Gallant Match

by Jennifer Blake

  Behind them lay the town in its orderly arrangement of streets marked by lamps at the corners, where cats and dogs slinked, pigs snuffled along and men walked with every sense alert for those who preyed on the unwary. From that direction, faint on the dawn wind, came the tinny and melancholy sound of a barrel organ.

  They were so alone there in the dimness, she and the Kentuckian. The knowledge brought an odd flutter in the pit of her stomach. His hold on her was not hurtful, but its firm pressure suggested that it could become so at the least sign of resistance. The power of it affected her like a drug, so she swayed a little where she stood.

  It was maddening, that febrile awareness, when she wanted nothing more than to get away from him. Far, far away.

  “We’re going aboard the steamer, you and I,” he said in tones like a sledge being dragged over gravel. “We can do it nice and easy or we can do it hard—you can walk up the gangway on your own two feet or I can carry you. Your choice, Mademoiselle Bonneval.”

  Refusal hovered on her lips. She longed to fling it in his face then jerk from his grasp and run like the wind.

  The trouble was that she suspected he would catch her all too soon. Afterward he’d do precisely as he threatened. To be carried on board like a sack of flour, with her derrière turned up for all to see, was more than she could bear.

  Pride demanded compromise, no matter how much it pained her. Besides, he could not stay with her every moment until the ship sailed, could he? She had a few hours yet before she need succumb to despair.

  “The captain may not let us board,” she said, the words stiff and graceless in her capitulation.

  “I’ve only to show him the letter of intent written by your father that appoints me your escort for the voyage. If there’s a problem, he can apply to him.”

  “But I’m dressed in male clothing. It will appear odd.”

  “You should have thought of that before you left off your petticoats.”

  She looked away. “Better to be mistaken for a boy than taken for a…a light skirt.”

  “I’d agree with you there,” he said with a grim nod.

  “Not that I care for myself, but your good name may suffer if I appear in pantaloons.”

  Reaching out, he picked up a strand of her hair that had tumbled down to lie across her shoulder, rubbing it between his fingers. “No one could take you for a boy while this flows around you. My reputation can only be bettered when you appear in full female regalia.”

  It was a compliment of sorts, if she cared to see it in that light. She did not. Snatching the strand of her hair from his hand, she flung it behind her back. “That will be difficult when I have no baggage.”

  “You’re going to tell me you don’t have your chère tante Lily all primed to come running with your traps whenever you send word? Don’t be daft. I’ll see to it she knows your change of direction.”

  “You are all accommodation.” Her voice was tight in her throat, compressed by the tears she refused to shed.

  “It’s what I’m being paid for.”

  The words were abrupt and double-layered. He meant her father had commissioned him to see that she sailed on the Lime Rock, also that she remained safe, reasonably comfortable and, as with any live cargo, arrived in the same condition in which she embarked. Kerr Wallace would perform his duty. She could expect no more from him, and certainly no less.

  He released his grip on one arm but retained her elbow as if he thought she might yet take off if he let her go entirely. It was possible he was right, Sonia thought; she could not be certain what she might do in her present mood. The resentment inside her was so powerful that she longed for a weapon, something, anything to use to annihilate him.

  Turning with her, Kerr Wallace strode toward where the Lime Rock lay. She had to lengthen her stride to keep up with him. She tripped after a few yards, exclaiming as she nearly fell on her face. The Kentuckian brought her upright again, then slowed his pace. Even so, she had trouble with the boots she had found in the garçonnière wing, left in the bottom of an armoire after a visit by one of her cousins. They were too big for her, as was the frock coat from the same source, though the pantaloons she’d borrowed from the cook’s son were a size too small. She looked a fright, in fact. That she could care, after all, was almost as annoying as the rest.

  At the ship’s mooring, Kerr Wallace hailed the watch and requested permission to come aboard. An interminable wait ensued before the captain appeared and gave the order to allow it. The rope railing of the gangway was unhooked and they climbed the slippery planks with their nailed crosspieces. Sonia, leading the way, was horribly conscious of the unprotected view of her lower limbs. It was a great relief when they reached the deck and a ship’s mate was detailed to show them below.

  They stopped at the cabin presumably reserved for the use of her aunt and herself. The mate who had directed them nodded and went away. As Sonia put her hand on the door latch and pushed it open, Kerr moved to block her way.

  She gave him a look of fulminating interrogation, but he only ducked his head and entered the small cubicle. Stopping in the center with his hands on his hips, he surveyed the dim corners, the Persian carpet that was its one spot of color, the bunks stacked one above the other with their tightly tucked sheets and blankets, the small commode table inset with a basin and pitcher and with doors underneath to conceal a chamber pot. It was not a difficult inspection since he could have touched the walls with his outstretched fingertips.

  His gaze alighted on a small trunk sitting at the foot of the bunks. Without ceremony, he caught one handle and slung it out into the corridor. That done, he gestured for her to join him.

  “What was that?” she asked in disdain as she crossed the threshold. “Someone else in occupation?”

  “A mistake,” he answered, his hands resting on his hip bones. “I’ll attend to it.”

  No doubt he would, one way or another. “One you anticipated?”

  “On some vessels it’s first come, first served. I doubt you’d find the owner of the trunk an agreeable bunkmate.”

  She barely repressed a shudder. “No.”

  “Figured. In spite of the face paint the other night.”

  She had no one to blame for that remark except herself, as much as she despised acknowledging it. Turning from him, she held the door, standing stiffly beside it. “I hope you have no expectation of taking the trunk owner’s place?”

  “Never crossed my mind.”

  “You have seen me settled. I require nothing else except for you to leave me.”

  He pursed his lips but didn’t argue. Nor did he try to hide the gleam of sardonic amusement in his eyes. Moving to the doorway, he ducked through it, inclined his head in a bow and took the heavy hatchway from her, pulling it shut behind him.

  She let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, permitting it to sigh between her lips like a child’s deflating pig bladder. She had almost feared…

  What precisely had she been afraid of? That Kerr Wallace intended to stay with her as a guard? That he would make himself at home in one of the two bunks? That he would take liberties because of the peculiar situation in which she had landed herself?

  He need not, of course, have made it so clear that he was disinclined. No, even if nothing he had done suggested his thoughts might take that direction.

  Mon Dieu, but she could not remember when she had been so aware of a man’s virile strength, his superior height and reach. If he had decided to stay, how could she have stopped him?

  He had not, nor was he likely to in the future. To him, she was nothing more than a responsibility. It was only that he’d laid hands on her, carried her as if she weighed no more than a peck of dried beans, clamped her to him so her knit britches rasped against the stubble of his jaw. She had felt the muscle in his cheek move as he clamped his jaws together from some reason she could only guess. She was not used to such treatment. Never in her life had she been in such an embarrassing position
.

  It wasn’t that she had no knowledge of the rough-and-tumble ways of boys. She’d run wild for some years before putting up her hair and resigning herself to her lot as a female. Many were the mornings she’d sneaked out of the house with her cousins, the children of her father’s younger brother. They had played marbles in the dirt, walked the tops of brick courtyard walls, jumped the ditches that ran muddy with sewage and slops after a rain and fought barefooted and bare-fisted with the gangs of rowdies from beyond the Vieux Carré. She’d learned to swim by paddling like a wild thing after being thrown into the river, but learn she had, that and much more.

  Of course, her every antic had been watched over by old Fonz, her father’s majordomo Alphonse, until he’d died three winters ago of the ague. She’d thought he was perhaps eighty years of age, but couldn’t say for sure. He’d been sold into slavery as a boy by an uncle who had killed his father and older brother in order to assume the position of chief in their African village. He’d not repined, or so he said. Being a slave was no easy life but better than being dead, and it had brought her to him in his old age, his chick, his kitten, his girl-child in pigtails who had idolized him because he adored her in his grandfatherly way.

  Alphonse would not have approved of this alliance with Jean Pierre. He would have stopped it, if only by shaming her father into abandoning the idea. White-haired, bent Fonz had been a quiet power in the house, creating a ring of protection around Sonia. Her childhood would have been much harsher without him.

  Such thoughts took no more than a second to slip through her mind. They were banished by a quiet grating of metal on metal, followed by a distinct click.

  Sonia whirled, her eyes wide as she stared at the door. She reached it in a single stride, caught the handle and tried to turn it. She jerked once, twice.

  Nothing, no movement whatever. It was locked.

  She slammed the door panel with the flat of her hand, hitting it so hard it burned all the way to her shoulder, then spun and put her back to it.

  For an instant, tears burned the back of her nose. She would not cry, she told herself with fierce resolve. No, she would not. Her impulse instead was to pound on the door at her back, to scream and shout curses after the Kaintuck.

  That would be a waste of time as well as exhausting her strength and her passions to no purpose. She would need both if she was to find a way out of this dilemma. And if there was nothing to be done, then she would use them to make Kerr Wallace wish he had never been born.

  Six

  It was perhaps two hours later, when the morning light through the small porthole illuminated the dreary confines of Sonia’s prison and danced in watery reflections on the ceiling, that reprieve arrived. It came in the clear tones of her aunt as she scolded someone for the handling of her trunk. Moments later, the sharp clicking of heels marked her progress down the passageway outside. The lock in the door turned and it swung open. Tante Lily swept inside in a froth of petticoats and lace and the wafting of fresh air.

  “Ma petite, what is this? I cannot believe you are here. Are you all right? Please tell me everything is as it should be with you!”

  Sonia scrambled from the bunk where she had been sitting and stepped into her aunt’s rose-scented embrace. “Yes, yes, of course I’m all right, just so very glad to see you.”

  “Likewise, chère, believe me.” Her aunt patted her shoulder, sniffing a little. “You cannot conceive of the uproar this morning when it was discovered you were gone. Your papa was about to send for the gendarmes when Monsieur Wallace arrived with news of your whereabouts. I’ve been throwing things into boxes and trunks like a madwoman ever since, for he insisted I must come with him at once.”

  “How very thoughtful,” she said with irony as the huge Kaintuck, carrying a small trunk on his shoulder in a manner too reminiscent of her own transport a short time ago, loomed behind her aunt. His smile was brief, a mere movement of the lips, as he stopped in the doorway, fingering the key to it in his free hand.

  “Well, I consider it so myself, for he need not have troubled. I mean, a message would have sufficed for most. Such courage he displayed, to come at the earliest moment to admit what he had done. I quite expected to see him clapped up in the calabozo. But, no, indeed. Your papa commended him instead, said he had done just as he should to prevent you running away. Naturally, I was sent with all speed to lend respectability to the escapade.”

  Tante Lily’s spate of words was as much for Kerr Wallace’s benefit as to let her know what had transpired, Sonia realized. Her aunt could not be aware of how much he had guessed of their plans. The dry appreciation that lurked in the gray shadows of the Kentuckian’s eyes indicated he understood the act as well.

  It was maddening, that perceptiveness, since it raised doubts of her ability to deceive him. Beneath the anger, however, ran a current of distress. Her father had shown not an iota of concern for her welfare, or Tante Lily would surely have related it for the rarity, if nothing else. No presumption that she might have had reason for her actions had apparently crossed his mind, no doubt of the sword master’s word about the events that led to her incarceration, no inquiry after her safety and well-being. There was nothing from him, apparently, except condemnation and concern for propriety. She had expected little more, yet somehow his unfeeling attitude still took her by surprise.

  She recovered in an instant, tilting up her chin as she drew a deep breath. Her eyes were half-blind with unshed tears as she held the level gray gaze of Kerr Wallace. If he felt any triumph, he hid it well. The look on his face turned somber, the set of his mouth grim.

  Her aunt released her, fumbling for a handkerchief, which she pressed to her eyes. “But there, you will think nothing of your papa’s temper. You know how he is, and I’m sure he will come and see you off. In the meantime, we must, we really must, do something about your toilette, ma chère. How could you go out in the public in such an ensemble as you have on? It’s all very well in a child of twelve, though I never liked it. But you are two-and-twenty, practically an old maid. I’d thought you beyond such indiscretion long since.”

  Sonia knew her aunt as well as her father, knew the scolding was mere nervous chatter to cover her upset and concern. “Yes, certainly,” she said without inflection. “That is, if Monsieur Wallace will allow us the privacy.”

  Her aunt whirled to stare at the sword master. “Are you still here? Mon Dieu, monsieur, can you not see you are no longer required? This is the cabin of a lady. You may not enter without her permission. Sonia’s papa may overlook the familiarity you dared assume, but I do not. Put down that trunk and take yourself off. Away with you!”

  The mountain of a man colored to his eyebrows, a phenomenon fascinating to watch. The cause might have been anger at being rebuked, but had every appearance of embarrassment. With a curt nod, he set the trunk in a corner and backed from the room.

  “Wait!” Tante Lily moved after him in a flutter of skirts, putting out her hand with the palm up. “The key, if you please!”

  It was handed over without a word. Sonia watched her aunt take it then close the door in Kerr Wallace’s face. It was a pleasure to see him routed, but not quite as satisfying, somehow, as she might have expected.

  “There now, tell me everything,” her aunt said, attaching the key to the chatelaine at her waist as she turned back and took Sonia’s hands in both of hers. Seating herself on the bottom bunk as the only resting place, she pulled her down beside her. “Did your Kaintuck behave like a complete brute? Did he hurt you at all? What conduct! I was never so shocked in my life as when I heard. Carrying you about, indeed. Quite abominable.”

  Sonia cleared her throat, looked down at their clasped hands. “No, he was…simply unstoppable.”

  “There I was, thinking you safe on the Mobile steamer and making ready to join you—in a quiet way, of course, so as not to alert the servants. When I learned what had happened, I nearly went into spasms. Are you sure he did not harm you, Monsieur Wallace? He
didn’t offer you insult of…of a personal nature?”

  If she claimed such a thing, would her father remove him? Sonia wondered. It was a great temptation to put it to the test.

  She couldn’t do it. Kerr Wallace didn’t deserve such an underhand trick. More than that, he would hardly keep silent if accused, and her father might well believe his version of events over anything she could fabricate.

  “No, no, nothing like that.”

  Tante Lily closed her eyes an instant. “Bien. I am relieved beyond words to hear it. Something about his manner made me think…” She sighed, patted Sonia’s hand. “But that’s neither here nor there. He is not, perhaps, quite the barbarian that one might have expected.”

  As much as it pained Sonia, it had to be admitted. She shook her head.

  “And now it seems you go to Vera Cruz, in spite of everything. Truly, ma petite, there are worse things for a woman than having a husband chosen for one. I shudder to think what might have happened if you had been caught on the street by some drunken lout. Yes, or if Monsieur Wallace had been any other kind of man. He might have taken the most dastardly advantage.”

  She knew very well what her aunt meant, could recall with biting clarity the moment when, lying pinioned by Kerr Wallace’s weight without knowing his identity, she had feared it was to happen. To speak of that would only alarm her aunt again, however, without being useful in the least. “But he was not,” she said, her voice not quite even.

  “What a blessing your papa hired someone so trustworthy, so conscientious. Nonetheless, he may not always be so if you try him too far. Come, say you will be sensible.”