Reckless Seduction

by Jane Feather

  “Then you will marry no one,” Latour stated. “If you do not choose to behave in a responsible manner, accepting your duty like any other Creole lady, then you and your dowry shall go to the Sisters of Mercy.”

  The statement, as he had known it would, proved to be the arrow that pierced the tight shell of determination that had fortified her will to withstand Latour’s intent. She had tried to guess what his next move would be, but never, even in nightmare, had she imagined this fate. The sisters were a strict and impoverished order, unlike the Ursulines with whom Genevieve was so comfortable. They would be overjoyed to accept a potential novitiate of good family with a reasonable wedding portion to present when she became a bride of Christ. There would be no luxuries like books and the time to study in the convent set in swampland some fifteen miles outside the city, where the life was devoted to prayer and labor. It would be a living death, one to which she could not submit, as Victor Latour knew only too well.

  “You will leave within the hour,” he went on, watching her through narrowed eyes, gauging the reactions that she could not dissemble. “There will be no need to pack, since the sisters do not permit personal possessions of any kind, no books, no jewelry, no—”

  “I know what they do not permit, Papa,” she interrupted quietly. “Just as you know that you have won. I will do as you wish.”

  “As I bid,” he corrected with a snap.

  “As you bid,” she agreed tonelessly.

  “I will instruct Hélène to make preparations for the betrothal ceremony. No expense shall be spared on the reception.” With that, Victor Latour strode from his daughter’s bedchamber, leaving the door ajar.

  No expense spared! Genevieve laughed mirthlessly, wondering if that was her father’s idea of an olive branch. Having got his way, he could afford to be generous. But, at least, her imprisonment was over, and she could leave the four walls that she had come to hate, could breathe the crisp January air, could walk and ride the stiffness from her unused muscles.

  An hour later, she joined Hélène in the salle de compagnie. Her stepmother was overjoyed to see her, but clearly had difficulties with divided loyalty. With one breath she offered sympathy and with the next congratulation. One minute she was obliquely critical of her husband, the next full of praise for his wisdom that surely his daughter must accept was far greater than her own could ever be. “And, you know, chère, Nicolas will be a good husband,” she said, patting Genevieve’s hand. “You are friends, and there will be no surprises for either of you.”

  “Were you obliged to marry Papa, Hélène?” Genevieve, until now, had never been able to understand why her young stepmother would have agreed to be joined with an irascible bully, twice married, and twenty years older than herself.

  Hélène blushed crimson. “What a question, chère. Of course it was not like that. My father believed it was the best for me, and his judgment was always correct. And Mama was quite in favor of the match, so, of course, I was delighted.”

  “Yes, of course,” Genevieve sighed. Hélène, like most women of her kind, could not begin to understand why Genevieve should object to such a pleasant arrangement. Nicolas was attractive, wellborn; they had grown up together, and the marriage would be most generously blessed by Monsieur Latour. The fact that her cousin was weak, cowardly and self-serving would be seen as a mere peccadillo, when he could be brutish, a drunkard, gambler, womanizer, and she would have had to put up with it all like any other wife.

  “Your papa wishes the betrothal to take place next week,” Hélène said hesitantly. “It is very soon, but I think we will be able to invite all our friends who will be very happy to celebrate such an occasion with us.”

  “I would prefer that we do not have a reception,” Genevieve said. “It is not an occasion to celebrate.”

  “You must not talk like that,” Hélène scolded. “Your father insists that it is done right, and you cannot be so discourteous as to have a long face at your own betrothal. How would it look for poor Nicolas? You must consider his feelings.”

  “Mine, of course, are never to be considered again,” she retorted bitterly. “Not only must I submit to this life sentence, but I am expected to look joyful about it. I am going out for a walk.”

  “Eh, Monsieur Delacroix, you become faster as the years go by, I swear it,” panted the maître d’armes as his thrust in prime was parried and countered with a flanconnade to his left hand. “The years are supposed to slow one, but you are as fleet of foot and eye now as you were seven years ago.”

  Dominic merely smiled, flashed his foil in a swift salute and renewed the attack.

  Nicolas, with the other young bloods who had come to spend an afternoon at this salle d’escrime on Exchange Alley, watched the match. Their own play was hopelessly amateur beside that of these two masters, and they all knew that they would learn more this afternoon by observation than by practicing against one another.

  Dominic emerged the victor of the bout, not easily, certainly, but there had never been any doubt of his eventual success in his own mind or in his opponent’s. Laughing, the two men went off to the maître’s inner sanctum, under the envious eyes of the young men, who considered the invitation to take a glass in private with Pepe the summit of ambition.

  Nicolas was exchanging a few desultory passes with a friend when the privateer emerged, shrugging into his coat. Shaking out the ruffles on his shirt and straightening his cravat, he regarded his juniors with an amused eye that seemed to Nicolas to burn its gentle cynicism into his back. He fluffed a parry and received his opponent’s lunge full on the chest.

  “Concentration, my dear Nicolas, is the be all and end all of fencing,” Dominic observed. “If you are ready to leave, I will walk with you.”

  Nicolas was not, as it happened, ready to leave, but he could recognize an order when he heard one. Now what did the privateer want with him? Apprehensively, he fetched his coat and the two left, Delacroix humming to himself in the most unnerving fashion. “So, Nicolas,” he said at last. “How are things proceeding in the Latour household?”

  “You mean with Genevieve?” Nicolas asked, a sulk in his voice.

  “I do not wish to be impolite,” Dominic said gently, “but I cannot imagine finding any other member of that family remotely interesting.”

  “She has agreed to the betrothal,” Nicolas told him. “Victor spoke with her this morning and when he came out of her chamber, she had agreed to obey him.”

  “Have you seen her since?” Dominic demanded, a sharp note of anxiety in his voice. There was no knowing to what methods Latour would stoop to achieve his object.

  “At luncheon,” Nicolas said. “But she did not say very much; in fact she hardly opened her mouth.”

  “But she is unhurt, as far as you could tell.”

  Nicolas looked blank for a minute, and then nodded as he understood his companion’s concern. “Yes, I do not know how he persuaded her, but there was no violence, I am certain.”

  “By which you mean that the coercion was not physical,” Dominic said acidly. “Well, pray accept my congratulations, St. Denis.” Swinging abruptly on his heel, he strode off in the opposite direction.

  From then on, his usual calm, single-mindedness seemed to have deserted him. He could not concentrate on his final preparations for the voyage to Europe, was short with Silas who bore the surliness in stoic silence and responded by being extra attentive, which made Dominic feel guilty and therefore increased his irritability. Genevieve sat in the forefront of his mind, intruded on every waking moment and, quite uncharacteristically, he found himself in a ferment of indecision. He knew that in all fairness he must now bow out of her life, the life he had so vigorously urged upon her to accept. But he needed to see her, to satisfy himself that she was all right, that she had reached the right decision and understood, now, why it was the only sensible choice. And he needed to see her because he wanted her. He had never needed a woman the way he needed this sprite, and the realization chilled hi
m. Rosemarie, perhaps, but it had not been quite the same; the hunger of lust was subsumed beneath the golden overlay of an ideal love forged on the anvil of authority’s opposition. But that laughing, loving, passionate, infuriating, stubborn, willful, diminutive fairy child had no appetite for romantic ideals, only for the rough and tumble of lusting love, for the equality of need and its satisfaction. She seized life with both hands, was constantly searching the horizon for new experiences, jumped with glorious abandon. They were two of a kind.

  Dominic Delacroix finally faced the fact that he had tried so hard to deny. If they were truly so alike, shared so many basic characteristics, how could he condemn her to a life that he would have escaped, or died in the attempt? He was as much a Creole as she, owed as much duty to his breeding and inheritance as she, but he had turned his back on both. They differed in one essential: gender. Was it reasonable of him to take the side of the society he despised in order to crush the spirit of one whom he admired? One to whom he was drawn in the most powerful way, whom he needed, whose presence he enjoyed in all her facets?

  It was not at all reasonable. And clearly something had to be done. She could not possibly share a bed with Nicolas St. Denis; he would never appreciate her. And neither would any of the other empty-headed young men with an excess of time and money on their hands. No, Genevieve Latour’s destiny did not lie in Orleanian society—something she had known for a long time. Where it did lie, the privateer had no idea. But he would give her the opportunity he had long ago taken for himself: to go out and look for that destiny rather than wait in female submission for its imposition.

  With that decision came the plan for her rescue, fully formed and sufficiently outrageous to bring a gleam to the privateer’s blue eyes. It was a plan that his sprite would appreciate to the full and would, perhaps, compensate her for the days of dreariness and depression consequent on her imprisonment and capitulation.

  Silas received his orders in silence. He was offered no explanation, but reflected with a sour smile that only a halfwit would have needed them. At least monsieur seemed to have recovered from his bout of inattention and general lack of interest in the pressing matter of the imminent voyage. The old sailor, with a particular coloring in mind, spent a morning selecting silks, velvets, cambrics, and muslins from the storeroom at the back of the mercer’s on Chartres Street. Then, with the precise memory of a particular size and shape, he gave minute instructions to the army of seamstresses who had three days in which to fashion a complete wardrobe that would clothe an elegant young lady from the skin out on every conceivable occasion.

  “Genevieve, chère, please try to smile.” Hélène fussed around the still figure, adjusting the delicate ruff of antique lace at the neck of Genevieve’s gown of heavy ivory satin.

  The color would normally have been a good choice, but the girl was so pale and limp that it merely made her look even more washed out, the heaviness of the material seeming to weigh her down, increasing her appearance of diminutive fragility.

  “You do not see slaves smiling in the coffles to the auction block,” the girl retorted, then bit her lip, stricken with remorse at the thought of having made such an abominably inappropriate comparison. Spoiled baby! She could almost hear Dominic Delacroix’s sardonic tone, the azure gaze stripping her of adult dignity, reducing her to the status of chastened pupil. She forced a smile and apologized to her stepmother for the brattish comment.

  “It is quite all right, chère,” Hélène reassured, her own relief transparent. “It is such a big occasion for a girl. I know exactly how you feel. I was so nervous at my own betrothal that I could barely walk, and my dear papa had to support me during the ceremony, I was shaking so badly.”

  There was a knock at the bedroom door, and Elise came in, radiantly pregnant and clearly bursting with the good advice that one, experienced in the ways of the world, had to impart to a baby sister. “The grande salle looks enchanting, Hélène,” she said, bestowing a kindly kiss on her stepmother’s cheek. “You must have worked so hard. Oh, Genevieve, you look like a week of wet Sundays!” She pinched her sister’s pale cheeks vigorously, ignoring the recipient’s indignant ouch. “Hélène, do you not think she should use some rouge?”

  “Your papa would not like it,” Hélène said definitely.

  “No, I suppose it would not be proper, since she is not yet married,” agreed Elise. “I cannot imagine why you are behaving as if this is the end of the world, Genevieve. It would not be surprising if Lorenzo and I thought it to be so, since it means that our children will receive nothing from the Latour estate, but have we once said anything?”

  “Not in so many words, Elise,” Genevieve agreed drily. “For all I care, you and Nicolas between you can share everything. Why could Papa not have had this wretched scheme when you were on the marriage mart? You would have been perfectly happy with Nicolas.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence, then Elise said with unconcealed bitterness, “You know perfectly well that you have always been Papa’s favorite.”

  Genevieve looked at her, stunned. Dear God, but it was quite true! She began to laugh, peal after peal ringing through the room at the utter absurdity of it all. “He has the strangest way of showing it, then,” she gasped, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “Marriage to Nicolas or the Sisters of Mercy! My dear sister, you do not know how lucky you are to have escaped the burdens of the favorite!”

  Elise and Hélène were at a loss. Genevieve’s laughter was no more reassuring than had been her previous miserable silence, but rescue appeared with the arrival of Tabitha who informed them that the guests were assembled in the grande salle. Monsieur St. Denis and Monsieur Latour and the lawyers were there, and it was time for Mademoiselle Genevieve to make her appearance.

  The summons instantly sobered Genevieve, bringing her back from the brink of hysteria with a salutory jolt. “I am coming, Tabitha.” She walked to the door, Elise and Hélène falling in behind her. She barely distinguished one face from another in the smiling sea as she walked up to the long table at the far end of the grande salle where stood her father, her cousin, and two solemn-faced men of law, a layer of crisp documents spread on the surface of the table behind them. She was conscious, on one level, of the scent of wood smoke from the two fires burning brightly at each end of the long room, of the mingled fragrances of perfume and scented candles, and the wax polish on the gleaming floors. Mantels and doorways were hung with the green shining richness of smilax and holly. It was all very pretty, Genevieve thought with an abstracted interest. Hélène must have gone to a great deal of trouble; she must remember to thank her when this was all over.

  Her father was talking, or rather, pontificating. The lawyers were nodding importantly and Nicolas was smiling nervously. Everyone else was very quiet, listening with fascination to the terms of the betrothal. So fascinating was it that for a few seconds no one registered the three men silently stepping into the salon from the hall, bringing a rush of cold air with them from the open front door.

  One of the men was Dominic Delacroix, a heavy woolen cloak thrown casually over his shoulders, revealing a coat of blue superfine with silver buttons, buckskin britches, and riding boots—definitely not appropriate attire for attending a formal betrothal ceremony. His companions held drawn pistols; their clothes, the great gold hoops in their ears, the neat pigtails, advertising their profession, if their menacing stance and watchful eyes had not done so.

  The words died on Victor Latour’s lips, and the silence in the long room deepened until the hiss and pop of the fires seemed as loud as an orchestra in full wind.

  Genevieve turned slowly. The privateer smiled at her and walked up the aisle formed by the ranks of guests, as she had done some five minutes earlier.

  “You must forgive this interruption, Latour,” drawled Dominic, reaching the table. He turned to Nicolas standing ashen and motionless as if in the grip of an old and familiar nightmare. “I find that I do not bear you sufficient ill will, St. Denis,
to stand by and watch your systematic destruction at the hands of a woman who, with the best intentions in the world, will not be able to avoid annihilating you.” He switched his attention to Genevieve. She did not move, but the tiger’s eyes were alight with laughter and expectation. “You and I have some unfinished business, as I recall.” So saying, he lowered one shoulder and swept her over it.

  “What the devil …” Latour found some words, at last, but they were directed at the retreating back of the privateer and his small burden of ivory and silver and gold. “Stop them!” he bellowed at the room at large, and at an army of servants in particular; but that army was no more a match for the two pistol-carrying sailors and the overpowering authority of Dominic Delacroix than his guests.

  Genevieve began to laugh, raising her head from her imposed contemplation of the floor, to look at the receding tableau, to fix it forever in her memory.

  “I was under the impression that abducted damsels were supposed to shriek in distress, not find their plight amusing,” observed Dominic in the general vicinity of her quivering behind. His burden choked and Monsieur Delacroix grinned.

  The grin did not escape Silas who allowed himself a grim nod of satisfaction as he and his companion backed out of the room in the wake of Danseuse’s master. A ripple of movement, a whisper of speech followed their retreat, as if the castle of the Sleeping Beauty had begun to stir. The front door closed, shutting off the stream of cold night air and setting the candles fluttering, the fire hissing.

  Dominic swung Genevieve into the saddle of the waiting horse, mounting behind her in almost the same movement. Throwing off his heavy cloak, he wrapped it securely around her before pressing his heels into the mare’s flanks. The animal was off on the instant, pounding down the street toward the quay.

  “Where are we going?” asked Genevieve, tossing her head to catch the cold, fast air whistling past.