship that brought her to Grande Terre had completed the master design—bringing them together, never more to be parted.
And what had she learned? She loved him without question; his happiness was far more important than her own. By making him happy, she would receive more than her own share of the same commodity. Love, given and received unselfishly, created a never-ending cycle of rewards for those involved. Nicolette Vernet was ready now. to offer and accept without question.
Nicolette could hardly contain her excitement as she sat in the slipper-shaped tub filled with heated rainwater, and let Sukey sponge her back and shoulders. The fancy cake of French soap scented the bedroom with delicate wafts of verbena. When Sukey finished with her, Nicolette leaned back, closed her eyes, and let the silky water caress her body.
She tried to envision what lay ahead in the hours, the days, the years to come. But try as she would, the only image which came clearly to mind was Jean Laffite’s face—the sun-bronzed cast of his skin framed in combers of darkness, which broke about his shoulders, his bold brows shadowing the green-gold glitter of his sometimes-melancholy eyes. She didn’t have to visualize his strong, sensuous mouth. The feel of his kisses still lingered on her lips.
Nothing else matters, she thought to herself. I’m my own person. The choice is mine.
She knew her parents would be disappointed by her decision and that hurt her. But not as much as the thought of life without Jean Laffite hurt. She couldn’t imagine spending the rest of her life away from the man she loved.
“There comes a time,” she’d told her aunt shortly after the incident on the beach that afternoon, “when a woman must choose between being selfish or resigning herself to living out an empty life to please others. I’ve made my choice, selfish as it may seem to some people.”
Jean Laffite, aided by Xavier, dressed slowly, meticulously. He savored the feel of fresh linen against his scrubbed skin. Rubbing a hand over his close-shaven face, he nodded his approval to his servant. He stepped into his perfectly cut trousers, then pulled on new boots, which shone like polished mahogany.
All for her, he thought to himself. For my Nikki!
Xavier, sensing the Boss’s pensive mood, remained silent as he carefully wound the sash of crimson satin about Laffite’s trim waist. Tonight his master wore the colors of the American flag—white shirt and blue britches, set off by the bright red cummerbund—to honor Louisiana’s first anniversary as a state.
Jean Laffite, a man whom no country claimed, longed to find a home for his fierce patriotism as much as a place for his intense affections. France, the land of his forebears, had been denied him when his parents transplanted to Spain before his birth. Spain, which had killed his Jewish grandfather and had driven the rest of the clan into exile in Santo Domingue, or Haiti, where the Laffite brothers had been born, stirred only his hatred now.
He knew the islands of the Antilles well. He had been schooled on Martinique, taken his military training on Saint Christopher, sailed with Beluche and his brothers under letters of marque out of Guadeloupe. His first bride hailed from Saint Croix. But those homelands were lost now, too. In 1804, when the slaves of Haiti rose up to drive the French off the island, Laffite and his family escaped with ten thousand other refugees to make a new home in Louisiana. Now they lived in the United States, and Laffite longed to make himself a valued citizen, not a man outlawed and hunted by its government.
His need for respect, for belonging, and his need for the love of Nicolette Vernet twisted and twined about each other in his mind and in his heart, making each an intergral part of his whole desire.
Laffite told himself that with a woman he loved and cherished at his side, he would naturally become more respectable in others’ eyes and be more easily accepted by his countrymen.
It was all well and good to be the Boss of several hundred pirates, privateers, freebooters, and buccaneers expelled from the four corners of the world. But he longed for more. He enjoyed his status of “gentleman smuggler” in New Orleans—the camaraderie of the Crescent City’s leading businessmen when they met at Maspero’s Exchange and the shy but admiring looks offered him by their wives and lovely daughters at the opera—but it pained him that he was never invited into their close-knit society. There were a few wealthy rebels who entertained him in their homes on occasion, but the true crème de la crème of New Orleans eyed him with the same disdain and suspicion they had for the Americains—those settlers from other states who had invaded from the northeast, traveling down the Mississippi to begin new lives in the old city.
Nicolette, if she would have him, could change all that.
“You going to marry her, Boss?” Xavier asked suddenly.
Jean Laffite looked down into the inky face and opened his mouth to give an immediate “yes,” but it froze on his lips. He frowned.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” he said instead. “I can’t! We’ve got every type of man on this island, from ships’ masters to boy whores, but not one priest in the lot. Not even a back-country parson to say the words over us!”
Xavier grinned, his large teeth shaping a crescent in his dark moon-face. “I got a right handsome broomstick, Boss. Ain’t never been jumped before, neither. Reckon it might not be as fancy as the sort of wedding her papa’d give her in New Orleans, but it’ll tie a right smart knot all the same. My ma and pa didn’t have no preacherman, but here I is, big as life—almost—and all thanks to a ole broomstick!”
Laffite’s frown deepened. The thought of Nicolette Vernet jumping a broomstick like a slave wench rather than having a priest preside over her marriage bothered him. She deserved better. Did he even dare ask her to do such a thing?
He’d had one of his captains read the ceremony when he married Bianca, but she’d been beyond protesting by then. She would have allowed him to have his way with her, if he’d demanded it under the circumstances, without benefit of any knot-tying. That service had been for Gambi, not for Bianca and himself. But he could not marry Nicolette in that manner. Despite his formal education, island superstitions were deeply ingrained in him. To repeat that type of ceremony might well set the fates in motion to repeat the tragic ending.
“Get me that broomstick, Xavier!” Laffite ordered at last.
Still, vague fears gnawed at him. Would Nicolette Vernet consent to marry him under these or any other conditions? He could make her stay on Grande Terre, but he couldn’t make her love him.
Jean Laffite, the fearless corsair, had sailed the seven seas, fought as a privateer for the government of Cartegena, faced rapiers, pistols, and knives in more duels than he could remember. He had pitted his strength against swamp panthers, hurricanes, yellow fever, and his own mutinous men. But now he found his hands clammy, his throat dry as sun-bleached bo
nes, and his heartbeat as erratic as slack sails in a nor’easter. He was terrified at the thought of asking Nicolette Vernet to become his wife.
Nicolette, waiting down the hall in the pink-and-gold sitting room, was in no less of a dither. She anticipated his knock at any moment, the edges of her frayed nerves at the point of unraveling. He had yet to declare himself. Would he tonight?
Following the afternoon fracas on the beach with Gambi and his men, Laffite had escorted her back to the mansion and left her in her aunt’s care, telling them both to rest and be ready for the exciting activities that evening.
He had kissed her, yes. But he hadn’t asked her to marry him. Maybe he didn’t love her the way she loved him.
The longer Nicolette waited, the more dismal her thoughts became. They clicked through her mind like a nun’s beads at vespers—sharp, grating, inevitable in their sameness and lack of warmth.
She sat, straight of spine, on a rose brocade slipper chair, and laced her nervous fingers in her lap. Part of her prayed for him to hurry, while another part hoped he would give her more time to compose herself. She didn’t want to rush impulsively into his arms the minute she saw him—begging him to have her, promising to love him always. No! That would never do!
What if he arrives with all intentions of asking me to be his bride, but then changes his mind at the last instant? Because… Because of what? her mind groped.
Because I’m so young and inexperienced… because I’m as silly as a child at times… because Papa wouldn’t approve… because he knows I’m betrothed to another man…
“Because he doesn’t love me!” she wailed aloud.
The knock at the door startled Nicolette so that she almost tipped over the chair.
“Nikki? May I come in?” The husky timbre of his voice caused a hollow ache inside her as if she hadn’t eaten a decent meal in several days.
Her own voice surprised her with its strength and musical clarity when she answered, “Yes, please, Jean. I’m ready.”
Tainted Lilies Page 6