“No, the general must first see for himself that using Lafitte’s men is the only way to save the city. Then I will approach him about Lafitte.”
Christopher didn’t like it, but Jason was unmoved. He smiled and said mildly, “Why don’t you go prime Lafitte? That should satisfy your urge for action.”
Unable to decide whether to laugh or kick someone where it would do the most good, Christopher stalked out of the room and headed for Lafitte’s cottage on the ramparts.
“Come in, mon ami,” Lafitte cried happily. “I was wondering when you would come back to see me.”
Christopher lounged in one of the wooden chairs and snapped, “I suppose you know why I have come?”
Looking seraphic, Lafitte murmured, “Let us say I hope I know why you come? The Americans need me rather badly, don’t they?”
“You know we do.” And forgetting all his careful arguments for convincing Lafitte to throw his forces in with theirs, he demanded, “Are you going to join us?”
His eyebrows rising in mock surprise, Lafitte admitted, “But of course! Did you doubt it?”
Narrowly Christopher regarded him. “What is your price? Surely it is not sheer nobility of purpose that motivates you?”
“Ah, well, there is that, but you are right, mon ami—I do have my price.” Serious, Lafitte said, “I want my men freed, I want my goods returned, and I want no more interference by Claiborne.”
“I cannot guarantee you anything,” Christopher admitted candidly. “What I can do, I hope, is arrange a meeting between you and General Jackson—between you, you will have to work out your differences.”
Lafitte nodded. “That is fair enough. Jackson, I have heard, is not an unreasonable man…nor is he in a position to be high-stomached about where his ammunition and added men come from.”
Christopher could agree with that, and after confirming Lafitte’s willingness to meet with the general as soon as it could be arranged, he departed, feeling as useless as he had to begin with.
From that point on the New Orleans area was a hive of activity. One of the general’s first orders was for brigades of axmen to block the swamp-hemmed watercourses that surrounded the city with fallen trees. Because Christopher was spoiling for action and knew those areas well, due to his time with Lafitte, on Claiborne’s recommendation to Jackson he was appointed as one of the men in charge of the hurriedly assembled army of axmen. Though the work was hard, Christopher was pleased that there was a concerted effort being made to protect the city.
On Lake Borgne Commodore Patterson was posted with five gunboats to act as the general’s “eyes” for the defense of the eastern routes into the city. Having decided not to attempt any defense of the river below Fort St. Philip, Jackson inspected the fort, and on his orders the inflammable wooden barracks were demolished, and the existing cannon were augmented by the addition of a thirty-two-pounder. Two new batteries were erected, one across the river at the derelict old Spanish Fort Bourbon and the second a half mile upstream.
At English Turn, below the city on the Mississippi River, he ordered the immediate construction of batteries protected by earthworks and another battery to be mounted at a point covering part of Bayou Terre aux Boeufs.
Jackson was out of the city for six days during his inspections, but there was a constant stream of orders relayed back to his engineers in New Orleans and demands to the governor and requisitions for troops and stores. On his order the slaves of riverside plantations were called in to throw up earthworks and erect batteries. With gladness he accepted Pierre Jugeat’s offer to raise a battalion of friendly Choctaw Indians and approved the request of Jean Baptiste Savary to form a battalion of free men of color from the refugees from Santo Domingo.
In the city Nicole watched the activity with growing unease. She longed for Christopher and worried constantly. She cursed herself a dozen times a day for her silliness, knowing in her heart that Christopher was enjoying himself in the swamps, and that he would have detested being a mere spectator. She supposed it was her own restlessness that made her inclined to worry about him, and ruefully she admitted she envied him.
Jackson returned to the city on the tenth and set out again two days later to inspect the routes from the head of Lake Borgne. As a result of his inspection a battery was mounted on Chef Menteur Road, and Fort St. John was strengthened and reinforced. He had done what he could and with what he had to work with; now there was little he could do but wait.
Jackson had barely returned to the city again, when on December 13, the news reached him that British ships were dropping anchor off Cat and Ship islands at the mouth of Lake Borgne. He wrote to Major General John Coffee at Baton Rouge, “I expect this is a feint to draw my attention to that point when they mean to strike at another,” never realizing that the British did intend to attack through the lake. Jackson settled down to wait, confident the lake was too shallow for big ships to anchor within sixty miles of New Orleans.
Christopher was back in the city by the second week in December, tired and irritable. His moroseness disappeared when Jason informed him that the general was agreeable to a meeting with Lafitte.
In a private meeting between the two principals in Maspero’s Coffee House they agreed that Lafitte would fight for the Americans. Upon hearing the news, Christopher felt a wave of hope sweep through him. With only five thousand men to face an enemy of twice that number, it was encouraging to know that there would now be ample ammunition and that some of the best-trained fighting men in the world were on their side.
And now there was nothing to do but wait—wait and wonder where the British would begin their assault.
Christopher, at Claiborne’s recommendation, was appointed to the general’s staff as the liaison between him and Lafitte and his men. It both gratified and pleased him, for now there was something he could get his teeth into.
Nicole found the waiting excruciating and wished she possessed some of her husband’s enjoyment of the preparations. Like the other ladies, she had been busy making bandages, but for the women there was little to do except wait and tend to the absentminded, distracted men who were their husbands, brothers, and lovers.
The stunning news reached New Orleans that the British did indeed mean to attack by way of Lake Borgne, having captured Patterson’s five gunboats. Jackson was enraged. Not only had he lost his “eyes” and valuable men, but now the British had the use of his shallow-drafted vessels to transport their troops. From his Royal Street headquarters, he wrote frantically to Major General Coffee: “You must not sleep until you reach me.”
The citizenry was panic-stricken at the news of the British attack on the lake. On December 16, Jackson declared martial law.
Major General Coffee and his men arrived on the twentieth, and on Wednesday of the same week Jackson called a briefing session at his headquarters. Christopher was in attendance, and as Nicole had a fitting at Madame Colette’s just down the street, they had decided that Christopher would meet her there after the meeting.
The briefing lasted longer than either of them had expected, and Nicole, growing weary of waiting, told Madame Colette to explain to her husband when he arrived that she had gone home. Her cloak fastened around her, Naomi in attendance, she walked out and accidentally bumped into a neatly dressed young man.
Laughing, she stepped back and exclaimed, “Excuse me! I’m awfully sorry, but I didn’t see you, if you can believe that.” The next instant the color drained from her face as she found herself looking into Allen’s features.
For a frozen moment neither of them said a word, Allen Ballard’s face as white as Nicole’s. Unaware that she did it, Nicole reached out to rest her hand on his chest, as if to reassure herself that it was not an apparition. “Allen,” she said in the merest whisper. Allen, after throwing a sharp glance around, grasped her hand and said urgently, “I have to talk to you. Is there someplace we can be private?”
Stunned by the unexpected meeting, still not assimilating what his prese
nce in New Orleans on the eve of the British attack might indicate, she shook her head. Looking at Madame Colette’s, she murmured reluctantly, “I suppose Madame would let us use one of the fitting rooms.”
It wasn’t what Allen wanted, but it would have to do. Thrown completely off guard as Nicole, he was fighting with the shock that she was here in New Orleans and not in England as he had been led to believe. She had to be silenced—long enough for him to escape the city and report to his commanding officer on the city’s woefully inadequate defenses.
Allen hadn’t wanted to spy out the city, but he was the only one who was familiar with the area, and reluctantly he had agreed. He had been aware that he might be recognized but was relying on the hope that not everyone had known he was a British spy during his imprisonment on Grand Terre. Besides, dressed as he was as a young man of the city in a tight-fitting coat of Spanish blue, buff pantaloons, and gleaming boots, the brown hair cut short and wearing a cocked hat, he had thought it unlikely that anyone would connect him with the Allen Ballard who had sailed on La Belle Garce. He hadn’t counted on Nicole Ashford tripping merrily down the banquettes of New Orleans either. It was the devil’s own luck, he thought; another half hour and he would have been safe.
At that very second Christopher was strolling in the direction of Madame’s when he was brought up short by the unpleasant sight of his wife making overtures to a strange young man. Then as the two of them turned and walked back into Madame’s, his eyes narrowed in disbelief. Allen Ballard! What in God’s name was he doing in New Orleans? It took Christopher less than a second to realize the reason, and his mouth went grim as he approached the dressmaker’s.
His wife consorting with a damned spy! By heaven, for all he knew this wasn’t the first time they had met. In the grip of raging anger Christopher was blind to anything but the fact that Nicole was with Allen.
He considered reporting that a pair of British spies were meeting at Madame Colette’s. Let Nicole pay the price for her duplicity! But he knew that he could not. Whatever she was, she was his. That knowledge twisted like a knife in his gut, destroying the peace and contentment he had felt these last weeks, making him bitterly aware of how easily he would have succumbed to her spell. He had begun to believe her protestations of love, to believe that she was as different from Annabelle as Robert had been from Simon, and now this!
He hesitated only a moment outside Madame Colette’s, his mind made up. Nicole must be protected from her own deceit and guile. She was his wife, and he would not have her dragged into the gutter by the likes of Allen Ballard. Ballard would die before he could implicate Nicole.
Christopher entered Madame Colette’s, having decided to act as naturally as possible until he could get his hands around Ballard’s neck. But his plans suffered a check the instant he entered the premises, for Madame Colette, her finger to her lips, hurriedly led him to the back of her shop.
Madame had been profoundly shocked when Madame Saxon had returned with a young gentleman in tow. She was even more disapproving when Madame Saxon had dismissed her maid and requested the use of one of the dressing rooms for a few minutes of private conversation. While her dressing rooms had often been used as rendezvous places by many married ladies with their lovers, she had not suspected Madame Saxon of being that sort. The wad of notes Allen had quickly shoved in her hand would have kept her quiet about the meeting if Monsieur Saxon had not suddenly appeared.
Bluntly she informed Monsieur that his wife, she was sorry to say, was meeting a strange young man in the front dressing room.
In that dressing room Nicole’s mind was working furiously. Once her first shock had fled, it hadn’t taken her but a second to realize why Allen was in the city. She could not allow Allen to leave, not when she guessed that he had information that might mean the death of her husband. Nor could she turn him over to the authorities, knowing that the gallows would be his fate. Vividly she remember the upward spiral of that shark, and she knew she could not live in peace if she were the cause of Allen’s death. She must render him incapable of leaving the city until after the battle.
Her eye fell upon the warming brick that sat innocently in the far corner. If she could grasp that and strike Allen unconscious, she could then, with Madame’s help, tie up Allen and hide him somewhere in the city until his knowledge was no longer of any value. Then she could set him free.
Allen was thinking much the same thing, except he had decided to overpower Nicole, gag and tie her, and then beat a hasty retreat from New Orleans. By the time Nicole was discovered he would be safe.
Christopher was making his own plan. He had to get Madame out of the shop while he silenced Allen, and the only way he could do that was to send her after the military. That would work well, although instead of a live spy they would find a dead one—one who could tell no tales. Christopher explained to Madame that when he stormed into the dressing room, she was to race to the authorities.
It did not go as anyone planned. Dropping her reticule, Nicole managed to get her hands on the warming brick and hide it in the folds of her cloak. Allen was on the point of forcing himself to deliver a powerful blow to Nicole’s chin, one which he hoped would knock her out, when Christopher, murder on his mind, burst through the thin door; Madame, faithfully following his instructions, darted from the shop, speeding after the authorities.
At the sound of the shattering wood Allen jerked around and Nicole, taking advantage of his distraction, brought the brick up and aimed it at his head. Her aim was bad, and instead of connecting with Allen’s head, it landed right in the middle of her husband’s chest, knocking the wind from him and causing him to stagger back into the other room.
Allen, now intent only on escape, leaped from the fitting room, while Nicole wasted a precious second staring in horrified disbelief at her husband as he reeled from the room. But then realizing that Christopher would be no help for a moment or two, she shot after Allen.
Allen was almost to the door, and the only way she could reach him was a headlong tackle. She made it despite her long skirts; wrapping her arms in a stranglehold about his knees, she bought Allen cursing and tumbling to the floor.
To Christopher, his breath coming in painful gasps, it looked as if the two of them had been trying to escape, only Nicole had tripped and fallen, dragging Allen down with her. Wasting little time on speculation, he heaved himself away from the wall, and as Allen struggled to his feet, seeking to escape from Nicole’s embrace, Christopher landed him a punch on his chin. Allen crumpled, and Nicole, with a satisfied sigh, loosened her grip.
Christopher dropped to his knees, his fingers itching to close around Allen’s throat and still forever his tongue, but Madame had been fortunate in meeting one of the patrols that Jackson had ordered to enforce the martial law; just as Christopher was about to reach his goal, Madame and a patrol came rushing into the shop.
Knowing he had lost his chance, Christopher rose painfully to his feet and said in a dull voice, “This man is a British spy…I recognized him. Take him away and inform the general that I will report to him later this evening.”
Nicole, her heart heavy in her breast, watched with shadowed eyes as they complied with Christopher’s orders. It was only when Christopher’s steely fingers closed around her arm and she glanced up at his face in surprise that she saw his disillusionment and anger.
With a sick feeling, she was aware of how it might look. Helplessly, she began, “But I…”
Christopher’s lips thinned and he snapped, “Keep your mouth shut! Don’t say another word until we are at home.”
There was nothing she could do; confused and resentful, she allowed Christopher to hustle her away. She tried once more to explain, but Christopher’s cold, “I said later, and I meant later!” froze the words on her lips.
By the time they reached Dauphine Street Nicole was in a temper. Christopher couldn’t believe that she had purposely met Allen at Madame’s! How vexingly stupid and ridiculous! If that was all the fai
th he had in her….
Standing in the center of her bedroom, she faced him and demanded, “What is the matter with you? Don’t you want to know what happened?”
Taking a deep draught of the brandy in his hand, Christopher replied bleakly, “No. I already know what happened and I don’t need your lies to distort the truth.”
Drawing her breath in with a sharp gasp, Nicole cried, “Then suppose you tell it to me! It is obvious there is something I don’t know about or don’t understand.”
“In that case, madame, I’ll tell you,” Christopher said in a cold voice. “This afternoon I was walking to meet my dearly beloved wife”—he grated out the words—“when it was my unpleasant chance to see her caressing a strange man on the street. If that wasn’t enough, the two of them slunk away, like two alley cats, for a little rendezvous. What’s more, the man my wife was so eager to meet was none other than an English spy. Tell me,” he asked sneeringly, “have you been supplying him with information? Is that why you have been so interested in what I have been doing? You were gathering it for your confederate?”
Nicole blanched. That he believed her capable of such perfidy left her sick and drained of every vestige of fight. Wearily she said, “If that is what you believe, I’ll not try to change your mind. Tell me, do you intend to turn me over to the authorities also? I would like to know so that I may pack a few things to take with me.”
Her calm acceptance of his accusations left Christopher staring at her in angry dismay. No, he wasn’t going to turn her over to the authorities, he almost shouted, she was his wife! But what was he going to do? Did he believe those terrible things he’d thrown at her? As some semblance of coherency trickled back into his thoughts, he realized that there were certain things about what had happened this afternoon that were decidedly odd. For instance, the lunacy of meeting at Madame’s when he was expected at any moment. The brick that had been hurled at him. There had been no warning that he was about to burst in on them, so what was she doing with it? The ugly surmise crossed his mind that Allen had been making a nuisance of himself and that Nicole had been protecting her honor. If that were so…
Lady Vixen (The Reckless Brides, Book 3) Page 28
