François’s glazed pupils slid from his friend to his wife. What he saw . . . it could be misconstrued. Nicolas’s big hands clasped Natalie’s shoulders. The dress’s neckline looked askew. François wasn’t certain if it was passion that ignited their expressions or anger.
He braced his weight on his good leg and closed the door behind him. His free hand held a corked bottle, a quarter full. The rich brandy he had consumed to blot out Jasmine’s torture had not helped his equilibrium. The slave woman had loved him, really loved him, which was certainly more than he could say for his dear wife.
“I drove over to talk about old times, Nicolas.” He tried to make out what lay behind the sudden screen that dropped over the half-breed’s eyes. He felt sprouting in his guts an ugly suspicion that had lain dormant in his mind since the day Nicolas returned with the bride he himself had arranged for. “It looks like you’re already busy talking about old times.”
Natalie ignored his sarcastic innuendo. “I saw the execution today, François.” She moved to put distance between herself and Nicolas. In the candle’s faint light, her hair sparkled like louis d'ors. God, but she was beautiful! “I saw Jasmine lashed on the whipping horse.”
François glanced at Nicolas for a hint as to what was on Natalie’s mind, but his partner had turned his back to kneel at the hearth and stir the embers. François knew that Natalie had been aware of his affaires all this time. He had wanted her to hurt like he hurt for her. If she had made a scene, cried or begged or gotten angry, she would have been in a class with other women. That he could deal with. Maybe, just maybe, he could have made her . . . Hell, he was getting maudlin.
He said bluntly, “Jasmine died about half an hour ago.” Natalie bowed her head for a brief second, then looked him directly in the eye. “I brought her child here—your child, François.”
Anger stirred his liquor-steeped blood. “You are never to meddle in my business!”
“Don’t you mean meddle in your affaires?”
His gaze went from her to Nicolas, who had risen to stand beside Natalie. François wasn’t certain if it was a protective gesture or not, but the mere action riled him. “We’re going home.”
“Your daughter goes with us,” she said defiantly.
Frustration knotted in him. “Why?”
“Because,” she said in an empty voice, “the child may be the only hope left to bond us.”
The preposterous statement staggered him. His mistress’s child, a slave child, bonding them. He almost laughed, but the laughter turned to a sneer. “Do you think a child will bring me to perform my husbandly duties—which you could not inspire?”
Natalie blanched.
Nicolas said, “The child is asleep. Leave her for the night.”
Damn Nicolas and his logic and wisdom and—damned complacency with the world! As for his own self, his life was spinning dangerously out of control. He shrugged and limped to the door. “Are you coming?” He tossed the question carelessly over his shoulder to Natalie.
The ride back into Natchitoches was tensely silent, with only the rumble of the caleche’s great wooden wheels and the chorus of bullfrogs to rile thoughts that were already highly agitated. Initially, Natalie’s interference had infuriated him, but once more the insidious serpent of suspicion slithered through him. Had Nicolas and Natalie been carrying on their own affair the entire time? His mind flashed back over the years, sorting out images of them. Those interchanging glances he had intercepted—had they held nuances he had missed?
He pitched the empty bottle out into the night, immediately wishing he had another. The brandy might blot out the image of their bodies entwined, an image that tortured him, spinning through his brain in tempo with the carriage’s wheels over and over. By the time they reached Natchitoches, the settlement’s lights had been snuffed—and his suspicions had magnified. An instant’s cold sobriety flashed through the darkness. Had he been cuckolded? There was only one way to find out.
As if sensing his suddenly resolved purpose, his wife seemed to flee up the stairs to the gallery and down the hall to her bedroom. Her pale blue dimity skirts swished like the tail of a Thoroughbred in heat. Promising. He trailed after her. His wooden leg thudded on each stair, declaring his intent. When he opened the door, she spun around to face him. Her arms were lifted to remove the combs in her hair. The position provocatively thrust her breasts taut against the blue-striped organdy bodice. Something in his face must have given him away. Slowly, her arms lowered to cross protectively before her.
“What do you want?”
He unbuttoned his vest. “To consummate our marriage, Natalie.”
The cornered look of the animals that Nicolas trapped edged into the silver center of her green eyes. She had no excuse. She was his wife. With a boundless sense of satisfaction, he felt himself harden, thrusting against his breeches as her breasts did her bodice.
“Why now, François?”
His smiled wryly, even as his fingers worked at his cravat. “The obvious. Because I was unable to before.”
“With me, yes,” she countered, her voice huskier than usual. “But not with every other female in the Louisiana territory.”
He started toward her, discarding his shirt on the settee. He reached out and fingered one of her wispy side curls. “All that has changed.”
She turned her head away. “I’ve changed. I’m not the same woman you married. Whatever love I might have had for you, you destroyed with your whoring.”
He brushed her gardenia-white cheek with the back of his fingers. Her sharply indrawn breath pleased him enormously, even excited him. “I’m not asking for your love or affection.” His hand dipped down between her breasts and located one taut nipple. “I want foutre, my dear.”
Her head swiveled around at the obscene word. “No!”
“You’re my wife, remember?” With that, he ripped the bodice down the front, and her breasts spilled out over the camisole. Her hands fought him, and she tried to shove him off balance, but he was larger and forced her backward to the bed. His free hand opened his breeches. Never, with even the most practiced whores, had he felt the excitement bursting in his groin as he did now.
Natalie tried to scramble across the bed, but he caught one hose-encased calf and dragged her back. She kicked out at him, and her fingers arched out to claw his face. He dodged and then leveled himself atop her. His hands thrust her skirts over her hips. “Not like this!” she begged.
“It’s the only way.”
He knew that now. His hands anchored her hips to the mattress. He used the space between her thrashing thighs as a channel to guide his thrusting organ up into her. At his entry, she arched off the bed with a strangulated gasp. Otherwise, there had been no obstruction, no maidenhead to pierce. Only her surprise and outrage. With that knowledge, his own rage mounted. He plunged into her time after time, and then came too quickly. With a muffled groan, he fell across her.
“You’ve had what you came for,” she hissed, pushing ineffectually at him. “Now get out!”
He raised up off her, his arms enclosing her at either side. Her unbound hair, meshed over the tapestried cover, framed her dead-white face. A great sadness welled in his soul. “No, I found out what I wanted to know.”
He shoved away from her and rebuttoned his breeches. Something in his expression must have warned her. She struggled from the bed. Pushing mindlessly at her skirts, she followed him to the door. “Where are you going?” she asked in consternation.
He retrieved his sword and started down the stairs. Whatever sadness he had initially felt was rapidly being diluted by his anger. He had been betrayed. He ignored Natalie’s anxious questions and stalked from the house. He might have been unfaithful to Natalie, but he had never tried to dupe her or to skulk around behind her back. Yet she and Nicolas had done just that. Nicolas, his partner, his best friend.
He would kill the bastard.
Nicolas, his partner, his best friend.
The catchph
rases chased each other round and round in his rage-smoked mind as the caleche’s gray picked its way through the deep night. The fresh bottle of rum François gulped from periodically only intensified his seething hatred. Shakespeare was wrong, he fumed. There was no fury like a man cuckolded.
He should have known that that half-breed’s sixth sense would have alerted him to a trespasser’s approach. François, silhouetted by the moonlight, descended from the caleche and stalked toward the cabin door. Nicolas waited just inside in the shadows. Just like the half-breed had always done—waited in the shadows, waited to take his place in Natalie’s bed!
François stepped into the darkened room and drew his sword. He could just barely make out Nicolas’s eyes. “I’ve come to kill you, mon ami.”
Nicolas’s voice held the calm and patience of a priest. “You want to tell me why first?”
“Merde! Do you and Natalie take me for an absolute idiot?”
In the silence, he wasn’t certain what Nicolas was doing. He heard movement, that was all. He didn’t trust the son of a whore.
“You’re wrong.” Nicolas’s voice came from a different part of the room.
François spun toward it. He squinted, trying to focus on the differentiating shades of black.
“Nothing has happened between Natalie and me, François.”
“Liar!” He moved toward the shadowy figure. “I’ve known all along.”
The figure evaporated, and François swung around. He cursed the wooden leg that gave his position away while Nicolas moved silently, stealthily. If he couldn’t conceal himself, then he would distract Nicolas, his enemy.
“Don’t you think I’ve seen the way you two look at each other, touch each other?” His sword scythed the air. It made no contact, but he heard Nicolas, dodging from its path, bump against something.
“I tell you, François, you’re wrong.” This time Nicolas’s deep voice came from François’s right.
François’s sharp blade cleaved the darkness. Nothing. “Am I wrong about the bloodless sheet tonight?” He swung with both arms. Whoosh. Whoosh. Emptiness. The damned half-breed had the advantage in that he saw better in the dark.
“You’re wrong about everything. Go home. We’ll talk about this tomorrow when you’re sober.”
“Oh, but you’re wily, mon ami." Where the hell was the bastard? Keep him talking. “While I was away, did you hang your bloodied sheet out for all to witness the defloration? You assume too much, mon ami. The privileges of the proxy over that of the husband, eh?”
“The proxy marriage was your idea, François, when you hurt your leg.”
“Perhaps I didn’t have to lose my leg.” Even as he said it, the suspicion became certain knowledge. Nicolas and Natalie had conspired against him from the first. Take his manhood, and what was left?
“You know that’s asinine, François! You would have died if we hadn’t amputated.”
François’s smile was lethal. He stabbed at the traitorous voice. The sharp blade sheared an unobstructed arc. “Goddamn you to hell, Nicolas!” he cried.
He hacked again and again at the unseen enemy and found each time only a void. Sweat and tears mingled in his eyes. “Damn you, Nicolas,” he said, weeping, “can’t you fight like a gentleman instead of a sauvage?”
Suddenly, Nicolas’s arm locked about his throat. François’s free hand clawed at the constriction. “Bastard!” he wheezed.
“Drop the sword, François.”
He felt the vital air seeping from pores. He had to strike now! Wrenching his wrist, he raised the sword and drove backward and downward with it.
§ CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE §
Lt. Armand Scoraille tucked his tricorn under his arm and bowed low over Natalie’s hand, his lips brushing her gloved fingertips. “I will call again tomorrow, madame, if I may.”
She withdrew her hand, held by the handsome lieutenant just a fraction too long. Having arrived only several weeks before from Paris, his uniform was in immaculate condition. Soon the sultry heat, even though it was almost October, would convince him that the heavy woolen blue jacket, along with the brown bagwig, was unnecessary for another couple of months at least. However, St. Denis still managed to turn out in splendid array after all those years. “Perhaps another time. I leave tomorrow for Fort Rosalie.”
A frown furrowed the brows over the lieutenant’s light brown eyes. He was merely one more among the throng of men already courting the widow. “Surely, Madame de Gautier, you’re not planning on making the journey yourself?”
She lifted her shoulders prettily. “And why not? I’m half-owner in Louisiana Imports-Exports, I keep the books and select the merchandise to be bought and sold.”
“Well, naturellement, I have heard of this business you run so successfully.”
Natalie didn’t bother to inform the officer that it wasn’t so much business that sent her to Fort Rosalie as it was a message from Jeanne-Antoinette, who was expecting her first child in a month and wanted Natalie to be there to help with the delivery.
Lieutenant Scoraille continued, “But to travel to the Natchez Trace, madame, it can only be tres dangereaux for a woman.”
Her mouth curved in a wry smile, and, stepping from the company’s overhanging porch into the blistering sunlight, she raised her yellow lace parasol. “Two of my employees will be with me. Besides, Lieutenant, I have seen and been through more danger in the last few years than most soldiers see in a lifetime.”
A lifetime. She felt as if she had lived several lifetimes, and she had yet to see her thirtieth year. Nevertheless, she felt terribly old.
“Ah, yes,” the lieutenant said, touching her elbow sympathetically. “I have heard the tragic circumstances of your husband’s death. My condolences.” He bowed again, annoying her slightly with his solicitous attentions.
“Au revoir, Lieutenant Scoraille,” she said curtly, starting homeward. It was impossible for her to feign sorrow at François’s death. The real tragedy had been François’s life, not his demise. She felt his death had at last set him free. Oh, the settlement still gossiped about his suicide.
All of Natchitoches had known that his depression had driven him to drink and other wild excesses, so the fact that he had died by his own hand wasn’t so farfetched. Only she and St. Denis knew the full accounting given by Nicolas—that he had sidestepped François’s driving sword, and François, still immobilized by Nicolas’s arm, had inadvertently impaled himself. However incredible, she believed the story. St. Denis hadn’t felt it necessary to call for a court of inquiry, although Father Hidalgo had been incensed that the commandant had ignored his accusations that the peculiar circumstances pointed to skullduggery.
She passed by the hotel, stagecoach depot, and the theater and ballroom, all of which had sprung up in the past year due to the town’s booming trade. All roads led to Natchitoches. It was the outfitting point for the thousands of people going west. It was the terminus for the eastern end of El Camino Real or the San Antonio Trace. Another route led eastward to Fort Rosalie, where it connected with the Natchez Trace.
Arriving home, she handed her parasol and gloves to Therese, who met her at the door. “Is Quin-Quin napping?”
The freedwoman’s jowls wattled with her nod. “Yes, madame, but there’s—”
“And my baggage, did you have a chance to pack it?” She knew she sounded short-tempered. The conversation with Lieutenant Scoraille about the past had triggered her bad mood. “If not, don’t worry about it, Therese. I can do it tonight before I go to bed.”
“Madame, Monsieur Brissac awaits you in the parlor,” Therese managed at last.
Natalie’s stomach fluttered like a hundred hummingbirds. “How long has he been here?”
“About a half hour, madame. I served him the chateau wine.”
“Good. Please see that no one disturbs us.”
Therese’s large, raisin-brown eyes gleamed with wicked good humor. “They’ll have to cross my dead body first, madame.”
She was glad she had worn the yellow silk damask with the white satin quilted petticoat—but regretted the mobcap that hid her hair.
“I see the English colonies have civilized Monsieur le Sauvage,” she said quietly.
He took a drink from the footed glass he held. So he drank more easily now.
“You could at least have let me know where you were,” she said, this time vehemently. “I worried—”
Without turning, he said, “You’ve done well with the business, Natalie.”
She crossed the parlor to stand behind him. Her fingers ached to caress that broad back. “I heard once you were in Williamsburg’s countinghouses—that you had bought shares in a three-ton merchant vessel.”
She had also heard he had purchased an indentured servant from Ireland and scandalized Williamsburg by setting the lass free. The last Natalie had heard was that the young woman was living with him.
He set the empty glass on the sideboard and turned to face her, his hands at his hips pushing back the front panels of his finely tailored coat. Inwardly, she shrank from the sulfurous eyes. “I kept account of your half of the company, Nicolas,” she rambled. “It’s all deposited at the Royal Bank of New Orleans.”
“As I’ve said, you’ve done very well. Much better than I expected.”
“You resent my independence, don’t you?”
He tossed back the remaining wine in his glass. “I want to sell out to you.”
She drew in a deep breath. “I don’t deserve your hate, Nicolas.”
The corners of his lips curled in a bitter smile. “Oh, I don’t hate you. I still want you as much as I ever did, damn you, Natalie.”
BLUE BAYOU ~ Book I (historical): Fleur de Lis Page 23