From what she could discover, Ali had been left behind to keep watch over Alhambra. The situation there had not changed either for better or worse, apparently. Rafe had little to say on the subject. Her nursery was still in order with Ali’s son, a hefty, kicking, cooing babe of five and a half months, the most important boarder. Ali had a great attachment for the child. He had named the youngster Rif so that he might not forget his people, the Berber tribe from which his father sprang. Ali slept with him at his side at night, a fact which had, perhaps, influenced Rafe’s decision to leave Ali behind, though he did not say so.
Questions about Giles and Fanny Barton brought little more response. They were not at Cypress Bend. They had left their plantation on the river for the amusements of the city. The winter season would just be starting in New Orleans.
Her husband’s attitude was bewildering. It was no compliment that his single need of her was to slake his passion. If his understanding was so superior, he must know she required more than that. And yet, though he kept her at his side, though he required her company below in the cargo box not only at night, but often in the afternoon, he did not say the words she most wished to hear.
Catherine came to hate the inscrutable gaze he turned upon her. She resented his impatient answers only a little less than his alienating silence. Imperceptibly, she began to repossess herself, withdrawing by degrees the portion of her heart and mind she had so willingly yielded. She could no longer give herself to him with abandon. It was hurtful, therefore, to give herself at all.
Such shrinking did not, of course, go unnoticed.
“Your eyes, sweet Catherine, reproach me, though your lips smile. How have I offended you?”
They were in the berth. They had been sitting there at first, since it was the most comfortable seat in the cabin, but the sitting had quickly led to other things.
What could she say? You hold yourself aloof from me. You treat me like a woman you have bought, a pleasing whore. I hate you because you can make love to me, and forget. I hate you because I am afraid you came after me out of no more than vengeful desire.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“I am to guess, then?”
She shrugged, a pettish motion she regretted but could not help.
He caught her chin and turned her to face him. “Look at me and tell me what is wrong.”
“I am tired,” she said, withstanding his gaze because it mattered so much, “and I long to see Alhambra.”
“No more than that?” he asked, but she was not deceived. His sudden stillness had not been natural.
Catherine lowered her eyes. “I have wondered,” she said carefully, “what you thought, finding me in such a place there in Natchez.”
“What I thought doesn’t matter,” he replied, his voice carefully expressionless. “I forfeited the right to condemn long ago.”
Irony twisted her smile. “And did it never occur to you there might be nothing to condemn?”
“What do you mean?” he grated.
“I was only asking a question.” She turned the limpid gaze on him that had confounded the nuns at the convent school.
“Now, having uselessly tested the depths of my affections and loyalty, will you be content with what is between us?”
She answered, “I doubt it.”
Forgiveness was to be hers then. She had thought to present to him the gift of her faithfulness, and found it tossed magnanimously back into her lap. That under different circumstances she might have been glad of the gesture made no difference. Instead of trust, he gave her pardon. It rankled.
In the gray and blue transparency of the morrow’s dawn, the keelboat under full sail swept past the bearded oaks and shuttered silence of the mansion called Alhambra and continued on through timeless wraiths of river mist toward New Orleans.
~ ~ ~
The silk-clad bosom of Yvonne Mayfield was as plump, as scented as ever, but comforting. She received her daughter in her boudoir. Her dressing gown was a ravishing shade of plum trimmed with rose-point lace. Her hair was charmingly coifed with shining curls of doubtful origin over each ear, her tears, however, were real. They ran convincingly into the deeper creases beneath her eyes, and rolled wet and heavy with salt down her cheeks. Tears stained silk, but Madame Mayfield never noticed.
“So Rafael has left you with me for a while. That was kind of him,” Catherine’s mother said.
“Yes.” Gently Catherine disengaged herself and looked about for a seat for the older woman.
“A good man in a crisis, but he can be extremely unpleasant also, quite menacing, in fact. Do you know, when he could not find you at Natchez on his first trip he returned here and accused me of hiding you from him? C’est infâme! Not that I wouldn’t have, chérie. If you had asked it, I would. I have been well served, Catherine, for pushing you into marriage with him, well served, indeed.”
“Never mind,” Catherine said, helping her onto a new chaise lounge of moire silk and pressing a perfumed handkerchief into her hand. “I am back, Rafael Navarro has gone, and you need not wear black. With so much cause for rejoicing, how can you cry?”
Her mother wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Tear wet, her gaze was still astute. “You have been gone a long time, chérie. You must tell me everything that has happened, but most of all, what has come to you to cause that terrible tone in your voice.”
United against a common enemy, the two women moved closer together. Their campaign of action was carefully laid. In the way of women everywhere they struck back at the man through a flank attack at his most vulnerable point: his purse.
It was not a particularly satisfying operation due to Rafael’s generosity — he had placed a magnificent sum at Catherine’s disposal — but it was time-consuming, and it forbade repining.
The first consideration, of course, was clothes. Her wardrobe hung in the armoire at Alhambra. It might have been sent for, but the gowns of appealing innocence contained in her trousseau were no longer suitable. Catherine was in a mood for defiance. She wanted something of surpassing elegance and style, and if it was a trifle outré, so much the better.
Transparent taffeta, brocade so stiff it could stand alone, lawn patterned in apricot and black, in a peacock clash of blue and green and lavender; a soft drape of nun’s gray linen worked up with cowl and crossed belt of tasseled cord, velvet with jewel-toned nap, the glitter of a jeweled corselet to wear under the bust, a muff of gleaming beaver with a crockery handwarmer included, a gold-fringed Persian shawl, a pleasing flutter of striped, scalloped, and figured ribbons; these and more were commissioned for delivery as soon as possible.
One of the taffetas, the peach, its billowing fullness depressed by a banding of matching velvet ribbon, was completed in time for her mother’s weekly “at home.” Topped by the lovely jewel colors of the Persian shawl, it gave Catherine much needed confidence. Would all of New Orleans come to gawk, or, worse still, would they stay away? Head as high as any aristocrat, tumbriling to the guillotine, she descended to the salon to see.
She need not have worried. New Orleans was much too maliciously intrigued by the heady scent of la scandale to deny itself a glimpse of the notorious Madame Navarro. The women were distant, the men charming, though the least bit encroaching. It was possible to trace the passage of rumor and counter-rumor about the crowded room by the dipping of painted and lacy fans. She had fled her home for fear of the slaves, been captured and held for ransom — She had been abused by river boatmen — no, she had tried to commit suicide rather than live with the Black Panther! Mais non, her husband was blameless, such a handsome fellow. She had been left for dead by his slaves, saved by Navarro and brought back to New Orleans to regain her health. Look you, there was another man in the affair. Hadn’t her husband found them together in Natchez? A pretty fool Fitzgerald looks, hinting Navarro killed her. She was seen parting most amicably from her husband at the levee.
Indignation sparkled in Fanny’s gray eyes as she embrac
ed Catherine. “How lovely to see you looking so well, but isn’t it ridiculous, the things they are saying. If they had seen how demented Rafael was when he thought you had drowned they would be ashamed to speak such terrible lies about him. If I have one more impertinent question asked of me I shall scream.”
“Which will help not at all,” Giles said, bowing over Catherine’s hand, the clasp of his fingers firm and reassuring.
“People will always talk,” Catherine said, smiling. “As long as they occupy themselves with something less than the truth I am satisfied.”
“I confess I am amazed at the number of different rumors currently abroad,” Giles replied in his quiet, controlled voice. “One would almost imagine there was some plan afoot to amuse and confuse the populace.”
Catherine glanced at him sharply. “You can’t be serious?”
He moved his shoulders uncomfortably. “I saw a couple of Rafael’s river boatmen entertaining a tavern last evening with a tale of sacrifice — you, my dear, saving a flatboat family’s child from drowning before being swept downstream yourself, then you were supposed to have suffered loss of memory after you were rescued. A most affecting tale, in all honesty. If you find yourself a heroine tomorrow we can begin to guess at the truth. It’s a clever rogue, our Rafe.”
“Yes,” Fanny agreed in brittle tones. “If you will excuse me, Catherine, I will go and see what I can do to further his scheme.”
“She hasn’t forgiven me, has she?” Catherine asked, watching the tall, straight figure of the girl moving through the press.
“It’s herself she can’t forgive,” her brother answered. “She did a noble thing, against her own best interests, and it benefited no one.”
“She is in love with Rafe.” Catherine could not have said how she was so certain. She simply was.
“And if she had let you go without a word, you would be — who knows where, in what condition of life, now? And he might have turned to her. As it was, you became, for a short time, a martyr to Rafe’s ill temper. She had her hopes, but found you as great a rival dead as alive. A discovery such as that does nothing for a woman’s vanity, much less her disposition.”
“You have seen Rafe, you know what happened? All of it?”
Giles inclined his head. “Rafe visited me before he returned to Alhambra. He entrusted me with the agreeable task of keeping you amused. I am to be your escort wherever you wish to go. Command me!”
“Was my husband afraid I could not find my own escort?”
“No, rather afraid you could find one more attractive than he would care to choose for you.”
“Nonsense,” she said, her lips curving as they were meant to. “But it is a great deal to ask of friendship.”
His blue eyes darkened to cobalt. His reply was abrupt. “Not at all. I would that circumstances were such I could do more.”
Following the “at home,” invitations began to pour in. Soirées, routs, masquerades, balls. She began to feel she was asked as a curiosity. True to Giles’s prediction, in a matter of days so many contradictory tales had been circulated that she became a figure of mystery. Her name was even whispered in connection with that of former Governor James Wilkinson who had been defending himself before various courts-martial against charges of treasonous activities and being a Spanish agent for some time.
Catherine put a good face on the public appearances; that much, at least, she had learned from Rafe. With Giles’s solid form at her side, she danced, smiled, parried questions, and chilled the insolent in high form.
To a performance of mediocre opera at the small theatre on Orleans Street, she wore gold velvet. The wide, medieval sleeves, edged with fur tinted to match, lay folded on the floor as she sat watching the singers struggle through their parts. Her hair, fashionably cropped on top and at the sides was brushed into a profusion of tawny gold curls. A murmur, starting in the parquet moved gradually about the single tier of boxes. La Lionne — La Lionne.
Catching the muted syllables without knowing for whom they were meant Catherine was cast back to a dew-bedraggled morning and Ali, standing earnestly before her. La Lionne, the lioness, he had called her. Such a pity she had done nothing to deserve the name.
But once given, the appellation was impossible to repudiate. With sardonic humor, Catherine even began to play up to the crowd’s inclination for drama which had occasioned it. Golden fur in tippet and muff and cloak’s hood became her griffe, her signature.
At first Fanny and Madame Mayfield accompanied Catherine and Giles in their gay and frenetic round. Fanny was the first defector. She could never regain her old ease in Catherine’s company, could not begin to understand her seemingly frivolous attitude when she herself would have been either forcing herself on Rafe’s notice or waiting repentantly for his return.
But then Fanny had not, like Catherine, parted from Rafe with an aching smile and the brittle agreement — once Alhambra was well behind them — that yes, she would be pleased indeed to spend an indefinite amount of time with her mother. She had not had to face that most bitter of all rejections; that of a woman who has been tried, and found wanting. It was possible, however, that Fanny had suffered a rejection of some fashion. She could not otherwise account for the girl’s aversion. Giles’s sister turned to former friends in the American sector of the city forming above the canal, and Catherine was not surprised when she learned that the girl was packing to travel back east with a family group leaving after the first of the year.
“There is no enemy so implacable as one who was once your friend,” Catherine’s mother said with philosophical candor. “You must forget her, forget everything. Look about yourself for a new life, new friends, a new man. One does not mourn the passing of the full moon, however splendid its light; one enjoys the next phase, and the next.”
“That’s very well for you, Maman,” Catherine agreed, “but you are a widow.”
“There are ways—” Madame Mayfield had begun, but stopped then, her gaze clashing with the look of arrested warning in Giles Barton’s eyes.
That Yvonne Mayfield’s philosophy worked for herself could not be doubted. The stairs to her bedchamber rang still with the footsteps of a number of men, all engagingly young and unsure of themselves, all enjoying varying degrees of favor, from the mere lending of a matronly ear, to the most intimate. Catherine, tinglingly alive to the demands of her own physical appetites, discovered tolerance within herself for her mother. She was not particularly comfortable in the presence of the young men, but with her own large and handsome cavalière servente in tow, she could scarcely object.
Gradually, as she saw Catherine accepted once more into the woof and warp of the New Orleans season, Madame Mayfield also withdrew. She had her own circle of familiars, her own amusements. She had caught the fever for gaming, perhaps from some of her young men, and spent hours at the tables in the elegantly appointed gaming houses. Without being able to appreciate her fascination, Catherine still had few fears for her mother. She was an innately cautious woman, as frugal with the sum she allowed herself for testing la bonne chance at faro as she was with her housekeeping money.
Giles, alone with her in their journeys about town from one place of amusement to another, behaved with exactly the same propriety as when they had been so well chaperoned. He did not probe or invite confidences. He did not make pretty speeches or pay her court. His was a soothing personality, one that made no demands, still she was constantly aware of his admiration, his gallant sympathy, and something approaching ardor. It was present in his eyes, in the arm he held to protect her in the crush of a crowd, in his adroit turn of the conversation when it approached too close to her, in the delicate use he made of his size to shield her from the overt attention of other men. Her debt to him grew each day, as did her gratitude.
At no time was she quite so thankful for his presence as when she came face to face with Marcus Fitzgerald.
The occasion was a rout party given by one of the rather fast young hostesses who
had taken up La Lionne in much the same spirit as they had begun to invite opera singers and artists to their homes. Many had married new American money and were ignored for it by the old Creole regime. They had to have someone of interest for their entertainments.
“They should have called it a riot instead of a rout,” Giles said, surveying the company with wry amusement.
“If you don’t like it we can always—”
“What is it?” Giles asked as Catherine stopped.
There was no time to tell him. Marcus, thin to emaciation, his chestnut hair lying flat and gray-streaked across his skull, was bowing before them.
“An — unexpected pleasure,” he murmured.
It would be impolitic to cut him directly in front of everyone. There was no point in lending free weight to his story. An impression of casual friendship might be best
“I think not,” Catherine said, gently smiling.
“Not unexpected?”
“Not a pleasure.”
Watching the blood rush to his face was gratifying. That he was as vulnerable to insults as she had once been to his superior strength was disturbing, however. It seemed to argue that he was not indifferent to her; that his peculiar love-hate attitude still endured, was, perhaps, intensified by the punishment he had so obviously suffered.
“We have not seen you in town lately,” Giles said, easing into the conversation.
“No. I make my home in the country.”
“You don’t miss the amusements of the season?”
“I keep myself busy,” Marcus answered, an odd glitter at the back of his sunken hazel eyes. “In the swamps I have discovered a contre-danse I prefer. It features the beat of drums.”
His voice bland, Giles asked, “Haitian, I presume?”
“As it happens, yes,” Marcus replied, his animation quenched.
“Take care. These primitive dances are very well on an island, but they can be dangerous when transferred to the mainland. They may spread beyond control, and will surely destroy the dancers.”
Love and Adventure Collection - Part 1 (Love and Adventure Boxed Sets) Page 80