by Lara Parker
The moment he saw her he called out harshly, “Angelique!” In an instant Barnabas was at her side. “That is your name, isn’t it? Angelique.” He took her hands. “I’ve been waiting here for over an hour in hopes you would appear. I endured that interminable supper without one glimpse of you, and yet you were there all the time, somewhere in the house, were you not?”
He was trembling, and his face was drawn, as if he were in physical pain. In the lamplight his skin took on a yellow cast, and his eyes were deeply shadowed.
“I must talk to you,” he whispered. “Will you come to my room later tonight?”
“No, Monsieur. How could you ask such a thing?”
“I won’t violate you. You have my word. You can trust me as a gentleman.” She saw drops of perspiration standing on his forehead.
“Surely you know you ask the impossible. I have been flattered by your attentions, but now that you know the truth about me—”
“What do you mean?”
“That I am a lady’s maid, sir, and not gentility. I should have thought you would have noticed in the market, by my dress—”
“Your dress!” he said, laughing. “You are exquisite! You have such delicate airs! You must be a … a princess, with your gait, and your form. I thought your dress charming. Don’t Parisian elegantes dress in peasant costumes for amusement?”
“I wouldn’t know, sir,” she said, feeling her heart sink, “but now, please, excuse me. It’s time I returned to the house.”
“Angelique, please don’t go. I beg you. I have been in agony since last night, trying to think of a way to see you again. I long to know more about you. If you won’t come tonight, then tomorrow. Meet me at the tavern, or the theater, or, if you prefer, the cathedral! It doesn’t matter. Only tell me that I may see you again.”
She hesitated, and she felt him sense her resolve waver.
“Angelique. Please, say you will.”
“In the square, by the fountain,” she said. “I will be there tomorrow evening, at six o’clock.”
* * *
The following night, when she arrived, he was waiting, and she was able to observe him a moment without being seen. He had one foot casually placed on the stone riser and was looking toward the sea. He had shed his uniform jacket and wore only breeches and a loose-flowing shirt of white cotton that complemented his finely molded features and dark curls.
The sight of him moved her in a way she did not expect, and her limbs went weak. Light falling on the fountain brightened the air around him, creating an aura behind his head, as water fluting from a cup lifted in the hand of Dionysus tumbled over carved acanthus leaves.
When he saw her, he stood up eagerly, his face lit with pleasure and his eyes caressing her movements as she approached. She felt that she was floating above the ground. He stepped forward and took both her hands, and she trembled at the intensity of his gaze. People do not look at one another in that way, she thought. They live together for years and barely see one another. But this look was intimate and uncomfortable, difficult to sustain. Yet she felt if she looked away, this feeling of time standing still would be lost.
“Walk with me,” he said gently. “The night is so lovely.” He took her hand and placed it around his arm. They strolled for a quarter of an hour without speaking, down the wide tree-lined avenue, then down a side street toward the wharf. He was a large man, much taller than she, and his stride was longer than hers. Every so often she was forced to take little running steps to keep up with him.
They stopped and looked out over the sea, where the moon had risen, causing its moonstream to flow across the water. They sat on a small stone wall that circled the strand. The air was fragrant with honeysuckle and frangipani, and the little coqui chirruped in time with accordion music wafting from a gypsy band playing outside the theater. Barnabas gripped her arm, as though she could fly off into the night, and spoke to her in a voice that was deep, sonorous, with a slight rasp that gave his words the character of long-held and guarded secrets.
He told her of his life as the son of a shipbuilder in Maine, boarding school in England, and of his house in Collinsport, a town named after his family. He spoke of his years at sea, his many escapades, and he related to her a long, fascinating tale of having been captured by buccaneers. She listened with her heart brimming, but said nothing. This brush with death had changed him a great deal, he said. It had transformed him and given him whatever moral character he now possessed.
He poured out his life to her, confidences she had not expected, that he had been deeply ashamed of his family’s ownership of slaves, and of how he had always felt estranged from his father, neither ever approving of the other. He spoke of a desperate loneliness, a distance from his comrades. He told her that he had been reckless and foolhardy all his youth, not because he was prone to bravado, but in an effort to escape a furious aversion to all that was his own world.
She shared her life with him as well, at least the parts she could reveal: her childhood by the sea, the bond she felt with the ocean. She spoke of the little convent where the nuns taught her to read, her camaraderie with Josette, sharing tutors as well as the schooling of a Parisian countess. She entertained him with her knowledge of the intricate mechanics of making sugar on the du Prés plantation, somehow able to render humorous, even ridiculous, the trials of raising cane. She spoke of her love of Shakespeare and other English poets she had read, and she told him in confidence that she had always kept a journal in which she recorded all her thoughts and memories. He drank in every word, making generous comments, and encouraging her to continue. He seemed all the while to be the victim of an inner turmoil, a kind of intoxication he repressed with a tremendous effort.
They had been walking for over an hour when he stopped before an elegant town house. A little trap and groom stood there, the horse tied to a hitch. “These are my private quarters,” he said. “I have dinner waiting.” Her first thought was that he was going in and would ask the carriage to take her home.
She nodded and turned toward the buggy, but he stopped her and took her hand. “Please do me the honor of joining me,” he said, his eyes so dark and his tone so painfully anxious, she was amazed.
Candlelight beckoned from a beautifully appointed apartment hung with velvet tapestries and encircled with mahogany paneling. She could see a white cloth, the gleam of silver and translucent china. With tentative solicitousness, he led her to the table. She was keenly aware of his happiness in having her there and forgot everything in the easy embrace of refinement. It seemed that she had always known such a life could be hers. Luxuries she had only dreamed of were as natural to him as the sand to the shore, and he treated her as though she were in every way his equal.
She sensed his nervousness and was surprised when he poured her wine and clumsily tipped over her glass with the lip of the bottle. Cursing to himself, he mumbled an apology as the red bloomed on the white cloth. He covered it quickly with his own napkin, and she noticed, as she had the first time, his large hands, muscular and primitive, beneath the ruffled cuffs of his shirt. He looked at her to see whether she found him foolish. His eyes were wide apart, dark and lustrous beneath the heavy brows, fringed with lashes, and set deep in shadows. His nose was formidable, almost too large for a face that reminded her of pictures she had seen on Roman coins, endowed with character and strength, yet permeated with that human quality which suggested even leaders of great empires had ordinary cares.
After they had finished the dinner and were sipping the last of the wine, he leaned back in his chair and stared at her. The night was caressingly warm and moist, and the air between them seemed palpable and thick. Barnabas appeared calm on the surface, but Angelique was aware that there was a rushing of turbulent feelings somewhere deep within him, feelings that he held tenuously in check.
“You have told me that you will never love,” he began. “Now you must tell me why.”
She sighed. Warm with the wine, and languorous with the c
omforts of his apartment, she felt that her troubles were part of a dim past, whereas at this moment she wanted only to relish the delicious feelings that flowed through her body in waves.
“Is there someone else? Another man in your life who has claimed you? Some lover who has eclipsed all others?”
She could only shake her head. She looked at Barnabas. Somehow she had always felt she could trust him, even when she was a child and he had given her the moonstone, or when he had spoken kind words to her on the deck of the schooner. She struggled to answer him. Finally, she said, “Those I loved were taken from me. I have something in me that is dangerous, injurious, some dark power I don’t understand.…”
“What makes you say that?”
“It was told to me once … long ago … by the…”
“A fortuneteller?”
“… yes…”
He looked at her with such compassion that it seemed that all her griefs were only bitter dreams and she was waking from them.
“Oh, sweet lady…” he said.
Her eyes filled with tears and, try as she might to stop them, they flooded and fell down her cheeks. Inexplicably, when she had wanted so much to be strong, she was weeping, and he watched her until she found her voice, and said, “Why do you ask?” she said. “Why does it matter?”
“Because I have found the woman I want to love,” he said with utter guilelessness. She was not certain she had heard him correctly. “I knew the moment I set eyes on you,” he continued, “that I desired you, and since that moment I have been able to think of nothing else. I am only afraid that you will forget me after I return to America.”
“I will not forget you. How could you suggest such a thing?” Unconsciously, her hand went to the ouanga at her neck.
His words tumbled out. “I must tell you that I have very deep regard for you. You are not only beautiful, you have intelligence and strength of character. And a quality few women claim … mystery. You are like no woman I have ever known; something in you stirs me; and all I know is that I long to possess you. Nothing else matters. I don’t know how I can be more honest than to tell you my true feelings.”
“I fear, Monsieur, that you may regret your generous words at another time—” She stopped, for he had fallen to his knees at her feet and was clutching her hand. “Oh please, do not kneel—”
“What about you, Angelique?” he asked, kissing her hands. “Do you have feelings for me as well?”
Her head was swimming; she had no idea how to answer him.
“I am deeply flattered by your offer, and I want to say yes to you with all my heart, but … I am afraid … that you have been caught in a storm—a reckless infatuation, that will clear in more sober moments.”
She saw something dart in his eyes, a quick jerk as though he had heard something unexpected in her reply.
“This is…” she said softly, keenly fearful of being forward, “I am correct in assuming, am I not, that this is an offer of marriage?”
“Of course,” he answered quickly. “Yes. Of course, it is, my dear, what do you think? I long for you. Oh, God, I love you! I want to live with you, and I don’t want anyone else to have you.”
“But we are separated by society’s codes. The difference in our stations might cause you to change your mind in time—”
“Angelique, I have a fortune! Enough for both of us!” he said hurriedly, almost as though he were irritated by the need for explanation.
He stared at her a moment, then rose and went to open another bottle of wine. When he spoke again, Angelique could sense him struggling as though he were compromised by some battle raging within him. “My father’s marriage is not a happy one,” he said at last. “My mother is a fine woman, but he does not love her. I don’t think he is capable of love. And so, unfortunately, she drinks.”
“My … my father was a drunkard as well. He was depraved and unpredictable … and very cruel to me—”
“I can’t understand it! Often she is so drunk by the afternoon that she cannot come to dinner. She drinks because she is miserably lonely. And so is he! My father has amassed a fortune in shipping, but his heart is bankrupt. If human feelings were coins, he would be a pauper.”
“Will I meet him?”
“I hope you will never be forced to meet him. You wouldn’t like him.”
He sat down again and took her hands; he appeared more at ease with his feelings. “I have come to value more subtle things,” he continued now with great urgency. “I have sworn to have love in my life. I want a woman who is my soul’s companion, and I believe that woman to be you. If you will have me, Angelique, I will return within a year’s time, when I am due to come into my fortune. I will take you back to America with me.”
“America! So far away … and, safe, perhaps.… I don’t know what to say—”
“Then say yes.”
For a moment she was transfixed, her head reeling with the conflicting emotions she was feeling. He had said he loved her, this man she had worshiped for so long. He had asked her to marry him. He was rash and wild, and perhaps did not know his own mind. The candlelight molded the planes and shadows of his cheek and brow, and his deep eyes searched hers for an answer. What could she do? Was it possible for her to escape the cruel forces that controlled her life? Where was the evil spirit who owned her soul? Had he abandoned her forever? It had been so many years. Was it possible that she was free?
She remembered the dawn over the ocean, when the morning mist obscures the horizon and the great deep is encircled by the haze. How sheltered and close the sea appears in the silver light. Once she had been caught beneath a huge school of moon jellyfish, their transparent bodies rising above her head, a thousand clear blue saucers floating pearly and translucent, their long tentacles swaying. She had been terrified by their beauty, but though she could hold her breath no longer, she could not bring herself to swim into them for fear of being stung. What had she done that day? Had she slipped through unharmed, or had the tide blown them all away?
“Say yes…” He bent and kissed her hands, and it was as if the gloom parted, and the sky gleamed with light. She was more frightened than she had ever been, but, unable to help herself, she uttered words she never dreamed she would hear herself speak. “Yes, I will go with you, Barnabas—”
“And do you love me? Let me hear you say it!”
“Yes, yes, I do love you with all my being. I have always loved you, and I will love—”
He swept her into his arms, and his kiss took her breath away. His lips tasted hers as though she were all sweetness, and he sucked at them and traced them with his tongue until her mouth melted into his.
“I want you,” he whispered, his voice ragged with excitement, and she realized he was shaking, as he pressed her to him and kissed her over and over.
His mouth moved down her neck and into the hollow of her throat, where she could feel her own pulse quivering. Then he fell awkwardly to his knees and, placing his hands around her, buried his face in the folds of her skirt. She could feel the heat of his breath through the fabric and sensed again his impetuous youth, and the violence of his passion.
He rose to his feet. Trembling, as though he would shatter with the fierceness of his desire, he said to her in a hoarse voice, “I will take you back now. I promised that I would not violate you, and I am a man of my word.”
He crossed to the door, turned, and reached for her hand. But she stood as though in a trance, and after a moment he returned to her. His eyes were luminous and she thought he was as beautiful as a god when he sighed and touched the side of her cheek. “Come,” he said, “before it is too late.”
They had walked only a few blocks when it began to rain, and the underground streams of Saint-Pierre, which were its music and its secret life, sprang from every hollow and hillock and trickled into the gutters that ran along the street. “We should turn back,” he said, but then, looking down at her, he shook his head and smiled. “I don’t trust myself alone in that r
oom with you again.” With that he wrapped his arm about her so that she would not fall, and led her along.
It was a hard rain, warm and caressing, and they walked until they no longer cared how wet they became. Their hair and clothes were dripping. A thought hummed in her head like the drone of a waterspout, and she realized she was holding her breath, deadly certain of what she knew was coming. Some diabolical catastrophe awaited her. She would slip on the wet pavement and fall to her death, or the sky would darken, and a bolt of lightning would sear her flesh. But there was no sound other than the pounding rain, and the path a little way in front of them was all they could see.
She began to feel as though she were caught in an underwater current, flowing down from the mountains in an inexorable journey to the sea. If she were going to be stopped, she wanted it to be now, before her heart was completely lost. Where was he, the Dark Spirit who had forbidden her to love? Why was there no sign? Suddenly, a reckless defiance gripped her. She would challenge him, taunt him into coming. And if he did, whom would he destroy? Barnabas was too strong, too merry. She looked up at him, and he smiled, his eyes glowing with fierce vitality.
Tempted by her look, Barnabas stopped her by the high wall of a garden in a deserted street. His hand reached around her waist and he pulled her to him. “Just one kiss…” he said softly.
Heedlessly, she fell against him with abandon, fear dissolving into itself. He pressed her against the stones, and, emboldened, she responded eagerly. He kissed her liquid mouth, drinking the rain as it flowed from her lips. Rhythmically, he kissed her, pushing against her, feeling her body beneath her saturated skirt. She felt her heart pitch against her chest, as deliberately she flung caution aside and dared the Devil to come.
Barnabas lifted her up in his arms and carried her a little way to where the wall rose up between the garden and the street. The water dripped from his face as he crushed her against his chest, and she could hear his heart thundering—not the deep bass, but a furious drumming, bright and hard as the rain. The sound frightened her, and she remembered when the surge swept her against the reef and she knew the coral would tear her skin.
