Mara bit her lip at his display of tenderness. He had seldom shown this side to her. She realized once again that here was where they must part company, for she would not be wanted at Beaumarais. Mara turned her tawny eyes away from their figures silhouetted closely together in the doorway and suddenly knew herself to be an intruder.
“Nicholas!” Françoise exclaimed, suddenly remembering something. “Alain. Alain will be able to help you in your search.”
Nicholas frowned. “Your brother? How could he help me?”
Françoise shook his arm in excitement. “He is overseer at Beaumarais now. He will know everything that is going on around the plantation. You can trust him, Nicholas,” Françoise spoke with an entreating note. “You know he has always been a friend to you.”
“Perhaps I shall speak with him,” Nicholas said ruminatively, “for it would be good to have at least one friend I can count on. I shall probably be met with hostility.”
“Not by my papa, Nicholas,” Françoise corrected him with a knowing smile. “You have always been a favorite of his.”
“Etienne is at Beaumarais?” Nicholas asked with pleased surprise.
Françoise threw up her hands in defeat and said mockingly, “He always says he will leave, and he goes to Paris, London, Vienna, or even St. Petersburg, which was where his travels took him last time. And yet always he returns to Beaumarais and is happy living nowhere else.”
“I’m glad he’s there. I look forward to seeing him again, for it has been far too long since our last meeting. I saw him in Venice many years ago and he had changed little.”
“Papa never seems to age, but then perhaps it is because he is never aware of time passing. To him one day is the same as the next, and all he is interested in are his paintings and music—and collecting treasures from all over the world,” Françoise said with an indulgent smile.
“He used to enjoy riding with me upriver along the boundaries of Beaumarais. Perhaps we will find the opportunity to do that again.”
Mara was the first to notice Françoise’s discomfiture and waited for her next disclosure. Nicholas became aware of Françoise’s hesitancy as well and, folding his arms across his wide chest, stared down at her patiently.
“You might as well tell me.”
“Much of that land is no longer Beaumarais property. Some of it had been sold off during the years, but it was just last year, after your father’s death, that…” Françoise paused nervously under the narrowing of Nicholas’s eyes. Then, taking a breath, she continued quickly, “…the whole northeast quarter was sold.”
Mara could see the muscles in Nicholas’s jaw tighten. He said quietly, “The land bordering Sandrose.”
“Yes. Amaryllis still lives there,” Françoise told him as she watched him closely.
Mara was watching Nicholas’s expression as well, wondering if he still felt anything for Amaryllis.
“I thought she had married a man from Natchez? Denise told me she left New Orleans shortly after I did,” Nicholas remarked without any sign of emotion.
“Even Amaryllis’s beauty couldn’t overcome the scandal of that time, and so she fled north to Natchez where she quickly found herself some poor, rich fool and inveigled him into marriage,” Françoise spoke contemptuously.
Nicholas eyed her thoughtfully. “You never cared for her, did you?” he asked softly.
“Non,” Françoise admitted, “and I still do not. She always acted like I was the dirt beneath her slim, satin shoes. And I never forgot when she pushed me—on purpose, Nicholas—into the bayou.”
Nicholas smiled, remembering the incident. Françoise could only have been about ten years old and Amaryllis around thirteen. “I believe she claimed you slipped.”
“Slipped!” Françoise cried indignantly. “Slipped with the palm of her hand in my back. That is the truth! But she was always a liar.”
“Enough, Françoise,” Nicholas said abruptly, halting in mid-stride Françoise’s diatribe against her old enemy. “Why is Amaryllis back at Sandrose?”
Françoise sniffed. “She bled her poor husband dry, spending his money on a big house up on the bluff in Natchez, acting like a queen when she visited New Orleans. But most of all she used his fortune to keep Sandrose alive and thriving. Her husband didn’t fare so well, however, for he drank himself into his grave just to escape her and her incessant demands. He was in debt when he escaped her greedy clutches,” Françoise said with a malicious look.
“So she is a widow,” Nicholas commented with a curious look in his green eyes.
“With two nearly grown children,” Françoise added. “She would like to forget about their existence while she tries to ensnare a rich American banker into becoming her second husband. It is rumored that it was her new suitor’s bank which loaned her the money to buy Beaumarais land, and,” Françoise added portentously, “they say she is after more than the land belonging to the de Montaigne-Chantales. She wants Beaumarais itself.”
Françoise looked away from Nicholas’s emerald green eyes, squirming uncomfortably under his gaze. Françoise’s eyes rested speculatively on the beautiful Irishwoman who sat apart from them, and she wondered just what the relationship was between her and Nicholas. Could it survive the test of Amaryllis?
“We must be leaving, Françoise,” Nicholas said, breaking into her thoughts, his own eyes resting momentarily on Mara before he turned back to his cousin. “By the way, who inherited Beaumarais?” Nicholas asked curiously.
“No will was ever found, so Celeste did, as guardian for Jean-Louis, since you were not here and François was dead,” she told him. Then she added with a pleading note, “Nicholas, please, you are not angry with me? Say you will come and visit again?”
Nicholas smiled. “You mock me, for you know I can never stay away from you for long.” Nicholas kissed her cheek. “Au revoir, ma petite cousine.”
“Nicholas,” Françoise said seriously, “you will be careful?”
“I am always that,” Nicholas replied carelessly as he guided Mara to the door.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Mademoiselle Ferrare,” Mara said politely as she held out her hand.
Françoise seemed momentarily surprised, then clasped it firmly. She shook her head. “Françoise, please—and I think it was not so much a pleasure this time, but I hope you will come and visit me again. Oh, Nicholas, do give Papa my love and tell him to come and visit me. His granddaughter asks constantly for her grand-père.”
“I will, Françoise,” Nicholas promised as they started along the path to the street.
“Peter tells me he took the liberty of ordering my carriage for you,” Françoise called after them with a laugh. “He noticed that you dismissed yours. So please, allow my coachman to take you wherever you are going,” she offered with a wave. She quickly disappeared back inside her house before Nicholas could argue.
There was an awkward silence in the carriage as they rode back to the hotel. Mara glanced over at Nicholas’s brooding face knowing he was suffering both grief and anger at the news about his father’s death. The silence became unbearable for Mara, yet she knew there was nothing she could say. She sought another, safer subject.
“Your cousin is a very beautiful woman,” Mara said suddenly. Despite Nicholas’s continued silence, she went on. “She seems very happy. If you are going to Beaumarais, you should have invited her to accompany you. She would like to visit. You’d think her father would—” Mara stopped abruptly as she became aware of Nicholas’s amused glance.
“You really don’t know, do you?” he asked with a strange expression on his face.
“Know what?” Mara demanded defensively, not caring for his amused look.
“Françoise is a femme de couleur, an octoroon,” Nicholas said quietly. “She and Alain are the children of my uncle Etienne and a quadroon. Olivia, Françoise’s mother, was unbelievably beautiful. I have only a boy’s memory of her. Once, when my parents were in Europe, she arrived with Etienne to stay on
the plantation while they were gone. Even then I recognized the unusual beauty of the woman. I can understand why my uncle never married and is still devoted to her memory.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died a long time ago. After that Etienne would often bring Alain and Françoise to the plantation when he came to visit, and that is why I know Françoise so well. But now that she is a grown woman it is different. She would not be comfortable at Beaumarais.”
Mara shook her head, still unable to believe his startling disclosure about Françoise. “I had no idea. I never guessed. Why, she looks like…” Mara’s impulsively spoken words trailed off.
“She looks like you or me,” Nicholas finished her thoughts aloud. “If she chose to live in France, she could very easily pass for white, but she chooses instead to live here in New Orleans with her lover, and here she is considered less than equal, even though she is a free woman. But she will remain. This is where she was born, and where she will raise her children, and where she will die. She has too much Creole blood in her ever to be content anywhere else.”
Mara looked out on the street passing by and knew that Nicholas had come home too. She wondered if he could ever be happy anywhere else either.
The carriage stopped before their hotel and Nicholas escorted her through the crowded lobby and up to the corridor leading to their room.
“You will no doubt be leaving for Beaumarais almost immediately,” Mara began, “and as I wish to sail for Europe as soon as possible, I would like to make the necessary arrangements for our passage without any further delay.”
At her casual words and cool tone Nicholas halted beside the railing of the gallery, his hand closing around Mara’s elbow and bringing her to a sudden stop beside him.
Mara gazed up at him in amazement which quickly turned to confusion as she noticed the cruel look entering his green eyes. “What is wrong? I would have thought you’d be rather relieved to have our liaison come to an end so smoothly,” Mara taunted him, hiding her unhappiness behind caustically spoken words.
Nicholas’s lips curved into a humorless smile. “You seem in a hell of a hurry all of a sudden to rid yourself of my presence. Don’t you care for the idea of being seen with me, now that I find myself still the outcast?” Nicholas sneered.
Mara stared in growing frustration, realizing that he was in no mood to be reconciled. “You know that is not true,” Mara denied. “You, of all people, should know that I don’t care about appearances. I just want to return to Europe. It is what we agreed upon, Nicholas.”
“And just how do you expect to buy passage, my dear?” Nicholas inquired in a voice that sounded far too soft for Mara’s comfort.
“You’ll forgive me for reminding you so bluntly, m’sieu, but as your memory seems to need prodding, you did offer to pay for my passage to Europe,” Mara told him tartly. “Or is it your intention to renege on the agreement?”
Nicholas’s eyes narrowed dangerously as he replied smoothly, “And if I did?”
“I only accepted your charitable offer in the first place to humor you. I didn’t fancy sailing halfway around the world with someone staring daggers at me, and so it relieves my mind considerably not to have anything further to do with you. I shall sell some of my jewelry to buy passage,” Mara declared.
“That, my dear, would possibly get you a bunk in steerage, hardly a private cabin,” Nicholas said. “But you may set your mind at rest for I have no intention of reneging on our agreement. I only question when you will be leaving. It doesn’t suit my purposes for you to leave at this time.”
“The devil it doesn’t,” Mara said shortly, anger simmering as she glared up at him. “You seem to be laboring under a misconception that you’ve got some say in me life, when ye haven’t, M’sieu Chantale,” Mara said with growing indignation as she tried to ridicule him with a mocking Irish accent. “Ye seem to have very little faith in me natural abilities.”
Nicholas smiled grimly. “Oh, I’ve never underestimated you, Mara, me love,” Nicholas mimicked her.
With a sigh of defeat Mara dropped her pretense. “Just what is it you are playing at, Nicholas? All of a sudden you seem to be acting as if you own me, like one of those unfortunates over there being sold to the highest bidder.” Then with a derisory look around her, she added, “Of course, that might not be such a bad idea. With a personal reference from you, why, who knows? I might even be able to make me fortune.”
Mara winced as Nicholas’s fingers tightened painfully around her elbow.
“So you wish to be bought and paid for, like one of those young women across there? Did you know that in many slave sales the bidders demand a full inspection of the goods. You would stand before a room full of men, stripped of your clothes and dignity, while they stared at your beautiful body, your rounded breasts and slender thighs. You would have to suffer their gloating inspection and ribald remarks as they walked around you, their hands itching to touch that soft curve of buttock as they raped you with their eyes.”
Mara flushed with mortification, refusing to look at him even when his fingers closed over the point of her chin and lifted her face to his.
“Well, my dear, my gold is as good as the next man’s,” he bit out, his insulting words flicking her like a whip. “Come,” he said as he became aware of the stares they were beginning to draw.
Mara went along with him to their room.
“To be sure, I thought ye’d fallen into the river, or worse,” Jamie greeted Mara. “And ye was right. Looks like Master Paddy’s comin’ down with a churchyard cough for sure. Goin’ to rub some more salve on his chest right now,” she said. Without waiting for an answer, she bustled back inside, firmly closing the door to Paddy’s room behind her, but not before nodding to Nicholas.
Nicholas watched Mara curiously, wondering what was going through that beautiful head. He could see her slipping away from him now, just as everything else had done. In less than an hour he had heard of the death of his father and the threatened sale of Beaumarais. And now Mara O’Flynn was demanding her freedom.
His emerald gaze traveled across the distance of the room and locked on Mara’s averted profile, lingering on the soft, full curve of her lips as he remembered the taste of them beneath his; yet even then, with her clasped against his heart, she still kept herself apart. She always seemed to be holding something back from him and he never felt as if he possessed her completely. She was an enigma, as indeed she always had been. Maybe because of that, she excited him as no other woman ever had. He had never felt this almost unreasonable need for possession, this ache in his loins whenever he was close to that damned Irishwoman, but could he really blame himself, for she was, after all, an actress, and it was that very fine art in acting of creating an illusion that Mara O’Flynn seemed to excel in. In her very complex nature she presented a challenge to him, and he was determined to solve the puzzle of her, he swore beneath his breath as he made his first move against the wall of reserve she had erected between them.
“How much is Paddy’s life worth to you, Mara O’Flynn?” Nicholas began his attack on that which was dearest to her heart. “Is it worth coming with me to Beaumarais? You don’t hate my touch so much that you couldn’t endure it awhile longer for someone else’s sake. Paddy and Jamie are both fatigued from the months at sea and could use a rest on dry land for a change. You wouldn’t, for your own selfish reasons, deny them an opportunity to recuperate?” Nicholas argued both persuasively and unfairly, knowing full well that Mara would never risk her nephew’s health. “Think of spending those long hours in a damp cabin as you cross the stormy Atlantic to Europe, Paddy suffering a chest cold and the old woman’s rheumatism acting up,” Nicholas added. “I really would have to advise against such a journey at this time.”
Nicholas paused for a moment to allow his words to sink in, his eyes never leaving her face as he watched for some sign of weakening. The expression on her flawless features never changed.
She would nev
er endanger Paddy’s health, and he knew that. But what he didn’t know was that she wasn’t as self-sacrificing as she would have him believe. Her heart had jumped with excitement and joy when he first suggested her accompanying him to his home. And if she agreed to go to Beaumarais, was it really enough to be with him just a little longer, or did she perhaps hope for a more permanent relationship?
“Maybe the real reason you wish to leave New Orleans is that you have come to enjoy my lovemaking so much that you desire to run away before you become my slave,” Nicholas taunted softly, his expression deliberately contemptuous as he goaded her into acting rashly, knowing that once she gave rein to her temper she would speak without stopping to think.
“Become a slave to you, Nicholas?” Mara scoffed, humiliation and anger coloring her cheeks. “Never.”
“Then come with me to Beaumarais,” Nicholas said. “It’s one way of proving me wrong, isn’t it? And you always enjoy doing that, don’t you, Mara?”
Mara’s lips trembled slightly as her tawny eyes, carefully wiped clear of all emotion, met Nicholas’s stare. She nodded. Whatever her motives were, she had made her choice.
We have seen better days.
—Shakespeare
Chapter 12
“’Tis like a floating hotel,” Mara remarked in amazement from the top deck of the big, ungainly-looking steamboat as it made its way upriver, the thick, black smoke pouring out from its twin stacks. Huge stern paddles stirred up a torrent of frothy, white water in its wake. Mara looked across the wide, muddy river with its flat banks and thought it must be a mile from shore to shore.
She stared down into the swift current, past the lower decks where she could see the hands and heads of curious passengers sticking out as they strolled along the wide decks and enjoyed the view. It wasn’t really like a ship at all Mara thought, wondering at the large, elegant stateroom Nicholas had taken for them with its thick carpeting, heavy chandeliers, ornately framed oil paintings, and mahogany furniture. There were several enormous salons, all expensively endowed with velvet hangings and satin-cushioned sofas and chairs. In the numerous dining rooms the service was as excellent as the food. There was also a main saloon where the men could gamble and drink while the big paddle-wheeler made its way upriver toward Baton Rouge, Memphis, and St. Louis, stopping as well at numerous small-town levees and plantations to let passengers on and off.
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