Iron Lace

by Lorena Dureau

  Monique drew her dressing gown closer about her and her shoulders sagged as she turned back toward the door.

  “I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” she said coolly, trying to keep her voice steady and unemotional. She wondered how she could ever be nonchalant around him again when the memory of his caresses were so much a part of her now.

  He hesitantly took a step toward her. Suddenly he took her by those drooping shoulders and turned her around to face him. The flame of the candle in the dimly lit room awakened gold flecks in the gray of her eyes, and he remembered how she had looked in that flash of lightning when her face had been aglow with ecstasy.

  Gently he brushed a lock of her pale gold hair back from where it had fallen over her forehead, his finger trembling as he touched it.

  “Monica—my sweet impatient little child with a woman’s passions… a woman’s body!” he murmured. “Please believe me, I want you so much! It’s only because I really love you—te quiero tanto—that I don’t want to hurt you, not now or ever. Everything must be right between us. Can you understand that?”

  She lowered her lids to avoid the intensity of his gaze, despite the fact that he continued to hold her by the shoulders and look down into her face. “I… I think I do,” she replied, but there was hesitancy in her voice.

  “I want you to be sure… as sure as I am,” he continued softly. “Then I promise I’ll make love to you with all the passion of last night and then some. What happened between us has only convinced me more than ever that you’re the woman I want. But I want you for a lifetime, so it’s important that you feel the same way about me, too. Can you be patient just a little longer, my adorable chiquilla? I’d like to see how you feel in a few months from now… let’s say in January when you turn eighteen. Who knows, you might feel quite differently toward me by then.” He smiled sadly. “The fact is you may not even feel the same for me by tomorrow,” he observed rather bitterly as he recalled how she had always been so hostile toward him until that fateful moment in the hallway when the storm had literally thrown them into each other’s arms. “If in the three and a half months lacking from now to your birthday you can show me that the fact that I’m Spanish and not French doesn’t really matter to you… that you’re no longer a petulant, impulsive child but a warm, loving woman who knows her own mind and can be steadfast in her emotions—then you’ll make me the happiest man in all the Louisiana colony. Will you do that, my dear?”

  It was she now who looked at him with open scrutiny. “Perhaps… but three and a half months seems like such a long time.”

  He smiled. “You have no idea how long it will be for me,” he assured her. “So it’s a pact, then? Our little secret, if you wish, so you’ll feel no pressure from your family or anyone to do anything against your will?”

  Her eyes were shining now. “Oh, yes, Miguel. You’ll see how grown up I can be. I really don’t hate you, you know. You’ll never need Azema or any other woman but me!”

  A twinkle glinted in his eye. “I’m sure I’ll have my hands full with just you when the time comes,” he conceded solemnly. “Meanwhile I suggest that we both try to remember I’m still your guardian and act accordingly.”

  He gave her as fatherly a kiss on the forehead as he could manage at that moment and hurried her out of his room before he wouldn’t be able to follow his own advice.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  During the weeks that followed, the change in Monique never ceased to amaze those around her. Grandmother Chausson reached the conclusion that it had been well worth the fright the girl’s escapade had given them if the change in her had come about as the result of it.

  Gone was the petulance and hostility of yore. Monique went about now with her luminous gray eyes reflecting an inner joy that seemed to bathe the world around her in a completely different light. Whenever her guardian spoke to her, she would lower her eyes and blush with proper maidenly modesty and submit to whatever he said without any further argument.

  Even Mlle. Baudier was flabbergasted by the zest with which her charge suddenly attacked her studies, the most noteworthy of all being her progress in Spanish, which, until then, had been the girl’s worst subject.

  Celeste had expected her sister to tear into her for having violated their sacred oath, but instead Monique had been surprisingly forgiving about it all.

  “It’s just as well that Miguel found us,” she had replied with an indifferent toss of her curls as Celeste had meekly tried to broach the subject the first time they had been alone again. “I realize now it would have been a mistake. Maurice is still so infantile.”

  Although her guardian had resumed his more formal attitude toward her, Monique saw a new tenderness in his eyes or a slight tremor in his touch that sent a delicious shiver down her spine and left her tingling with memories of past caresses and anticipation of those yet to come.

  Just the sight of him was enough now to set her insides trembling. They had been in the darkness that night when he had made love to her in the hallway, but she had felt the long lean length of his body as he had molded it hungrily against hers. Now she looked at him in a new way. Even as she admired how handsome he looked in his elegant frock coat and breeches, she found herself recalling the hard firmness of the body she knew lay beneath them. Then the memory of that night would come flooding back, overwhelming her, and she could feel her breasts swelling again, their nipples hard and pulsating against her bodice.

  It pleased her to fondle again and again in her mind that sweet secret they shared. She dreamed of the day when they would stand before Mémère and confess their love for each other and speak of plans for their marriage. Her newfound love so filled her heart now that there was no longer room in it for hatred or politics or old resentments.

  Vidal, however, found the waiting almost more than he could bear. He cursed his lack of control that had prompted him to unleash the more passionate facets of his love for his young cousin that night of the hurricane, for those moments of intimacy with her had only fanned his desire to even greater heights. Yet he didn’t completely regret what had happened. A powerful charge surged through his veins every time he remembered how she had responded to his caresses. All the ruffles and fichus in the world couldn’t erase the impression of those full young breasts now from his mind… how they had felt cupped in his hand, palpitating to his caresses, swelling between his lips. Sometimes just the sight of them so perfectly molded by the tightness of her bodice was enough to set the knot in his loins pulsating again.

  He knew that she remembered, too, just by the way she’d suddenly flush and steal a discreet glance in his direction whenever he was in the room and she thought no one was looking. He wondered whether she might also be lying awake at night, even as he was, wishing they could be together at that very moment. That bewitching little doll was every bit as passionate as Azema, but there was no calculation behind it. His little Monique was pure passion— ready to surrender completely with that innocent abandon of hers, so characteristic of everything she did.

  Since their return to New Orleans, he had deliberately avoided being alone with that delectable little ward of his, for he felt he could no longer trust himself with her anymore. When he was near her, he couldn’t be rational, and he didn’t want a repetition of that episode in the hall. Delightful as it had been, that should not be the order of things where Monica was concerned. It would never do to seduce his ward and then ask for her hand in marriage. Grandmother Chausson had entrusted her to him, and it would be like betraying that trust if he protected Monique from everyone in the colony except himself!

  Even little Celeste had been casting her lovely fawnlike eyes in his direction lately. The dear child was obviously having her first romantic fantasies, with him as her phantom hero. That role didn’t especially disturb him, however, for it was one he knew he could handle with no harm done to anyone. After all, he was certain he would dissolve from those childish dreams the moment a flesh-and-blood beau entered the young
girl’s life, as was bound to happen before too long. But meanwhile, it was one more reason for him to be on tenterhooks and keep a short rein on that easily roused nature of his.

  Unfortunately, he had never been in such a situation before. In that carefree existence as a bachelor that he had led until now, there had never been any need for him to hold his emotions in check. If he wanted a woman and she was willing, he took her. This holding back was a new and frustrating experience for him, especially since he had never desired any woman the way he desired Monique. Perhaps it was because he wanted so much more from her than just that voluptuous little body of hers.

  On several occasions he’d been tempted not to wait a day longer and simply go to Grandmother Chausson, ask for the girl’s hand in marriage, and be done with it. But in his heart he knew that the brief waiting period he had imposed upon himself and Monique was for the best. Marriage was for life, and he had to be sure that her feelings for him went beyond those of just a young girl’s response to her first brush with the more pleasant sensations involved in making love.

  Even if he spoke to Aimee Chausson about his tendre for his ward, Miguel was almost certain the latter would also insist that they wait a few months in order to give the girl time to be sure of her emotions. If he had been from any other country except Spain, perhaps it wouldn’t be so necessary, but Monique’s hostility toward anything and anybody Spanish seemed so ingrained in her that it would probably be better to proceed cautiously and not risk repenting a hasty marriage later. At Monique’s age, a few months could make a great deal of difference…

  Of course, Grandmother Chausson would probably approve of the match, but Miguel preferred not to say anything to her about such a possibility yet, since he didn’t want her or anyone else pressuring the girl and influencing her decision. He wanted Monique, but not in a marriage of convenience. A pox on those “arrangements”! He knew such matrimonies abounded, but he hadn’t waited until he’d reached his twenty-seventh year to marry simply to enter that purgatory in which he had seen so many of his friends writhing. After all, he knew something better was possible between a man and a woman. Hadn’t his father found it with his stepmother?

  Now, after tonight, he knew no woman could ever satisfy him except his sweet, passionate little ward. With a woman like Azema—and he had known so many like her over the years!—it was always so superficial—pleasant enough at times, yet devoid of any real sentiment for either of them. He knew that with Monique, however, it would be an entrega total—a complete giving of one to the other—a perfect fusion of two beings. She was worth waiting for. With Monique he was learning the sweet torment of loving someone above all others… even himself.

  Chapter Thirty

  After the intense heat of the summer months, Miguel was surprised at how cold it was this first day of November—All Saints’ Day. In keeping with the French custom of “Toussaint”, or the Spanish one of “Day of the Dead”, Monique and Celeste insisted that they attend the traditional picnic in the cemetery.

  For in New Orleans, All Saints’ Day was a social occasion—the fall counterpart of spring’s Easter Sunday, when each one put on his or her new winter outfit and sallied forth to mass to pray for the souls of their dead and then went to the cemetery to visit or perhaps even spend the day with them.

  Although their grandmother was satisfied with just getting out her best gray silk dress and matching woolen cape, Monique and her sister each had her “robe de la Toussaint” for the occasion, and even their lovely beaver-trimmed capes of royal-blue velvet with large matching fur muffs were new.

  In the spirit of the occasion, Miguel also treated himself to a new black double-tiered cape, which Monique noted proudly only a man with a superb figure like her guardian could show off to advantage.

  Since the five-year-old cemetery was on the fringes of the city, they had taken the family coach there, with Miguel riding up top beside the coachman and the women inside with the picnic baskets and the enormous bouquets of flowers that the girls had been growing all summer “for Mama, Papa, and our little brother”.

  Once at their destination, however, they left their coach at the gates and joined the continuous flow of townsfolk ambling about the cemetery. A holiday mood pervaded the atmosphere. Vendors were everywhere, offering refreshments and a wide assortment of real and artificial floral pieces.

  Although there were some graves in the new St. Louis Cemetery, the majority of the resting places were above ground, a lesson learned after the many disagreeable experiences the city had had with the old St. Peter burial grounds where corpses often used to come bobbing up to the surface after floods or excessive rains!

  At that moment that strange City of the Dead, with its rows of little windowless “houses” of whitewashed brick and plaster, adorned with wrought-iron fences so similar to those of the city just outside its walls, looked like a veritable garden in bloom, belying the dreary wintry day.

  There was a wrought-iron bench in front of the Chausson tomb, so Grandmother Chausson sat down with Mlle. Baudier to keep her company and, setting the picnic baskets beside her, began to hold court as many among that constant stream of people passing by stopped to pay their respects as they made their way up and down the lanes of whitewashed tombs.

  A tall cross draped in black in the center of the grounds bore mute testimony to the ancient rites that had been held there the night before, when the priests had performed their imposing midnight chants for the response of the departed souls interred there. Some of the parishioners had kept votive candles burning on the resting places of their loved ones throughout the night, but many, including Grandmother Chausson, who hadn’t been able to attend the ceremonies of the night before were simply asking one of the numerous monks strolling around the grounds to pause and give a special blessing.

  After about an hour or so spent in receiving visitors at their family tomb, Monique and Celeste became restless and asked permission to go call on some of their friends in other parts of the cemetery; and since the place was thronging with so many friends and clergy, Grandmother Chausson saw no harm in letting them go off for a little while, as long as they didn’t leave the grounds. Miguel had momentarily gone to do some visiting on his own with the governor and the Ducoles, and had promised to bring back some pineapple beer on his return.

  Like children just out of school, the two girls left their grandmother with Mlle. Baudier and ran off down the rows of tall whitewashed tombs to see who else was there they knew. After pausing to greet a few of the families they had known since childhood, they suddenly heard a familiar voice greeting them from behind.

  “Heavens! It’s Maurice!” murmured Monique uneasily. Her first instinct was to try to avoid him, but Celeste, assuming that, as always, her sister would want to have a few words alone with her beau, immediately left them and took up vigil in front of the row of tombs behind which Maurice had led Monique so he could talk to her more privately.

  Clad in his high-crowned hat with a dark gray cape that Monique couldn’t help thinking rather overwhelmed him, her friend looked appropriately fashionable for the occasion. His blue eyes had brightened at the sight of her, and he pulled her even farther behind the tall two-story tombs at the end of the lane near a wall of crypts.

  “I’m so happy to see you!” he exclaimed with delight. “It’s been over a month! I’ve waited for you by the carriage entrance several times, hoping you’d find a way to steal out as you used to, but I was beginning to fear your guardian had made good his threat and sent you to a convent.”

  Monique smiled and shook her hooded head. “Of course not!” she replied. “I just haven’t felt very much like going out by myself anymore. Sneaking out like that is for children. A lady doesn’t go stealing out of stable entrances.”

  Maurice looked at her curiously, as though he could indeed see there was something different about her.

  “Yes, Monique, you really are a woman now,” he agreed, his eyes sweeping admiringly over her. “I�
�ve never seen you look lovelier. I still get angry every time I think of how your guardian thwarted our elopement, but don’t fret, my dear. I haven’t given up hope that the day will come when we can marry right here in New Orleans with both our families’ consent. Your guardian can’t stand in our way forever.”

  “It was probably for the best that he stopped us,” she told him. “It wasn’t right to run away like that. I realize that now.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” admitted Foucher reluctantly. “It would be better, as you say, to do things right with everyone in accord. Perhaps after your cousin himself marries, he’ll be in a more amiable mood toward the idea of matrimony in general. Has he set a date yet?”

  Monique lifted her brows in surprise. “A date?” she repeated in confusion. Maurice couldn’t possibly know yet about her and Miguel. “Yes, Azema Ducole must be pressuring him to make an honest woman of her by now. She seems like the type of woman who gets what she wants.”

  “Azema? Oh, no, Maurice, you’re mistaken. My guardian doesn’t love that horrid woman anymore.”

  It was Maurice’s turn now to be surprised. “Well, you could have fooled me,” he replied. “I saw him with her just last week. It was Monday afternoon, I think… yes, that was it… last Monday. My father’s business partner has his offices in the same block, so I go by there often.”

  Anger and disbelief welled up in her. “I… I’m sure you’re mistaken,” she reiterated, lashing out at him for having even suggested such a thing.

  “I tell you it was him. I saw them with my own eyes. I was riding down Chartres and there he was standing in the carriage entrance of the Ducole town house, holding his horse by the reins and taking his leave of her. He was kissing her hand, and suddenly she bent forward and kissed him on the lips. I remember thinking that they were acting like an engaged couple.”