by Danice Allen
Tonight was proof of that. Someone had infiltrated the tight ranks of his operation. Lucien knew his time as Renard must come to a natural end, but he’d no intention of obliging his enemies by celebrating that end dangling from a noose. But fate might see his abolitionist career conclude in a different manner than he envisioned…
In the interim Anne would be in danger, too. The best plan all around would be to discourage her from caring about him, to keep her at a safe distance. But could he? He had gone to her house, kissed and caressed her in her own bedchamber, but there had always been the safeguard of her abigail sleeping in the next room. Completely alone with her now, he wanted nothing more than to hold her in his arms and make love to her all night long.
When she woke up, he’d guard his identity … and his heart. He would show her that he was angered by her risky behavior and discourage her from falling in love with an outlaw. It would be hard, but he was doing it for both their sakes. He ruefully remembered Micaela’s comment about him being an honorable man. Could he be honorable tonight, or would he give in to his deepest yearnings?
Lucien heard his horse whinny, a reminder that the animal needed water and his bridle removed. Close by was another smaller shack that he used as a makeshift stable, complete with hay and oats. He would put Tempest in there for what was left of the night, safe from alligators that sniffed out a sweating horse from yards away and stalked it like any other warm-blooded prey. Even now there could be unwanted visitors outside the door—the long-toothed, beady-eyed, low-bellied kind.
With one last look at Anne, who slept peacefully, Lucien stood up, opened the door, and went outside. There was a rustle in the grass that grew tall along the water’s edge and a ripple in the water itself. By the flash of terror in Tempest’s eyes and the way his nostrils flared, Lucien realized he’d come outside just in time, just when an alligator was about to pay a predatory call. Lucien hurriedly led the horse to the shack several yards upshore, rubbing Tempest’s long nose and crooning soothing words. He tended to the animal’s needs and firmly latched the door shut behind him. Then he jogged back along the path to the cabin.
When he opened the door, a firefly drifted in with him. His gaze darted to the bed, seeking reassurance in the vision of his sleeping angel.
But she wasn’t asleep. She was sitting up in bed, staring at him most disconcertingly, all four candles ablaze and flooding the room with light.
Anne was disoriented. Her head felt like a balloon, light and airy, as if it might float off if it weren’t attached. Her memory came in bits and pieces—bits of chaos and pieces of fear. Slowly she put them together and came up with one fantastic scene after another. The cemetery, the slaves escaping, the bounty hunters, the mad dash across country on Renard’s horse, the gunshot, the pain…
A shiver coursed through her. She touched the bandage that was tied snugly around her forehead and winced involuntarily. It hurt like the dickens, but obviously she’d not been mortally wounded. She must have fainted more because of the shock than because of the actual physical injury.
She looked around, familiarizing herself with the strange environs. She was in a bed with clean, simple bedclothes underneath her and nothing on top, which was fine because it was too hot for covers. The bed was swathed in mosquito netting, making everything outside this man-made cocoon appear hazy and slightly unfocused. The fuzziness of her vision might also have something to do with the throbbing pain behind her right eye.
Four globes of light pulsed and flickered, one on each side of the bed, and two across the small room on the flat shelf of what looked like a pantry cupboard. She assimilated these facts and grew comfortable with them before she attempted to unravel the unknown aspects of her situation. Had Renard brought her there? If so, where was he?
The door opened. An instant before she hadn’t even known where the door was. Renard came in the room. As before, he was dressed in black, his head tied up in a close-fitting scarf, hiding his hair completely. A mask covered his face from forehead to mouth, with slits to see through. He wore a long-sleeved shirt, tight-fitting trousers, and tall boots—all black. While a single firefly flickered and bounced around him, he didn’t move. He just stared back at her.
Then suddenly he was in motion, moving quickly to the pantry and snuffing out both candles with a hiss of breath, then leaning over Anne’s bed to extinguish the candle on one side of her with a thumb and forefinger. He picked up the other candle and placed it on the mantel of a small fireplace behind him. This lighting arrangement made it impossible for her to see Renard’s face. He was in the shadows—black melding into black—but she was fully illuminated, exposed. She objected and told him so.
“Renard, why are you hiding from me?”
“Hiding?” He leaned against the wall opposite the bed, his shadow merging indistinguishably into the shadow of the pantry cupboard. “I’m right here, cher.”
“I can’t see you.”
“That’s the whole idea.”
“But you can see me.”
“And the sight of you brings me more pain than you can imagine.”
“I … I don’t understand.”
“You have been injured because of me.”
“No, it wasn’t your fault!”
“Why did you come to the cemetery tonight, Anne?” His tone was stern and disapproving. “It was very foolish of you. You were in grave danger. You might have been killed.”
Anne felt awkward and foolish. He was right. “I wanted to see you,” she said, instantly embarrassed by the petulance in her voice.
There was a pause. “And you would take such risks to see me? Why? You don’t even know me.”
Anne twisted her hands in her lap, feeling less and less like a mature woman, and more and more like a silly, inexperienced schoolgirl. But the dark that obscured Renard’s face lent her courage. She raised her chin. “I could ask you the same thing, you know. Why did you risk exposure by climbing into my bedchamber window? You don’t know me, either.”
“I know you better than you think.”
“How is that possible?”
“I have been watching you.”
The thought that Renard had been surreptitiously watching her sent a thrill through Anne like a bolt of lightning. “But how? Where?”
“Never mind. Let’s get back to my question to you. Why are you taking such risks for a man you don’t know?”
“I do know you. At least I know the substance of your character. When I first … met you on the Belvedere, I was very much impressed with your…”
She hesitated, so he supplied, “With my kisses?”
“With your mission, monsieur!” Anne felt her face heat up. “You’re making it very hard for me to tell you how much I admire what you do.” A shrug of her shoulders expressed her loss for words. “It’s so noble.”
His weary sigh sounded in the darkness. “I don’t think of it as noble. I think of it as necessary. I do what I can. As time passes, more and more abolitionists will become involved in what is coming to be known as the Underground Railroad. Soon I will be nothing more than one among many.”
“Will that suit you, monsieur, being one among many?”
“Eminently. I don’t do this for the newspaper coverage, you know.”
Anne continued to feel tongue-tied and unusually shy, which didn’t seem right after the intimacies they’d shared just the night before. “It’s good of you, monsieur, to discount the fame.”
“You mean the notoriety, don’t you?”
“Many people think of you as a hero.” Softly: “I do.”
“Because I cut a dashing figure in black?” His voice dripped with scornful sarcasm.
Anne was offended. She felt her uncharacteristic shyness receding. “Of course not! As I said, I approve and applaud what you do. Even if your fingers dripped with jewels, if you behaved heroically, you’d be a hero to me.” Anne couldn’t imagine how she’d come up with such an example. She’d been describing Delacroix! But he
was no hero. He was a scoundrel.
But her conscience rebelled at this pat summation of Delacroix’s entire identity. He’d saved her from danger, hadn’t he? Wasn’t he a hero, too? More to the point, why did he constantly intrude on her thoughts, even when she was with Renard?
Her head throbbed. She rubbed her temple, feeling confused, frustrated. An edge of impatience crept into her voice. “You are angry with me tonight, monsieur and you won’t listen to me and believe me. Why is it so hard to accept that I admire you and what you do? Truthfully, I’m not merely besotted by your dashing image.” Though it didn’t detract from his appeal either, Anne silently admitted.
Renard’s broad shoulders shifted in the dark. She could hear the whisper of cloth against rough wood wall. The firefly seemed attracted to him, too; it bobbed around his head, lighting first one feature, then another in a fleeting orange glow.
“I know you despise slavery, mademoiselle,” he said in a tone that conceded her point, but only reluctantly. “I know you would do more for the cause if you could, and are chafed by the limitations of your sex.” In a lighter tone, he added, “You would be a man, eh, mademoiselle? Then you would set the world on its pompous ear.”
Anne thought about this interesting idea for a minute, but there was never any question in her mind that she much preferred being a woman. Her attraction to Renard was more than sufficient proof of that. “No, I don’t want to be a man. I enjoy being a woman.” She lingered on this thought, hoping the implication was not lost on Renard. “But I am attracted to men who are the sort of man I’d be if I were a man. Does that make sense, monsieur?”
He did not reply. His silence unnerved her. She wanted to fill the empty space with words. Preferably with truth. Anne drummed up her courage. “I’m very much attracted to you, Monsieur Renard. I think I might even be a little … in love with you. I have to know … do you feel something for me? Is that why you came to my bedchamber?”
“I shouldn’t have come,” he said bluntly, deflating Anne’s hope of a similar confession from him. “I only contributed to your infatuation with a fantasy, a hero of your imagination.”
“You’re wrong,” said Anne stubbornly. “I don’t know why, but it seems as if I’ve known you forever. There’s something between us … a familiarity I can’t explain. It’s as though I see you all the time, instead of just that once on the Belvedere and then in my room last night—”
“That is impossible,” he quickly interjected.
She sighed. “Yes, I know. Which makes it all the more strange for me to feel so at home with you. And when you kissed me …”
The firefly, as if cued, hovered near Renard’s lips. They were finely molded, firm and sensuous. “Yes?” he prompted her softly. His lips stayed slightly parted. Anne imagined the feel of them on her own lips, trailing down her neck, lingering in the hollow under her ear.
No, that was Delacroix! She shook her head to clear it of the intrusive image, but only succeeded in making her head ache worse. “When you kissed me, it felt so natural, so right. So exclusive.”
“Exclusive, eh?”
“Yes, as if you were—”
“As if I were the only man for you.”
She’d made her point. Eagerly: “Yes.”
“If that is so, cher, then I must conclude you have never felt the same in any other man’s arms, n’est-ce pas?”
Once again Delacroix’s image intruded. Those dark eyes, the thick lashes, the wicked smile. She remembered the kisses in the alley. She’d felt exactly the same in his arms as she had in Renard’s. Just as natural. Just as right Just as exclusive. She had to tell Renard the truth.
“The truth, mademoiselle,” Renard prompted, as if he’d again read her thoughts.
“There has been one other man with whom I’ve experienced similar feelings.”
“But you don’t love this man?”
“No, I don’t love him,” she said, the words rather too strongly underscored with feeling. Then, less emphatically, “I can’t love him. I deplore his lifestyle. He is a slave owner.”
“Is this your only objection to the fellow?”
“Isn’t it enough?”
Another long pause. “Oui. It is enough. But what if he weren’t a slave owner?”
“There are other objections.” Irritably, her head pounding like the drums on Congo Square, she said, “But why do you ask me about this man? He means nothing to me. Less than nothing.”
“I ask because he and I are the same—”
“The same?”
“—the same in that we both make you feel strong emotions. How can you love me and not love him?”
Anne had no reply. She took reprieve in complaining about her headache. In truth she was beginning to feel quite overpowered by it. “My head aches abominably.”
Instantly Renard was alert. “Mon Dieu, I’m such an imbecile. I talk while you suffer. Un moment, cher.” He moved to the cupboard, opened a door, and pushed around bottles and dishes. “First I will get you some water, and some food if you’re hungry. And then a cup of tea, laced with Armande’s special headache remedy.”
“Armande?” Anne remembered the two men on Camp Street. Armande was the tall one, the one she’d also seen at the cemetery the day she ran across Delacroix. Her brain was trying to pull together some disjointed thoughts. Something just out of reach was taunting her. “I know an Armande.”
Renard stopped his busy movements abruptly, looking over his shoulder. His face was fully in the light of the candle, but Anne’s vision seemed to be getting worse; everything was a blur. His wary stance seemed oddly at variance with his casual tone of voice. “You know an Armande? One of Madame Grimms’s banker friends, I suppose.”
“No. I don’t exactly know him. He’s a mulatto, I think.”
Suddenly the room capsized and went black in splotches. Anne fell back on the pillow and tried unsuccessfully to hang on to consciousness. The next thing she knew, Renard was sitting on the side of the bed, holding a cup of something. The mosquito netting was draped over on itself, uncovering the details of the room. Renard had put the candle on the table by the bed, and she could see the color of his eyes. Dark, dark chocolate. “Here, cher. Drink this, and you’ll feel much better.”
Anne wanted desperately to feel better. Then maybe she could think straight. Things were eluding her, things that would be eminently clear and logical when she was feeling more herself. She felt weak but sat up so she could drink. Something seemed to shift inside her head, and the pain throbbed harder than ever. Renard supported her neck. She held on to the cup, but his hand covered hers. The long fingers, the curve of the wrist looked familiar.
“Your hands…”
“Drink, Anne.” She took a sip from the cup. It was tepid and tasted like black tea laced with something bitter, with a generous measure of sugar added to counteract the bitterness.
“Drink more.” Renard tipped the cup higher. Anne complied, completely trusting him.
“Now lie back against the pillows and rest.”
Again she obeyed, closing her eyes and easing down into the pillows. But when she felt the bed lift under her, she opened her eyes and caught Renard’s wrist before he could stand up completely. “Stay with me.”
“I can’t.”
“I won’t rest unless you sit beside me. Please?”
He hesitated. “I have to move the candle.”
“I don’t care, as long as you come back.”
He repositioned the candle, setting it on the mantelpiece where it had been before. He came back and stood over her for a minute, then sat down. His face was in shadow. She reached up and touched his mouth. Warm breath spilled over her fingers, sending a tremor down her spine. He removed her hand and put it on the bed, pressing it flat for a minute as if emphasizing his next words. “Don’t touch me, Anne. I can’t bear it. Touch me, and I’ll have to leave.”
Anne felt suddenly flushed. “I’m hot.” She tugged at the front of her jacket. “T
his is too confining.” She fumbled with the buttons. Exasperated, she let her hand plop to the bed.
Renard’s cool palm pressed against her forehead. “It’s probably the effect of the medicine making you feel hot, though it’s certainly a warm enough night to begin with.” He began to undo the buttons, his fingers nimble and quick. The way they brushed against her skin was distracting. And very pleasant. She felt her nipples pucker against the soft muslin of her chemise.
With the jacket open, relatively cool air whispered across Anne’s exposed neck and chest. She felt much better already, although she wasn’t sure if it was the medicine or the loosened buttons or the man sitting next to her that was doing the magic. But then Renard withdrew, apparently intending to put the mosquito net between them again.
She stopped him by catching hold of his hand. “What are you going to do with me?”
“I’m going to take you home as soon as you’re up to the ride. Rest now, and let the medicine work.”
“You know all about me. You know where I live. You know who my aunt is. You know my name. You even know everything I feel about you … but I know nothing about you.”
He sighed. “It is for the best, cher. I wish you understood. Now please rest, Anne.”
“Only if you stay.”
“I said I would.”
“Inside the netting.”
“Only if you lie still, and … don’t touch me.”
“Won’t you please just hold my hand?”
Another hesitation. “Just.” He took her hand. “Now be quiet and go to sleep.”
As Anne held on to Renard’s hand, she couldn’t resist running her thumb along the fine bones and ridges. They felt beautiful, maybe as beautiful as Delacroix’s. She wished she could see them.
Later, when she opened her eyes, she realized she must have slept for a while; the candle had burned down some. She felt marvelous. The medicine had obviously worked wonders. Her headache was gone.
The lone firefly hovered and hummed just outside the netting. Anne smiled. It had attached itself to them like a minuscule pet. She felt warm breath on her ear and turned her head, finding herself nose to nose with Renard. He was asleep, his head on the pillow, one leg bent on the bed, the other hanging to the floor. He still had hold of her hand, their fingers laced on the pillow between them.
