Louisiana History Collection - Part 1

by Jennifer Blake

  Still, for the first time in days, Félicité was able to relax. As the time spent in bed with Morgan lengthened, the darkened room began to take on the aspect of a retreat. Here she could drift, unmindful of what might be occurring beyond these four walls, unheeding of events she could not change. Let it go, then. As long as she must bow her will to Morgan’s wishes, what use was it to look beyond this moment, this circumstance? She might as well close her eyes and seek the soothing opiate of dreams.

  It was just before dinner when a messenger delivered a packet of close-written sheets for Morgan, along with a three-page letter of instructions and questions. The second officer in charge of the Spanish army of occupation was, apparently, indispensable. There were limits to the time he would be allowed to absent himself from duty.

  Morgan looked over the papers, then tossed them to one side. When the evening meal was over, however, he climbed out of bed, donned his breeches, and spread the sheets out over the desk in the study. Félicité watched through the doorway for a time as in the light of a branch of flickering candies he sent a quill slashing over page after page of parchment. Now and then he would lean back, checking a list with his lips pursed, or rake his fingers through his hair in frowning concentration as he came to a decision. He seemed engrossed, oblivious of his surroundings, though now and then his green gaze wandered to the white-draped bed and her shape beneath the sheet.

  Restlessness crept in upon Félicité. She felt peculiar sitting, waiting. The house was quiet as Ashanti and the others had their meal in the kitchen. It was well after dark, a late dinner hour being the custom in this semitropical land where appetites stirred only fitfully until the cool of the evening. Soon the moon would be rising.

  Félicité slipped from bed, finding her saque, drawing it around her. She let herself out of the bedchamber and moved across the salle to her own room. There on the dressing table she found her brush and used it to bring some order to the tangled mass of her hair. Running water into a bowl from the lavabo fastened to one wall, she bathed her face and neck for coolness. On impulse, she added more water to the bowl and sponged her entire body. She had bathed that morning before Morgan, but she relished the sensation of freshness.

  Dusting herself with violet-scented cornstarch, she took another clean linen night rail from her armoire. Its well-washed softness felt good against her skin. At the same time, with it covering her nakedness beneath her dressing saque, she felt less vulnerable within herself.

  She had picked up her hairbrush, trying to decide what would be Morgan’s reaction if she braided the long length of her hair for the night ahead, when she heard the strains of the guitar. The sound came from the street, a soft and haunting air tinged with melancholy. It drew closer. As Félicité stood listening, the musician paused in the street outside the house and lifted his voice, a soft, clear baritone, in the words of an old Spanish love song.

  Juan Sebastian Unzaga. The voice could belong to no other. Embarrassment and dread gripped Félicité, along with an odd sadness. She cared nothing for the Spanish soldier, but still his persistence and his willingness to make his feelings plain by this public salute were touching. He could not know of her recent change of status, or he would not have come. No doubt he would learn of it soon enough; such things could not be kept a secret in so closely knit a community. In the meantime, what was she to do?

  She put down the brush and glided from the room with the skirts and shoulder capelet of her saque billowing around her. At the doors that opened out onto the balcony, she paused, glancing toward the study. The door to that room from the salle was closed. She could hear no movement inside. Perhaps Morgan had not noticed the serenade, or, noticing, had not realized the Lafargue house was its object. There was one other possibility; that he realized, but did not care.

  It was not that Morgan had any right to object, and of course she didn’t mind one way or the other. It would be best, however, if there was no confrontation, nothing to draw attention to the house and its new occupant. The best way to ensure that might well be to do nothing, to ignore the man in the street below, letting him finish his song and move on without acknowledgment.

  The only trouble with that resolve was that Juan Sebastian seemed disinclined to curtail his performance. As soon as he finished one song his nimble fingers began to draw forth another melody from his guitar. The music soared upward, pouring in through the doors that stood open to the evening breezes. He could not see Félicité where she stood, she was sure of that. Regardless, it was as though he sensed her presence, so full and resonant with longing was his voice. It caught at her imagination, vibrating through her, stirring the impulse to see him, to step out onto the balcony and accept the homage he offered, knowing full well that such humble supplication was the creation of the night and the music, nothing more.

  At a slight sound behind her, she turned. Morgan stood with his hands on his hips, his dark-green gaze raking her where she stood in the shadow of the portieres. His tones tight with sarcasm he said, “How much longer is this caterwauling going to go on?”

  “I — I couldn’t say.”

  “I can,” he grated, and walked past her out onto the balcony.

  “No!” Félicité cried, moving swiftly after him to clutch his arm, to draw him back. It was too late. They were caught in the silver-white gleam of the halfmoon just swinging above the rooftops of the town.

  “Félicité,” Juan Sebastian breathed as he caught sight of the white shimmer of her nightclothes and the golden cape of her hair about her shoulders. “How beautiful you—”

  He stopped short as he saw the dark shape of the man beside her. For long seconds no one spoke, no one moved.

  Morgan stepped to brace his arms on the railing. “Well, Bast?”

  “I — I did not know. I never dreamed—” On the upturned face of the Spaniard the brief delight was replaced by confused disappointment.

  The tableau they presented was damning. A gentleman did not remove his coat, much less his waistcoat and shirt, in the presence of a lady unless they were on terms of intimacy. And although the ladies of the French court and the haut ton received both male and female callers in dishabille, enjoying tidbits of gossip while being dressed by their maids, that was an amusement for married women, not young girls, and for the daylight hours only. By appearing as they had, they could not have made their relationship more plain.

  “Now you do know,” Morgan said quietly.

  “Yes.” Juan Sebastian drew himself up with all the pride of a grandee, which indeed he was by birth if the gossips were right. “I will bid you goodnight.”

  The disillusion in his tone, and the bitterness, struck Félicité like a blow. She wanted to call after him as he turned away, to explain. With the realization that she could not came some small recognition of how the days ahead were going to be. Her face set, she swung back into the house.

  Morgan entered behind her. His features impassive, he watched as she moved about the room in agitation, avoiding the doors that led to either bedchamber.

  “Am I to take it,” he drawled, “that you would rather I had not sent Bast away?”

  She sent him a venomous glance. “I would rather you hadn’t made it so obvious that you were staying here.”

  “I can’t see that it matters.”

  “Oh, no, I’m sure you can’t. You weren’t the one who was branded a harlot.”

  “Nor were you. Bast is unlikely to spread the news of my presence to all and sundry.” His tones were laden with rigidly contained patience.

  “He won’t have to. It wouldn’t surprise me if half the town knows already.”

  “If that is so, there is nothing we can do about it. It strikes me that you weren’t overly concerned until Bast came on the scene. Can it be it’s not your loss of honor and respectability that troubles you so much as the loss of a suitor?”

  She stared at him, a cold sparkle in her brown eyes. “How can I expect you to understand my feelings? You a mercenary who trad
ed honor for gain so long ago you have forgotten how it feels to be without it.”

  “You haven’t answered my question,” he reminded her, his face taking on a metallic hardness.

  “Why should I? You have taken from me my chastity, my character. You have seen to it that I will be reviled and despised as a traitor and an immoral woman. Because of you and what you represent, my father has been imprisoned, shut away from all contact as though he were already dead before the eyes of the world. My brother has fled, my home and everything I possess has been listed for confiscation and will almost certainly be taken. By what right do you question me about anything? By what right do you dare?”

  “I did offer recompense,” he reminded her, “and future security.”

  “Recompense? Security? As well to offer the innocent man held in custody the compensation and safety of prison walls!”

  “It is a pity you feel that way.”

  “What else can you expect?”

  “Gratitude?” he suggested.

  “Gratitude?” She almost spat the word. “For what?”

  “For risking my career and my future prospects to intervene for Olivier Lafargue.”

  “That you did, if indeed you did so bestir yourself, as a part of a bargain in which I was to be seen in your presence, though you seem to have carried it a great deal further than was intended.”

  “You are not entirely without blame in that last instance, if I remember correctly,” he countered, an emerald glitter in his eyes.

  “I may have told Valcour of your attendance, and even let fall the fact that you would be escorting me home that evening, but as I tried to tell you before, I never plotted to have you killed. I could not have done such a thing, any more than I could have ordered a chamber pot emptied on your soldiers from yonder balcony.”

  He lifted his head, a blank look descending over his features. “If you didn’t order the chamber pot emptied, then who? — Valcour. I might have known.”

  “Yes, Valcour! Since he has gone beyond your reach, there can be no harm in admitting it.”

  “It seems I must readjust my thinking,” he said, his voice silken as he moved toward her. “A closer examination of your — thought processes may be in order.”

  The expression in his eyes was anything but detached. Hastily, Félicité said, “I see no necessity. You have only to believe me.”

  “I am afraid I have become too cynical, too dishonorable, for that. I require to be shown.”

  “How — how can I do any such thing?” Félicité queried, a trifle breathless as she retreated before his advance.

  9

  FÉLICITÉ’S MISGIVINGS CONCERNING the attitude of the town toward her fall from grace were well founded. In the next few days, as she went back and forth from her house to the prison or the market, hardly a soul spoke to her. Her neighbor from next door who had brought her news on the day her father was arrested came no more. The gifts of food that had temporarily sustained them ceased. On the day when, with the rest of the inhabitants of the town, she put in a reluctant appearance at O’Reilly’s headquarters for the swearing of the oath of fealty to Spain, she caught sight of her giggling friend from convent days. The young woman spared not even a smile. Stiffbacked, she and her husband turned away, cutting Félicité dead, leaving her isolated among the people who shared her birthright. Compared with the abusive taunts that were sometimes whispered after her in the streets, or called in louder tones in the market, this snub was nothing, and yet it hurt her more than anything she had yet endured.

  Greater than the pain of ostracism, however, was her growing fear that some rumor of the fact that she was living with a Spanish officer would reach her father. Though he could not have visitors, he could speak to the guards, could sometimes receive a note if the officer in charge was in a lenient mood, even if he could not send one. The state of mind that must overtake him in such a case, the torment without knowing the reasons for it, was something she did not dare contemplate. To add this burden to the fears and oppression of the spirit he must already be supporting was unthinkable.

  Her father was not of a robust constitution. He had also an introspective and pessimistic frame of mind. The only thing worse than having him discover her circumstances would be if he should learn that they had come about in her attempt to save him. He would be appalled. His pride and honor would be extinguished by such a sacrifice for his sake. Situated as he was, helpless to exercise his parental obligation to protect her, he might well make himself ill.

  At last she hit on a means of deflecting some of the damage of any rumors that might reach him. In a note of forced cheerfulness, delivered with his food tray, she told him with perfect truth that a number of Spanish officers had been quartered upon the townspeople, and that the Lafargue house had been honored with the person of the second-in-command under O’Reilly, one Lieutenant Colonel McCormack. With great care, she stressed the advantages in the situation, those of extra food and the addition of the colonel’s manservant to make the work easier and serve as an escort for Ashanti and herself when they walked out on the streets. She did not, of course, mention the fact that Valcour was not in residence. In fact, some small reference she made to her brother might be taken to indicate that he was still there, going about his usual pursuits. Valcour had not bothered to apprise the imprisoned man of his previous disappearance; it seemed safe to conclude that he would neglect to send word of this last. As distasteful as was the subterfuge, it was the only way she could think of to protect her father.

  What she would do when Olivier Lafargue discovered the truth on his release, if he was released, she did not know. It would have to wait upon that time.

  It was more than a week after Morgan had set up his quarters in the Lafargue house. Félicité, with Pepe close beside her, was returning homeward after delivering her father’s meal. She was in no hurry; preparations for Morgan’s dinner were well in hand, and in any case, he seldom made his way to the house from O’Reilly’s headquarters before dusk. Walking in the evening air was pleasant. She considered making a circuit of the Place d’Armes as she had in other times, but decided against it. There would be too many opportunities there for her to be humiliated. It would be much better if she turned her footsteps back toward the center of town.

  The streets had been laid out by a military surveyor when New Orleans was founded nearly seventy years before. They ran straight and true to the river, with the side streets cutting across them in precise right angles, instead of winding like European thoroughfares. It would be easy enough for her to make her own square walkway, returning at its end to the Lafargue house.

  She skirted the parish Church of St. Louis, intending to traverse the garden behind it to reach the next side street. Across the way, she caught sight of the flash of a red uniform and the golden glitter of officer’s braid. Without thinking, she came to a halt, pausing in the deep shade of a moss-draped live oak. Pepe froze into immobility beside her, sucking in his breath with an audible sound. It was only then that Félicité was certain the officer was Morgan, only then that she noticed the woman on his arm.

  Dark, dressed in black silk overlaid with a skirt of gold lace, her hair dressed high with its distinctive white wings threading the shining blackness and gold combs supporting a mantilla, it was the woman Félicité had seen arriving that memorable day she had gone to see Morgan at the government house. She strolled beside the colonel; her bearing regal, her manner gracious and assured. For his part, Morgan gazed down at her as though she held him fascinated, one brown hand covering the slim white fingers that lay upon his sleeve.

  That Pepe knew something more of the situation than she was obvious. Félicité slanted him a quick glance. “What a charming-looking lady. I wonder who she can be?”

  “I believe, mademoiselle,” the manservant said carefully, “that it is the Marquesa de Talavera.”

  “How interesting. A Spanish title, I presume?”

  “This is so. It comes to her from her husband
, the marqués, a fine man who, regrettably, is no more.”

  “She is most attractive.”

  Pepe inclined his head. “La Paloma is considered to be one of the most beautiful women in the Old World, or the New.”

  The name he had given the woman meant “The Dove.” It seemed an unlikely title for such a personage, conjuring up as it did mental images of soiled doves, the name often applied to public prostitutes. Sending Pepe a look of frowning inquiry, Félicité repeated, “La Paloma?”

  “She is called so because of her hair, mademoiselle,” he said, his face impassive, “and because the reference amuses her.”

  “I see,” Félicité said, though she was not certain that she did. It would not do for the manservant to think that she was overly interested, however. It was no concern of hers if Morgan McCormack wanted to flaunt members of the Spanish peerage around the town. She sincerely hoped that the lady was able to keep him entertained for the remainder of the evening.

  If it had not been for seeing Morgan with the other woman, however, Félicité might have been less polite when she met Juan Sebastian Unzaga a few yards from home. He stepped from a doorway to bar her passage, sweeping the ground with his hat as he made a leg before her. She returned his greeting with as much aplomb as she could muster while ignoring the flush of embarrassment that rose to her cheekbones.

  “Mademoiselle Lafargue — Félicité! I had to see you, to speak to you.”

  “For what purpose?” She gave a small shake of her head as she tried to smile.

  “To make certain that you are happy, that this — arrangement between you and my friend Morgan is what you want.”

  Félicité glanced at Pepe. “Your concern is flattering, but I hardly see how I am to answer such a question.”

  “By telling the truth! May I not ask that much? And that you give me a few precious moments of private conversation with you.”