“Oh, I know,” the girl agreed, the corners of her mouth drooping. “But it is still what I would like above all things. They say Madame Fontaine likes things to be lively about her, which is why she brought her friends. These ladies and gentlemen dance every night. They have card parties, masquerades, musicales, and sometimes they even have amateur theatricals.”
Caroline returned to her packing. The silence of the somnolent afternoon stretched around them. Estelle stirred in her chair and sighed gustily. “Mam’zelle?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you think Madame Fontaine is the chérie-amie of Rochefort?”
“Estelle! Where did you hear such a phrase?”
“What does it matter?” the girl asked in a sulky tone. “I know what it means, and I know that a man may have a mistress. You haven’t answered my question.”
“I suppose this is also something they say?”
She nodded.
“I have no idea if she is or is not. It is not my business to know,” Caroline said primly.
“Perhaps not, but that wouldn’t keep you from guessing,” Estelle said reasonably.
“I wouldn’t be any closer to the truth,” Caroline said.
“Oh, well, I don’t suppose it matters,” Estelle shrugged.
Caroline did not answer.
Estelle’s wandering attention alighted on Caroline’s face. “You don’t appear too happy about your forthcoming visit. In fact, I don’t believe I have ever seen you so pale and, if I may say so, moody. I believe you have gotten thinner. I do hope nothing is wrong with your uncle?”
“No, nothing like that,” Caroline assured her. “I just haven’t been sleeping well lately.”
“It’s this thing with Rochefort, is it not?” the girl said with sympathy. “I know how you must feel. I don’t think I have ever been so shocked in my life, and I was never on board a ship he had captured, nor have I been kissed by him in the salon. At first I thought how exciting it must have been, but now that I consider, I don’t believe I would have liked it at all!”
Hovering between tears and laughter, Caroline opted for the latter. “I’m sure that in either case, if it had been you, he would have been made to regret his want of conduct.”
“I’m not so sure,” she said with a heretofore unwonted lack of confidence. “The other day I wouldn’t have been in your shoes for anything!”
When Estelle had gone, Caroline sat before her trunk, clutching a lawn handkerchief in her hand and staring at nothing with dry, burning eyes. The truth was, she had not minded at all being kissed. That was hardly surprising, since she had discovered that she was in love with the privateer who called himself Jean Rochefort. Recite his faults as she might, she could not alter her feelings. There was only one course left to her, and that was flight.
They were granted the opportunity late that evening to confirm the truth of at least one aspect of the rumor so rife in the countryside. Caroline and the two young ladies, with Anatole, Theo, and M’sieur Delacroix in attendance, were enjoying the cool after the setting of the sun. Suddenly a carriage came into view. It was being driven at a furious pace, and the dust fogged in long rolls that were wafted toward them on the evening breeze.
“Rochefort’s phaeton,” Theo said, but none needed his identification. That dashing vehicle could not be mistaken, nor could the man who sat holding the reins. The only thing in doubt was the name of the lady who sat up beside him.
She wore a driving costume of cerulean blue with fitted sleeves and a frogged bodice. On her head was a cavalier’s hat complete with a plume so long that it swept around the brim to wave in Rochefort’s face. The wind of their passage made the hat’s perch so precarious that the lady was forced to hold it on her head with one hand. The final touch was added as the phaeton bowled past. A small dog with a furry coat and a black face jumped upon its mistress’s lap to bark at those seated on the gallery.
Anatole exchanged a look with his father.
Estelle sat forward to exclaim, “It is she! It is Madame Fontaine!”
“Silly widgeon, to carry a dog with her in an open carriage,” was Theo’s comment. “And I’ll wager she’s abominably hot in that rig, too.”
No sooner had he spoken than there was a piercing scream from the carriage. The little dog had jumped from the high body of the phaeton onto the road. It rolled end over end, sat up, yelped once, and then set off the way the carriage had come, growling furiously.
Rochefort pulled up, not an easy task with high-spirited thoroughbreds hitched in tandem, running flat out. He could be seen trying to pass the ribbons to the actress so that he might get down to fetch her pet. Madame Fontaine spurned them and got to her feet. She teetered on the edge of the carriage, then jumped down, catching her skirts on the high wheel. For an instant her audience was afforded an excellent view of the latest fashion in Parisian clocked hose, then with one hand holding her hat, she trotted after the dog. “Fifi!” she called. “Wait for me, my little one! Oh, Fifi! Someone stop her!”
Estelle gave a gurgle of laughter. M’sieur Delacroix hid a smile. Theo, a wide grin splitting his face, started down the steps to the aid of the lady, while Anatole stepped to the railing, the better to see.
The commotion had brought Colossus and one of the maids to the door. They gave way to Madame as that lady, clad in her dressing sacque with her hair about her shoulders and her maid trailing behind, stepped outside. She took in the situation at a glance.
“Theo!” she called. “Come back at once! At once, do you hear? Estelle, Amélie, you will enter the house. Pray do not argue! I know what is best.”
Theo hesitated, his mother’s command going against the teachings of a lifetime. In that small amount of time, the little dog’s enthusiasm for the chastisement of the humans who had the bad manners to stare departed. She sat down to wait for her mistress.
Madame Fontaine scooped up her pet. Scolding in a monotone, she hurried back to the phaeton. She handed the dog up and, with the aid of Rochefort, climbed over the wheel and settled herself once more. Backs stiff, the pair of them drove off without looking back.
“Detestable creature,” Madame was heard to mutter.
M’sieur Delacroix looked around in mock surprise. “I thought it was a charming little dog.”
With a sound suspiciously like a snort, Madame turned back into the house.
A dozen emotions warred in Caroline’s breast. Among them were anger, jealousy, and pain, but prominent also were genuine amusement and a rather shocking satisfaction that Rochefort had saddled himself with a woman guaranteed to drive him distracted within a week. She told herself she might have expected him to behave in some such outrageous way. He was not the kind to go slinking off in the night. Even stripped of his pretenses, he was still a force to be reckoned with. They would be lucky indeed if installing a mistress at Felicity was the only way he found in which to flaunt his disregard of the standards of the people in the community.
It was the height of stupidity to worry over the mad starts the man might get up to, of course. She had other, more important things to occupy her mind — such as where she was going and what she was going to do when she left Beau Repos. She might return to her uncle’s home in Natchez for a few days, just long enough to take her bearings. Then, New Orleans, she supposed. Or perhaps she would go there directly. She had a little money put by, enough to keep her for several weeks, if it took that long to find a new situation.
These plans, so laboriously considered, were brought to nothing only hours after they were made. The family was at the dinner table when a clamor was heard outside the front door. Colossus left the dining salon with his unhurried tread. A few minutes later, with much distaste, he ushered in a dust-covered messenger dressed in wine-colored livery. His brown face grave with portent, the man made his apologies for disturbing them at their evening meal, then presented a sealed envelope to M’sieur Delacroix. It escaped the notice of no one that the envelope was edged in dark gray, the color of demi-mourning.
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“Colossus, see that this man has food and drink,” M’sieur Delacroix instructed. When the pair departed in the direction of the kitchen, he carefully broke the black seal of the message, drew a candelabrum nearer, and unfolded the parchment.
“Well, sir?” Madame demanded after a moment.
Her husband folded the message and dropped it on the table before he replied. “It is from your sister at Cabanocey. It seems, ma chére, that your great-aunt, Tante Titine, is gravely ill.”
“We must go at once,” Madame said, setting down her demitasse as if she intended to leave on the instant.
“But Marie, you should not think of it. Your condition—”
“My condition? If I considered that, I should never move out of my bed,” she said with some justification.
“Surely there is no need?” Her husband frowned.
“There is every need. It is a matter of family. Have I not always made certain of every observance due your relations?” Madame asked with a significant nod of her head in the direction of Tante Zizi’s bedchamber where that elderly lady was eating her solitary dinner.
“Of course, ma chére.”
“Yes, and there is something you have forgotten, I think. Tante Titine was a childless widow. When I was a girl, I was her favorite niece, and she always said to me that when she no longer had a use for it. I might have her ruby-and-diamond brooch. The piece was a marriage gift from her husband. The setting is gothic, of course, but the stones are good and will be handsome once they are reset. If I do not go, if I cannot see her before she passes on, I shall never get my hands on the piece, I know it. My sister, saying it is her due since she housed Tante Titine, will beg it for her pasty-faced daughter. And if I saw anyone else wearing my stones, it would make me ill, I know it would!”
M’sieur Delacroix knew when he was beaten. He argued no more, but agreed to accompany his wife on the day-long journey to Cabanocey. Madame arose at once, leaving her coffee to grow cold while she rang the bell for her maid and set the woman to packing.
This development prevented Caroline’s own departure, of course. She could not leave with M’sieur and Madame Delacroix away from home indefinitely.
By sunrise the next morning, all was ready. The berlin carriage stood upon the drive. Dressed from head to toe in lavender-gray, followed by her maid carrying a dozen small items necessary for the lady’s comfort, Madame emerged into the hall. She had asked Caroline to arise betimes to see them off. Now as she pulled on her gray gloves, she began to issue her last-minute instructions.
“Do not let Theo overdo, if you please. He thinks he has recovered his strength, but as his mother, I know better. Do not allow my daughters to associate in any way with that canaille who so unfortunately occupies Felicity. I will not have them contaminated. We shall be lucky if we brush through without some stigma being attached to us after M’sieur Delacroix’s lack of perspicuity in sponsoring that — that privateer.”
The last word was delivered with a vicious sneer. How nice, Caroline thought, to be able to transfer blame so easily. She was always conscious that if she had only recognized Rochefort earlier, they all might have been spared much.
Madame was also conscious of this fact. “I shall hold you responsible, personally responsible, if anything occurs in my absence to jeopardize further my daughters’ chances of marriage.”
“I understand,” Caroline replied.
“I foresee no difficulties. Should there be any, you have Anatole to depend upon, or if necessary there is M’sieur Gravier at Bonne Chance. The younger children are all healthy at the moment, Heaven be praised, but should illness befall, I am persuaded you will be able to cope as well as I. I cannot say when we will return. It may be within two or three days, it may stretch into a week or even two. It is as le bon Dieu wills.”
On that pious note, she moved off down the steps. M’sieur Delacroix first handed his wife into the carriage, and then her maid. With a genial wave, he climbed in himself. The steps were taken away, a whip cracked in the soft morning air, and they were gone.
Caroline turned back into the house. Moving along the hallway, she thought she heard a soft sound, like a woman crying. She stopped, listening. The sound came from the direction of the chamber usually occupied by M’sieur and Madame. Beyond that bedchamber was the room where Amélie slept. Called the Virgin’s Bedchamber, it was traditionally used by the eldest daughter because it had no entrance except through the master bedchamber. There could be little doubt it was Amélie she heard crying.
Caroline could not ignore the distress she heard in the girl’s voice. She knocked on the door of the outer chamber.
The crying stopped, but there was no answer. She waited a moment, then went into the first room. Crossing to the door of the second, she knocked again.
“Who is it?” Amélie called in a voice quite unlike her own.
“It’s Caroline. Is anything wrong?”
“No, I — I was talking to myself, that’s all.”
Caroline knew differently though she hesitated to force the issue. “May I come in?”
“Yes, just a moment — all right.”
Caroline heard the bed ropes creak. When she opened the door, Amélie was pushing her arms into a dressing gown, sitting on the edge of the bed. As she got up, a square of white paper, which looked as if it had been hastily pushed into the pocket, fell from the wrapper. Blushing scarlet, the girl pounced upon it, crumpling it in her hand before putting her hand into the slit pocket.
Forcing down her dismay, Caroline smiled. “I am thoroughly awake after my early rising. I thought if you were no longer sleepy we might share a cup of coffee. Colossus is up also, and I’m sure he would bring it to us if we rang.”
Amélie nodded her agreement, though there was a listlessness to the movement Caroline did not like. As the embarrassed color faded from the girl’s cheeks, it left her face abnormally pale with dark shadows beneath her eyes.
“Perhaps you would like to come to the sitting room when you are ready, then?”
That, too, was agreeable, but though she came, and though they sat for some time in desultory conversation, Amélie made no reference to what was making her miserable, nor did she mention the note she had hidden in her pocket.
Madame and M’sieur Delacroix had not been gone above a day before Anatole began to make himself at home at Felicity. Since the young man had reached the age of consent, Caroline had no authority over him, nor had she been given any instructions. She could speak to him about the matter, but she had little hope of his attending. It did seem hard that a young man who had been allowed to come and go at the plantation next door pretty much as he pleased for so long should be denied the privilege just when the goings-on guaranteed to capture his interest were beginning to take place.
His constant companion in these visits was Hippolyte Gravier. That young gentleman began to make himself comfortable in the garçonniére at Beau Repos, sending his curricle and horses to Bonne Chance so they would not eat their heads off in his host’s stable. When he was not with Anatole at Felicity, he was presenting himself on the Beau Repos gallery, where he kept Estelle entertained and the younger children in smiles with his antics. He was so often at meals that they began to send for him, like one of the family, when he did not arrive.
There was some discussion of the pair’s paying a visit to Baton Rouge. The main purpose of such a trip would be to see Mademoiselle Louise Roussel, who had returned home a few days after the outing to the haunted sandbar. This could not be admitted, of course, and some other pretext for traveling to that town had to be invented. In the meantime, Felicity had much to offer in the way of entertainment. It was judged best, finally, to wait until M’sieur Delacroix was in residence once more to relieve Anatole of the responsibility of the household. Then he could give his son the required permission to pay his suit to Mademoiselle Roussel.
It was the fifth day that the master and mistress had been from home. Dinner was over, Anatole and Hi
ppolyte had gone out immediately afterward to a fête given by Rochefort. Estelle was languishing in the salon doing mayhem on the piano-forte to a tune from The Beggar’s Opera. Caroline was trying to finish her Berlin work by the light of a guttering candle while, on the other side of it, Amélie sat patiently stitching on a hand-held firescreen.
Suddenly Estelle brought her hand crashing down on the keys. “How dull, dull, dull everything is! I shall go mad if you two sit there sewing like a pair of Penelopes a moment longer. Let us do something exciting, please, Mam’zelle Caroline?”
“What would you like to do?”
“Oh — let us disguise ourselves and slip into the ballroom at Felicity unnoticed! That would be beyond anything thrilling. Or we could have them hitch up the carriage and go for a drive, perhaps to see Béatrice and Bonita at Bonne Chance. They will be glad of company, now their cousin Louise is no longer with them.”
“They would think us mad indeed if we came visiting at this time of night,” Caroline protested. “As for the other, I think you know it is impossible.”
“I don’t see why, if no one knows we are there,” Estelle protested, a sulky look about her mouth.
“No one can guarantee we would not be recognized, and in any case, that is not the only danger in such company.”
“I think you exaggerate to frighten us, don’t you, Amélie? But never mind. We don’t have to see Madame Fontaine’s theatricals. We can plan our own. Maman has a trunk full of things that are out of fashion, and Tante Zizi is certain to have some odds and ends we can use. If we put our heads together, we can make Anatole and Hippolyte Gravier regret leaving us here alone while they go off carousing!”
It seemed harmless enough. But no sooner had Caroline agreed to the project than difficulties began to present themselves. Madame had locked the trunk containing her castoffs and had taken the key as well as the keys to her dressing table, her personal secrétaire, and her armoire. Tante Zizi had long since gone to bed and could not be aroused for such a frivolous reason. Amélie developed a headache and asked in such a piteous voice to be excused that it would have been heartless to deny her.
Sweet Piracy Page 17
