Skye Cameron

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  I felt a little ashamed, as though I had forgotten something important.

  “I am her granddaughter too,” I said softly. “I belong to a race that does not lose its head or go giddy with frivolity like the Creole.”

  He reached his hand to me, smiling a little. “The Scotsman who cannot on occasion lose his head to his heart isn’t worthy of wearing the plaid. If you recall, there have been French and Scottish mixtures like yours in history, and they’ve as often as not run into trouble about the losing of heads.”

  Before I could answer, Mama came lightly into the room and gave me a quick, astonished look.

  “So here you are. Robert wishes to see how you look. Stand up, daughter, and turn around. Let me see how the dress hangs.”

  My earlier confidence faded a little before her scrutiny.

  After a moment she nodded. “The gown looks well—quite suitable and jeune fille. But the hair—about that I’m not so sure. Delphine inclines toward the overly dramatic. For you it is not—”

  “Let the child be,” Papa said, and my mother glanced at him in surprise. It had been a long while since he had shown interest enough to intervene in our affairs. “There’ll not be a woman at the party tonight,” he went on, “more eye-taking than your daughter.”

  Mama pouted a little and moved toward the door, and I knew he had said the wrong thing. He knew it too, though he had not intended to hurt her.

  “For me, Louise,” he said as she paused in the doorway, “you are the most beautiful. Always.”

  But she was not mollified. I think she had not expected to find me looking as I did, and she had an impulse to punish us both. So she glanced at him indifferently, as though his words did not matter, and went out of the room. I saw the dark blood rise in his face and knew how deeply she had cut him.

  I could have shaken my mother in bitter anger at that moment, but she had gone on toward the parlor, where the shutters upon the courtyard gallery stood open and Uncle Robert waited to judge my appearance.

  ELEVEN

  I stood before my uncle in my new gown, with my hair upon my shoulders, and he studied me so gravely that my heart began to thump beneath the tightly fitted bodice of the dress. What Uncle Robert thought meant everything at that moment. Papa, after all, was prejudiced from the start in my favor. But to some extent I could test myself in my uncle’s eyes.

  At length he nodded in approval. “I am pleased, indeed, Skye. The evening should go well. I shall be proud to present my niece to this gathering tonight.”

  A heady sense of confidence possessed me. Surely if I could pass this severe scrutiny, I would meet no disapproval anywhere.

  My mother fluttered her blue silk fan and coughed gently for attention, but he scarcely noticed her, though she was breath-taking in pale blue silk. I thought she looked very young and lovely tonight, but for once I knew I could hold my own beside her.

  When Courtney called for us I saw his startled look of astonishment when he saw me, and then a dawning pleasure in his eyes. I caught him staring at me oddly once or twice, and certainly he was attentive during our drive to the Garden District.

  Mama was far from pleased. I could sense the pique in her faintly pouting look and in the lack of vivacity she showed while we were in the carriage. For the third time tonight a man had remarked on my appearance and ignored hers, and I had a feeling that someone would be made to pay for this. But for now it was my evening and I could not worry about her. There was a new sense of joyousness in me, an eagerness to embrace all the color and warmth of a gay and brilliant New Orleans evening. I was ready to love everyone and to believe everyone would love me.

  When we reached the Law house and Courtney helped me from the carriage, pressed my arm and whispered that he could not wait to dance with me, all my tingling anticipation increased a thousandfold. Yet it was not of Courtney I was thinking, but of Justin. How would he like me now that I was no longer a wren? And would he too be eager to dance with me?

  The house was brilliantly lighted in all its windows and we heard the sound of gay laughter as we went up the steps. In the parlor someone was playing the piano and a Chopin waltz drifted pleasantly into the scented night.

  Justin himself came to the door to greet us. He bowed to Aunt Natalie, to Mama, to me, but his eyes skimmed over us as if he were barely aware of our presence. The unexpected fires I had found in myself blazed up in bright anger, and I might have spoken to him deliberately, forced his attention, had I not suddenly realized that all his concentration was on my uncle.

  A curious moment of silence fell upon us there in the bright hallway as the two men faced each other. It was as if Justin and my uncle were caught together in a strange isolation through which hostility crackled like a living thing. No one else existed in that instant for either of them. The antagonism that sprang between them was so sharp and frightening, so wrought with suppressed violence, that it was shocking to see. What lay between these two that they were so ready to hate each other? And how could my uncle and his family possibly step into this house when such antagonism lay between him and his host?

  Then Justin moved and held out his hand. “Good evening, sir,” he said quietly and the hint of violence I had glimpsed was hidden. Uncle Robert took his hand and returned his greeting with equal calm. Whatever had flared between them had been submerged, concealed, but it was alarming to know it was there.

  Justin led the way into the great lighted parlor, and Mama, Aunt Natalie, and Uncle Robert followed him. Courtney offered me his arm, but an unexpected panic seized me. The real test was now upon me. I must step into that room and be the woman I wanted to be, without doubt or faltering. I must face Justin Law and make him aware of me, make him recognize me as he had not yet done because of my uncle.

  Then, before Courtney could lead me after the others, Tante Aurore’s little maid came running up to him.

  “If you please, m’sieu, Madame Aurore refuses to come downstairs. She says she cannot attend the party, and I do not know what to do.”

  Courtney sighed and turned to me. “This is a difficult thing. All day, Skye, she has been saying she will not attend Justin’s party. She will not see him, will not take part in anything he plans. But for the sake of propriety she must put in an appearance.”

  I grasped at this opportunity for a reprieve. Somehow I must recover the sense of joyous confidence I had felt in the carriage, before Justin’s look had slipped over me without seeing my transformation and doubt had beset me.

  “Let me go upstairs and talk to your mother,” I offered. “It may be that she will listen best to someone outside the close family.”

  Courtney was grateful for my suggestion and I went quickly upstairs to Aurore’s room. I found her lying upon the bed, fully dressed, but plainly in a state of limp collapse. She pressed a handkerchief dipped in violet water to her temples and greeted me almost tearfully.

  “Is it true, chérie, that Robert has accepted this invitation? That he has come to this house tonight?”

  “Of course,” I said. “We are all here. Aunt Natalie, Mama and I. And naturally Uncle Robert. So you must find the strength to join your guests downstairs.”

  “They are not my guests!” she cried. “I agreed to invite them in a moment of weakness, but it is not my party.”

  I took the violet-scented handkerchief from her hands and sat beside the bed, stroking her forehead with the bit of cool, perfumed linen. Outside the dark garden stirred faintly in the evening breeze and the mingling of June scents drifted through the window, sweeter than the perfume in my hands. In the dusk the birds were chirping sleepily as they settled down for the night.

  “Nevertheless, they are your guests too,” I told her gently. “And they are all your friends. If you do not appear to greet them, Courtney feels there will be much gossip.”

  “There will be gossip anyway.” Aurore turned on the bed, and put a hand upon my arm. But now she was not thinking of the problem downstairs. “When he first came here,” she
said, and I knew she meant Justin, “he told me I should have gone to Colorado with his father when he left New Orleans. But how could I have gone with Harry when he wanted me to? How could I have endured disgrace and exile and hardship? Chérie. I had been gently bred and sheltered all my life. How could he wish this of me?”

  “You mustn’t worry about that now,” I said as I touched her frail wrists with the handkerchief, pitying this woman who seemed to feel so guilty about a long-distant past. “Tell me one thing, Tante Aurore. If your husband was really a spy, why didn’t he join the Union Army?”

  “I think he was never a spy. He said to me often that the South was his second mother. He would never betray her, or take up arms against her. But it was thought at the time that he was against us because in open argument he opposed our fighting the North. Robert Tourneau himself believed he was dangerous to the South. Feeling was very strong against him and so it was necessary to escape, lest they hang him first and inquire afterwards. But Harry should not have taken the boy.” She put a hand to her heart as if it were beating painfully. “Justin has grown to look like his father. I came near to fainting the day he walked into this house.”

  “You loved your husband, didn’t you?” I said softly.

  She closed her eyes. “What is love? Of what practical use is it? I’d have been far better off if I had married Robert Tourneau, as my family wished me to do.”

  It seemed a release for her to talk, so I drew her on. “Do you really mean that?”

  “Yes, yes!” She pounded one thin hand into the pillow beside her head. “None of this suffering would have been mine had I married him. I would have been cherished, loved. I would not have had to take charity from a man who once cared for me.”

  “But all these things are done and past,” I said. “We have to deal with what exists in the present. So now you must be brave and go downstairs.”

  She sat up and pushed back a strand of hair nervously from her forehead. “I suppose it is necessary to make the effort. If I do not, Robert will be displeased, and I cannot afford to anger him.”

  I helped her straighten her black silk dress and tidy her graying hair. Then we went together to the door. Downstairs someone played the piano again and the sound of a lively polka came to us. Now I knew that I could postpone the test of stepping into that room no longer.

  Aurore hesitated at the top of the stairs. “I think Justin has not come here out of an idle wish to reacquaint himself with his old home. He has come for some wicked purpose of his own.”

  Then rigorous Creole training came to her aid. She raised her head, tightened her lips to still their trembling, and walked quite steadily downstairs, her hand resting lightly on my arm.

  As Creoles loved music, so they loved dancing, and already chairs had been pushed back against the wall and in spite of the warmth of the summer evening, couples were circling the floor. I saw my mother go by in Courtney’s arms, smiling up at him so captivatingly that he did not notice us there in the doorway.

  In the North the combination of these enormous double parlor rooms would have been called a drawing room. The two rooms stretched from the front of the house to the back, with tall windows along one side, opening onto a veranda, and high ceilings which kept them airy and cool. The Empire touch was evident in carvings over the high doors and in the cornices, marking a division of the rooms. Handsome mantels set off twin fireplaces, and two great mirrors at either end of the long expanse, reaching from floor to ceiling, gave back all the movement and color that glowed in the room.

  But my eyes, even as they noted details, were searching for Justin Law, and at first I did not see him. Uncle Robert came toward us across the room, looking so handsome, so assured and distinguished, that I wondered how Aurore had ever managed to leave him for Harry Law.

  He greeted her pleasantly and told her the party was charming. By his manner he seemed to set her in her proper place as hostess, as if it were she who had planned this soirée, and not Justin. She responded gratefully and as she moved away from us to meet her guests, I saw that she was fully in control of herself once more.

  Uncle Robert regarded me with approval and offered his arm. His wife, he said, was chatting happily with her women friends, and he would be honored to show me about. And as I moved through that gay gathering at his side all my confidence and courage came sweeping back full force. For now I was no wren to be left neglected and overlooked. I moved at the side of a handsome and distinguished man of some consequence in New Orleans, and he paid me affectionate homage.

  On every hand I saw interest come to life in the eyes of the young men to whom my uncle introduced me. In no time at all I was dancing as I had never danced before, and loving every moment of it. This new exhilaration was like champagne bubbling in my veins, so that my head felt as light as my feet. Courtney came to dance with me too, and then I saw him again with my mother. But I did not care. There were so many attentive young men, and I was riding on the giddy crest of such a wave as I had never risen to before. Yet all the while, dancing now with this one, now with that, I was aware of one man I had glimpsed at the far end of the room. Justin was not dancing, but he was the center of a constantly shifting group who engaged him in conversation.

  I sensed the whispering that went on all around him, especially among the ladies. What chatter there would be in the Vieux Carré tomorrow, what lively gossip! They would whisper that the fellow was recently out of prison. A murderer in their midst! “Naturally,” I heard one lady murmur, “he will not be received in any good home. We are here only for dear Aurore’s sake.”

  But if scandal buzzed about him, Justin ignored it and seemed completely at ease. Of course I took care that my eyes should not meet his as my partners whirled me by, but just as I was aware of him, I hoped he was aware of me, aware of my triumph. How that brown little word he had named me with ate at my being, so that I could never rest until I heard him retract it.

  At last there was a lull in the dancing and Uncle Robert came to my side again, and once more we moved from group to group, stopping to chat here and there. This time our course took us ever nearer to the place where Justin stood. I had the opportunity now for an occasional careless glance in his direction and I could not help but be impressed and a little surprised by the way he conducted himself. His manner, perhaps, was a bit more hearty than that of the Creole, but the polish of good breeding was there when he chose to assume it. He had the air of a gentleman, no matter what his past.

  My uncle, I realized, was moving deliberately toward him, and taking me along. This time Justin must certainly look at me, must reveal whatever he thought of my appearance tonight. But when we reached him, there was nothing about his look or manner to show that he saw the slightest change in me. His eyes recognized me, he smiled politely, but at once his attention went past me to Uncle Robert, and again that sinister hostility leaped like a spark between the two men.

  There was no escape for me. I was drawn into the circle of their meeting, my hand upon Uncle Robert’s arm.

  “You are planning to take up residence again in the city of your birth, m’sieu?” Uncle Robert asked him.

  Justin’s look rested steadily on my uncle’s face, and I saw his mouth tighten.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “I’ve grown tired of mountains made ugly by the men who mine them. The river has called me ever since I was a boy. Perhaps I’ll take it for a partner.”

  Beneath my hand I felt the stiffening that ran through my uncle. “Your meaning, m’sieu?”

  “To make it clear,” Justin said, and there was an ominous note in his voice, “my intention is to recover my father’s shipping business.”

  “As you know,” Uncle Robert told him coldly, “that business is being well managed for me and it is not for sale.”

  “Perhaps purchase is not what I had in mind.” Justin’s tone was even, but I sensed the suppressed anger beneath his words.

  Uncle Robert turned abruptly from him and led me away. His face wa
s tight with a fury he could not conceal, and I did not dare to question him about Justin’s meaning.

  The dancing had started again and Courtney came once more to dance with me. Uncle Robert seemed to be glad enough to be released from his duty for the moment and I went whirling away in Courtney’s arms.

  “Why has Justin come to New Orleans?” I asked his brother. “What does he hold against my uncle?”

  But Courtney would not speak of serious matters. “You are beautiful tonight, Skye. You should always dress like this and wear your hair upon your shoulders. And you must not trouble your lovely head about the affairs of men.”

  I did not want to be put off like that. “I’m quite capable of understanding that one plus one makes two,” I said a little tartly. “And I’m interested in knowing why such enmity exists between Uncle Robert and your brother Justin.”

  Courtney waltzed me gently down the room. “Ah well, if you insist, I’ll try to explain. Before the war my father was the owner of a large and profitable shipping business which ran boats upon the Mississippi River. Of course all this was lost during the war. Later your uncle was able to salvage something of the business and build up the company again. My brother’s notion that he somehow has a right to this business as my father’s heir is nonsense of course. If Justin wants to get into shipping, let him start a company of his own. However, M’sieu Robert will deal with him properly when the time comes, I am sure. I am willing to trust his judgment in this matter.”

  Again I sensed in Courtney his deep respect for my uncle, and I liked him for it. Yet I found myself wondering how strong this feeling was and how far Courtney would go to please Uncle Robert. I wondered what my partner would say if he knew that my uncle had plans to marry him to me. I didn’t believe Uncle Robert had said anything to Courtney as yet, and I thought I would test him a little.