by Jane Feather
That familiar little prickle ran down her spine at these words. Perhaps he did know her as well as she knew herself. Perhaps they were two of a kind. If they were not, how could what had happened have happened, and what in the name of goodness did she think she was doing? “I will be here,” she said quietly. “It is Rampart Street, is it not?”
“Just so. You will recognize the house if you look carefully when you leave now. Let us go downstairs.” Cupping her elbow, he eased her toward the door.
There was to be no passionate farewell, then? No soft words of remembrance? No gently romantic acknowledgement of the pleasure exchanged? The privateer had a day’s work ahead, clearly, and was anxious to be about his business and to be done with this business. Genevieve shrugged. Far be it for her to intrude! She marched down the stairs that she had not seen on her coming into this house. That blanket-wrapped abduction seemed to have happened in another lifetime to another person.
Nicolas stood in the square hallway, his face drawn, eyes heavily ringed; whether with anxiety, conscience, or simply lack of sleep, Genevieve could not tell. But it was abundantly clear, from the look he shot the privateer, that he was not about to do anything to annoy that gentleman—like, for instance, demanding satisfaction for the dastardly kidnapping of his cousin.
“Good morning, Nicolas,” she greeted cheerfully. “Did you enjoy the ball? I hope it came up to Elise’s expectations. Monsieur Delacroix.” She turned as she reached the hall, holding out her hand to the privateer who stood on the stair behind her. “My thanks for your hospitality.”
Laughter danced in the turquoise eyes. He raised her hand to his lips. “The pleasure was all mine, mademoiselle. I hope it will be repeated in the near future.”
Inclining her head in faint acknowledgement, she sketched a curtsy before turning back to her cousin. “If you are ready, Nicolas?”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Nicolas sprang to open the front door, but was forestalled by Silas, who stood impassively as they went past him out onto Rampart Street. Genevieve automatically drew her hood closer around her face. No respectable lady could ever find a reason for traversing this street. But then, of course, she hardly qualified as respectable, did she? A giggle escaped her and she hastily turned it into a cough, glancing behind her at the house, fixing it in her memory. Her gaze drifted up to the second floor, to the window she had looked from earlier, and encountered the intent scrutiny of a pair of brown eyes. A shiver ran down her spine, but as she looked, a figure appeared behind Angelique, hands curled on her shoulders. It was Dominic, turning his mistress away from the window—back to bed?
What if he was? Genevieve demanded angrily of herself. It was none of her business. What lay between a man and his quadroon placée was out of the frame of reference of any Creole lady, be she wife, sister, aunt, mother, or even mistress.
“I do not understand what has happened.” Nicolas was speaking, his voice low but urgent. “Why is Dominic not using you to compel my uncle’s cooperation?”
“He quite rightly guessed that Papa would probably not find my reputation enough of an inducement,” she replied. “But he has agreed to leave Elise alone.”
“To give up his plan?” Nicolas stopped on the banquette, looking at her incredulously. “I have never known him to give up something on which he has set his heart. What did you say to persuade him?”
“I told him I would help him,” Genevieve said dismissively. “As we discussed, you and I.”
“But how?”
“That is no business of yours, Nicolas.” She looked at him contemptuously. “It is better that you not know. You are released from your obligation. Is that not enough for you?”
Nicolas flushed in angry discomfiture. “I suppose you imagine I have not been lying awake, worried out of my mind about you?”
“You had no cause for concern,” she said shortly. “Did you not get a message delivered by Silas?”
“Yes, I did. And it did little to put my mind at rest. It was simply an order that I present myself to that house by seven o’clock this morning. I had no idea what had happened.”
“The matter is at an end,” Genevieve told him. “If you manage to avoid getting into impossible debt in the future, then maybe you will avoid dragging your relatives into the mire with you.” It was harsh, and she knew it, but she found it hard to forgive Nicolas for what might have happened to Elise. Although, even while she thought this, an inconvenient little voice nagged at her conscience, telling her that if it hadn’t been for Nicolas and his cowardly stupidity, she would never have experienced last night, or be facing the prospect of an exciting, undrawn future quite outside the experience of a maiden on the marriage mart.
“Who is she?” Angelique demanded as Dominic drew her away from the window. “You did not say you would sleep with her.”
“It was not my intention,” he said. “And she is nothing to do with you, do you understand?”
“But you bring her here, to my house,” Angelique protested, although she knew she shouldn’t.
“It is my house,” she was reminded. “And I do what I please in it. She will be coming here again, and when she does, you will pay a visit to a friend.” Dominic ran a hand over his chin and frowned. He needed a shave and a bath. In other circumstances, he would have had both here, but Angelique was looking aggrieved and disconsolate, and he was in no mood to deal with a scene. “Tell Silas we are leaving,” he instructed briefly, going to the armoire for his coat.
“Will you not stay for breakfast?” Angelique, recollecting herself, smiled and stood on tiptoe to kiss his mouth. “I will shave you myself, and prepare oysters in the way you like them, and we can eat them in bed.”
Dominic glanced at the tumbled bed, the pillows that bore the imprint of Genevieve’s head. For some reason, a rerun with Angelique as partner had little appeal. He shook his head. “No, not this morning, Angel. I have work to do on my ship.”
“Will you come to me this evening?” She was twining herself around him, and he could smell the strong sickly sweet fragrance of her favorite lily of the valley perfume. Genevieve, he recalled, had smelled of soap and lavender water, unsophisticated, certainly, but pleasantly refreshing.
“Maybe,” he replied shortly, taking her arms from around his neck. “It depends. Tomorrow afternoon, however, I do not wish you to be here. Tu comprends?”
Angelique lowered her head, hiding the flash of fury in the brown eyes. She did indeed understand. “As you wish, Dominic,” she murmured, and he was too distracted to hear more than the submission he expected in her voice.
He left with Silas five minutes later, and Angelique spent the next half hour wreaking havoc in the kitchen with the china, her slaves cowering against the walls as this seemingly limitless fury expended itself. They all knew that the master had spent the night in Angelique’s bed with another woman, and it did nothing for Angelique’s consequence in their eyes.
Once the storm had passed, however, Angelique went up to her bedchamber. The brown eyes were coldly determined, and the little maid who scurried around laying out her clothes, brushing her hair, passing the paint and powder, kept well out of the way of the too quick hands and the serrated tongue. Whoever was responsible for upsetting her mistress so dreadfully was clearly going to suffer, the child decided, with a little shiver. Angelique was well known for the fearsomeness and duration of her grudges.
Dressed to her satisfaction, Angelique put on the turban that law required all quadroons to wear as identification, and left the house, the maid accompanying her. They walked down to the river, skirting the levée market and turning into a narrow street of dilapidated houses, whose sagging floors and peeling paintwork bore witness to the depredations caused by the flooding Mississippi, the fearsome attacks of hurricanes, the constant, ineradicable dampness of humidity and river mist.
It was the home of gaming hells, brothels, coffeehouses, and wineshops, frequented by the riverboat men, the sailors, and all those with money to burn
and a taste for the unsavory. Angelique walked briskly, ignoring the ribald calls from open doorways, stepping over the occasional drunkard stretched upon the banquette. The rise of the levée was on their left, topped with scrub grass and mock orange trees. Clotheslines flapped in the breeze above the odorous piles of rubbish, adding to the general air of desolation and neglect. At a small dark doorway, Angelique told her companion to wait.
The child cowered against the wall, looking nervously up and down the street. There were few people around, but those there were not of the type to inspire confidence. She peered in through the doorway, into a dim room with sawdust on the floor, and a most pervasive odor that she could not begin to identify. It was heady, a mixture of alcohol, of incense, of strange herbal potions. Angelique was at the rear of the room, deep in conversation with an old woman wrapped in brightly colored scraps of material, her hair bound in tight pigtails standing out like corkscrews over her head. She was bent over a small round table, its top formed of stretched hide, rattling something in the palm of her hand. With a flick of her wrist, she tossed whatever it was onto the leather surface, and the two women looked closely. The child, slipping into the room, saw white bones forming a random pattern on the table. There was a whispered consultation, then the old woman creaked over to a shelf on which reposed jars, sackcloth pouches, and carved boxes. Muttering, she ran her hand along the contents of the shelf before finding what she sought. She brought the pouch over to Angelique. A flash of silver shone for an instant in the dust-laden dimness before her fingers curled over the coin Angelique held out. The child swiftly returned to the street and was waiting, to all intents and purposes, in quiet obedience, when her mistress emerged.
Dominic, sublimely unaware of the havoc he had caused, went back to the unsullied peace of his house on Chartres Street, where he bathed, shaved, consumed a leisurely breakfast and contemplated the pleasurable prospect of stealing an anchorage from Victor Latour, under his very eyes, and with the connivance of his own daughter. The privateer preferred a subtle vengeance and found utterly delicious the idea that Latour should be unaware of the theft of his land; that his cooperation in Dominic’s plans should be unwitting. And the daughter? A passionate sprite with silver-gold hair and tawny eyes. Dominic smiled to himself. She would come to no harm at his hands, but when they had exhausted the possibilities that each had to offer the other, it would be a most knowledgeable and skillful woman he gifted to whichever young Creole blood was lucky enough to attract Genevieve’s fancy, and was considered an eligible suitor by Victor.
Rising from the breakfast table in the courtyard, he went through the house to the front hall where Silas was waiting to hand him his curly brimmed beaver and cane. “You are going to Danseuse, monsieur?” There was no mistaking the wistful note in his voice.
“No.” Dominic drew on his gloves. “To the office at the Exchange. I have some charts there that I want to examine.”
The sailor’s eyes gleamed. “Plans for the next voyage, monsieur?”
Dominic smiled. “Maybe, Silas, maybe,” he said airily, and walked out onto Chartres Street. At the banquette, he turned and looked back at Silas, standing in the doorway. “If you’ve a mind for a stroll, pay a visit to Danseuse and tell the bosun to have a half crew assembled for a short sail—two days, maybe three—in inland waters.”
Silas beamed. “Yes, monsieur. With pleasure, monsieur. Right away, monsieur.”
Chuckling, Dominic sauntered unhurriedly in the direction of Maspero’s Exchange. Preparations were being made for an auction later in the day, and the auctioneer greeted his tenant with the offer of a julep and the suggestion that he might like to look over the day’s stock. If any pleased him, Maspero would be happy to hold his bid.
“The julep I’ll accept gladly, Jean.” Dominic followed the auctioneer into his inner office. “But I’m not buying at the moment.”
Maspero looked at his guest shrewdly as he handed him a frosted silver goblet. “Plans afoot, eh?”
“Possibly.” Dominic returned as vague an answer as he had to a similar question from Silas. The auctioneer was no more fooled than the sailor, but politely changed the subject. One did not press a man about his affairs, after all. And the privateer was notoriously closed mouthed, as befitted a man in such a business. Only thus could one be sure of reasonable safety.
Alone in his second-floor office, Dominic laid navigation charts of Lake Borgne upon the table. He had spent many hours pouring over them as he had planned the original anchorage on Latour’s property. But that site fronted the lake and Genevieve had talked of a bayou, surrounded by swamp, inland from the lake. He was taking a risk, of course, that she knew what was involved in a secluded harbor for a fleet of frigates and clippers—deep water was a must. But what did a Creole maiden know about a ship’s draught? Perhaps he’d been a fool to accept her suggestion so easily. In the cold light of day, he knew why he had done so, of course. Having met, in the shape of Mademoiselle Genevieve, an insurmountable obstacle to the achievement of his goal, he had readily latched onto the offer of an alternative.
The sound of footsteps and whispered voices clearly in altercation beyond his door brought a frown to his brow. He straightened from the charts on the table and went to the door. Maspero knew that the privateer received no uninvited visitors in his office, and it sounded remarkably as if someone was demanding entrance. He flung open the door. A slight figure in a bright calico gown, a turban wrapped around her head, somewhat down-at-heel boots upon her feet, was engaged in vociferous, if low-voiced argument with the auctioneer.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Dominic demanded of Genevieve Latour, seizing her wrist and hauling her into the room before the astonished gaze of the auctioneer.
“I wished to see if my disguise would pass,” she said cheerfully, looking around the room with fascinated eyes. “It seems that it did. Monsieur Maspero was not about to permit a quadroon to sully his upstairs regions.” An acrid note lurked in her voice.
“How did you know to find me here?” he asked, ignoring both the note and the statement.
She shrugged. “I did not. But I knew it was possible, and if you were not it would not have mattered. I would have proved my point anyway.” Wandering to the table, she bent over the charts. “Are you looking for the anchorage?”
“As it happens,” he agreed, somewhat bemused by this visitation, although recognizing that he should not have been. Experience should have taught him that Genevieve did not make a habit of turning up in orthodox fashion and only when expected. “Have you no maid with you?”
“How could I have?” She laughed. “I cannot pay clandestine visits in this guise to a house on Rampart Street in the company of my maid. This was just a trial run, if you like. It was amazingly easily accomplished.”
“I had little doubt that you would find it so,” he said drily. “Where on earth did you acquire those dreadful clothes?”
“Amelie procured them for me,” she informed him with a serene smile. “Perhaps you do not remember her, but—”
“I remember only too well,” Dominic interrupted. “Take the turban off, at least while you are in this room. And since you are here, you may help me. Where is the anchorage you have in mind?” Coming to stand beside her, he bent over the chart, then slowly stood upright again. That fresh, distinctive scent of young, delicate skin and silky hair was utterly distracting. “On second thought, it can wait a minute,” he murmured, tilting her chin. “Did I kiss you this morning?”
“Not properly,” she said, a slight quaver in her voice. She seemed to be swallowed up in that turquoise gaze, her own eyes riveted on his mouth, her lips tingling in expectation of that remembered sensation—the firm softness of his against hers.
His mouth curved. “I did not think I could have done. I would have remembered if I had. I think I should remedy the omission, don’t you?”
Genevieve could only nod, the long golden sweep of her eyelashes fanning on her cheekbones as her arm
s slipped around his neck, and she came up on tiptoe, bringing her face eagerly to his.
Dominic tasted deeply of her sweetness, feeling the soft yielding of her body as she reached against him. His hands ran down her back to cup her buttocks, drawing her against the rising shaft of his desire. She responded with all the passion she had evinced during the night, her mouth opening as she pressed her body against him, moving sensuously, sinuously, bringing his arousal to a throbbing peak. His breathing ragged, at last he drew back. “Ah, but you could drive a man to his ruin, sprite,” he said thickly. “And will do so one day, unless I am much mistaken.”
But not you, Genevieve thought, trying to still her fast beating heart that pushed the hot swift blood through her veins while her pulse fluttered like a wounded bird in the palm of a hand. Dominic Delacroix could never be brought to ruin at the hands of a woman, however passionate she might be. She smiled in what she hoped was a light, flirtatious manner and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Such flattery, monsieur. I declare I do not know where to look.”
A frown darkened the blue eyes. “Don’t play the coquette, Genevieve. It does not suit you. Your responses are true, and they are what make you special. You have no need to play games. You are not Elise.”
The reproof was delivered in the tones of schoolmaster to erring pupil, and Genevieve bit her lip in awkward discomfiture. What made it particularly galling was that she knew he was right. Elise’s affectations sounded simply ridiculous on her stepsister’s tongue. In fact, Genevieve privately thought that they sounded ridiculous even coming from Elise, and she could not imagine what had possessed her to try to emulate her. It seemed a good point at which to change the subject. “Did you not want me to show you the anchorage?”
“Yes.” To her relief, Dominic accepted the changed tack as ending the topic and returned to his scrutiny of the map. “This is the site I had originally chosen.” Pointing with the sharp tip of a pair of compasses, he indicated the spot. “Show me yours.”