Louisiana History Collection - Part 1
Page 12
Henri had been placed beside Madame Doucet. How dignified he looked with his hair tied back by a full black ribbon, the down shaved from his face, and an outdated coat, most likely one left from Reynaud’s boyhood, stretched over his bony shoulders. As he caught her eye where she sat on Reynaud’s right at the head of the table, he gave her a quick smile that also held warm admiration. All of their temperaments, it appeared, had benefited from warm beds and good food.
The table was covered with white damask that was overlaid diagonally by another cloth in an oriental pattern with pagodas and blossoms in red and gold. Near the foot of the table, to the right of Reynaud’s cousin Madeleine, St. Amant sat, sipping his wine and tracing the pattern of the cloth with one finger as he waited, with the others, for Madame Doucet to finish spooning up the last of her dessert before beginning on the savories and nuts in front of him. As a small silence fell, he looked up at their host. “A delightful meal, Chavalier. I congratulate you on your cook.”
Reynaud inclined his head. “I will convey your compliments to him. I had him from a planter in the Indies, where he was used to a more discerning palate than mine. He will be pleased that you approve.”
“You are too modest,” St. Amant said. “A cook, like any other human being, does not expend his efforts unless he knows they will be appreciated.”
Reynaud did not comment, but sat waiting, his eyes narrowing slightly as if he expected more.
“Your hospitality has been altogether too generous, even overwhelming. I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say that we are most grateful.”
“I will be repaid if you enjoy your unavoidable stay with me. I have arranged for a hunting expedition, if that should appeal. There are abundant deer around us, or bear, if you prefer. The bayou named for the Duc de Maine is near, practically on the doorstep, if fishing is your pleasure. Or, if you have had enough of forests, there are cards, chess, and the use of my library.”
“What more could we want,” St. Amant said, his tone dry though his shrug was no more than a quick movement of his shoulders, “except to know when we are to leave here.”
“Not an unreasonable request. I wish I could give you a definite answer, but that is impossible. The fact is, I am expecting a visitor, a friend. He may arrive tomorrow or it may be next week. When he has come and gone, then we will leave for the fort.”
“Forgive me, m’sieu, for interrupting,” Madame Doucet said, her hands going out in a fluttering appeal, “but is this visitor to be an Indian?”
Reynaud turned to her. “I beg your pardon, madame?”
“Is he to be an Indian? I — I ask it because … Oh, I know it sounds strange, but I woke at dawn this morning and went to the window. My room looks over the back of the house, you know, and as I stood there I thought I saw an Indian warrior pass into the kitchen building. He was wearing a cloak, one like yours, m’sieu, and though I could not be sure, I thought he was of the Natchez.”
There was a brief silence. With a frown between his eyes, Reynaud sent his cousin a quick glance. The others did not look at each other. When Madame Doucet had made just such a claim previously, no one else had seen the Indian. There had been a feeling then that Reynaud had agreed that the Indian was there and had identified him as a Tensas merely to pacify the older woman, to relieve her mind. It was not to be wondered at, this preoccupation of hers with Indian warriors; still, it made them uneasy.
“One of the guards, I don’t doubt,” Madeleine said, her tone offhand.
Reynaud’s face cleared and he sent a wry glance around the table. “Of course, though that may be the wrong term for the men you may see about the place. There are a number of them, some of them of mixed blood like myself, some who have been among the Indians so long they look like savages. They are a rough-and-ready lot: hunters, trappers, traders coming and going at odd hours, but they provide protection for Madeleine in my absence and are a curb against the defection of the African workers.”
“You relieve my mind,” Madame Doucet said with a sigh.
“You might want to watch out for the friend I am to meet here. He was one of these men for some time, though now he is more often gone than not, with his trading.”
“He is half Indian?” the older woman ventured with a return of fear to her eyes.
Reynaud’s smile was reassuring. “He was born in France, but he has lived with the Natchez. He was one of the orphan boys sent to live with them before he was twelve, to learn their language in the early days. We grew up together, he and I, being much of an age, but he left the tribe when he reached his majority.”
Madame Doucet nodded as though satisfied. St. Amant allowed a respectful moment of quiet, then reverted to his original topic. “When we do leave for the fort, how long may we expect the trek to take? I have been trying to calculate it myself, and though I grant you that dead reckoning is not my strong point, I have a feeling we are not so far from Fort Saint Jean Baptiste.”
“The Indian trails can be deceiving. It is still a journey of some distance.”
“Yes.” Pascal grunted, his tone belligerent with the amount of wine he had drunk and his suspicion of what he obviously considered to be an evasion. “But how far?”
St. Amant sent the merchant a quelling look. “I suppose I was thinking of your proximity to the post. Surely it is the nearest French settlement to you?”
“That is correct.”
“It must have been there that you received and unloaded the furnishings for this house after they had traveled upriver from New Orleans.”
“Quite true, though you would be surprised at how little made that trip. The lumber of the house itself was cut and hewn here where it sits. Artisans skilled in carpentry and the making of fine furniture were brought, the best that New Orleans, Biloxi, Mobile — and Mexico City — had to offer; and other laborers also, though much was done by my own people.”
“You astonish me,” St. Amant said politely. “Still there must have been many cartloads of fine goods and the great labor of cutting a road through to the fort?”
“Pack trains, yes, but no carts and so no road,” Reynaud said, then added with a smile, “except, of course, for that which runs along the boundary of my property for my own convenience.”
Elise saw Madeleine lift her head to stare at Reynaud with a sharp look in her eyes before the woman lowered her gaze to her plate once more. Elise had little attention to give this byplay, however, as she saw the point St. Amant was trying to make. If there was a cart road, however narrow, then it should be easy to follow. They could dispense with the services of their guide and host. The prospect was too enticing to abandon. She leaned forward. “Even the harpsichord came on horseback?”
“Pulled behind a Spanish mule on a special conveyance,” Reynaud answered, his composure unruffled. “You are aware that the Spanish mission of Los Adaes is less than thirty miles from Fort Saint Jean Baptiste? That was a stroke of good fortune, for the Spanish have many more horses and mules and I was able to buy what I needed from them — at a price, of course. Trade between the Spanish and French garrisons is brisk, I’m afraid, this far from either center of government.”
“Smuggled goods,” Elise said, thinking of Vincent’s part in that trade prohibited by the French government.
“It is a matter of survival.”
She settled back in her chair, leaving the field to St. Amant. What reason, after all, had Reynaud to conceal from them the existence of a road? The men of their party were hardly congenial and, indeed, barely polite despite the fact that he had tried to save their lives. His bargain with her had sorely tried his patience, netting him more frustration than relief. If he had business at the fort of the Natchitoches country, as he had said, then he could easily make the journey there and back in the time it would take to guide them. In all probability he was as anxious to be rid of them as they were to be gone, only his notions of hospitality, imbued from both the Natchez and his father’s family, prevented him from saying so.
Elise, letting her fingers move over the keys of the harpsichord, glanced from Pascal to Reynaud. The contrast between the coarse, sprawling merchant and the half-breed dressed in satin, sitting relaxed at the card table, was marked. Even St. Amant seemed to lack both refinement and force in comparison. Reynaud had the urbane elegance of a courtier without the mincing airs, vicious wit, or condescension of that species. It was ridiculous, even unfair, that he should be able to move so easily between the roles of savage and gentleman. She had thought she was beginning to understand him and now she was no longer sure. Even as she appreciated his chameleon-like facility, she mistrusted it.
I have no people. He had spoken those words on the trail. Had he meant them? Did he really feel no greater loyalty to the people of his father than to those of his mother? If not, then even he did not know which guise was the true one. And if he did not, how could she tell?
She glanced up, startled from her thoughts, as Pascal came to stand in the curve of the narrow instrument. His voice was rough and faintly slurred as he drawled, “Do you know you’ve been staring at that twice-damned half-breed like a she-cat in heat?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” He was drunk, but his voice was carrying. She sent a quick look to be certain the card players had not heard.
“Oh, no, not I. You’re the one. Can it be that that savage bastard has thawed the ice widow? Maybe it was what you needed all along, to be forced to give it up.”
“You are insulting,” she said, rising to her feet and stepping away from the harpsichord. “I will expect an apology when you are sober.”
He reached out to fasten hard, moist fingers on her arm “If you’ve started to thaw, maybe I can finish melting you. I’ll come to your room in an hour.”
She wrenched at her arm in the sudden, frenzied return of her old revulsion, but she could not release herself. “Do,” she invited in a hiss, “and I’ll kill you.”
“I’ll wager my welcome will be warm enough when I’ve got you under me,” he said, his grasp bruising as he jerked her nearer.
“You will lose,” came a hard reply from behind them.
Elise was freed abruptly as Reynaud came between them. He took Pascal’s wrist, bent, and lifted one hip, and the merchant went flying to land flat on his back on the floor.
Pascal shook his head, raising himself on his elbows. The words thick and shaken, he said, “What kind of Indian trick was that?”
“A wrestler’s throw. Shall I demonstrate again?”
The merchant sent him a look of black dislike, but managed to signal that it would not be necessary.
“You will make your regrets for your conduct to Madame Laffont.”
Pascal stared at Reynaud with his thick lips folded, but apparently something he saw in the other’s face decided him. His gaze wavered and he mumbled an apology.
Reynaud took Elise’s cold and trembling fingers and placed them on his arm before turning to his guests. “The evening, my friends, is at an end.”
The salon was quiet as he led her away. Only Madeleine followed with quick footsteps as Reynaud pushed open the door of Elise’s bedchamber and guided her through. His cousin closed the door behind them and moved to stand nearby, her anxious gaze upon Elise’s pale face.
“Cognac,” Reynaud said to the woman. When she slipped away to fetch it, he turned Elise toward him. A soft curse left him as he saw the look in her eyes. He made an abortive gesture as if he had meant to take her in his arms, then realized he could not. His voice curt yet quiet, he said, “Hold to me.”
It was as if she had not been able to breathe since Pascal had touched her. She heard the command with a sense of limitless release. Sliding her hands inside his coat, she clasped her arms around him and rested her face on the brocade of his waistcoat. Closing her eyes, she let out a deeply held sigh. She felt his cheek against her hair, the delicate touch of his fingers against the back of her gown, settling at her waist. She did not move. They stood thusly until Madeleine returned.
Reynaud stayed to see Elise take the restorative, to watch as she sipped it. Satisfied that she was all right, he let himself out of the room. His cousin, mystified but sympathetic still, bustled around, turning down the bed and laying out a nightgown. Finally she approached and took Elise’s glass to set it aside before beginning to unbutton her gown with a competence that did not brook refusal.
The cognac was potent. Elise seemed to have little will of her own left and allowed herself to be turned this way and that. She sat down to have her stockings and shoes removed, stood to have her nightgown slipped over her head, then sat down again to have her hair taken down in front of the dressing table.
As Reynaud’s cousin began to draw a brash through her long, honey-brown strands, a thought occurred to Elise. Without pausing to consider it, she spoke. “The women m’sieu brings here to his home, do they stay long?”
“Women, Madame Laffont?”
“The women of a certain kind.”
“I don’t understand you. There have been few women here, only one or two, and they the wives of the officials who visit from time to time. Sometimes a coureur de bois will pay a brief visit in passing, bringing with him his Indian woman, but such do not stay in the house, being uncomfortable in so civilized a place.”
Elise suppressed a smile at the pride she heard in the woman’s voice. “But the — the lady whose dress I was wearing, what of her?”
“Which one do you speak of, chère?”
“The lady who died.”
“Ah,” the woman said with a slow nod. “Reynaud will have told you of it and I can add no more.”
Had his cousin been warned not to speak? If so, it would serve no purpose to tease her. In any case, there was no further opportunity, for the door behind them opened and Reynaud stepped inside.
Madeleine gave a final smoothing to the thick curtain of hair that shimmered around Elise’s shoulders, then put down the brush, said good night, and went away. Reynaud reached up to drag off his wig and throw it onto the dressing table as he moved to stand behind her. He watched her in the mirror, his gaze running with a hint of possessiveness over her hair and the low-necked gown of white batiste that she wore. His voice soft, he said, “Charming.”
She ignored the comment. “You will be sleeping here?”
“It is the arrangement.”
“One you have not taken advantage of since our arrival.”
“A sign of my commendable patience. Did it trouble you?”
“Hardly. I merely wondered if the rules had changed.”
“No.” He smiled at her in the mirror as he shrugged out of his coat and hung it on the back of her chair.
“I wasn’t even sure if you used a real bed.”
“Occasionally.”
He kicked off his shoes with their high heels and rolled down his stockings, removing them. As he straightened and began to unbutton his waistcoat, Elise found that she could not look away until he had stripped it off, revealing the linen shirt underneath. She met his gaze with its trace of quizzical humor in the mirror, then her attention was drawn to his hands as they grasped the fullness of his shirt and pulled it from his breeches. He crossed his arms over his belly and drew the linen garment up and off over his head in a single, fluid movement.
The gray-black lines of his tattoos were there, unchanged, undulating in rows across his chest. Without
conscious thought, she turned in her chair and reached out to touch them, tracing their course with her fingertips. He drew in his breath as he accepted her touch, the first she had given that was of her own volition. He stood, unmoving, his eyes darkening to the gray of the night sky; then, slowly, so as to pose no threat by towering over her, he dropped to one knee beside her chair. One strong, brown hand lifted to cover her fingers where they rested-on his chest, which swelled as he prepared to speak.
“If I were not forsworn,” he said, his voice deep, “I would wrap my hands in the wild silk of your hair and draw you to me, enclosing you in my arms, holding you to me until I could feel the beat of your heart. I would touch your lips with mine, holding their sweet warmth until they opened to me. I would taste the essence of your mouth and probe its source, inviting you with every wile at my command to do the same. I would kiss your forehead, your eyes, the softness of your cheeks, that small seductive hollow behind your ear. Gently I would slide your gown from your shoulders, following its fall with a trail of kisses.”
“Please,” she whispered, a heated flush rising to her face that was not entirely due to embarrassment. She felt as if every word was a caress, as if each had weight and substance that she could feel against her skin. They seeped inside her, bringing a heaviness to the lower part of her body, a languor that prevented movement.
“Your breasts I would take in my hands, cupping their gentle shape flint is both soft and firm, stroking the nipples with finger and tongue until they were tight buds of sweetness. I would press my face into the white flatness of your belly and breathe your scent before searching out those secret places that bring you joy. And when you were ready, when you yearned for me, only then, would I fill you, banishing thought of any other man. I would use the force at my command to your service, your good, bringing to us both that boundless pleasure that is our birthright, our solace, our only certain reward for living. These things I would do, if I were not forsworn.”