The Creole Princess

by Beth White

  Justine’s face lit as Daisy approached, and Rémy clapped his little hands. Justine set the squirming toddler down so that he could stagger toward Daisy.

  Daisy crouched, setting the basket aside, and caught him just before he tripped. “Give me kisses, sweet boy,” she cooed, burying her nose in his sweaty little neck.

  He giggled and grabbed fistfuls of her hair, mashing his face into her cheek. “Day-day!”

  Daisy looked up in surprise. “Goodness, is he talking already?”

  Justine flushed with pleasure. “I’ve been teaching him your name. The other children wanted to come, but I couldn’t manage them all by myself. Grandpére took them fishing,” she added, at Daisy’s inquiring look.

  “I’m so happy you brought Rémy,” Daisy said, rising with the baby in her arms. “Corporal Tully, isn’t he handsome?”

  Tully cleared his throat in noncommittal fashion. “Ma’am.” He retreated a yard or so away, to give the women some privacy.

  Smiling, Daisy scanned Justine’s face. “You look wonderful. How is Mr. Chaz? Recovered, I hope, from his not-so-felicitous stay with us.”

  “Yes, he’s well.” Justine bent to pick up the lumpy satchel she’d brought. “Sorry this is a bit smelly. He insisted on sending a cheese and some sausage. The blackberries are ripe, so I made a tart too.”

  “All right. Just put it in my basket. I’m going to the market to buy some oranges and a few other things to put in too. Corporal Tully won’t tell.”

  “Is Antoine well? No one believes this, but I miss him.” Justine looked down, her cheeks flushed.

  Daisy, to her chagrin, felt tears sting the backs of her eyes. No one understood why she still missed Simon, either—least of all herself. Did that make her as pathetic as Justine? At least she hadn’t made babies with the man who deserted her. On the other hand, Antoine had finally stood up for something more important than a bottle of rum. She had no idea what Simon had run off for.

  She pulled herself together by rubbing noses with the baby. “Yes, he’s in remarkably good spirits. Tully and Niall McLeod keep the other men from abusing him, and now that he’s sober . . .” She shrugged. “He’s a Lanier. As you know, he can be quite charming.”

  “Yes, I know.” Justine sighed. “Have you heard from Simon?”

  Daisy stilled. “No.”

  “Daisy, he’ll come back. Simon is the most stubborn man in West Florida, and he loved you. Loves you, I mean.”

  “He told me to wait a year.” She felt her eyes drown as she held onto Rémy so tightly that he squealed. “I don’t even know what that means, Justine.”

  Justine put her arms around both Daisy and Rémy. “It means he’s coming back.”

  Daisy let herself melt into the other woman’s motherly embrace. Oh, how she missed Lyse. How she missed the closeness she’d had with her father. “Thank you, Justine,” she whispered. “I’ll take good care of Antoine.”

  “I know you will.” Justine sniffed.

  “Are you crying too?” Daisy grinned through her tears. “Corporal Tully is going to refuse ever to come with me anywhere again.”

  “I can’t help it. I think I’m pregnant again.”

  “Oh, Justine!” Daisy laughed. “I’m not telling Antoine that. You’ll have to tell him yourself.”

  “Daisy, what’s going to happen?” Justine stepped back, wiping her eyes, and took the baby. “Is your father ever going to come to his senses and let my husband go? What possible difference can it make for one Frenchman to be kept locked up?”

  Daisy shook her head as she picked up the basket. “I don’t know.” She looked to make sure Tully wasn’t paying attention, but lowered her voice anyway. “I’m worried that the war may be coming our way. There are letters flying back and forth between Mobile and Pensacola, more and more frequently. I hear that the French are making raids into the Gulf and the Spanish don’t do anything about it. I know Papa is anxious.”

  Justine hugged Rémy. “Can you—will you let me know if there’s anything I can do? Maybe your father will let me come in to see Antoine sometime?”

  “I doubt it. But I’ll try.” It was the best she could do. “Let’s go to the market, so I can buy those oranges. Maybe Rémy would like one too.” She turned and called to Tully, “Corporal, would you carry this basket while Justine and I visit the market?”

  With a resigned sigh, Tully complied. “Just what I wanted to do on my afternoon off.”

  16

  NEW ORLEANS

  MAY 25, 1778

  Lyse wiped her pen and capped the inkwell, then reread what she had written in her journal. How boring. Grimacing, she shoved the book away and went to the window to twitch aside the curtain and stare down at the street traffic.

  In two weeks she had gone from waiting tables and serving ale in an English public tavern, living as a servant in a tiny attic bedroom, to being the honored guest of the governor of Spanish Louisiana. She had enjoyed her stay with the Gálvezes, but she was becoming restless with the necessity of staying indoors. She had willingly told the governor everything she could think of that might be pertinent to Spanish success in taking Mobile from the British—apparently the war was about to take a twist shocking only to those who had been isolated on some deserted island—but for some reason no one would divulge to her, the governor and his lady had deemed it necessary for her to remain indefinitely incognito.

  It was a luxurious imprisonment, to be sure. On that first afternoon, after the governor excused himself and Rafa to adjourn to his office for further conference, Madame Gálvez had one of the servants show Lyse to a guest room, where she bathed and borrowed one of her hostess’s silk dressing gowns. After a long nap, Lyse woke to find a servant waiting to help her into a beautiful rose-colored dimity dress and show her down to the dining room. Rafa had apparently gone home to reunite with his family, leaving Lyse to enjoy a sumptuous but awkward dinner with the Gálvezes.

  She hadn’t seen him since. Madame Gálvez explained vaguely that Rafa was completing an assignment for Mr. Pollock, and that he would return . . . soon.

  Whatever that meant.

  Lyse found the hardest part of this sojourn—besides missing home and constantly wondering what Rafa was doing—to be the inactivity. She had been so used to intellectual and physical toil in the school and the tavern, from sunup to sundown, that now she was able to sleep at night only in short, restless bursts plagued with nightmares. Consequently, she withstood the daily routine of eating, reading, and picking at needlework with heavy eyes and frayed temper. The only relief in the monotony came from sporadic conversations with the lady of the house.

  Feliciana Gálvez was a charming conversationalist, who told lively stories of growing up in the great port city of New Orleans, cherished daughter of a large, wealthy French merchant family. Her first marriage had been brief and childless, her second an almost unheard of love match. She lavishly praised her handsome, brilliant husband, whose tact and diplomacy in difficult situations had early earned him the respect and gratitude of much older Spanish authorities, including the king himself. However, she was also careful to divulge nothing of any political importance.

  Lyse thought the governor was not the only one in the family with diplomatic gifts.

  She was just about to fling herself into the comfortable chair in the corner of her room, when a scratching at the door caused her to drop the curtain and quickly cross the room. At last—someone to talk to!

  When she got the door open, she stood, mouth ajar, staring at Scarlet. A smiling, neatly dressed, heavily pregnant Scarlet.

  Uttering a little scream of joy, Lyse flung herself at her cousin.

  “I hear you are in need of a maid,” Scarlet said, after Lyse had kissed both her cheeks and reluctantly released her.

  “I don’t need a maid—I need a friend.” Lyse wiped her streaming eyes. “How did you get here, and look at you! Rafa said you were having a baby, but—oh, my, look at you.”

  Scarlet laughe
d. “I can hardly see anything else, I’m so big! I have been with your Rafa’s family. They brought me. Doña Evangelina and Miss Sofía are in the family parlor. They sent me up first so we could say hello without . . . well, you know.” She shrugged.

  “You are with Rafa’s family? And they didn’t tell me? There is something very strange going on here, Scarlet. Where is he? I haven’t seen him since the day we arrived, nearly . . . eleven days ago, I think?”

  Scarlet’s big dark eyes softened. “I know you must have questions, some of them I can answer, some I can’t. But they told me to bring you down right away, because Miss Sofía is standing on her head to become acquainted with the girl who has her brother all but living in the frontier outpost of Mobile, West Florida!”

  Lyse glanced over her shoulder at the mirror. “All right, let me just—”

  “You look fine, just come on.” Smiling, Scarlet grabbed Lyse’s hand and pulled her down the long, carpeted hallway toward the stairs.

  “You seem to be familiar with this house,” Lyse observed, bemused.

  “Yes, I stayed here for a few days after Rafael bought me at the slave market. The Gálvezes are very kind, aren’t they?”

  “Indeed.” At the foot of the stairs she tugged Scarlet’s hand to stop her. “My cousin, I am sorry you have had so much to endure. That wicked Isabelle Dussouy will answer for her sins.”

  “Yes, but it is not mine to repay evil for evil. God will judge her, so I don’t have to.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Lyse didn’t know that she would have been so forgiving in Scarlet’s circumstances. But her cousin seemed to have gained a serenity that could come from no other source. Perhaps she, Lyse, could learn from it.

  Scarlet smiled and continued toward the open French doors of the family parlor. “Here she is!” She all but pushed Lyse into the room.

  Lyse quickly found Madame Gálvez, seated upon a settee with a beautiful young girl who looked like Rafa in a lavender dress. A third woman, older than Madame Gálvez by some fifteen years, rose from a high-backed chair and approached her with measured, queenly steps.

  “How do you do, my dear? I am Doña Evangelina Gonzales, and we have been waiting impatiently for the governor to give us permission to visit.” The woman took Lyse’s hands, kissed her cheek, and stepped back to examine her face as if learning a work of art in a gallery.

  “Madame.” Curtseying, Lyse felt a blush rise to the crown of her head. Rafa’s mama, the so-critical Doña Gonzales, was herself a lovely woman, exquisitely dressed in a jonquil-colored gown that must have been created in Paris. She herself must look a complete bumpkin.

  Doña Evangelina seemed to approve, however, for she released Lyse with a smile and gestured to the girl beside Madame Gálvez. “And this is my daughter, Sofía. Mind your manners, Sofi!”

  But the admonishment came too late. Sofía had already bounced to her feet and flung herself at Lyse, grabbing her in a warm hug. “Oh, I am so happy to finally meet you! Rafael said pretty, he didn’t say beautiful as a Goya painting!” Sofía let her go with an enthusiastic buss on the cheek, then whirled with a giggle. “And you have chosen this lace on my favorite gown, so I had to wear it and show you! See?”

  Lyse, duly admiring the dress, murmured approval. The lace was every bit as lovely as she had envisioned. She looked at Madame Gálvez, silently begging for rescue.

  Madame Gálvez smoothly rose. “Miss Lanier, you must forgive me if my desire to surprise you has perhaps been a bit overwhelming. I know you must have many questions, which my husband has given me leave to answer. Certain . . . protocols had to be in place first.”

  Lyse glanced at Scarlet, who remained standing near the door. “Of course, Madame. I understand.” But she understood nothing. She wanted to ask about Rafa. Surely someone would explain what had happened to him, sooner or later.

  “Good.” Madame Gálvez nodded. “Now we shall sit down to tea—” she nodded at Eduardo, hovering near the door—“and get properly acquainted.”

  Lyse took the only remaining chair in the room as the other ladies reseated themselves. Her experience with such intimate social situations had been limited, but she knew enough to let the elder ladies take the lead.

  Even the mercurial Sofía was now demurely settled upon the settee, hands clasped in her lap. Her dark eyes met Lyse’s, dancing.

  After some inconsequential chatter while Eduardo came and went, taking Scarlet with him and shutting the parlor door behind him, Madame Gálvez turned to Sofía’s mother. “Doña Evangelina, it may now be clear to you why I sent Scarlet to you. She is not Rafael’s lover, but a beloved relative of Miss Lanier. My husband has just completed the documentation releasing her from slavery—”

  Lyse couldn’t restrain a little squeak of joy as she jumped to her feet. “Oh, madame! I do not know how to thank you!”

  Madame Gálvez sent her an indulgent smile that yet had an edge of seriousness. “We are coming to that, my dear.”

  “Oh. Yes, madame.” Lyse dropped back to her chair. “But it is so wonderful.” She couldn’t help smiling.

  Doña Evangelina seemed less sanguine. “Then whose baby is she carrying?”

  “Lyse will perhaps be able to answer that,” Madame Gálvez said.

  “My cousin was married—well, perhaps not legally, but she considered herself married—to the blacksmith of Madame Dussouy, a society matron in Mobile. Madame Dussouy has a long-held hatred for my family, and often expressed that enmity in petty and cruel ways. Selling Scarlet apart from her husband was one such act. I don’t believe she knew about the baby, or she might have done something even more horrid.”

  Doña Evangelina blinked. “I see.” She looked at Madame Gálvez. “Please, continue, my lady.”

  Madame Gálvez nodded. “My husband had every intention of reuniting Scarlet with Miss Lanier, but he wanted first to ascertain that Rafael’s assessment was based on fact, and not biased by personal affection.”

  “His . . . assessment?” Lyse stared at her hostess. Clearly there was some subtext going on beneath this very cryptic explanation.

  “Yes. Even Rafael’s parents have not been privy to the fact that he has been serving his country in a much more dangerous capacity than would appear. Don Joaquín, his father, has of course served honorably on the staff of both former Governor-General Alejandro O’Reilly and my husband as well, and his brothers serve in the Spanish navy. But Rafael, in taking a post as merchant in company with Oliver Pollock, has doubled as liaison between the American Continental Congress and the court at Madrid. His Majesty—and my husband, by proxy—has greatly relied upon information Rafael has procured in his travels aboard Pollock’s ships, in and out of British ports along the Gulf Coast.”

  Lyse sat stunned. Rafa was a spy. She should have seen it. The extravagant inanity and dandified manners, which she knew to be a cover for a deep intellect. His genius for appearing at critical junctures. The way he had whisked her out of Mobile in the very nick of time, and his ability to locate and rescue Scarlet. He undoubtedly knew where Simon was too.

  Her body shook with reaction. Everything he’d ever said, every romantic and tender action toward her, had been accomplished for purposes so clandestine she might never be able to untangle what was real and what was sham.

  Mi corazón, he had called her. My heart.

  No, she was his dupe.

  Bracing herself, she linked her fingers tightly and lifted her gaze to Madame Gálvez. “I assume there is something you require of me in return for my cousin’s freedom. I’ll do whatever you ask.”

  The other woman seemed to understand some of her mixed emotions. Her smile was wry. “Don’t be too quick to agree, my dear. There is one more thing you should know. Your family has already been of great service to us in a capacity so secret that even Rafael did not know until recently. Your brother Simon—”

  “Simon! But he hates the Spanish!” Lyse blurted.

  “He had reason to, but your broth
er is a practical young man. He and your grandfather still have strong ties to your family here in New Orleans.”

  Lyse thought back to the conversation she’d had with Simon after Rafa had toured the bay with them. Certainly Simon had acted as if he hated Rafa that day, but when Lyse questioned him about the rebellion, there had been something vaguely unsettling about his answer. Evidently her brother was nearly as good an actor as Rafael.

  “So . . . Simon is an American sympathizer as well?” She could still hardly credit it.

  “Yes. He is with Rafa now. I am not allowed to say where.”

  This was entirely too much for one day. One minute she was in her room, expiring from boredom, the next she was in this salon with her world spinning out of control.

  “Does my grandfather know?”

  “I imagine so. They were very close.”

  She opened her eyes and faced Madame Gálvez. “What is it you want me to do?”

  FORT PITT

  SEPTEMBER 2, 1778

  At the juncture of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers, where they flowed together to become the Ohio, old Fort Pitt sat like a lean, hungry cat waiting for prey. Rafa was no mouse, but he felt just as vulnerable as he waited for entrance at the gate of the fort’s southern redoubt. Shivering, he turned up the collar of his coat. In New Orleans, the heat would still be suffocating, but as he and his companions had traveled north, skimming on the Spanish side of the Mississippi River past the British forts at Baton Rouge, Natchez, and St. Louis, then making their way slowly on up the Ohio, temperatures had grown more temperate. There was a definite snap of fall in the air, here in the Ohio Valley.

  He wondered what Simon Lanier, whom he’d left at the barque with the crew to guard the cargo, thought about this alien riverscape. Of necessity the two of them had gotten to know one another during the last three months of travel upriver. Where Rafa tended to be impulsive and flexible, he found Lyse’s brother to be brusque, quick-thinking under pressure, but infinitely patient and methodical in laying out plans. Rafa thought they made an effective team for their particular assignment: delivering 22,640 pesos fuertes, as well as a long list of supplies, to American Captain George Rogers Clark for use in his campaign to take control of the Kaskaskian territory.