The Creole Princess

by Beth White

  “You mean besides him?” Lanier jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

  “Yes.” Lyse glanced back to give Rafa an apologetic smile. “Papa, Don Rafael has brought Grandpére to visit us.”

  Lanier stopped dead still to stare at Lyse. “What? Why?”

  “He wanted to see the children, especially the new baby.” Lyse’s eyes filled. “Papa, he loves us very much. Please be kind to him.”

  Rafa couldn’t tell from Lanier’s stony expression whether his daughter’s plea reached him. He resumed walking, but at least he didn’t shake her off. At the house he opened the front door and planted himself in the doorway, leaving Lyse and Rafa on the porch behind him.

  “Mon pére,” Lanier said with little apparent affection. “I don’t know why this sudden desire to gloat over us, but now that you have satisfied your curiosity, I hope you will take yourself back to your British mansion and leave us be.”

  Rafa heard the hiss of Lyse’s indrawn breath. “Oh, no,” she whispered.

  He gave her a cautioning look. “Let your grandpapa handle it.”

  There was a moment of tense silence, broken only by the gurgling of the baby. Then Charles Lanier’s cultured French, “It is not so, my son. There is no gloating, only regret that I didn’t come sooner.”

  Antoine Lanier moved stiffly into the room and stood, arms crossed, staring at his father, who, still holding the baby, occupied the room’s only comfortable chair. With a nod, Rafa encouraged Lyse to enter as well, and he followed close behind. The two of them hovered just inside the door. Justine and the children clustered around the rough pine table, which had been cleared of the baskets.

  Little Geneviève bounced to her knees on the bench. “Papa! Grandpére brought us all lemon drops! See?” She opened her mouth for his inspection.

  Antoine’s face softened. “Yes, I see.” As if compelled, he looked at his father again. “Thank you, Father. We are all glad to see you.”

  “I miss you, Antoine,” the old man said softly. “Especially now that your mother is gone. I would that you would bring the children home, so they could come to know their heritage.”

  “Their home and heritage are here,” Antoine fired back. “When they are old enough, they may visit you on their own—as do Lyse and Simon.” He turned to glare at Lyse. “Though I’m beginning to think I have allowed them entirely too much freedom. They both seem to be short on good sense.”

  “Antoine,” Justine said, gently chiding. “Not in front of our guest.” She rose to take little Rémy, who had begun to gnaw on his grandfather’s watch fob, and smiled when the baby buried his face in her neck. “Come, little one, it is dinnertime for you. Lyse, perhaps you’d like to prepare tea for everyone? Bring the children and come with me.” Without waiting for a reply, she dipped a curtsey and glided from the room.

  Lyse gave Rafa a helpless look. “Would you like tea?”

  Tea was the last thing on his mind, and the stepmother was clearly a beautiful widget. “Of all things, señorita,” he said with a smile.

  As she herded the children in a noisy exit toward the back of the house, Rafa and Antoine seated themselves at the table. He couldn’t help comparing the stark simplicity of this small room to the grand salon in which the Dussouys’ soirée had been held. Here there were no Aubusson carpets, no imported furniture or gilt-framed portraits to please the eye. No rich pastries on silver trays and no candelabra with scented tapers to soften the glare of the afternoon sun. No bejeweled guests providing bright conversation to accompany the lilting strains of a string ensemble.

  Just three silent men in a fisherman’s cottage.

  Rafa waited, prepared to act the mediator.

  Antoine finally cleared his throat. “Justine and her tea,” he said gruffly. “I have a keg of ale on the back porch.” He made to rise.

  Charles stopped him with an abrupt gesture. “No, my son. I see I’m not welcome, so I’ll not stay. I just wanted to hold the children in my arms once, before—well, before it’s too late.” He glanced at Rafa. “Giving you a chance to earn some Spanish coin was excuse enough. If you’ll conclude your business, we’ll take ourselves back across the bay and relieve you of our unwanted presence.”

  Antoine thumped a fist against the table. “You make me the churl, when it is you who cast me out!”

  The old man’s lips tightened. “It is you who wanted to go your own way. I merely allowed the consequences to fall where they would.”

  “The consequences rest on your grandchildren. They bear the burden of your selfishness.”

  Alarmed at the storm boiling to the surface, Rafa half rose, deliberately jarring the table against his thighs. “It seems, gentlemen, that it would be more to the purpose for the two of you to join forces in convincing your British masters of the benefit in allowing free trade for Spanish ships wishing to take port in your fair city. They do no one good by allowing freebooters to make off with merchandise that would strengthen commerce here.”

  “Allowing freebooters?” The old man barked a laugh. “French, American, and Spanish ships alike are being robbed by the English navy, while the Regulars turn a blind eye. And King George does his best to tax us all into penury. My family has owned property here for three-quarters of a century, and it’s been all I can do to hold on to it in the face of his majesty’s greed.”

  Antoine turned on him. “And the Spanish are no better—the dogs took New Orleans by the throat and slaughtered anyone who protested.”

  The rational side of Rafa’s brain understood the Frenchman’s bitterness against the commander who had ordered his brother’s execution. Still, he was young and proud enough to resent the insult. He stood blinking until he had a grip on his temper, then said carelessly, “I defy you to claim New Orleans isn’t better off with Gálvez in command of the city.” He shrugged. “Besides, that is all water under a very old bridge. The question now is how to get one’s cargo through the gauntlet of pirates patrolling the Gulf of Mexico.”

  Antoine considered him with narrowed black eyes. “My boat is armed, as is my son’s. Besides, we navigate coastal channels the British are too lazy and undermanned to frequent. Your merchandise will be perfectly safe.”

  “That is good to know.” Rafa hesitated. “I had wanted to set sail before the evening tide.”

  “We can leave immediately.” Antoine skewered Rafa with narrowed eyes. “But try to make free with my daughter again and you will find yourself missing some essential parts.”

  He was going back to New Orleans, and she would never see him again, Lyse reminded herself as she carefully placed the chipped teapot and four mismatched cups on Justine’s silver tray. Her young stepmother had brought the tray with her as part of her dowry, and it was one of the few really fine items in the cottage’s shabby little kitchen. It was reserved for use with the most honored of guests, like Grandpére.

  And Rafael Gonzales.

  She knew she walked the razor-thin edge of Papa’s temper, and if she stepped wrong, she risked his wrath not only upon herself but on Justine and the children as well. It was her place in this family to facilitate peace. To help them love one another, as Grandmére Madeleine had taught her.

  Grandmére, who had been born of shame but reared in grace, had understood the blessedness of peacemakers. Lyse found daily purpose in honoring her memory.

  So, if she could not have Rafa’s presence in her life, she could at least send him away without the bitter aftertaste of discord. Squaring her shoulders and recovering her smile, she picked up the tray and entered the salon.

  She found the three men on their feet, evidently prepared to leave the house. “Papa! Where are you going?”

  Papa, all but shoving Rafa through the door ahead of him, looked over his shoulder. “The Spaniard has hired me to take him down to his ship at Dauphine Island. Tell Justine I will be back later.”

  “But what about the tea?” She looked down at the tray. “Grandpére, don’t you want to—”

  “We�
�ll have tea another day,” Grandpére said gently. “I’ll come again, cher.” He walked over and bent to kiss her cheek, then whispered in her ear, “And so, I imagine, will Don Rafael.”

  Her gaze flew to Rafa, who blew her an insouciant kiss over her father’s stiff shoulder. Papa pushed him out of sight and growled, “Well, old man? You wanted to come. The tide will not wait.”

  Lyse set down the tray and flung her arms around her grandfather. “Please come back! We have missed you!” She lowered her voice. “And tell Rafael thank you for coming. And that I will pray for him.”

  Grandpére kissed her again and let her go. “He is a blessed man.” He followed Papa out the door.

  Lyse ran to the rotten porch and watched the men untie the boats—Papa in Simon’s, and Rafa and Grandpére in the hired boat—and begin the short trip over to Mobile. She might never see Rafael Gonzales again, but her life was forever changed because of him. He had seen in her more than a drunken fisherman’s daughter. He had stood beside her in the face of Isabelle Dussouy’s arrogance and shown her the woman’s essential cowardice. He had even sparked hope that Scarlet might one day be free—if she could find a way to be brave and persistent and very clever.

  Those three things she was determined to be, God willing.

  7

  PORT OF NEW ORLEANS, NEW SPAIN

  MARCH 22, 1777

  The Valiente limped into New Orleans with more than her sails in disrepair. The port side of her upper gun deck had been broadsided, and the berth deck was carrying water. Two of her three square-rigged masts had been clipped so that she listed badly.

  Rafa, nursing a hole in his shoulder from which a scrap of iron had been removed by the ship’s surgeon, hobbled down the gangplank with less than his usual swagger. He frankly dreaded the coming report. Gálvez was likely to hand him his head—if Pollock didn’t do it first.

  The gold was gone.

  He could still hardly credit it. That he’d survived the pirates’ attack seemed even more miraculous.

  He stopped, eyes tightly clenched against the sensation of the quay shifting beneath his feet. The wounded shoulder throbbed, and his stomach heaved like seas in a northeast storm. He’d wanted nothing so much as to keep to his cabin. But reporting in must come first. By now, word of the attack would have reached Gálvez, and delay would only make it worse.

  He pulled himself together, set one foot in front of the other, and crossed Decater Street toward the governmental offices of the Cabildo in the Places d’Armes. Behind him the docks throbbed with activity—shrimp boats, barges, and tugs clogging the piers, and longshoremen hauling barrels, crates, sacks, and every imaginable container onto the quay. Laughter, profanity, and shouts in every language of the globe competed with the shrill of whistles and rattle of carts and drays along the wharf. On coming home, Rafa would normally have stopped to absorb and revel in the stabbing color and sound and odor of his adopted city.

  But today . . .

  This day, every sensation focused on the loss of twenty-four thousand pesos for which he must give account. The noise around him only added to the headache that threatened with every step to send him to his knees.

  He didn’t even stop to admire the beautiful Church of St. Louis, the center of the Places d’Armes. Arriving at the Cabildo, he was greeted by a yawning young adjutant in sloppy uniform and gigantic powdered peruke, too busy admiring himself in a pair of shiny Italian leather boots to spare more than a cursory glance at Rafa’s credentials. Making a mental note to report this lackadaisical guard, Rafa rapped upon the governor’s door.

  A moment later Gálvez himself appeared. His impatient scowl turned to surprise and welcome. “Gonzales! I was beginning to think you’d absconded with the king’s gold. Come in and tell me—” The general’s heavy black brows twitched together. “Sit down first, before you fall down. Here.” He hooked the leg of a chair with his foot and pulled it over before pushing Rafa into it.

  “Thank you, sir.” Rafa struggled to sit upright and hold his superior’s frowning gaze. “I’m . . . all right. But I’m afraid I have bad news.”

  Gálvez stood over Rafa, arms folded. “It would appear so. Have you seen the surgeon?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve a hole in my shoulder and a killer headache, but I’ll recover after a bath and a day’s rest.” Rafa swallowed. “It’s the gold. It’s gone. We were ambushed by pirates just past the tip of Dauphine Island. We’re lucky they didn’t find the gunpowder.”

  Gálvez stared for a moment. “Pirates took the gold, left the gunpowder, and released the ship?” He sat heavily against the edge of his desk. “That makes no sense.”

  Rafa allowed himself to slump, sliding down until his head rested against the back of the chair, closing his eyes against the lurid images that had played in his head for the last twenty-four hours. “Yes, sir, I know. If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

  “Start at the beginning, then. Tell me all.”

  “We had sailed four miles out of the Dauphine Island harbor into the Mississippi Sound. The weather was good, with a brisk southwest wind, calm seas. I was on the bridge with Torre at the helm, keeping an eye out, since privateers are known to hide in the bayous. The lookout in the upper rigging shouted that a corvette approached from behind, coming up fast. Wasn’t long before I could see her with the naked eye. She was sixty feet long, maybe seventy tons berthen, carrying ten guns and flying a British flag. Fast, sir—so fast I knew we wouldn’t outrun her.” Rafa rolled his head against the back of the chair. “She fired a wide warning shot and I knew I’d better stop or return fire.”

  “Were you in British waters?”

  “Probably, though I could argue not.”

  “No sense initiating aggression,” Gálvez said reluctantly. “So you dropped anchor.”

  “Yes, sir. I chose caution—and paid for it.”

  Gálvez grunted. “What happened?”

  “After we hove to, their captain and three mates prepared to board, all armed to the teeth—and, here’s the thing—” Rafa gritted his teeth. “They were disguised—face paint, shaved heads, crazy plaited beards. I’d swear they were British, except the captain’s accent was a little off. French, maybe?”

  Gálvez shrugged. “The Acadians hold long grudges. But why hide under an English flag?”

  Rafa struggled to sit up. “I don’t know, but as soon as I realized we’d been tricked by pirates, I signaled our cannoneers to fire. Pretty quickly the scene was smoke and noise and blood, and I went down, from a musket ball.” Remembering the searing pain of the hit, he gripped his aching shoulder. “Seems they thought I was dead. I came to in a puddle of blood, saw the pirates were forcing my men to haul off the crates of gold, and knew I had to do something. So I crawled backward into a niche where I’d hidden a loaded musket and ammunition. I’d set up a series of signals for contingencies, whistles mostly.” He chuckled, remembering the enemies’ consternation when their captives suddenly dropped the cargo and dove back onto the Valiente while Rafa covered them with musket fire. “My men all deserve medals, sir. We were under way before they could stop us, limping but alive.”

  Gálvez was quiet for a long moment. “I will think,” he finally said. “Disasters occur, and one must rework and recover.”

  There was no rage. No blame. Rafa knew that many commanders would have him court-martialed—or hung. And this was the heart of his loyalty. How could he repay such grace?

  “I will get the gold back, sir. I will return to Mobile, I will find the pirate’s lair, and I will bring him back to you.”

  “Yes, but first you must have your shoulder repaired. While you do this I will have Pollock commandeer the powder and supplies. Later we shall worry about the gold.”

  “The longer we wait, the less chance we have to recover the loss.”

  “Patience,” Gálvez said, raising a hand to keep Rafa in his chair. He moved to sit behind his desk. “You have the letter from our friend in Pensacola?”

/>   “Yes, of course.” Abashed to have forgotten such an important item, Rafa reached into his coat pocket. “Here it is.” He handed Gálvez the thick packet he’d carried safely in spite of everything. “At least this didn’t fall into enemy hands.”

  “Yes. If anything is more valuable than a hold full of gold, this is it.” Gálvez broke the packet’s seal, unfolded it, and swiftly perused the closely written missive. A wolfish grin spread across the patrician features. “And taking into account the details of Fort Charlotte in Mobile that you have provided, Spain will soon control the entire Gulf Coast.” He looked up at Rafa from under heavy brows. “You are dismissed, Gonzales. Clean up and report to Pollock. After you have briefed him, tell him I want to see him forthwith.”

  “Yes, sir.” Rafa managed to get to his feet and salute. “Thank you for your trust. I won’t fail you again.”

  When Gálvez merely waved a hand and kept reading, Rafa backed out of the room, already formulating a plan to return to Mobile. He would recover the gold. And if in the process he managed to capture an hour with a certain beautiful Creole, so much the better.

  MOBILE

  MARCH 1777

  The Chacaloochee Bayou was alive with returning spring. Wildflowers sprang up in niches along the Indian trails through the greening woods, tempting Lyse to slow down long enough to pluck a fragrant handful. Blue, her favorite color, clustered around dark-brown centers, making her think of Rafa singing “De Colores.” She walked along, scuffing her feet through the pine straw the wind had blown across the path, brushing the flower’s delicate petals against her fingers.

  She supposed he must be back in New Orleans by now. Perhaps he’d given the tea caddy to his maman and the lace to his sister Sofía. Sofía was a very lucky girl, to have such a brother.

  Of course, she thought with instant loyalty, Simon was a brother among brothers. Which was why she came to be walking through the woods, confident in her ability to persuade him to move back home.