“May I see them?”
She nodded and tried to rise, but her legs would not hold her.
“I’ll get them,” Celine volunteered, anxious to afford Cordero and Madam Latrobe some privacy. Following the soft, tormented sound of crying, she walked to the back of the house and paused in the doorway to one of the bedrooms. A girl, who was maybe ten years old, was comforting a little boy with a headful of glossy black curls. He was lying with his face buried in her lap, crying as if his broken heart would never mend. The lovely girl looked up and noticed Celine hovering there.
“Can you come with me? Cordero Moreau has come to see you,” Celine said softly. She was taken aback by the resemblance to Cord that she saw in the little boy’s face when he stopped sobbing long enough to look up at her.
“Uncle is here?” he said, brightening.
Celine nodded. Swiping at his tears with the back of his hand, the child scooted off the bed and darted past her as he ran to the sitting room. The girl stood up, straightened her skirt and tossed her long, dark curls over her shoulder. Her haughty movements belied the deep shadows of grief dwelling in her eyes. If Celine didn’t know better, she would have thought the beautiful girl standing before her was pure French Creole and not of mixed blood. As did the boy, the girl had the Moreau look about her.
“I’m Celine,” she told the girl.
“I’m Liliane Moreau. My brother is Alan.”
“Your uncle wishes to see you,” Celine said. At least, she told himself, Alex Moreau had acknowledged his two bastard children by his mistress.
She followed Liliane back to the sitting room, where she found Cordero hunkered down with the boy who was resting against his knee. He cradled the child against him, smoothing back Alan’s tousled hair. Her first impressions of Cordero had not prepared her for the sight, and she had to admit to herself that she was deeply moved.
“Perhaps someday you can come to see me, but your grand-mère needs you much more right now,” Cordero was saying.
“That’s right, cher,” Madam Latrobe said softly. “You are the man of the house.”
Cordero noticed Liliane beside Celine and reached out for her. She moved into his embrace and he gently kissed her cheek, then laid her head on his shoulder. “I have left enough money with your grand-mère for both of you to be well taken care of. If you need anything at all, write to me and see that the letter is sent aboard a ship bound for the island of St. Stephen.”
“Papa always said you would take care of us, Uncle Cord.” A single, pitiful tear slid down Liliane’s cheek, a testament to her grief. She slipped her arms around Cord and buried her face against his neck.
“Your papa was like a brother to me, and so you are like my own.”
Like my own. Celine had an instant vision of Persa and felt tears well up again. She turned away, pulled the cloak close around her and walked over to the window, where she saw the Moreau driver and carriage waiting in the street. Behind her, Cord continued to hold tight to the children as they clung to him.
“I don’t want you to go, Uncle Cord,” Alan told him.
“I would be happy to take you both with me, but your grand-mère needs you.”
“They are all I have, monsieur,” Madam Latrobe said softly.
Celine heard the thread of fear laced through the woman’s tone and then heard Cordero tell the children, “I don’t want to leave you, but I have to. When you’re older, you can come to visit me. I’ll show you the island and teach you to swim. Would you like that?”
Alan shook his head no. “I want you to stay.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible now.”
Celine waited until he bid his niece and nephew farewell one last time and kissed them both. He asked them to be good and to take care of their grandmother. When Celine turned around, he was standing by the door waiting for her, his eyes shining suspiciously again as he watched little Alan climb upon his grandmother’s lap and turn away.
Celine hurried to Cordero’s side, raised the hood of her cloak and then preceded him out of the house. She looked neither right nor left, but kept her eyes on the open door of the carriage, praying that they would reach the levee without notice.
She glanced over at Cordero. He was preoccupied as they pulled away from the house on rue de Rampart. He was staring out the window, his thoughts far away. The gentle, caring man she had seen in the Latrobe house was not the hardened cynic who had stood beside her in his grandfather’s library. What manner of man had she married after all?
“Alex loved them so much,” he whispered.
She knew he had been thinking aloud when he turned around to see if she had heard.
“And yet he would have gone through with the arranged marriage,” she said.
Cordero frowned. “He always did what he perceived to be the honorable thing. For him, there was nothing wrong with following the Creole tradition of fathering children with both his mistress and his wife.”
“And for you?”
“I have no mistress, if that’s what you’re asking. No children that I know of, either.”
“Perhaps you should have made arrangements to bring the children to St. Stephen.”
The look he shot her could have melted iron. “Are you mad? What would a reprobate like me do with two children? They’re better off here with their grandmother.”
“As you were with your grandfather? They might fare better with you.”
“It’s out of the question.”
“You claim to be a drunk and a wastrel, but I have yet to see you take a drink today. Besides, the man I saw back there was not a heartless sot. He was a loving, caring uncle.”
He smiled slowly, crossed his arms and leaned back against the seat.
“We’ve been in each other’s company less than a full day. Don’t even begin to think you know me, wife.”
When she didn’t rise to the bait, he dangled more.
“I doubt you will be around long enough to know me at all. Wait until you find yourself living in dire straits on the island. You will be more than ready to run back to your rich papa and the luxuries to which you are no doubt accustomed.”
She met his gaze and tried to mirror the cool smile that did not reach his eyes.
“Don’t even begin to think you know me, husband.”
They were among the last passengers to board. Long-forgotten sights and sounds came back to Celine as she stepped from the gangway onto the main deck of the Adelaide. She was instantly reminded of the unremitting noise aboard a sailing vessel. Sailors shouted to each other from every corner and from atop every mast. The wood ship creaked and squealed, each joint and timber sounding a complaint. The clamor would grow even worse, she knew, once it was coupled with the roar of the open sea.
All manner of livestock which would be served up at meals were housed in cages on deck. The fowl clucked, the pigs granted, the sheep bayed. At least their fate was predetermined. The passengers faced endless days of boredom and confinement, close quarters shared with strangers, and the ever-present dangers of shipwreck, disease and fire.
“Are you all right?” Cordero stood beside her, watching her with a fair amount of grudging concern.
How could she be “all right” when her mind was suddenly full of faded memories filled with blood and death? The last time she had been aboard a ship, her mother had caught yellow fever and died trying to take Celine to a better place. Had it not been for Persa’s agreeing to adopt her, she would have ended up in an orphanage in New Orleans.
Now all she could think of was the stark image of her mother’s shrouded body as it slipped into the cold Atlantic waters. That and the sight of Persa lying dead on the floor. And Jean Perot in a pool of blood. No, she was not all right. She was definitely not all right.
She longed to tell him that she might never be “all right” again. Instead she nodded slightly and turned to look back at the city.
New Orleans lay pressed against the river like a lover. The open square calle
d the Place d’ Armes where couples strolled, families picnicked and the condemned were hanged. The market where Marcel the vendor hawked vegetables. The maze of narrow streets and alleyways she knew so well. The courtyards, the fountains, the rumble of carts and carriages that blended with the shouts of drivers. The city pulsed with its own lifeblood, and that pulse had drummed in her veins for too long to deny it.
Tall ships’ masts stood like a forest of leafless trees along the waterfront. Crates and barrels, trunks and carriages all vied for space on the docks. Sweat-sheened, heavily muscled men with skin of darkest ebony rolled hogsheads and hefted bales of cotton and other goods along the wooden wharf. Fat, well-dressed merchants argued with sea captains over the price of their cargoes. A tea-colored woman with a burnt orange chignon wound around her hair walked through the crowd balancing a basket tray upon her head.
Celine could not conceive of loving any place as much as she loved New Orleans. She was tempted to leave Cordero Moreau to himself and his journey and run back to the small little house on rue de St. Ann. She wanted to know that someone had taken care of Persa. She couldn’t bear the thought of her beloved guardian lying cold, alone and abandoned in death. She almost screamed with the pain of having to bear it all in silence as she slipped away like one of the rats that hid aboard the cargo ships.
He touched her hand in that unguarded, vulnerable moment when her mind was occupied with sights and sounds and sorrows and she had dropped her guard. Skin to skin, the connection was made, and dizziness raged through her. She felt her head begin to whirl and her hands go clammy. Darkness clouded her vision until images from Cordero’s past, as seen through his eyes, flitted through her mind.
New Orleans long ago. The streets less crowded than now. The wharf throbs with life. The crowd ebbs and flows around him. Foster and Edward stand beside him. Waiting. Henre Moreau appears. He marches toward Cord with four ebony slaves, his expression hard and set. Grim determination fills his eyes.
Terror is lodged deep in Cord’s heart. Anxiety. Abandonment. Anticipation. Loss and betrayal. Utter desolation that fear only heightens. All of them swarm like a maelstrom inside him.
Even after Cordero released her, the residual despair that had seeped from his past into her mind continued to rock Celine to the core. She stared up at him, searching his eyes for some trace of the deep-seated hurt he had experienced—pain which had been replaced by cynicism and cool detachment.
This time when he placed his hand at the small of her back, she was ready for the contact. To protect herself, she created a filter of rose light, the way Persa had taught her so long ago. She felt only the touch of his hand this time, warm even through her clothes, and possessive.
“You are ill,” he said.
“No. Just a bit melancholy. I’ll miss this place.”
“I thought you and your father just moved here from Boston.”
Celine sighed, too distressed to argue the facts; besides, it was still to early to explain. “What are our accommodations?”
“We have two cabins in the stern.”
“With windows,” Foster added. The servants had come aboard and directed the stevedores hefting all their trunks and boxes, and now joined Cord and Celine.
“Windows?” Edward voiced his worry aloud. “What if they leak? What if water seeps in during a gale?” He frowned so hard his brow became a solid, wrinkled hood above his eyes.
Neither Cordero nor Foster bothered to reassure him.
Two cabins. The underlying worry of how she was to avoid intimacy with Cordero over the journey began to gnaw at Celine anew. From here on she would have to rely on a quick wit—and perhaps, if she could get the ingredients, one of Persa’s sleeping potions. The thought of that option lightened her step as they made their way toward the passenger cabins where those who could afford the price traveled in greater comfort.
She had spent most of the daylight hours on the long voyage from England roaming the deck with the other emigrant children. Along with their families, they had been crowded together in steerage, sleeping in narrow, open berths arranged like so many shelves in a pantry, forced to cook, eat, give birth, relieve themselves and even die—as her mother had—in a common area with barely enough room to turn around.
On good days, their meals had consisted of salt beef and barreled pork. She could recall her mother, and then Persa, offering her a handful of raisins on the days when only flour, suet and raisins were doled out to them for pudding.
The moment she and Cordero reached the stern where the first-class passenger cabins were located, Celine knew her experience this voyage would be far different from her last. They passed through a saloon with a dining table in the center of an otherwise bare room. Then Cordero moved to one of the many doors that lined the saloon and opened it. He stood aside to let her pass.
Celine stepped inside the confined space of the cabin, which proved to be nothing more than a very large closet. The doors and walls were paneled in wood, polished to a high shine. Her gaze flew to the bunk against the sea wall. The shelf, barely wide enough for two, took up most of the floor space.
Jemma O’Hurley’s trunk had already been delivered. It stood in the middle of the floor alongside two others, one small, one a bit larger.
She pointed to the other two trunks. “Those were delivered to the wrong cabin. Are they yours?”
Cordero walked to the small window, bent to allow for his height and peered outside. “You can see downriver.”
“I said, your trunks somehow wound up in my cabin.” She started for the door to seek out Foster and Edward. “I’ll get one of your men to remove them.”
“Why? This is my cabin, too.”
“You said we have two cabins.”
“We do. Foster and Edward have one. I’ll not have them in steerage.”
Celine would not condemn a dog to the ’tween deck, let alone these two men who had been so kind to her. That hadn’t been what she meant.
“Why can’t the three of you share a cabin? Certainly a cot could be arranged …”
“That’s impossible.” The corners of his lips twitched.
“Why?”
Cordero threw his hands up and shook his head. “Why? Why? Because I say so. I haven’t been married a day and already you are nagging me to death. Is this shrewishness something that girls learn at an early age or some mystical metamorphosis that takes place an hour after vows are exchanged?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call what passed between us last night an exchange of vows. You were barely lucid.”
“Lucky for you.”
“Nothing about this situation is lucky, if you ask me.”
“We haven’t weighed anchor. There’s still time to back out of this.”
She realized what he was up to. It was her last chance. She could leave him now if she chose, walk down the gangway and out of this dark comedy of errors.
But she knew she might just as well fashion a hangman’s noose for herself.
Celine took a deep breath. She looked at the bunk that was just wide enough for two. At least she had a few hours left before she had to face that dilemma, she consoled herself.
She forced herself to smile. “As much as you’d like me to leave, I’m staying. We’re merely having our first disagreement.”
“The first of many.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorjamb.
“I’m sure,” she said.
“It’s going to be a long voyage, Jemma.”
“It will be if you insist on calling me that. I’ve told you time and again, that’s not my name.”
“But you’ve given me no alternative. What should I call you?”
There was no doubt that he was only humoring her. She glanced out the porthole at the city and took a deep breath. “Celine. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”
He nodded. She didn’t like the way he was watching her from beneath half-lowered lids. She didn’t like it at all.
“Celine, then. If you insist. A
n interesting choice.”
“It’s my name. I prefer you use it.”
“Whatever you say. Just don’t nag.” His stare had grown quite intense and lingered on her lips so long that it made her nervous.
Somewhere the crew was weighing anchor with much shouting and an earsplitting rattling of chains. Celine walked to the window and watched the muddy water of the Mississippi rush past. The ship began to swing out away from the dock and take up the motion of the current.
“How should I address you?” she asked.
“Cord will do,” he said after a pause.
She nodded, wishing he would leave her alone. The thin walls of the cabin had already begun to grow confining. The room was barely large enough for one, let alone two. Privacy would be impossible. Celine grasped the window frame. The air in the cabin suddenly seemed humid and stagnant.
“Would you like to go up on deck?” Cord asked.
She could not hide her relief. “It is stuffy in here.”
He walked over to the door and stood aside. “After you, Jemma.”
Celine turned on him, ready to launch into protest, but then noticed the teasing glint in his eyes and figured it was better than having him glower at her.
Cordero raised his hands in surrender. “Cecilia. Ceylon. Celine. I’ll call you anything you like if it will stop your nagging.”
Celine refused to rise to the bait again.
With a tall glass of whiskey in hand, Cord comfortably lounged in a chair beneath an awning raised on the poop deck. He stretched out, crossed his legs and studied his new bride as she stood at the rail, observing their passage downriver. She had finally abandoned the hooded cape she had insisted upon wearing earlier despite the fall heat. Her slender hands lay upon the varnished rail, her tapered fingers curved over the rich wood surface. With her dark hair lifted on the breeze and her face turned to the sun, he grudgingly admitted to himself that she was more than lovely. He couldn’t help but wonder how Alex would have felt about her.
By nineteen, Alex had met Juliette, fallen in love and fathered his first child. Because the two could never marry, Alex had been content to remain a bachelor, but he was prepared to eventually align himself with someone acceptable, preferably another Creole whose bloodlines were well-known so that the family name would remain untainted. It was a rare Creole bride who went into marriage unaware that nearly every husband had two families, one secret and one recognized.
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