“Papa says Diego is perfect for me and we’ll be very happy. Papa says he already thinks of Diego as his son.”
“Papa says… Papa says!” Gabrielle mimicked. “And why is he suddenly such an authority on marriage and happiness? He certainly didn’t manage his own very well! He never loved Francine, never wanted to marry her! Is he now going to force you only because he was forced and has lived to regret his lack of fortitude all these loveless years?”
Nicolette stared at her aunt, aghast. “What are you saying?”
Gabrielle DelaCroix for once in her life felt ashamed. She hadn’t meant to let uncautious words slip out in the heat of anger. Nicolette didn’t need to shoulder this burden along with all her others.
“Nothing, dear. Forget what I said.” She sighed. “It’s only that sometimes your papa acts like a first cousin to a jackass!”
The discussion ended with nothing resolved. Gabrielle, out of sheer desperation, borrowed Gator-Bait and sent him to the Basin with a message for Reyne Beluche, telling him to return to Grande Terre as quickly as possible and alert Laffite to the emergency. The Spy sailed within the hour.
Nicolette remained in her room, not wanting to see or speak to anyone. Sukey clucked over her chick, happy to be back among “civilized” people in an atmosphere she understood.
She groomed Nicolette carefully for her four o’clock meeting, a daily appointment now, with Diego Bermudez in the petit salon.
Nicolette stared vacantly into her mirror as the servant added a few soft curls around her face with a hot iron. She felt the heat near her face and thought with a sudden burst of relief that she might be coming down with yellow fever.
That would solve all my problems, she thought. I’d be dead before the wedding.
Nicolette rose on command, as she’d been conditioned to do since her return home a few days ago. The long skirt of palest blue muslin fell about her ankles from a high waist and a bodice much too tight for comfort in the May heat. She longed for the freedom of her bright peasant skirt or canvas sailor’s britches.
She almost smiled, thinking how horrified her mother would have been to see the casual way she’d dressed on Grande Terre. No stays, no corsets, and she had seldom bothered with slippers—stockings, never! She hadn’t truly valued that freedom until now, when it had been taken away forever.
“That M’sieu Diego, he shore a fine-looking gentleman!” Sukey enthused. “You two gonna have the prettiest babies in all N’Orleans, Mam’zelle Nikki!”
Babies! The servant’s statement stopped Nicolette’s breath for a moment. She felt herself gulping at the air to recover.
It was the first time she had even considered this facet of her marriage and the thought numbed her. She hardly knew Diego Bermudez. How could her papa expect her to allow Diego Bermudez to do the things necessary to produce babies?
When she left the room to meet Diego downstairs, she was trembling all over and her face was chalky-white.
“My dear, Nicolette,” Diego crooned as she came into the salon. “What a lovely bride you’ll make-all pale and fragile, like a muguet, a lily of the valley.”
She didn’t listen to his words, but answered automatically, because he always showered her with lavish compliments, “Thank you, Monsieur Bermudez.”
After he kissed her hand, he continued to hold it and said, “I want you to call me Diego from now on, Nicolette. After all, in a few days, or should I say, nights, we’ll be very close.”
He closed the door behind her. Only then did she realize that they were alone for the first time. Her mother should have been there to ensure the propriety of the meeting and relieve Nicolette of some of the strain of entertaining her fiancé.
“Where is Maman?” she demanded.
“I believe she said she’d be resting this afternoon, darling.”
The smile curling his thin lips sent a chill through Nicolette, and his calling her “darling” made her want to slap his insipid face and scream at him, “No! That’s Jean’s name for me! Don’t you dare call me that!”
But instead, she decided simply to leave. When she headed quickly for the closed door, Diego caught her arm and pulled her roughly up against his chest, holding her in a bruising grip.
“It isn’t time to go yet, Nicolette. I’ll tell you when you may leave. Until then, you will entertain me!”
Before she could reply, he captured her lips in a fierce kiss. His fingers bit into her ribs and he arched her back awkwardly, almost throwing her off balance. She dared not try to squirm away or he might drop his arm and let her fall. But when he let one hand glide up her bodice to fondle her breasts, she struggled against his hold. During this quiet battle, the door opened behind them.
“Monsieur Bermudez, I presume!” Gabrielle DelaCroix’s voice cut through the charged air like a shot through a quiet forest.
Diego righted Nicolette at once and released her.
“Aunt Gabi!” Nicolette said, surprised, feeling sick and dirtied.
Gabrielle pretended she hadn’t noticed the compromising embrace. “When I heard my sister had taken to her bed with a migraine, I immediately appointed myself chaperone for the afternoon. Of course, it would be unthinkable in any proper Creole household for an engaged couple to meet alone.”
“See here, madame, if you’re insinuating…”
“I never insinuate, monsieur!”
Gabrielle walked all around Bermudez, eyeing him in a calculating manner as if he were a slave on the block.
“So, you’re to be my niece’s husband? Well, well! You look respectable enough. But then, respectability in some cases is only a surface thing. What about it, Monsieur Bermudez, have you any hidden vices?”
“Madame!” Diego exclaimed, feeling unnerved by the woman’s outspoken manner.
“Well, answer me, young man! Women? Gambling? Drinking?” She drew herself up to eye level with him and gave him the blackest of stares. “It seems only fair that my niece should know what’s in store for her.”
Diego swallowed several times and his face changed from angry scarlet to fish-belly white under Madame DelaCroix’s scrutiny.
“I don’t keep a mistress, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Commendable!” Bermudez relaxed his guard at this slight praise so that her next statement caught him totally unprepared. “Commendable, but highly suspect! All Creole men have mistresses. Am I to take it from this admission that you don’t like women? That you prefer
“Madame, please!” he cut her off.
“Very well,” Gabrielle conceded. “I won’t pursue the matter with my niece present. However, her father should be aware of the type man he has picked for his daughter. He’s paid you a considerable dowry, I’m sure.”
Thinking of the outrageous sum—five thousand piastres—he had demanded of Claude Vernet, Diego almost smiled. Then his anger flared. Such a delicate matter was never discussed with women, and in this case he certainly didn’t intend to reveal that he had used the possible taint on the maternal side of Nicolette’s family to up the ante.
“I don’t see that this is any of your concern, and I refuse to remain here and be insulted by an outsider!”
He whirled about and hurried from the room, not even pausing to say goodbye to his fiance—. When they heard the carriage gate slam after him, Nicolette gave a great sigh of relief.
Gabrielle laughed. “The pompous ass! I’ve seen quite all I care to of Diego Bermudez!”
“I’m afraid you’ll see more, Aunt Gabi,” Nicolette said. “He’ll be back for dinner, as usual.”
Gabrielle stared at her niece, her mouth in a wordless “O” and her agile mind whirring with plans.
Chapter Eleven
Diego Bermudez stormed out of the Toulouse Street house and headed straight toward the river and the Vernet Company’s warehouse and offices near the levee. He decided against taking a carriage, hoping to walk off some of his rage before he confronted Claude Vernet. But his mood only soured more as
the smell of rotting garbage and emptied slops shimmered up in the afternoon heat from the open gutters, offending his nostrils.
He covered his nose with a perfumed square of linen and swore under his breath. No decent human being should try to exist in New Orleans after Easter. Most of the right people had left by now for the clean air and cool breezes of their plantations upriver or down.
“Another bit of unpleasantness for which I have my dear Nicolette to thank!” he grumbled. “I’d be at The Shadows, cool, comfortable, and properly wed, if she hadn’t decided to go traipsing off with that bastard Laffite instead of coming back to New Orleans as any decent woman would have. Well, we’ll just see after the wedding if the little hussy’s sorry for the way she’s acted!”
From the Place d’Armes, the ships riding at anchor made the Mississippi look like a forest thick with leafless trees. It seemed that all eight thousand inhabitants of the town must be occupied along the wharves today—loading and unloading cargo, hauling produce to the market, peddling their wares from baskets on their heads. The levee teemed with brawling, sweating masses, cursing in a dozen different languages.
Bermudez brushed past an old Choctaw squaw squatting in the shade of a sycamore at the edge of the square. She puffed cascarilla in her clay pipe while she hawked her sassafras, dried herbs, and charms.
Near Gallatin Street, mongrel women—all shades, from magnolia-pure, to café au lait, to tobacco-gold—roamed the levee. By daylight, they crept from the Swamp, where a man could buy a drink and a woman for a picayune and possibly get his throat slit in the bargain. By night, they hoped to lure men to visit their notorious brothels.
Something about the pure baseness of this area stirred heat in Diego Bermudez’s loins. He glanced farther upriver toward Tchoupitoulas Street and the section of the levee which fronted Faubourg Ste. Marie, where the Americains were establishing a foothold in the city. These foreigners, from other states, weren’t worth thinking about, but the several hot-sheet hotels he owned in that area and the rent past due from their madams were never far from Diego’s thoughts. His gambling debts would more than consume what the women owed him, but their rent would buy him time.
This proved a monthly problem. The gamblers and money-lenders were forever dunning him while he waited, hard-pressed, for his soiled doves to pay up. He couldn’t go to them and collect. Neither Diego Bermudez nor any other man in his right mind dared trespass in that area, even on his own property, without fear of his life. And the local authorities, such as they were, stayed far clear, accepting the average murder a night as none of their concern and good riddance to bad rubbish.
Well, he’d think of a way to get his money or, by God, he’d bum them out!
Diego laughed aloud and muttered, “Wouldn’t Nicolette’s high and mighty aunt love to know about my dealings with these women? No, I don’t have a mistress. I’d never let a woman use me. That’s my department, and Nicolette Vernet will soon be in it!”
It was hot inside the Vernet offices, and the ceiling fan, kept in motion by a small slave, drove waves of stifling air down Diego’s collar when he entered. He squirmed in his own sweat and cursed, mopping his brow.
“Ah, Diego!” Vernet hailed, his coat off and shirt sleeves rolled up, a serious breach of etiquette for any Creole gentleman, even if the temperature soared over 100. “High time you showed up!” He shoved a pile of papers across his cluttered desk. “This is your specialty. Damned if I can make a dent in all these bills of lading.”
“I’ll do what I can, sir, but I really came back to talk to you about Nicolette.”
“Nikki?” Claude asked, a worried frown on his tanned face. “She isn’t ill, is she?”
“No, monsieur, not at all. In fact, she looked wonderful this afternoon. I didn’t mean to alarm you. It’s just that I’ve been upset.”
Claude Vernet rose from the chair behind his desk and came to drape an arm around his future son-in-law’s slender shoulders.
“I’m sure she didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Diego. You have to remember that she’s high-strung, and after what she’s been through these past weeks… well, we both know the problems. Besides, all brides tend to be jittery. Take my word for it, son, after next Monday, everything will be just fine!”
“I’m not putting this well, monsieur,” Diego said, shrugging off the other man’s arm. “What happened this afternoon wasn’t Nicolette’s fault. It’s that aunt of hers, Madame DelaCroix.”
“Gabrielle?” Claude cried. “You mean she’s here… at the house? No one told us she was coming. Why didn’t anyone send word to me? Here and starting trouble already, is she?” he chuckled. “By God, some things never change! Thank heaven!”
He grinned like a boy and his eyes danced with marine-blue lights.
“Dear—Gabi!” he sighed. “Is she still beautiful… not gone to pudding like so many Creole matrons?” He babbled on in his excitement—remembering old times and quiet moments between them. “I can’t wait to see her. Why, it’s been almost ten years!”
He was pulling on his coat, shoving papers aside, and heading for the door.
“Monsieur Vernet! About the trouble she caused?” Diego called after his employer.
“Oh, don’t give it another thought! Beautiful women always cause trouble! It’s just Gabi’s way. She’s a very loving person, actually.” His words trailed off into pleasant thoughts for a moment, then he added, “She’s overpro-tective of Nikki… always has been. You’ll come to dinner tonight, of course…” and he was gone, leaving Diego Bermudez more angry than ever.
“I wouldn’t miss it!” Diego spoke to the now-empty doorway, glowering at Claude Vernet’s disappearing back.
Of the people involved in the family dinner that night, only two realized the full significance of the occasion—Diego Bermudez and Gabrielle DelaCroix. Both spent the remainder of the afternoon scheming to attain their opposite goals.
Gabrielle had seldom been bested, but her adversaries in the past had not often been as unemotional, unscrupulous, and ambitious as Diego Bermudez.
What lay so delicately in the balance of the evening’s outcome was nothing less than Nicolette’s entire future. Gabrielle refused to see it sacrificed on the matrimonial altar. Diego was just as determined to accomplish his own goals—a prosperous marriage, a partnership in the Vernet Company, and his share of that family’s fortune. He would brook no interference from any quarter.
As the dinner hour drew nearer, Nicolette finished sorting things in her mind. She had reached several conclusions: Diego Bermudez, as dull as he seemed next to Jean Laffite, would make a proper husband, and that had been her goal from birth—to marry well, make a good home, and bring numerous children to the union. By doing this, she would be a credit to her husband and to her parents. If they were happy, she could be happy.
The affair with Laffite had been no more than a lovely fairy tale. Life simply wasn’t made of spun sugar and dashing gentlemen smugglers. Little girls dreamed such dreams. Grown women did not!
She would cherish the memory of Laffite’s love all her days, but she knew now that it was not meant to be. She even felt fortunate that their interlude had come to such an abrupt conclusion. How much more difficult the memory would be if he had grown tired of her and sent her away!
She frowned at the thought. Hadn’t he done just that? At the very least, he had suggested strongly that she go. Would he have sent her packing if he had returned and found her there? She refused to think about that.
As for Aunt Gabi, she adored the woman, but as her maman had whispered quietly to her that very afternoon, “My dear sister has always been such a flighty person. She thinks she knows what is best for everyone, but in truth, she has never been able to choose wisely for herself. Consider the source, Nicolette, when she offers you advice.”
Nicolette thought about those words as she sat in her little, copper slipper tub, bathing carefully. I should have questioned his motives when Jean Laffite said he wanted to m
arry me… that he’d always love me. Surely, if he had wanted our marriage to be proper and legal, he could have arranged to bring a priest to Grande Terre. After all, he is the Boss, as he so often reminded me! But it served his purposes to pretend we were married… to play at being my husband for a time!
“Yes, I’m well out of that situation,” she told herself, “and fortunate that Diego doesn’t hold my frivolity against me!”
The frivolity she spoke of to herself surfaced in her mind as Jean Laffite’s lingering passion-filled embraces, his tender way of kissing the hollow of her neck, the peaks of her breasts, the inside of her thighs, and…
She pushed all such improper memories from her thoughts. That part of her life, brief as it had been, was over. Thinking about it aroused forbidden feelings, which embarrassed her deeply. She swore to herself that she would never dwell on the past again. She would think only of her future, and Diego Bermudez, and their life together!
Gabrielle DelaCroix tried discussing the barbarity of arranged marriages with Claude Vernet, but decided that she would do as well or better to go out and present her arguments to the brick wall at the back of the courtyard.
Claude wanted to reminisce about earlier days, to question her about life in Paris, her plans for the future. But he refused to discuss anything concerning the time she and Nikki had spent among the Baratarians.
Failing in her attempts to get through to Claude Vernet, Gabrielle chose another tack. She hated using trickery, especially on Nicolette, but this was no time to be fainthearted.
She knocked softly at Nicolette’s door, and heard her niece call, “Entrez.”
“Nikki, I’m so glad you haven’t dressed yet. I’ve brought you something. I saw what your mother had her provencial modiste make for you to wear, and though I hate to criticize, I’m afraid my sister lacks any sense of style.”
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