by Beth White
Fortunately, his own quirky sense of the ridiculous rescued him during these ever more frequent trips to barbarous outposts like Mobile and beyond. That, and a certain talent for extracting—and planting—pertinent information.
“Colonel Durnford,” he said, firing the opening salvo, “it is my hope that British ports along the Gulf Coast will not be closed to Spanish merchants such as myself—now that the crazy colonials in the northeast have elected to cut off the nose of their collective face. We Spaniards, of course, have no interest in making war with our best customer.”
Durnford’s mottled complexion darkened. “You heard about that, then?” He did not, Rafa noted, answer the question.
“’Tis news likely to spread at the rate of fleas in a kennel.” He spread his hands in a gesture copied from his Gallic friends in New Orleans. “This so-called declaration of independence, which is as stupid as it is appalling, is like to create shock waves in all manner of unexpected places.”
“It was indeed ill-advised.” Durnford exchanged glances with Redmond. “What do you know about it, Don Rafael?”
Rafa smiled and brushed an invisible speck of lint from his breeches. “That your King George is the grossest villain since Caligula. He has, they say, ‘obstructed the administration of justice,’ making judges dependent on his will alone. That he and his minions subject colonial citizens to a ‘jurisdiction foreign to their Constitution and unacknowledged by their laws.’ That he has erected a multitude of new offices and sent ‘swarms of officers’ to harass people and to eat them out of house and home. That he levies taxes without the people’s consent. That he has, in short, fundamentally altered all aspects of British government.”
Rafa had kept his voice quiet, but by the time he finished, he was aware that a certain intensity colored the words. The women had abandoned the topic of fashion and turned to listen, Mademoiselle Lyse staring at him with wide golden eyes.
He would have given much for a window into her brain at that moment. Many French Americans resented British presence but were, for a variety of reasons, unable to leave their homes and businesses in order to start over elsewhere. Those who did remain were required to swear at least nominal loyalty to King George.
Before he could ascertain anything like truth, the heavy lashes fell, shielding her gaze.
Daisy Redmond sat forward, her small fists clenched. “How dare they make such absurd claims! King George is—is . . . Why, he’s the king! He has a perfect right to tax anyone he chooses! And how else could he pay for the military protection provided by my papa and his soldiers?” She glared at Rafa. “How dare they?”
“I am only repeating the main phrases that have been passed along the information circuit.”
Colonel Durnford tapped his fingers against his lips. “That is quite a mouthful of accusation. And you say they have literally declared themselves independent of their sovereign nation?”
“It would seem so.” Rafa sipped from the fragile cup in his hand. “Personally, I think it’s all a tempest in a teapot, so to speak.”
He got the expected laugh from that. Miss Daisy sat back, and the conversation veered to less volatile topics, such as the price of sugar and the problem of freebooters who infested the shipping lanes between Havana and Pensacola.
Fortunately, as he had hoped, Rafa seemed to have laid to rest any suspicions the officers might have harbored regarding the purpose behind his visit. Both men continued to treat him with a mixture of amusement and mild disdain.
Which was perfectly acceptable. Desirable even.
Eventually Miss Daisy remembered that he was to have entertained with his voice and guitar. Agreeably he rose and fetched his instrument, a beautiful rosewood guitar designed and built by his grandpapa. He pulled it from the protection of its red velvet drawstring sack, made by his grandmama, grinning at the expected gasp of admiration from his audience. The inlaid mosaic of colored chips of turquoise and ebony encircling the sound hole made it a thing of great beauty as well as augmenting its resonance.
He rippled off a minor scale and chord progression, grimacing to find it out of tune, then bent to pluck the strings and turn the pegs to his satisfaction. Finally he tried the same cadenza and shrugged, glancing at the French girl. “It is as good as I can make it in this terrible heat. What would you like to hear?”
Lyse straightened, apparently startled to find herself the one being addressed. “The rest of ‘De Colores,’” she blurted.
“Bueno.” He fingered a few arpeggiated chords, held her eyes, and began to sing. It was not a love song, but he made it so. Such was the gift he’d been given.
She stared back at him, her quizzical expression softening until her lips began to curve in a smile.
Then he remembered he was to charm the English young lady and not the French. Caramba. Sometimes the estúpido act became all too real.
2
Lyse awakened early, with the first calling of the birds. Leaving Daisy asleep, lying neatly on her side with hands tucked under her cheek, she slipped out of the high bed and dropped onto the cool plank floor. Dressing started with brushing and replaiting her hair, then securing her stockings above the knees with ragged ribbons and lacing on her stays. She stepped into her old blue linen petticoat, tied it over her shift, then pinned the open-front dress atop it all. She took a squirming moment to adjust the tight-fitting bodice, wishing there were money to purchase fabric for a new dress. Her body had filled out in disconcerting places over the summer, slimming down in others, until she hardly felt like the same girl who’d joined Daisy for lessons with her governess last spring.
She padded on stocking feet down the stairs, carrying her shoes and trying not to hit the creaky spots. She had promised to meet Don Rafael outside Burelle’s midmorning, as Major Redmond had all but ordered her to do. She was early, hoping to beg a beignet from the inn’s kitchen before her appointment.
Frankly she would be surprised if the Spaniard remembered to meet her. The song she requested of him, the so beautiful “De Colores” . . . eh, bah, he’d intended it for Daisy after all. After one line of liquid music, he’d turned that bovine gaze on Daisy, looking at her as if the sun and moon rose in her blue eyes.
Not that her friend noticed any man who wasn’t Simon Lanier. Daisy had smiled at the Spaniard with sunny indifference that bordered on insult and asked him if he knew “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes.”
Smiling at the memory of Don Rafael’s incredulous expression, she quickly slipped on her shoes, left the Redmonds’ house, and swung down the street toward the inn. The town was still sleepy on this bright midweek morning. Sailors who had spent the previous evening carousing were still abed, fishermen not yet returned from a night of shrimping, crabbing, and fishing. The shops would open around ten, when housewives and chefs sent their servants out to market.
A few young working women like herself were out and about, drawing water for the day or executing other errands. Lyse waved at people she knew, but didn’t stop to talk as she might normally have done. As she reached the corner where Burelle’s sat next to the livery and blacksmith, her stomach gave a loud rumble. Joony, the inn’s cook, should have hot beignets coming out of the grease by now. A beignet was an absolute necessity.
“Hola! Señorita Lanier!”
She stopped, skirts lifted to jump over a puddle, and looked up and down the muddy street. Then movement on the inn’s deep second-floor balcony drew her eye. Don Rafael, dressed in buckskin breeches and white shirtsleeves, leaned upon the wrought iron rail, waving a red handkerchief. The brilliant waistcoat was nowhere in evidence.
Lyse waved back. “Good morning, monsieur! You are risen early! I was just about to go round to the kitchen for breakfast.”
“I beg you will join me in the dining room instead. I’m on my way down.” Before she could say yea or nay, he disappeared through the French door behind him.
Lyse was left to jump over the mud onto the brick pathway which led to the inn’s front g
allery. Her family’s history with the Burelles was a long and colorful one. Her great-grandmother had baked for the present owner’s grandfather in the Old Fort Louis tavern before the town had moved in 1711 to its present location at the mouth of Mobile Bay. Over the years, members of the two families had intermarried until mutual cousins often sprouted in the most unexpected places.
Monsieur Burelle’s married daughter Brigitte was sweeping the porch and greeted Lyse with a cheerful “Good morning” as she mounted the shallow front steps.
“B’jour, Brigitte!” Lyse smiled without stopping to talk. She hurried into the inn’s dining room, where the houseman was popping open a fresh white tablecloth and letting it float down onto a table by the open window.
Zander gave her his usual wide grin as he smoothed wrinkles from the cloth. “M’sieur be lookin’ for shrimps, come time for makin’ de gumbo.”
“I don’t have shrimp yet, Zander,” she said, pausing with a hand on the door lintel. “In fact, I haven’t seen Simon since yesterday morning.” She glanced at the kitchen door. “I was hoping there might be hot beignets . . .”
“My Joony got the grease a-bubblin’ since dawn. And we got sugar brought in yesterday!” He kissed his black fingers.
Lyse laughed at the slave’s wicked grin. “Sugar? Then I better hurry before the word gets out and they’re all bought up!”
“Oh, señorita, please don’t abandon me when you have just arrived!” Don Rafael Maria Gonzales de Rippardá, resplendent in a dark-green jacket with deep lace-trimmed cuffs, over fine buckskin breeches and a scarlet-and-gold waistcoat, descended the stairs. “I must be insulted!”
It appeared they would be conversing in English today—the neutral tongue.
Lyse looked at Zander. She couldn’t afford to actually pay for beignets. Joony could usually be counted upon to give her a sack full of the droplets that splattered off the spoon into tiny, mouth-watering, grease-laden confections.
“Come, you must be my guest. I insist!”
Guest? She wavered. She had never dined in the tavern as a paying customer. If Monsieur Burelle came in and saw her here, he might shoo her out like a mosquito.
Apparently Don Rafael mistook her reluctance, for genuine hurt seeped into his expression as he executed a formal bow. “But I see that you are quite busy, so I will excuse you—and I will eat alone.” With a set smile he sauntered toward Zander’s table.
The thought of beignet scraps flew out of her head. “Oh, no no! Of course I will join you, it’s just that I never—”
“Ma’m’selle forgot to ask me to set two places ’stead o’ her usual one,” Zander interrupted smoothly. “Come, ma’m’selle, while I get another plate for m’sieur.” He stood behind a chair and waited for her to be seated, then pulled out another one for Don Rafael. With a friendly nod, he headed for the kitchen.
Feeling as if she’d suddenly been transported into her daydream from the pier yesterday, Lyse looked at the snowy linen napkin on top of her plate. It had been folded in the shape of a peculiar, long-necked seagull. She glanced at the porch. Brigitte was going to come in and evict her at any moment.
Don Rafael seemed unaware of her unease. He picked up the seagull in front of him and destroyed it with a careless snap, then draped it across his lap. Propping his elbows on the table, he fixed her with sleepy brown eyes.
She couldn’t make herself ruin her napkin bird, so she set it aside and tried to return that unsettling regard. He was an empty-headed popinjay. A practiced flirt. Nothing to be scared of.
She cleared her throat. “What would you like to see first this morning?”
“I have already seen it,” he said with a smile.
A silver-tongued popinjay, she amended. She willed herself not to blush. “Wait until you see Joony’s beignets and seafood omelet. They should be in an art gallery.”
Fortunately Zander returned with another plate and setting of flatware. He addressed Don Rafael with the respect due a wealthy patron of the inn. “I like to recommend the chef’s specialty of the mornin’, m’sieur. The omelet—”
“Belongs in an art gallery, I understand.” The Spaniard winked at Lyse. “I defer to the collective wisdom. Yes, and an order of beignets and—do you have the chicory coffee? I develop the taste for strong drink since I live in New Orleans.”
Zander kissed his fingers again in approval. “Oh, yes, she will grow the hair on m’sieur’s chest! And for ma’m’selle?”
“Regular coffee for me.” If she was going to be shooed out of the dining room, she might as well enjoy it first.
After Zander ambled away, she picked up her napkin, cupping it in her hands. One more minute and she would put it in her lap.
The Spaniard’s eyes were caressing her face. “You live in the Mobile for all your life, Señorita Lanier?”
She nodded. “I am Creole—native-born Louisianan. My papa runs the ferry across the bay.” When he wasn’t in gaol. “Also my grandpapa and his brother own ships here and in New Orleans. Perhaps you know the Lanier Brothers Transport company?”
Don Rafael tilted his head. “I have seen the ships. This is an important business, I think.”
The popinjay had beautiful manners. She couldn’t tell from his expression whether he considered it strange for a descendant of such a well-known family to be walking about barefoot.
“I suppose.” It always came down to Papa and his rash decisions. But then, if he hadn’t made those rash decisions, she wouldn’t be here. She took the napkin bird by its beak, shook it briskly, and laid it in her lap. “We can take the ferry down to Dauphine Island today, if you like. It’s a pretty day to be on the water.”
Holding her skirts clear of the mud and standing water, Daisy took the schoolhouse steps two at a time, praying nobody would see such an unladylike and undignified dash. But she had discovered from unfortunate experience that if the primer spelling list wasn’t on the chalkboard before the students arrived, she would face an hour of mayhem from which the day might never recover. She had thought Lyse might wake her, but the other side of the bed was empty, and no trace remained of her friend’s presence except a slight dent in the other side of the bolster.
Hurriedly she fished in her pocket for the key and let herself in. The one-room building, adjoined to the brick hospital situated on Conception Street, was constructed on a raised platform in the vain hope that frequent floodwaters wouldn’t rise into the schoolroom. This morning the floors were still damp from a heavy rainstorm earlier in the week, but at least there was no standing water under her desk, which happened to be the lowest point of the room.
Straightening desks along the way, she hurried to the blackboard at the front of the room and found a small piece of chalk in her desk drawer. Her father had the desk made for her as soon as he realized she was determined to stuff education into the children who wandered the downtown streets like feral cats. Tongue between her teeth, she started writing the spelling list.
She dearly wished that she might hold classes at least five days a week, but so far she had not convinced her father to allow her more than two. He insisted that she must reserve time for supervising the upkeep of their home. Besides, many of the children she wanted to teach were needed in running the various business endeavors of their parents. She herself had had the benefit of a governess who had taught her her letters, as well as deportment and a smattering of languages and music. Dear widowed Mrs. Calder had willingly included Lyse in the lessons, and both girls grieved when she caught yellow fever and passed away last fall.
Determined to pass along the benefit of her expensive education, she tried to convince the young mothers she met socially that their children would make more capable artisans, businessmen, fishermen, citizens, if they knew at least the basics of arithmetic, reading, and writing. To her joy, her little class had grown to the point that they must soon look for a bigger room.
Until then, she must find ways to contain the chaos.
She had just written �
�decision” in her best copperplate when footsteps sounded on the steps outside. Someone was early today, she thought, glancing over her shoulder. Probably nine-year-old Emée Robicheaux, precocious and hungry for learning. Daisy could hardly keep up with her requests for more books to read. She’d had to ask Lyse to start bringing books from her grandfather’s magnificent library.
But when she recognized the tall figure standing in the doorway, backlit by the morning sun, she almost dropped the chalk. “Simon!” She laid the chalk on the rail under the blackboard, dusted her hands, then the front of her dark-blue worsted dress. “What are you doing here?”
He sauntered in with his rolling gait, his usually pleasant expression replaced by something . . . odd. “I’m looking for my sister. Have you seen her?”
“Lyse?” Of course he meant Lyse, little Geneviève was only four. “Yes, she spent the night with me, but she left the house early this morning. She was going to . . .” Then it occurred to her that Simon might not know anything about Don Rafael Gonzales. She had never lied to Simon, but perhaps she shouldn’t blurt that out.
“Going where?” Now Simon was scowling, one of his famous Lyse is in trouble scowls. He braced himself against her desk and folded his arms.
Daisy practically worshiped the ground Simon walked on, but he could be overprotective of his little sister. “I’m so glad you came into town this morning,” she said, swishing closer to him with a smile. “I need fresh water from the spring for the children. Would you mind taking the bucket and—”
“Of course. After you tell me where Lyse is.” He wasn’t angry, at least not with her, not yet. Just implacable as only Simon could be.
Daisy had known him since she and Lyse were six and Simon was a ten-year-old miniature version of his handsome father. The day they met, shortly after her mother died, she’d been trailing behind her bewildered, grieving father in the Emporium. The Lanier children, ragged but happy, had been engrossed in racing a box turtle against a frog down a back aisle, while their beautiful mulatto mama bartered at the front of the store with Monsieur Gerard over the price of a pair of men’s stockings for her husband.