Sunset. It had been only mid-morning when she had left the house with Pauline. Where had the hours gone? Where was Pauline? Left behind, that was it. Left behind — with Solange.
The bitter taste of horror filled her mouth. Slowly she closed her eyes. Solange. Poor Solange. Too late. The blood she had spilled upon the damp earth of the forest floor would be congealed and blackened by now. Too late. Whatever pale emotion of possessive desire Rafael had felt for her would have been burned away in the fire of his hate. Such terrible treachery could be neither forgotten nor forgiven. She had no right to expect it — none even to wish for it. Too late. She was committed, committed to an uncertain future. With or without her consent, she was bound to the man who watched her so avidly from the dimness of the forward seat.
She could never go back to Alhambra. She could never go back. Ever.
16
“I’m the slick-sided seventh son of a seventh son! I’m brother to the grizzly bear, cousin to the catamount and my pappy was a pole cat! I can out throw, out gouge, ‘n out row any man on the mighty Missasip. I can cordelle further, drink deeper, climb higher, and fall lighter than any man Jack of ye here. I can swaller the Black River and spit out the Red. Daytime, I’m meaner ‘n a rattlesnake with a sore tail; come night I use the moon for my crowin’ perch! Cock-a-doodle-do! Can you hear the world? Cock-a-doodle-do!”
Catherine stopped in amazement in the doorway of the rough river tavern. A wavering yellow light spilled out into the night from lamps hanging in the gloom beneath the low, smoke-blackened log beams. At one end was a large fireplace with a frying pan and a baking pot hanging over the bed of coals, and a small feisty spit-dog wearily making his round, turning a side of beef suspended in the opening. The room reeked of sour ale and whiskey, of smoke and the liberal bespattering of tobacco juice soaked into the sawdust on the floor. A collection of unkempt ruffians, river boatmen, from the width of the shoulders under their homespun shirts, sat hunched over their food and drink at the puncheon tables. With open mouths they gazed at the bearded giant standing astride the center table, yodeling at the top of his lungs.
Recoil was Catherine’s first impulse, but Marcus was behind her urging her into the noisome room. She barely missed colliding with a scowling, black-browed young man with dark hair to his shoulders. He twisted to avoid her, wincing as his weight was thrown onto a lame foot. Ignoring her apology, he slipped past her out the door. She caught the impression of an intense backward look before she dismissed him from her mind.
“A fancy piece, if ever I saw one!” The coarse greeting came from a darkened corner.
“High in the instep. Might be right interesting to take her down a peg.”
“Take what down a peg?”
“Would ye say her ‘ud strip to advantage?”
What was there about her to provoke such comment? There was nothing to which they could take exception in her round gown of gray cambric and bonnet of rose satin trimmed beneath the brim with gray ostrich tips. She and Marcus might indeed have been husband and wife; there was nothing to indicate otherwise. Was it her elaborate toilette? Such a dreary place was doubtless patronized by only the most empty-handed of travelers. Certainly no one of any pretense to family or social standing need stay in a hostelry of this sort. Accommodation and a sincere welcome was most always to be had at a private house. But she and Marcus had not dared to bespeak such hospitality, a fact which, just possibly, put her in the category those men had assigned her. A fancy piece. It was a galling idea; still, after this escapade she might do well to savor the ring of it.
With her head high, Catherine stalked through the wave of ribald laughter. She was conscious all the while of the bruising grip on her elbow, and the silent, unwavering stare of the boatman on the table as he followed her progress across the room.
A short, balding man wearing a greasy apron over his paunch turned from basting the beef.
“Yeh?” There was a fleeting familiarity in the innkeeper’s manner which gave Catherine the impression that he knew Marcus and was none too impressed. The marked lack of respect shown to the dress sword hanging at Marcus’s side was also revealing. It would, of course, be the height of folly to draw it against such odds, but in like circumstances she could not feature Rafael letting such a consideration weigh with him.
Clenching her teeth, Catherine banished such useless musings, directing her attention to their reluctant host.
“A room, you say?” he queried.
“Yes, and private, if you please. None of your four or five to the bed.”
The innkeeper winked with exaggerated slyness. “I know just what you have in mind, Sir.”
“Do you?” Marcus asked with an attempt at chill irony while extending a coin between two fingers.
The man spat on the silver and rubbed it upon his apron. “To be sure. To be sure,” he said, a shade of doubt coloring his tone as he took in the quality of the stuff in Catherine’s gown. His gaze brushed her face, then scurried to the dark corner of the room. “Yeh.”
Marcus leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Also, you will forget — if you please — that you have seen us this night.”
“Certain sure,” the innkeeper replied with a dig of his elbow. “Nothing surer.”
Marcus was not satisfied, it was plain, but he had said as much as he dared, too much, in Catherine’s opinion. He stepped back, allowing the other man to light the way up a set of rickety stairs.
The upper floor of the tavern was scarcely more prepossessing than the lower. The puncheon rattled with every step, a brisk breeze blew down the dark and narrow hall, coming in at the chinks between the logs, and the portions dividing the space into cubicles were so ill-made that the candles of the occupants were clearly visible through the cracks.
Tittering female laughter alerted Catherine to some inkling of the true nature and use of these small private rooms. The rhythmic creaking of bed ropes, coupled with equally monotonous groaning made her sure of it.
“Marcus—” she began, coming to a halt as a shriek from a darkened room shook the cool night air.
“Not now, Catherine,” he grated, thrusting her over the threshold of the chamber the innkeeper indicated. Turning, he ordered: “Supper, the best you have, and a bottle of claret.”
“A feed I can give you,” the man replied, “but I’ve not much call in my house for rich man’s swill. You’ll have to take your choice of corn whiskey, Monongahela rye, or ale.”
Marcus’s lip curled. “Bring water then, and the rye — and if you would care to do the one more service, you can tell me which of the cutthroats downstairs can be trusted to take us safely downriver.”
“Why, that’s hard to say. Any one of them would, I expect, if the money passed merrily enough, and was available only in the City of Sin.”
“There’s none you would like to recommend?”
“As to that — the man exercising his lungs as you came in is as good as any, and better than most.”
“His name?”
“That old moss-face? Why, that’s Bull March, the best damn rough and tumble fighter on the river — why, he’s done took three red turkey feathers off other bullies this week.”
“I require his skill as a boatman, not a fighter.”
“He’s the best keelboat captain too. They do say he can take on three men, bite off their noses and ears and gouge out their eyes, and never take his hand off the rudder.” He winked at Catherine. “And he’s got quite an eye for the ladies, too.”
Peering into the chamber, Catherine pretended not to notice.
A frostiness crept into Marcus’s manner. “I believe I would prefer someone less — colorful — and less likely to delay us while he indulges in a brawl.”
“There’s always Parson Vail,” the innkeeper said, pursing his lips, “a nip-cheese who never bought a round of drinks in his life, but they do say he’s as careful with his boat as he is with his money.”
“He sounds the very man I need. Another th
ing, you wouldn’t know of anybody who might take a carriage off my hands?”
“Reasonable, is it?”
“Very — for a man with ready money,” Marcus said, lowering his voice.
“Maybe, just maybe.”
Catherine, moving away a discreet distance, was eyeing the fastening on the chamber door, a simple leather thong and peg latch, when Marcus took the candle from the portly innkeeper and pushed it into her hand.
“Business, chérie,” he said, an audacious glint in his eyes. “Amuse yourself until I return.”
Latching the door behind him was more of a gesture than a real precaution. She could not but be grateful for the tact of his withdrawal however.
A bare and battered Queen Anne table with a Sweet Gum stump taking the place of one of its curved legs stood in the corner. With a tired gesture, she placed the candle upon it and sank down upon the sagging bed. A rustling confirmed her guess at a corn-shuck mattress. The bed ropes stretched so far that she stood again at once, afraid she would have to pick herself up off the floor. Covering the mattress ticking was a sheet of such a grubby gray that she was afraid it would not bear too close an inspection. Bedbugs, she thought with a creeping sensation over her skin, were a definite possibility. The only other amenity, if it could be classed as such, was a cracked, brown stoneware chamber pot beneath the foot of the bed.
Slowly the position in which she found herself sank home. Mirthless laughter gathered in a hard knot inside her chest and she sank back upon the bed, clamping her hand over her mouth, rocking back and forth. The pressure made her eyes ache, streaming water. Her head pulsed with pain.
With a gulping gasp, she calmed herself, gently probing the soreness of a bruise on her cheekbone. She must not give way to her emotions; her position was her own fault. But, oh, how ironic it was that in escaping from one brutal man she had placed herself in the power of another.
At the thought of Marcus’s precautions against Rafael’s following them, laughter threatened to overcome her again. He could be easy. Nothing was less likely than that Rafael would come tearing after her, even without the death of his sister to occupy his thoughts. No, she had little fear of Rafael this night; it was Marcus who caused the crease between her eyes and set her mouth in a grim line.
With fingers that trembled visibly, she untied the ribbons of her bonnet and took it from her head. The crown was quite crushed on one side where she had hit her head on the door frame of the carriage when Marcus struck her. Had the blow been the action, perhaps, of a determined but exasperated man?
She must not make excuses for him. His conduct in leaving Solange had been callous in the extreme, if not totally criminal. Still, what did that presage for her own future? What, in short, were his intentions? She had no idea. An uneasy truce had reigned between Marcus and herself for the latter part of their journey. It had been dictated in part by her sick inability to hold a coherent idea in her aching head, but there had also been a most ignominious fear of forcing the issue. Her suspicions might be confirmed.
A wry smile flitted across her mouth as she tossed the bonnet aside. What could be plainer than installing her in this single room in what could best be described as an inn of questionable repute? Still, she could always hope that he intended to make his couch on a bench in the common room below. After all, he had left her alone. Tact, or expediency? Being a civilized man, it might be both, an explanation which she wished had not occurred to her.
To give way to useless speculation served no purpose. Her best course of action might be the cool assumption that Marcus intended to conduct himself as a gentleman. This decision taken, the next step was to tidy herself and await events.
All very commendable, of course, but when, a few minutes later, there came the shuffle of heavy footsteps in the corridor outside and an experimental shove on the door, she stood in the center of the room in quiet, frozen horror.
“Hey,” a drunken voice said. “Hey, girlie, let me in.”
Catherine was mute.
“I can see you, girlie. You ain’t got nobody. Let me in.”
It was true. Scanning the crude panel of the door, she could see the gleam of an eyeball through one of the wide cracks. Swinging around, Catherine swooped upon the candle and snuffed it out, then immediately wished she had not. To be a trapped quarry in the dark was infinitely worse than being spied upon.
“I like the dark, too, girlie. Com’n, open the door, lemme in.”
“Go away,” Catherine said in her coldest tone. “Go — away.”
Her answer was a thud and the protesting squeak of leather hinges thrown against their nails scraping along her nerves.
“I’m a-comin’ in,” the man yelled in a voice of ludicrous drunken merriment, as if he suspected her of teasing him. The heavy thump of his shoulder on the door came again.
Catherine flinched, backing away to the far wall. There was no place else to go, no window, no other door. She would not stoop to crawling beneath the bed. The door could not hold long.
Another assault, and abruptly the latch gave, catapulting the man into the room in a stumbling lunge. He waved his arms wildly, trying to save himself, then crashed to the floor!
With a nimbleness she had not known she possessed, Catherine sidestepped his flailing arms and legs and whisked around the bed to the door. Halfway through it, she was halted by a shout.
“Here! What’s going on?” It was the innkeeper, puffing down the hall toward her with Marcus close behind, trying to get around his bulk in the narrow passage.
For a suspended second Catherine was undecided whether to be glad or sorry to see them. She felt an almost overwhelming impulse to run and keep on running. Then with a sharp, controlled gesture, she indicated her room and the bellowing issuing from it
The innkeeper bustled inside. Setting down the lamp with which he had lighted his way, he collared the river boatman, hauled him to his feet and shoved him protesting outside the room.
“Chérie, are you all right?” Marcus asked, encircling her waist with his arm.
Her voice was brittle as she answered, “Of course.”
“I am to blame for leaving you,” he murmured disarmingly. “I would not have done so if it hadn’t been imperative that I sell the carriage and try to arrange for a boat to take us downstream. I could never live with myself if harm had come to you.”
Ignoring the last, Catherine asked faintly, “You sold the carriage? The Trepagniers’ carriage?”
“Shhh,” he cautioned. “It was necessary. How else was I to find the money for our passage? Don’t worry. My dear cousin will have little trouble tracing it, and he is warm enough in the pocket so that redeeming it will do him no harm.”
As Marcus spoke he nodded dismissingly at the landlord, busy contending with his belligerent customer, all the while gently urging her back into the room.
“But that — that is stealing,” Catherine said when he closed the door behind them.
A pained expression crossed his face. “Not at all. Merely borrowing against its value. I will repay my cousin at the first opportunity.”
“And when will that be?” she asked dryly.
Tilting his head on one side, he stared at her with a thoughtful expression on his handsome countenance for the length of time it took a party of noisy river boatmen to clomp down the hall and install themselves, with clinking bottles and glasses, and demands for the cards to be shuffled, in the room next door.
“Why,” he said slowly, “I’m not sure when. It may be as soon as your Rafael makes us his first payment of the generous allowance we will ask of him.”
Catherine stared at him, only preventing her mouth from falling open with great effort. Madness, she thought. Rafael would never agree. She was prevented from voicing this conviction only by the arrival of their supper, brought by a slattern of undetermined age with greasy, tangled hair and a complete lack of modesty about the flabby breasts escaping from her bodice.
They balanced their plates on
the maimed Queen Anne table, eating standing up. Forcing herself to eat the tough meat and the potatoes shining with grease without showing her disgust was an exercise in self-control which stood her in good stead, for while they ate Marcus expounded further on his plan to extract money from Rafael.
“Your erstwhile husband, chérie, is hardly in need of your dowry, but it would be too much to expect him to turn it over to you intact — especially if he suspected that I might benefit from such a gesture. Still, we need not despair. Our Rafael is a fair man. Moreover, I suspect — on account of his quixotic marriage to you, chérie, — that he possesses one of those major inconveniences, a conscience. A charming note, full of contrition and pathos, should elicit from him a stipend of a size to allow us to proceed to Paris. There, in comparative anonymity, we can set up housekeeping and enjoy ourselves without stint. We may not be able to move in the best of society, but I am assured that the demi-monde lead amusing lives. In fact, more amusing, filled with more pleasure and gaiety than the staid haut monde.’“
Catherine put down her fork and pushed the tin plate away with distaste. “There is only one thing,” she said slowly. “I have not said I will go with you.”
“You are referring to your stupid insistence that I escort you to your mother? Don’t be naive, Catherine, I never had the least intention of doing so, as you must have guessed by now. I made the suggestion merely as a sop to your ridiculous notions of the conventions. Haven’t you realized how leaving your husband with me will be construed by the circle in which your mother moves — be you and I ever so innocent? They will crucify you, chérie. Your mother will have trouble enough putting a good face on the matter without you showing up on her doorstep.”
“Women have left their husbands before,” she pointed out in a subdued voice.
“But when they do so with another man they are hardly welcomed back into the bosom of the family, or society, with open arms.”
“As you well know, I did not leave Rafael for you. There is a vast difference in leaving one’s husband with another man and accepting a friend’s escort home.”
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