The man kneeling at her feet stiffened, then gave a strangled cry. Her ankles were released. The one at her head looked up, cursing before flinging her from him so that she rolled in the crackling leaves. She wrenched herself over, pushing to her knees. Before her there was a third man in the moonlit darkness of the small clearing. Tall and wide-shouldered, pale of skin in the dimness and lean of form, he faced the burly black who wielded the cane knife with a flashing sword in his own hand that he gripped as if he knew how to use it. Not far away, the second man lay sprawled on the ground with his ax beside him. He did not move.
The attacker and the newcomer circled each other, their movements stiff with caution. The breathing of the big dark-skinned man was rough in the night stillness, and his feet made a scuffling sound among the leaves. The other was quiet, watchful, with tense alertness in his movements. The black lunged with a slash of the machete that cut through the air with a vicious, wafting whine. Metal clanged on metal. There was a flurry of blows and counterblows too swift to follow in the uncertain light. The man with the sword leaned forward in full extension then drew swiftly back. His sword glistened. The attacker cried out, stumbled. The cane knife thudded to the ground. He fell on top of it.
At the edge of the small clearing, a shadow moved. Elene swung toward it in alarm. Devota stepped forward into the moonlight. Touching the man with the sword lightly on his shoulder in approval, ignoring the bodies of the others, the maid came straight to Elene. She knelt before her, catching her arms as she exclaimed in concern, “Are you all right? Speak to me, chère, tell me you are unhurt.”
“Yes, yes, only let me get up.” To regain her feet, it seemed to Elene, would be to regain her dignity, and perhaps her inviolability.
“Of course, let me help you. What trash you have in your hair, and there is a sleeve half out of your gown. Sacré, but what animals! I can’t bear to think what I would have found if I had returned a moment later.”
“Nor I!” Elene pulled away from her maid as the older woman brushed at her gown and tried to pick bits of sticks and leaves from her hair. “Please, Devota. I love you dearly and thank God and all the saints that you came, but will you have done so that I may speak to this gentleman?”
Her rescuer had wiped his sword on a handful of leaves and replaced it in its sheath that hung at his side. He stood waiting with his hand on the hilt and his legs spread in a stance that indicated no great patience.
“Yes, of course. Chère, this is M’sieur Ryan Bayard of New Orleans. We met most opportunely on the road.”
Elene dropped a curtsy as best she could there in the darkness in answer to the brief bow he sketched in her direction. “You were well met, M’sieur. I am more grateful than I can express for your — your intervention just now.”
“I am delighted to have been of service,” he answered, his voice deep and more than a little brusque. “Now that we have the courtesies out of the way, could we please go? I have no desire to fight all of Dessalines’s army single-handedly.”
“Forgive me if I delayed you—” Elene began, at a loss.
“It’s of no consequence, so long as you do so no longer.” He moved toward her and took her arm. “Can you walk?”
“Of course I can walk,” she said, attempting to release herself from his strong grasp.
“It would not be surprising if you were a bit shaken. I could carry you, if you like.”
“I don’t like! Carry me where, m’sieur?”
“Away from here.”
“Chère,” Devota said.
Elene wrenched her arm back, trying to free it, but with little result. “You are a complete stranger to me, and though saving me from… from harm may entitle you to an interest in my welfare, it does not give you the right to direct my movements or to manhandle me.”
“Chère?” The maid’s tone was admonitory, though not hopeful.
“Forgive me, mademoiselle,” Ryan Bayard said with terrible politeness as he released his hold. “I was under the impression you wanted to go with me.”
“I can’t think how you gained such an idea.”
“Chère, no!” Devota’s protest was anxious.
“Nor can I. I will bid you good-night.”
Elene drew herself up. “I extend you the same.”
“He has a horse and carriage, Chère,” Devota cried, “and a place to hide us!”
Elene turned to look at the older woman. A place to hide. For an instant, she wanted to deny that she needed such a thing, then the reality of the events of the evening were borne in upon her with sickening force. She did not need to see Devota’s face to know that her maid thought they should go with this man, that he was their best hope of safety. It could well be so; it was almost certainly so. She swung back toward her rescuer. He was walking away, a tall, straight shape in the dimness with a broad back tapering to narrow hips, and a free-swinging stride. She had been too hasty. It was not a mistake she made often.
She took a step forward, calling out, “M’sieur!”
He stopped, turned.
“Wait, please, I—” The last word was tight, wobbling, then her throat closed, making it impossible to speak.
He came back a stride, then another, staring at her through the darkness. Ryan Bayard, seeing the gallantry in the straight shoulders of that bright, disheveled figure, hearing the choked appeal in her voice, was suddenly ashamed of his preoccupation with his own concerns.
His voice quiet, he said, “I believe, mademoiselle, that you are more shaken than you know; this is a night to shake the strongest of us. I tender you my apologies for my conduct, and beg you will believe that I would be honored to be of service to you, if you will permit it.”
Elene cleared her throat. “Again.”
“Pardon, mademoiselle?”
“You will be of service again.” She indicated briefly the still forms on the ground. “We accept your offer with gratitude, M’sieur, my maid and I. You are — very kind.”
Ryan Bayard had been called many things in the past few years, but no one had accused him of being kind. He was not sure he liked it.
“Shall we go then?”
It was not nearly so far through the woods to the main road as Elene had thought. The carriage was hidden at the edge of the shell-covered road, a phaeton pulled by a shining bay. Built for speed, the open vehicle offered little comfort, having only a thinly padded seat designed for the driver and perhaps one slender passenger at most. The three of them only managed to fit on it by Elene sitting in the middle and holding tightly to both Devota and M’sieur Bayard. Even so, each time a wheel dropped into a pothole or they rounded a curve on two wheels, she thought they would all go flying off the seat or over the carriage’s kick board in front of them. The only thing that prevented it, she was sure, was the hard arm of the man at her side to which she clung.
It was an odd thing to occur to her, but Elene did not think she had been so close to a man not of her own family in her twenty-three years. Even Durant had been kept at a distance by her father’s presence or Devota’s chaperonage. The body of the man who had killed for her was taut and hard with corded muscle. There was no hint of an easy or indolent style of living about him; rather, it seemed that he must engage in physical labor. His speech and his manners were those of a gentleman, however, as was his expertise with a sword. He was a puzzle, one that might serve to keep her from dwelling on sights and sounds and deeds she would as soon not bring to mind.
Was Ryan Bayard trustworthy? That was a question indeed. He had stopped his carriage for Devota on a night when people of her color were massacring whites, when he would have had every right to suspect a trap. That indicated either overweening confidence in his own ability to protect himself, or above-average concern for his fellow human beings. He had come to Elene’s aid at the risk of his own life, with hardly a moment’s hesitation, without knowing who she was, certainly without hope of reward. It was not possible that he could have any base reason for it, nor was there any c
ause to think he might take advantage of the situation.
Still, there was something about the man that disturbed Elene. She wanted to think she had heard his name before, and not merely in a fable about the ancient family of Bayard renowned in France for their prowess in war. She wished she could see his face, to search for some resemblance to someone she knew perhaps, or else to test his intentions.
The road they traveled remained clear in the bright moonlight. They passed one or two plantation houses with lamplight showing on the galleries, as if the owners were out staring at the red haze of fires and dark clouds of smoke boiling into the night sky. There was no sign of destruction here as yet, however, nor of the army of Dessalines.
“Do we have far to go?” Elene asked.
“Three or four miles. We will be off this main road soon.”
His effort toward reassurance was made, she supposed, because he had noticed the way she looked back at the two or three small groups of blacks they met, groups that faded into the woods as they bowled past. It appeared the uprising was localized for the time being, but those not involved were shifting from place to place in the night in defiance of the restrictions on movement.
“It’s so quiet along here. Shouldn’t we stop and warn people that there has been an attack?”
“Anybody who can see the fires ought to know.”
That was certainly true enough. Those who were still on the island were veterans of such atrocities after ten years of what could only be termed civil war.
“The wedding, that is why they chose us, why we were singled out?”
Ryan lifted a shoulder, his attention on controlling the bay as it shied at the swoop of a bat across the road. “I would say you attracted attention by the wedding, from what your maid tells me. But it was only an excuse for a place to start.”
“You mean—”
“It looks as if only a few houses, those three or four closest to yours, have been hit. The road was fairly clear from the house where I was visiting, maybe two miles from where I was stopped for you, and I saw no sign of any large body of men. It’s my bet the order for all hands to rise hasn’t gone out. That will come in the morning, or maybe tomorrow night.”
“Things have been so quiet lately,” Elene said, almost to herself. “What has brought all this on?”
Ryan turned his head toward her. “Haven’t you heard? News arrived yesterday that Governor-General Toussaint died in prison at Joux.”
Toussaint, dead. There had been something paternal and statesmanlike in his rule and, though he had been defeated, in his brief reign he had accomplished much for his people. He had been respected, even loved. With all these things, combined with the trickery that had brought about his arrest, it was not to be wondered at that his death in a French prison should be the tinder that set Saint-Domingue aflame once more.
This conflagration would spread, there could be little doubt of it. What was she to do then? She had no home, no family other than Devota; she did not know if her fiancé was alive. The only valuables she owned were the earrings in her ears and the cameo necklace in her petticoat pocket.
“Where are Leclerc’s soldiers?” she asked. “When will they march?”
“The question is, will they march at all?” Ryan said. “Their ranks have been so thinned by dysentery and yellow fever that they’ll be lucky to muster a good company of men to put into the field.”
“But something must be done to stop Dessalines!” Elene cried.
“Possibly, but not any time soon. The best thing I can see for you or any other whites is to get off the island as quickly as possible.”
He could be right. If matters reached the pass they had during the first uprising twelve years before, the only safety would be in leaving until the situation cooled, or until the French army could regain control.
“But how can we? What of our lands, the crops?”
“They aren’t much use to you if you’re dead,” Ryan said simply.
Before Elene could frame an answer, the carriage swung into a drive and bowled up it toward a darkened house. Ryan did not draw the horse up before the front door, but continued on around to the stable area in the back where he sent the bay through the arched opening of a barn before stopping. He unhitched the animal and turned him into a stall, then dragged the phaeton into a corner. Only then did he turn to the two women with him.
Elene, while waiting for Ryan to remember the presence of her maid and herself, had had time to catch her breath and look around her. This house where they had wound up was not only conveniently off the road, but stood on a headland above the sea. She could hear the sound of the waves in the still night, taste the salt in the air. The stables and barns seemed large compared to the size of the house, and in a near corner there was a wagon too massive to be used for anything except freight.
“What are we doing here?” she asked, keeping her voice low as she walked quickly along beside Ryan.
“This place belongs to a business associate. I’m staying with him for a few days.”
Elene sent him a swift glance. She had learned enough of the island in the year and a half she had been back to know that the house belonged to a mulatto merchant named Favier. She had never met the man. The mulattoes did not move in the same social circles, if Saint-Domingue could be said to have such a thing as society these days, and in any case, Favier had a reputation for keeping to himself. It was popularly supposed that, in addition to his more legitimate interests, he dealt in smuggled goods.
Something shifted in Elene’s mind, and she knew with abrupt clarity where she had heard the name Bayard. There was a privateer of no small notoriety — some even called him a pirate — who went under that cognomen.
The back door of the house swung open before they could reach it. It was no servant who stood in the opening, but the master himself. He carried a candle with a shield affixed. As they neared, he drew them urgently into the house and slammed the door behind them.
They called him a mulatto, but it was likely that Favier had only one-quarter black blood in his veins, instead of half, for his skin was the color of old parchment. He was short and stout, bordering on corpulence, and his hair was curled and pomaded with all the care of a dandy. It was also plain that he was badly frightened, for the candle he held shook in his hand and there were beads of sweat on his upper lip.
“Did anyone see you turn in here?” he asked, his liquid brown gaze wide as it fastened on Ryan.
“Not that I know of. I hope you won’t mind that I have brought guests back with me, Mademoiselle Larpent and her woman Devota.” Ryan turned to Elene. “Mademoiselle, permit me to present to you M’sieur Favier.”
“M’sieur,” Elene dropped a curtsy.
“Mademoiselle.” Favier sketched a clumsy bow, his gaze lingering on the disarray of her gown and hair only an instant. He spoke no words of welcome before he turned back to Ryan. “I expected you hours ago. Where have you been?”
“There was some disturbance along the road. I had to make a slight detour once or twice, and then it was necessary to take up Mademoiselle Larpent.”
“Was it indeed? Do you realize the danger you have put me in?”
“You?”
“I have managed to keep out of the fight between white and black and to maintain friendly relations with Dessalines, but if he finds out I’m harboring a white man, not to mention this Larpent woman, he will tear this place apart. And me also.”
“Then you will have to make certain Dessalines doesn’t find out, won’t you?” Ryan said quietly.
Elene watched Ryan Bayard. In the candlelight, she saw that he had hair as dark and polished as walnut and a face burned by the sun to a color at least two shades darker than that of the mulatto. His features were rugged, with a firm, heavily chiseled mouth and a nose that had been broken at some time in the distant past so that it gave him the predatory look of a hawk. His eyes were as blue as the midnight sea, and protected by heavy brows and a screen of thick dark la
shes. He could not be called handsome, and yet there was something compelling in the cast of his features that caught and held attention. The force that she had sensed in him was there in his stance as he faced his host. It was not surprising that Favier was nervous, for Bayard did not appear to be an easy man to cross.
The mulatto’s terror of Dessalines was greater than his wariness of Ryan, however, for he licked his lips, then burst out, “You can’t stay here!”
“Where do you suggest we go?” Ryan’s gaze was hard, but his voice carried almost a conversational tone.
“Into town. To the French army.”
“And shall I take my business there also?”
Favier moaned, as if the suggestion gave him physical pain. He drew out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. “You don’t understand.”
“I think I do. I risk a great deal for you with every voyage, but you decline to return the favor when needed.”
“The French soldiers can protect you.”
“Possibly, if the lady and I could get there,” Ryan said. “But you could hide us. And get word to my ship, so I can be taken off the island. The French would not be so obliging. For some reason, they don’t seem to approve of me.”
His ship. Ryan Bayard was indeed the privateer then, and it was apparent that Favier was in league with him, that he received and sold the goods Bayard brought to the island. Elene had heard much of these merchant-adventurers who sailed under letters of marque to plunder the shipping of countries at war with each other then sell it to the highest bidder. Those of French blood, one would think, would molest only British ships, but it was said that Bayard sometimes turned a blind eye to the color of the flag if the prize was a rich one.
She stared at him, at his coat of dark blue cloth and conservative white-on-white striped waistcoat, his cravat that had been somewhat disarranged during his fight, his closely fitted doeskin breeches and brightly polished boots. Even with the sword at his side that was somewhat heavier than the dress blades affected by most men, he looked not so much like a corsair, a terror of the seas, as a gentleman planter. Except for the bronze of his skin. No gentleman of her acquaintance would allow his face to be so exposed to the sun, any more than would a lady. Such sun-darkened skin could give rise to rumors of a touch of what was known as café au lait, an admixture of African blood. Not that she suspected it of this man. Rather, the bronze of his skin was further proof of his calling.
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