“How can I resist so gracious an invitation?” he said, his eyes crystalline in their gray darkness. “By all means, what are we waiting for?”
Cyrene had quickly become used to having afternoon callers. Armand’s visits became a routine affair. He often brought his friends with him, young men of his age and station who spent as much time laughing and joking among themselves as paying court to her. Not that she minded. It was almost like being with Gaston again, though, of course, Gaston never brought her tokens of candy or flowers with the dew still upon them, never wrote poems to the beauty of her wrists or the piquant arch of her brows.
Armand had asked if she meant to receive in the morning, to hold a levee, as so many ladies did, while she completed her toilette for the day. Cyrene had laughed aloud at the very idea. She had not yet gained the habit of lying in bed until the morning was half gone. She very much doubted that Armand and his friends would be up and dressed themselves in time to see her perform her sketchy toilette, and even if they were, the idea struck her as ridiculous. She was no queen whose every movement, from the time she opened her eyes in the morning until she closed them at night, must be attended with punctilio and a myriad of witnesses. It was bad enough to have René watching her every move without a gallery of other spectators as well.
She was growing used to René, however, used to looking up and finding his gray eyes upon her in speculation that was quickly hidden. She could not think why he kept her with him if he had such reservations, though sometimes she was forced to wonder if it was not his uncertainty about her that was her chief attraction.
She was sitting alone in the salon the next afternoon when Martha brought a visitor into the room. She had found him on the street outside as she was returning from the market, she said. He had been inquiring for Mademoiselle.
“Gaston!” Cyrene cried.
Her book went flying from her lap as she jumped up and ran to fling her arms around him. The younger Breton set his feet and took her onslaught, giving her a quick bear hug before he drew back to look at her.
“Now that’s what I call a welcome,” he said with a grin.
“Where did you come from? Why are you here? Is everything and everyone all right? Come and sit down and tell me.” Her joy at seeing him was so great that she felt she was babbling, but she could not stop.
“Could I have something to drink? I came straight from the river and I have the devil of a thirst. “
Cyrene looked around for Martha, but she was already disappearing toward the back of the house. The woman did not need to be told the needs of visitors, even those outfitted as Gaston was in a leather shirt and breeches. “You shall have it in a moment. Only tell me how M’sieur Pierre and M’sieur Jean are, and where you have left them.”
“We were on our way to the Choctaw country when it came to us suddenly that we had only Lemonnier’s word that you were safe and well. It was decided that one of us must come back and make sure of it. I was the one least likely to attract attention.”
“That may be,” she said with some severity, “but you are still in danger. You were seen at the warehouse. I can’t believe you have been wandering the streets in clear daylight.”
He shrugged. “I had to find you.”
As much as Cyrene would like to keep him with her, it could not be done, for his sake. She summoned a smile. “Well, you have found me and as you can see, I do very well. You can go back and tell M’sieur Pierre and M’sieur Jean that, and tell them, too, that it will ease my mind if they stay away.”
Gaston only watched her without comment, his expression reflective as he tugged at the gold ring in his ear. “You are looking very fine.”
“I… thank you.” For some reason, the richness of the silk dress she wore and the fineness of the lace on her coif made her as uncomfortable as when she had first donned them, though she was fast becoming used to such luxury.
“I heard a thing or two on the streets. It seems you’re mighty thick now with the governor, playacting with him and everything. Maybe something could be arranged?”
Unhappiness rose in her eyes. “I don’t think so. M’sieur le Marquis is an easy-going man, but he takes his position most seriously.”
“The Grand Marquis, people are calling him. A grand hypocrite, I say, when everyone knows his wife—”
Cyrene reached out quickly to put her hand on his arm. “Not so loud. Someone will hear you.”
“I don’t care if they do,” Gaston said, but he lowered his voice in deference to her request. “Anyway, if you’re not as happy as a squirrel with a two-year supply of nuts, then I’m supposed to take you away with me to rejoin Papa and Uncle Pierre.”
“You can’t do that.”
“No? Tell me why not? It should be as simple as a walk down to the river as dark begins to fall.”
“I — I gave my word.”
Gaston stared at her for a long moment, his gaze shrewd as he studied the color rising in her face. He slapped his hands down on his knees and clasped them there. “Très bien. If you stay, I stay.”
“Impossible!”
Though there was exasperation in Cyrene’s tone, there was a warm feeling inside her. She could say no more, however, for Martha returned then with glasses of wine and a plate of small cakes. By the time the woman finished setting them out, Armand arrived for his daily visit.
Cyrene presented the two young men to each other. There seemed nothing else to do, for to fail to identify Gaston in some manner would have merely made his presence all the more suspicious. It was always possible that Armand had not heard of him. She could only hope that it was so.
It was a futile hope. Armand looked at Gaston with the liveliest of interest. “Ah, yes,” he said, “the smuggler.”
Gaston flashed a grin as he executed a creditable bow. “I see my fame has gone before me.”
“As to that, I don’t know,” Armand said gently, “but I have made it my business to discover what I may about Mademoiselle Cyrene.”
“I begin to see.” The younger Breton looked from Armand to Cyrene with lifted brows.
He only thought he did, Cyrene knew, but she made no protest. If he thought that Armand was a part of the reason she was staying on in New Orleans, then he might be encouraged to go before it was too late.
Armand, when he had taken a glass of the wine set out, presented Cyrene with his latest poetic effort. She thanked him with every show of appreciation and read parts of it aloud as a means of easing the situation. She expected afterward there would be an awkward pause, but somehow the conversation returned to the subject of smuggling and she was left to sit in a corner of the settee listening as the other two expounded on the deficiencies of the current trading system. Armand, it seemed, had thought before of trading in an illicit manner with the English, but his father would not hear of it. M’sieur Moulin preferred that his son take what fortune there was to be had from the land and forget such hazardous escapades.
Watching the acquaintance and respect between Gaston and Armand grow was entertaining but not particularly absorbing. It was a relief when Armand, true to his upbringing, rose at the end of the prescribed time for afternoon visits and took his leave. It could be seen that he did not like leaving Gaston on the field alone, particularly as the other young man showed him to the door with as much casual confidence as if he had been his host. But good manners were adamant. Go he must, and go he did.
Gaston closed the door behind Armand and came back to fling himself into a chair near Cyrene. Fixing her with a stern gaze, he demanded, “Does Moulin call often?”
“Yes, fairly.”
“And what does Lemonnier think of it?”
“It’s the custom and he accepts it as such.”
“Does he, indeed? Well, I’ll be damned if I would.”
Cyrene frowned. “Then it’s a good thing it doesn’t concern you.”
“I can’t think what you get out of it, either, what with poems to the spots on your face.”
“Spots! To a very small mole, a beauty mark!”
“To a spot.”
She took a deep breath to calm her annoyance. “Many ladies receive in the afternoon, and it’s a mark of favor to have admirers write poetry about you.”
“I don’t care what it is, I wouldn’t want them cluttering up my house and I don’t know why you do, unless it’s to make René jealous.”
She denied the charge with indignation, but even as she spoke, she was not certain of the truth. She no longer knew what she felt for René. She had thought her love was gone, but what, then, was this joy she felt in his arms, the sweet thrill she found in his touch, the pleasure she had discovered in watching him, simply watching him, being near him, sharing his days and his nights? But it didn’t make sense that she could still be in love with him. It made no sense at all.
Gaston was still at the lodgings when René returned as dusk began to fall. If he was surprised to see the younger man, he did not show it but rather invited him to dinner and inquired after Pierre and Jean. Cyrene, who had begun to take on some responsibility for the running of René’s household, slipped away to confer with Martha over dinner, leaving the two alone. When she returned, René and Gaston appeared to be highly pleased with each other, with that purely masculine expansiveness of spirit that accompanies the reaching of an understanding.
So in charity were they with each other, in fact, that Cyrene expected René to invite Gaston to stay with them for the night. He did not, however. By the time dinner was over, it was well after nightfall. Gaston, persuaded by Cyrene to greater discretion than he had shown on his arrival, used the darkness for cover for his return to the flatboat.
Shortly after the younger man had gone, René took his place at his writing table. Cyrene was beginning to think that it was his way of avoiding the long hours between dinner and bedtime that must otherwise be filled with conversation. She realized that small talk was not her primary purpose in being with René; still, she found the way he was able to immerse himself in his box full of papers, ignoring her, to be vexing in the extreme.
She sat curled up on the settee before the fire with her new embroidered satin slippers kicked off and her feet tucked under her billowing skirts of silk in cream and gold-toned stripes. She had not powdered her hair since the great clouds of hair powder necessary for the task had a tendency to make her sneeze, but she had allowed Martha to dress it for her for the day in a chignon with waves and ringlets that fell to one shoulder. The weight of it after so many hours was causing the pins to dig into her scalp. Now she pulled them out one by one, releasing the long, dark gold skein and drawing it over her shoulder as she combed out the tangles with her fingers.
A pin she had missed slipped from the loosened tresses. It slid down the curve of her neck and over her shoulder into the deep décolletage of her gown. She gave a soft exclamation of annoyance as the cold pin settled. She leaned forward, inserting her fingers into the low bodice to retrieve the pin. When she settled back, she noticed that René had looked up from his writing table. He sat still, watching her.
She gave him a tentative smile. He returned it with warmth kindling in his eyes but resumed his work once more.
Cyrene sat suspended for long moments, watching the swift precision of his movements, the way the light of the flickering candles in his candelabra played over the planes and angles of his face and the contours of his lips, burnishing his skin, reflecting in the glossy black waves of his hair. The light shimmered on the plume he used and cast the shadow of his hard square fist, which moved endlessly across his page. She thought of that same hand upon her body and a faint shiver ran through her skin.
Cyrene moved her feet from under her skirts and stood up, stretching a little, then stepped to place her hairpins on a nearby table. She wandered to the fire and, taking the poker, prodded the flames to greater life. Returning the poker to its hook, she stood watching the blaze for long moments with her skirts gathered near her, well away from danger. Turning away as the heat became too intense, she wandered toward the writing table. She trailed her fingers along the smooth polish of its edge as she rounded it and touched René lightly on his shoulder as she leaned over him.
“What are you writing with such energy?” she asked in a pretense of lazy amusement. “It must be your memoirs at the very least.”
“Something equally dull, letters to men of influence. Exiles cannot allow themselves to be forgotten, unless they wish to remain in exile.”
“Would that be so terrible, to remain here?”
The salutation on the top of the page on which he was writing, she could see, was to Maurepas. The king’s minister could certainly be said to be a man of influence, though she remembered that René had also claimed him for a friend.
René turned in his chair to face her. “Is that what you would like, for me to stay?”
“Take care!” she exclaimed. “You’ll get ink on your sleeve.” In turning, he had placed his velvet-clad forearm squarely on the paper on which he had written, a page not yet sanded. She reached out to catch his wrist to lift his arm, but he placed it back down firmly again.
“The sleeve doesn’t matter, but the answer to my question does.”
His gaze as he spoke was compelling. She met it, her own eyes filled with doubt. Did she wish him to stay? It was possible. She did not like to think of his going. But she could not concentrate on the answer, for instinct told her it was no accident that he had blotted his page with his sleeve. He did not want her to see what he was writing. That very suspicion made the sentence she had caught sight of stand out bright and sharp-edged in her mind: … only one way to stop the forbidden trade known as smuggling, and that is by the vigorous prosecution of those caught in it so that they serve as an example…
She must say something. “Are you sure you wish to go?”
He rose to his feet, his broad shoulders effectively blocking from view the litter of parchment sheets on his writing table. “Sometimes I think of France and long for her as an orphan does for its mother,” he said, “and sometimes when I take you in my arms like this, I feel that wherever you are is home.”
He was attempting to divert her attention, as he had before when she took an interest in his writing. Let him, then. Cyrene, moving into his arms, accepted his kiss. It made no difference, after all. She knew what he was and still could not escape her attraction to him, could not afford to defy him, to dare him to denounce the Bretons to the governor. His possession of her was inescapable, therefore she might as well take what enjoyment she could from it. It was little enough recompense.
Nevertheless, on the following morning, when René had left the house for the coffeehouse or to see the governor or to wherever it was that he disappeared of a morning, Cyrene went at once to the writing table in the salon. The polished surface was clear, without so much as a scrap of paper on it, though the inkstand with its plume on the rest stood ready. The lacquer box sat against one wall. Though Cyrene shook the lock and tugged it, and even delved into it none too gently with her hairpin, it remained securely fastened, holding its secrets.
On the evening of the Mardi Gras masquerade ball held by the governor and his wife, the official Government House was lighted from top to bottom. Torches flared beside the doorway, illuminating the avid faces of the crowd gathered in the muddy street to see the arriving guests who trailed behind servants or link boys carrying lanterns. It had rained during the day, and the night sky was dark with low-hanging clouds that threatened another deluge, but that did not deter the spectators. They jostled one another for the best positions, vying with vendors of hot rice cakes and meat cooked in pastry, of oranges and candied violets, and, at the same time, keeping a sharp eye out for pickpockets. Wide-eyed, they stared at the costumes the fortunate ones had either commissioned for the occasion or else gathered together from odds and ends unearthed in old trunks. The audience seemed to be divided equally between those who saw beauty in everything and those who searched out only the fa
ults with comments more ribald and candid than prudent.
“What is he got up as, a tailor’s dummy?”
“I think he is supposed to be the fat German king of England.”
“Look at that. Anybody who would wear a cartwheel around her neck can’t be bothered that her backside looks like the aft end of a whaling ship.”
“She’s despised Queen Maria Theresa, idiot!”
“And I’m the Queen of Sheba!”
“Ah, here is the good père in his robes.”
“Yes, who looks like he should be defrocked.”
“Only see the dainty shepherdess with her little crooked staff—”
“And unless I miss my guess, looking for another staff that’s neither crooked nor little.”
Due to the wet and muddy streets, René had hired a sedan chair to carry Cyrene to Government House. The vehicle with its four bearers was by no means luxurious; the leather seat was cracked and smelled of sweat, the stale perfume used to cover such odors, and the mildewed straw in the bottom that was caked with dried mud. René walked beside the chair with one hand on the door and the other on his sword hilt. The sword was not only a part of his costume as a musketeer, it was also a sensible precaution. Due to the throng in the streets, it was a night when the undesirables of the town could be expected to creep from their holes.
Cyrene and René had to wait in line before they could approach the door of Government House, so they had ample time to hear the various quips and jests flung at the guests. When it was their turn, René handed Cyrene down, then tossed a coin or two to the sedan-chair bearers, bidding them to have a drink while they waited until the ball was over. There was a murmur of disappointment over the cloaks she and René wore, which hid their costumes, but Cyrene deliberately closed her mind to it as she passed quickly into the building.
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