Love and Adventure Collection - Part 1 (Love and Adventure Boxed Sets)

by Jennifer Blake

  “Cowardice?” she cried. “You are the one who ran away. And you can keep on running. Get out!”

  “And leave you to face the canaille alone? You do intend to face them, don’t you? I would have wagered half of what I possess that you would have pinned on a smile and faced that crowd with such aplomb they would have envied you your adventure. That is the secret of the gossip-mongers, you know, a corrosive envy of those who lead eventful lives. But perhaps you haven’t the courage. Perhaps you intend to cower here like a frightened rabbit with the hounds after it?”

  Goaded by that taunting voice, Catherine cried again, “Get out!”

  Swooping down upon the dressing table, she picked up the china candlestick holder and sent it spinning at his head. He ducked, and it shattered into fragments against the wall, the unlit stub of the candle rolling into the middle of the floor. The silver frame holding the miniature of her father was next to hand, and she had drawn back to throw it when she was halted by a memory, the memory of her mother screaming like a harridan, and the crashing of breaking crockery against her bedchamber door. While she hesitated Navarro closed in upon her. He took the frame from her nerveless fingers and stood holding it a moment, analyzing the quality of her stricken silence with a frown.

  Abruptly Catherine turned her back on him as tears of pain, rage, remorse, and yes, self-pity rose to her eyes. She would not let him see her cry, she told herself furiously. She would not.

  Behind her she heard his soft curse. She glanced covertly into the dressing table mirror to see him standing with the candle stub in his fingers. His eyes were narrow as he rolled the yellowed wax between his fingers, then sniffed at them. Contempt flashed in his eyes to be followed by a puzzled thoughtfulness. Still, he did not speak.

  Slipping the stub into his pocket, he turned to the armoire and threw open the doors. He made a satisfied sound in his throat, like a panther purring, Catherine thought viciously.

  “The very thing,” he said, drawing forth the gold silk gown. “Will you get into it, or must I be your maid?”

  Turning with a stiff unwillingness, Catherine clutched at her dressing gown, her face mirroring her indecision.

  Seeing it, he coaxed, “Come, Catherine, will you leave me to face the lions by myself?”

  “I thought they were canaille,” she said, deliberately making her voice hard as she took the dress he pressed into her hands, a gesture of defeat.

  “Whether a rabble or a band of lions depends largely on your own attitude. Which shall it be? Will you play the grande dame, or the supplicant?”

  Dragging her slipper chair forward as he spoke, Navarro swept his cloak to one side and sat down. The action caused Catherine to lose the thread of their argument.

  “What — what are you doing?” she asked.

  “Insuring that you do as I ask,” he answered with composure.

  Her voice when she spoke came out as a whisper. “You are a devil.”

  “An interesting possibility,” he agreed. “It has been pointed out before. Still, if this is Satan’s work, it is at least entertaining.”

  “You will forgive me if I do not agree with you?”

  “Certainly,” he answered, his eyes narrowing at the irony in her tone. “But I am not a patient man, and I have other duties this evening. It is permissible to arrive after the curtain rises and before the first interval, unthinkable afterward.”

  “Won’t you — turn your head at least?”

  A faint smile curved his mouth as he moved his head slowly from side to side. “You are much too wily for that. Moreover, I would deprive myself of a major part of the night’s — entertainment.”

  Annoyance with his insolence and with her own pleading moved in her chest with the aching of unshed tears. She jerked at the sash of her dressing gown as she moved toward the armoire. From its depths she drew out the low-necked underdress which matched the gold silk. She held it in her hands a moment, then with a defiant toss of her head she let the dressing gown slip to the floor. A swift lift of her arms, and the underdress of yellow satin billowed above her head and settled down over her naked form; a hurried search for armholes, a few side hooks fastened, and it was done.

  She turned to face him with triumph in her eyes, but saw, instead, the massive form of her nurse in the doorway of the small bedchamber.

  “Mam’zelle,” Dédé exclaimed in outrage as her horrified gaze moved from the half-dressed girl to Navarro lounging in the chair at the far side of the bed. Quickly she made the sign of the cross followed by the age-old, stiff-fingered gesture against the evil eye.

  For one brief moment Navarro looked disconcerted, then he smiled. “The faithful nursemaid, I presume, one who dabbles in a touch of black magic?”

  Dédé stepped into the room, ignoring the dark man. “Jules came for me, Mam’zelle. Is there anything — we — may do for you?”

  The temptation to see what Navarro would do to oppose Dédé’s juggernaut tactics was great but she mastered it.

  “If Jules is still outside you may tell him he is not needed. And then you may dress me for the theatre.”

  “You aren’t going with this man?”

  Dédé’s voice seemed suddenly unbearably dramatic. “You would prefer that we stay here?” she asked with a significant glance about the room. “Of course I am going with Monsieur Navarro.”

  “But Mam’zelle, you said—”

  “That doesn’t matter. I wish now to go. At once.”

  Dédé started at her firm tone, then decided on a different tack. “Very well, but in the gold? Madame said to me plain that you should wear something young, something modest.”

  “The gold,” Catherine answered, then to avoid Navarro’s mocking gaze she searched out a pair of yellow satin slippers to complement her gown.

  It was quiet in the room as the nurse stepped out to deliver the message to Jules. Navarro, his gaze on Catherine’s slender form, spoke musingly. “I must remember, chérie, that you thrive on opposition.”

  Catherine had expected to attract attention. She had not expected the neck craning, the open stares, and the whispers that ran over the audience as she entered on Navarro’s arm. She tried to remain as unaware as he, but it was not easy. Every eye seemed to be boring into them, every imagination busy with their private moments together.

  She had hoped for the blessing of a loge grille, the screened box used by ladies who were awaiting childbirth, bereaved families, and men escorting ladies of questionable character. Such pleasant obscurity was denied her. The box she was shown into was the most public of them all, in the center of the lower level, and decked with an eye-catching profusion of flowers.

  At least she and Navarro were not to be alone. Marcus and her mother were seated to the right. On the left was a young girl with high-piled hair and a simple white muslin dress, while beside her sat a woman recognizable as a duenna or a poor relation by her high-necked dress of dull black stuff. Behind them was a couple with, surprisingly, the fair skin and hair of Americans.

  The first act of the play was drawing to a close and Navarro did not attempt introductions. He seated her in one of the two remaining center seats and took his place beside her.

  A French melodrama, Selico, the play was offered by a company made up of Santo Domingo refugees to a full house numbering more than seven hundred. Every box in both tiers was occupied and the parquet below was packed to capacity.

  The story might have been suspenseful, the actors superb; Catherine didn’t notice. Her attention was caught by a window alcove; the alcove where she had the misfortune of meeting Rafael Navarro. The quadroon ball, held in this same theatre only a few nights before, revolved in her mind. If she looked about her she knew she would recognize a number of gentlemen who had been present that night sitting now with their wives and children around them. It was as if she had seen a secret portion of these men’s lives, and been a part of it herself.

  For the first time since Navarro had burst in upon her, Catherine had t
ime to wonder why he was doing this. Was it a new means of discomfiting Marcus? A diabolical whim? She wished she knew. In the darkened theater his face was a dim bronze mask. It gave nothing away.

  The end of the first act came with appalling quickness. The curtains jerked together with a swish. A lamplighter pulled down the great central chandelier with its crystal lustres and set it ablaze, before moving to the holders between the boxes. The crowd sat up with a collective sigh and much rustling as they began to ply their fans of lace, painted silk, and palmetto. Gentlemen began to stir, preparing to make the first of their visits to the different boxes, a custom which caused the intervals to be favored above the play by the ladies of marriageable age.

  Catherine’s mother broke the silence within the box.

  “A most charming addition to the season’s play list, is it not? Light, compared to the usual fare, but entertaining.”

  She waited until the murmurs of agreement had died away before continuing. “It is a great pity you and Rafael missed the beginning, Catherine, but a few words will suffice to set the scene for you. So your head is better? I am so glad you allowed Rafael to persuade you to come. I was sure you would wish to meet his sister.”

  “By all means,” Navarro said, deftly taking up the conversational ploy before Catherine could answer. “Catherine, may I present to you my sister, Solange, and her companion, Madame Thibeaut. The flowers about us are in Solange’s honor. She has just turned eighteen and is making her bow tonight. Until today she has lived quietly in the country at Alhambra. It was for her sake that I deserted you these three days, Catherine, but perhaps you will still be kind and introduce her into your circle of friends here.”

  “Certainly. How do you do, Solange?” Catherine’s smile may have been a shade brilliant in her relief that the flowers were not some peculiar joke at her expense arranged by Navarro; a comment on her emergence from seclusion. Moreover he had given her a plausible excuse for his demands for her company. She could begin to be comfortable again. Couldn’t she?

  Solange inclined her head, but there was no answering smile on her thin, sallow face. Her jet-black eyes held a wary watchfulness as she sat upright on her chair. The hairstyle she affected was much too sophisticated for her age, and her gown of unrelieved white had the unmistakable look of having been done by a country seamstress.

  The woman at her side, Madame Thibeaut, was even less prepossessing. She wore a widow’s cap of wilted lace threaded with the black ribbon of her mourning. Her shapeless lips were also colorless, and her face under its coating of rice powder was the jaundiced yellow of the tropics. The irises of her eyes had been faded by a hot sun into a light gray-brown. Against such a drab background the gold of the earrings swinging in her ears seemed strange, unnaturally bright. Whether Solange took her cue from this woman, or the woman from Solange, was impossible to say, but the older woman favored Catherine with only a barely civil nod.

  Navarro seemed to expect no more. He turned at once to the couple behind his sister and her companion.

  “This, Catherine, is Giles Barton and his sister, Fanny, friends and neighbors of mine when I am in residence at Alhambra.”

  “And at any other time, I hope,” Giles Barton said, getting to his feet to bow over Catherine’s hand. He towered above her, a broad-shouldered, blond giant of a man, perhaps a little taller even than Navarro, with frank blue eyes and an open and cordial smile. His large hand was warm, and he held her fingers in a firm grasp, letting them go neither too quickly nor too slowly.

  His sister leaned forward. “We are delighted to meet you, Mademoiselle Mayfield. I understand your father was an American; that gives us something in common, doesn’t it? I hope you don’t mind my brother and I making one of the party? Rafe insisted, and it is so seldom that I am able to persuade Giles to come into the city that I did not like to interfere with the arrangements.”

  “Not at all, Miss Barton,” Catherine answered. “M’sieur Navarro is free to invite whom he pleases, and, for myself, I believe large parties are more enjoyable.” Fanny Barton was nervous, that much was plain to Catherine as she answered. Her words tumbled over themselves, and her face was pale so that the freckles across the bridge of her nose stood out like a sprinkling of gold flecks. The smile that curved her wide mouth was hesitant.

  “May I compliment you on your gown?” the woman asked, her gray eyes earnest. “It reminds me of creations worn at home, in Philadelphia. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to see color. So much white is worn here. Lovely, of course, and one conforms because it is so practical and suitable in a warm climate where one must change often and clothing is laundered after every wearing — but still so — so colorless. Your gown stands out like a yellow peony in a bed of white roses.”

  Catherine had almost forgotten what she was wearing. The memory of its donning before the amused eyes of the man they called Rafe brought the color to her cheeks. She had to admit however, that the gown was a success. It had a low, round neck which rose in the back to a fluted, upstanding collar like a ruff. The skirt fell from just under the bust to flare in shimmering folds to the floor, spreading out into a small, graceful train. The style was regal yet simple, to enhance the beauty of the rich, golden silk. It provided a magnificent background for the rich luster of her mother’s pearls, necklet, bracelets, and earrings, purloined at the last moment by Dédé to detract from her extraordinary toilette.

  “You have — land near Alhambra?” Catherine asked. It was easier to continue talking to Fanny Barton than to turn and try to think of some commonplace to exchange with Navarro.

  “Yes, we have a plantation a distance of some five or six miles from Alhambra. The house is not as large, nor is the acreage as vast as Rafe’s holdings since he added Alhambra to his father’s old grant, but it is developing nicely.”

  “But you would prefer to live in the city?”

  “Not really. I enjoy its amenities, the shops, and the balls and endless rounds of levees and rout’s — even Monsieur Gaëtano’s Circus. But it’s not me.” She laughed. “Giles accuses me of enjoying the trip down on the keelboat more than the actual visit. I tire of it all soon enough and long for the peace of home. Not that it is so very peaceful.”

  “Isn’t it? I once spent a summer on a plantation. I was a child at the time, but it seemed to me that the days moved past as slowly as the river at low-water that time of year.”

  “That’s still true enough. The slaves have been troublesome of late, however. The place was stocked with island slaves when Giles bought it five years ago, and of course you know that Negroes from the West Indies are riddled with that terrible black magic they call voodoo. That isn’t to mention their inoculation with ideas of rebellion fostered by their knowledge of the Negro kingdom of Haiti with its history of revolution.”

  Madame Thibeaut nodded, and entered the conversation abruptly. “I could tell you a thing or two about that. We have several of the island Negroes at Alhambra. Murderous brutes, you can tell by looking at them. I should know. My mother and father, my older sister, and my husband were killed on Santo Domingo, that they now call Haiti, in ‘91. My son died in the open boat in which we were escaping to Cuba. I was lucky to escape alive. So many died.”

  Her flat, hard voice somehow precluded sympathy. There was a glassy, repellent light in her eyes. Perspiration beaded her upper lip, and as the candlelight slanted across her high, bulging forehead, Catherine saw that the heavy rice powder she wore was meant to fill the scars left by smallpox.

  Fanny smiled, saying in the soothing voice of one who has heard the story many times before, “It was terrible for you, I know.”

  “Terrible? They were demons, fiends from hell. Someone should send an army to kill them all.”

  “Napoleon tried, and failed,” Fanny said softly. “But now you are in the city, perhaps you will find some of your old friends among the new wave of Santo Domingan refugees and those who have left Spanish Cuba because of the fighting between France and Spain
.”

  The older woman showed not the slightest interest in the possibility. She hunched her shoulders in a pettish shrug and turned away.

  Solange, with unexpected tact, directed her companion’s attention to the parquet beneath them. “Look, Madame, at that droll old man. He looks like the Sun King himself. Who can he be?”

  Catherine, following the girl’s pointing finger, smiled. The old man Solange had discovered was dressed in the style of a generation before. He wore a curled, powdered wig with a queue, satin knee breeches beneath his brocade frock coat, silk stockings, and silver buckles on his red-heeled shoes. In one hand he carried a ribbon-decked cane and a lace handkerchief, in the other he cradled a small white poodle-dog, while a spider monkey clung precariously to his shoulder.

  “That’s the Chevalier,” Catherine answered her. “He has dressed just as you see him, like a gentleman of the ancien regime, for as long as I can remember. As a child he was one of my favorites, probably because he keeps a candy shop. You must pay him a visit while you are here and taste his pralines.”

  Solange stiffened. “Thank you, no,” she said in glacial accents. “I am no longer a child.”

  Catherine had meant nothing of the kind. She herself often patronized the Chevalier’s shop on Chartres Street. But Solange had already turned away with offended dignity, presenting her back to Catherine as she spoke to her companion.

  The box had filled rapidly. A number of young men clustered about Yvonne Mayfield while she parried their compliments with a practiced air, treating them with a nice blend of flirtatiousness and maternal indulgence. Navarro had gone to greet a number of his friends, and as Catherine watched he led them forward to be presented to his sister. Even the Bartons were occupied by an American couple, and the clatter of English rose about the soft, rounded syllables of the French tongue in the crowded theatre.