Reckless Seduction

by Jane Feather

  At one-thirty, Genevieve was walking briskly, despite the heat, in the shade of the lace balconies, toward Chartres Street. She was not sure what impulse caused her to change direction and walk instead to Rampart Street, except that there was just the faintest possibility that she might see Dominic, or perhaps Silas. She did not think she would have the courage to knock on the door of Dominic’s house if she was not sure he was there. The thought of confronting the cold loathing in Angelique’s brown eyes when Dominic was not in the house was too intimidating. It was not as if she could blame the quadroon since she was certain she would feel the same way if some other woman supplanted her in her own house and in her own bed. But Dominic would not permit even the beginning of a discussion on the subject.

  Genevieve was only mildly curious as to how much time Dominic spent with his mistress. She assumed that it must be sufficient to repay the cost of the house and Angelique’s keep, but it was not really a matter that concerned her. A Creole gentleman of Dominic’s sophistication and a quadroon placée were inevitable and inextricable partners.

  As she turned onto Rampart Street where front doors stood open and the balconies were alive with desultorily chattering women, their gowns butterfly bright and varied, little maids waving huge fans to stir the hothouse air around them, Angelique come out of her house, unattended, and crossed onto Dumaine Street. There was an air of purpose in her step, yet she somehow managed to convey a furtiveness as she glanced over her shoulder, looked to right and left, then increased her speed. If Angelique was on the street, it was reasonable to assume that Dominic was not in the house. Genevieve found her feet following the direction Angelique’s had taken. Like Angelique, she kept in the shadow of the house walls, and she adapted her pace to that of the woman in front. Why was she following her? The question reared its head vaguely and inconsequentially. She was following her. What did it matter why? There was little else to occupy her on this indolent afternoon, and besides, she could never resist the possibility of expanding her horizons.

  The pursuit took her into an area of the Quarter where no respectable woman would be seen. Flies buzzed over stinking piles of rubbish steaming in the heat. Women hung in open doorways, their gowns disheveled, exhibiting their charms to the passersby. Sailors rollicked drunkenly along the banquette, succumbing occasionally to the blatant displays of grimy female flesh so that there would be a mumbled exchange, the flash of a coin, and client and whore would disappear up the rickety outside stairs to the chambers above.

  Genevieve attempted to ignore the ribald calls, the lewd suggestions that accompanied her progress. Hands grabbed at her, touched salaciously, but no serious attempt was made to detain her. However, her heart was beating uncomfortably fast, and she could feel the sweat dampening her gown between her breasts and under her arms. It was the sweat of fear as much as that caused by rapid walking in the heat, but to retrace her steps was as alarming a prospect as to continue. And it was always possible that Angelique’s destination would take them out of these brothel-lined streets faster than retreat.

  Her foot caught on an uneven brick in the banquette and she stumbled, grabbing convulsively at the nearest stable object, which turned out to be a bare, brawny forearm heavily tatooed. Words of apology fell from her lips as she attempted to move on, but her savior had other ideas, it seemed. His hand slid familiarly around her waist, and she smelled the rankness of stale liquor on his breath as he brought his mouth to hers. She put her hand against his face and pushed with all her might, at the same time bringing her knee up with a vicious chop. With the bellow of an enraged bull, her captor released her, and she was off and running without a backward glance, although the yells pursued her, and for a heart-stopping moment she heard the pounding of feet. But both died away eventually and she slowed her pace, realizing that Angelique was no longer in front of her. She realized why a few seconds later. Coming abreast of a doorway where hung a brightly beaded curtain, she heard a whispered exchange. Then a man pushed past her from the street, through the curtain, and she saw within the deep-green gown and scarlet shawl of her quarry.

  Genevieve stepped back from the curtained doorway, standing against the wall as she wondered what to do now. She had no idea where she was, or how to get back into familiar territory. And whatever Angelique was doing inside the house was not something she was going to find out, even if she wanted to. In fact, Genevieve found that her curiosity had faded, and she was deeply regretting the thoughtless whim that had led her to this place.

  “If you’re coming to service, you’d better hurry. The houngan is ready.” The harsh whisper was thrown at her as a man, dressed in white, stuck his head through the curtain and looked up and down the street. Genevieve blinked like an idiot, and her feet seemed rooted to the banquette. The houngan? She had heard the word before, but the reference would not come to her. The man disappeared into the house and the bead curtain rattled.

  Voodoo! The houngan was a voodoo priest, Jonas had told her. Angelique had come to attend a voodoo service, to which Genevieve had just been invited. Genevieve found herself inside the dim interior beyond the bead curtain in much the same way as she had found herself on La Danseuse’s rigging on her way to the mizzen top—no conscious decision made in either case. So long as she kept out of Angelique’s way, there would be no danger. The light was dim, and her disguise was perfectly convincing, blending in beautifully with the clothing of the others crowding the room.

  A pole, carved to resemble a snake, stood in the center, a cloth-covered altar beneath. Genevieve hung back against the wall, and when a gourd, decorated with snake vertebrae, was passed to her, took a tentative sip of the aromatic contents. It was a powerful, fiery spirit of some herbal mixture, and her eyes streamed as the liquid burned its way down her gullet. No one else seemed to have difficulties with it, and the gourd was emptied and refilled many times as it was passed around the room. A chicken was tethered by one leg to the central pole, and Genevieve watched with a sort of repelled fascination as the bird was washed and dried with great care and tenderness. Then one of the white-robed acolytes poured something from another gourd down its throat, while another held its beak open.

  The houngan, for such she assumed him to be judging by his elaborate robes and mask, lit a candle with slow, ceremonious movements, then began to dribble something on the earthen floor. It looked like flour, or ashes, maybe, and the design it made, while clearly, deliberately constructed, was quite incomprehensible to Genevieve. The white-clad assistants began to move around the room, gesticulating with stiff, ritualized movements. Then they began to recite in a flat chant. One of them stopped before Angelique, who had positioned herself at the front of the circle, and Genevieve shrank further into the shadows, straining to decipher the words of the chant, or was it a prayer? She heard the name “Delacroix,” and shivered suddenly. The prayer was for Angelique. It asked for the return of her protector’s love and for the defeat of the nameless one who had stolen that love from its rightful owner.

  A wash of nausea caught Genevieve unawares and the room spun. She leaned against the wall, not daring to move lest she draw attention to herself. Angelique’s eyes were closed as the prayer was repeated, her face pallid with the force of her concentration, and her malevolence was almost palpable. Then the assistants moved to someone else in the circle and began another chant, directed toward the special needs of this participant.

  She had to get out. The heat in the room was almost insupportable. The rank stench of sweat and tallow wax, the sickly sweet odor of herbs, the bitter burning of the spirit in her belly combined to increase the dizziness and nausea of her fear. But there were too many bodies between her and the curtained doorway. Then a strange sound began, eerie, menacing yet stirring. It was the hollow beat of a drum. Then another joined in, and the rhythm picked up. A space cleared in front of her, and she saw the drummers clearly across the circle, beating with their hands on goatskins, stretched taut across hollow logs. Someone moved into the circle and
began to dance, quickly followed by another. Then it seemed that the whole room was in motion, swirling and chanting as the drumbeat quickened and the gourd was passed from hand to hand. Genevieve found herself caught up in the dance, whirling in the smoke-hazed dimness, the mounting frenzy around her as contagious as the plague. Then someone gave a great shout and the crowd fell back as an enormous man leaped into the middle of the circle, his pupils dilated, his eyes wide and staring.

  “The loa,” the chant went up. “The loa is riding him.” Looks of envy and admiration were directed at the wildly gyrating figure, and Genevieve remembered what Jonas had told her. The loa were the gods of the voodoo religion, and at the high point of the service, one of them would deign to enter the body of a participant, to ride him like a horse, and the possessed would speak with the god’s voice and act in the manner of the god, and be forever blessed by the possession.

  The loa possessing this man must be a particularly amorous one, Genevieve reflected, nausea and dizziness for the moment forgotten in her utter fascination and the knowledge that no one would ever notice her now. The possessed man was acting like a woman in the throes of the most erotic passion, and the spectators began to join him, imitating his lewd gestures, their bodies falling into the same positions. The drums beat faster, and the hysteria spiraled under the rhythmic, monotonous pounding so that even Genevieve felt herself sliding into the trance of complete absorption. But the instant before she was lost, the possessed one suddenly seized the tethered chicken. A knife flashed, and a hot jet of blood spouted forth from the bird’s severed neck, splattering those around. A great cry of exaltation went up, and a gourd caught the flow. The huge man tossed the contents down his throat before falling to the floor to lie, twitching and unconscious.

  Heedless of danger, then, Genevieve butted her way through the mass of bodies, but they were quite unaware of her, or of anything outside the supreme exaltation of the moment, and she reached the street in safety. But she didn’t stop there. With no sense of direction, she ran, her only object to put as great a distance as possible between herself and the house that served as a temple. She was running along the levée, and a flicker of common sense told her to turn up one of the narrow, fetid alleyways leading back into the town, away from the river.

  She thought her heart would burst through her rib cage, so fierce and loud was its pounding. Her legs screamed for relief, and her breath came in painful gasps, rasping in her chest as she emerged onto the blessed familiarity of Chartres Street. But somehow she could not stop running. Her legs seemed to have a life of their own, and she saw nothing but the banquette in front of her racing feet. Innocent pedestrians leaped out of her path if they were lucky enough to realize that she was not going to stop or divert her steps to avoid them. One or two yelled after the turbanned, disheveled quadroon, but nothing halted her frenzied progress until she ran headlong into Dominic Delacroix outside Maspero’s.

  Dominic had seen her coming down the street, immediately recognizing the gown and turban on that diminutive figure. But he had not the slightest idea why she would be running like a panicked steer, nor why she would be out and about the town in her disguise. But clearly something had to be done before she drew any more unwelcome attention to herself. Deliberately, he stepped into her path and then hung onto her as she struggled to free herself, to continue her flight. Since she seemed incapable of responding to questions, he scooped her off the banquette without further ado, and carted her, still kicking and sobbing inarticulately, away from fascinated ears and eyes, into the Exchange and up to his office. Jean Maspero shrugged expressively as the door slammed under a vigorous kick. The privateer’s business was his own, and it would be a very foolish man who would presume to question him, or to put his nose into that business without invitation.

  “Calm down, now, Genevieve.” Dominic set her on her feet, but maintained a tight grip on her shoulders. “What has happened to cause this panic? Do you realize how much attention you have drawn to yourself? Supposing you had run into someone on the street who knows you?”

  Genevieve fought for breath as her chest heaved agonizingly, and her legs began to shake uncontrollably now that the need for motion was gone. Dominic pushed her into a chair and filled a glass with brandy from the decanter on the lowboy. “Drink this slowly.” Her hand was trembling so violently that she could hardly get the glass to her lips and, with a muttered oath, he held it for her and would not take it away until she had drunk half the contents.

  At last, she seemed able to breathe easily, and the quivering ceased with the realization that she was now quite safe, but she still seemed to hear the menacing pounding of the drums, the frenzied chanting. The bright, shocking fountain of blood seemed burned on her retina. “It was so appalling, Dominic,” she whispered. “I have never been so frightened.”

  “No, I should think not,” he said very calmly. “You were terrified. Tell me what of.”

  “Angelique …” Somehow the words wouldn’t come.

  “What has Angelique to do with anything?” Dominic demanded, his eyes taking on that icy glint. “I have told you many times that she is no concern of yours.”

  Genevieve waved a hand in vague negation as she struggled to find the words to tell him of what she had heard and seen. Angelique was her concern, since the quadroon wished her harm, and if Dominic thought that his official mistress was untroubled by his interest in Genevieve then he had to understand that he was quite wrong. “I … I followed her,” she stammered. “When… when she left the house and—”

  “You did what?” he thundered.

  “Please … you don’t understand,” she said hastily. “I do not know why I did it at first, and I know I should not have done, but you must listen to what happened.”

  Dominic perched himself on the corner of the table at some distance from her chair and regarded her steadily. “This had better be convincing, Genevieve.”

  There was infinite menace in the soft tones, and she swallowed anxiously. “Voodoo,” she said without preamble. “She went to a voodoo service in some dreadful part of town, brothels and drunken sailors and …” She shuddered. Dominic said nothing, but he was quite motionless, his mouth set in a grim line and the eyes cold, sharp and piercing as blue icicles.

  “I went into the temple behind her.” Genevieve took a deep breath. “It was quite safe, at least, I thought it was because of the way I am dressed, and only Angelique could have known that I did not belong there, and if I kept in the background, out of her sight—”

  “You intruded on a voodoo ceremony?” he asked on a note of total incredulity. “Not even you would dare interfere in something as private as that.”

  Genevieve hung her head. In her panic, she had not thought of the unprincipled aspect of her actions, that she had been poking and prying into the most secret rites and rituals of another culture. “I did not think. I just went in.”

  “ ‘Just going in’ is a habit you have. It is one I intend to break you of. Now, tell me the rest. I presume I have not yet heard the salient point.”

  “No.” She took another deep, shaky breath. “There were prayers, chants and things, and they seemed to be for people in the audience. There was one for Angelique. It was about you and me.”

  “Go on,” he prompted, still unmoving.

  “They were praying that you would go back to Angelique and that something bad would happen to me. I could not understand all the details, but the point was clear enough.” She bit her quivering lip. “You cannot imagine how frightening it was to hear such malevolence directed at oneself. Then everyone went wild with the drums, and dancing and the drink … some dreadful, fiery spirit—”

  “You drank it!” Dominic shook his head in disbelief.

  “I was curious,” she admitted lamely. “And then I could not seem to get out. It became very confusing with the noise and the dancing. And then they killed the chicken. There was blood everywhere, and I ran. I don’t really remember very much after that.” Ano
ther uncontrollable shudder ran through the slight frame.

  “You impulsive, meddlesome little fool!” Dominic pronounced savagely. “You need a damn good hiding, Genevieve.”

  The recipient of this exasperated, uncompromising statement was too dispirited and emotionally exhausted for protest or defense, even if a convincing form of the latter had come to mind. Her gaze remained riveted on the whorls of a knot of wood in the oak floor at her feet, and a heavy silence settled over the room.

  Then Dominic sighed and crossed the room with long, impatient strides. “Just look at you! You look as if you’ve been put through a mangle.” Taking her chin, he tilted her face up to meet his scrutiny. “One of these days, you are going to get really hurt if you do not learn to stop and think before you follow your self-destructive, over-inquisitive nose into whatever trouble happens to crop up.” Genevieve said nothing, but two large tears rolled down the sides of the feature under discussion. “Here.” Dominic released her chin and pulled a large lawn handkerchief from his britches pocket, handing it to her. “Just as a matter of interest, what were you doing on Rampart Street in those clothes in the first place?”

  “I had to get a message to you.” Genevieve blew her nose vigorously and dried her eyes. “I thought maybe I might see you, or Silas. If not, I would have come here and left a message with Monsieur Maspero. But I knew you would not really like me to do that except as a last resort.” She held out his handkerchief, and he took the scrunched, soggy ball with a pained frown, shoving it back into his pocket.

  “So, what is the problem?”