Louisiana History Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  Or must she?

  She was so tired of this lie she was living. It was like a burden carried inside her, one that grew heavier the longer she sustained it. She recognized that it might be the weakness left from her bout with fever and the depression of spirit caused by her lack of success in retrieving the perfume that made ridding herself of her guilt so seductive an impulse. Still, it was irresistible.

  “If you will sit down,” she said quietly, “I will tell you about it.”

  Ryan stared at her for a long moment. There was something in her voice, in her face, he did not like. It gave him a peculiar feeling under his breastbone. There was another chair not far away, but he did not take it. Instead, he straightened and backed slowly away to the gallery railing. Leaning against it, he crossed his arms over his chest and waited.

  Elene drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. She had tried to make him understand before and failed. It was unlikely he would be so distracted this time that he would not take it in. She wished she had more time to think about it, to decide if it was really the right thing; to plan exactly what she was going to say and how she was going to put it. Devota would not understand, that much was certain. But the problem was not Devota’s. It was hers alone, and it had become, finally, unbearable.

  There was a tremor in her voice as she began to speak. She tried to explain what the perfume was and why it had been made in the beginning, though she was not sure she was making sense. The look on Ryan’s face was suspended, closed in. Regardless, she pressed on, explaining that first night in hiding on Saint-Domingue and how little she had thought of the effect of the scent she wore, how little she had believed in its efficacy, detailing all that came after. She did not stop until he knew everything.

  When at last she was silent, the look on Ryan’s face was perplexed. Holding her gaze with his, he said with slow care, “You mean you think I’m keeping you here with me because of your perfume?”

  “I don’t think it, I know. I didn’t want to accept it, but the evidence is too strong to deny.”

  “Because I make love to you when you’re wearing it and don’t when you’re not.”

  She swallowed, looking beyond him over the railing to the leaves of the oak. “Something like that.”

  “And I can never leave you?”

  “No.”

  A smile dawned on his face, rising to his eyes in bright, shining mirth. “That’s ridiculous!”

  “No, it isn’t.” The words were earnest as she sat forward in her chair.

  “You make it sound as if I have no free will.”

  “You don’t.”

  His grin grew wider. “I don’t believe in Voudou.”

  “That doesn’t matter! I don’t believe in it either, but I’ve seen what it can do over and over: make people well, make them ill, even cause death. It’s no laughing matter!”

  He tried to compose his features in a sober mien, but it didn’t work. “I’m sorry. I keep thinking of you in that hole under Favier’s house. All the time I was taking unprincipled advantage of you, you thought you were doing the same with me.”

  “I was!”

  “Then I hope you will do it more, and often.”

  She rose to her feet in agitation with her skirts swirling about her ankles. “You don’t understand, won’t understand.”

  He pushed away from the railing and moved to put his hands on her shoulders. “I understand all right. I’m just telling you that there’s nothing to what you’re saying, no matter what Devota may have told you.”

  “What about Rachel Pitot and Morven? Or Morven and Josie? Or Josie and M’sieur Tusard? What about Hermine’s death, and that of M’sieur Mazent? Doesn’t all that show you anything?”

  “Coincidence, nothing more. Just as it was a coincidence that I didn’t touch you while you weren’t wearing that damnable scent. It certainly wasn’t because I didn’t want you in all that time. I just thought — never mind what I thought. Just believe me when I say you have nothing to feel guilty about. This whole thing is a farce.”

  “It isn’t! I can’t live like this anymore. I won’t do it!”

  “If I understand what you’re saying, all you have to do is stop using the perfume. Stop, and you’ll see.”

  She jerked out of his grasp, backing away from him. “You’re the one who’ll see! That is, unless you shower me with affection just to prove me wrong!”

  Impatience hardened his voice. “Then wear the stuff and forget it. It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter!”

  “What if it harms you somehow? What if somebody else dies because of it, even you?”

  “It won’t happen. Anyway, there’s nothing you can do about it now!” His voice was rising, the tone grating.

  The door to the bedchamber was open behind her. She turned toward it. “Yes, there is. I can leave here. I can leave you!”

  He watched the door where she had disappeared for a stunned moment. She wasn’t rational on the subject of this perfume. It had to be her illness making her talk like this; there was no other explanation. With his fist clenched, he strode into the bedchamber after her.

  She was opening the armoire to take out her clothes. He put his hand on the door, slamming it shut again. “You aren’t going anywhere.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You aren’t strong enough yet. What would you do? Where would you stay?”

  “I’ll do something, find somewhere.” She tried to open the armoire door again and he held it shut with one stiff arm. She turned to glare at him.

  He looked at her, and something black and implacable rose inside him. “You are going nowhere,” he said, the words sharp with the obsidian edge of danger. “I won’t let you. You will stay here with me until hell is cool and this tiny earth goes spinning into the last pit of infinite darkness. Nothing will change my mind. Nothing will pry you from me, not some puny scent or lack of it, not a horde of quadroons panting for love, not death itself. I will never let you go.”

  Her eyes widened and her lips parted as she stared at him. Ryan, seeing the bewilderment and the wonder in the depths of her eyes, heard in his mind the echo of what he had just said. And suddenly, disconcertingly, he knew the first unfamiliar flicker of doubt.

  15

  NAPOLEON’S CESSION OF THE COLONY of Louisiana to the United States was confirmed on August 18 in the form of a letter to Laussat from the French chargé d’affaires, M’sieur Pichon, at the young nation’s capital of Washington City. The transfer had been made at a cost of seventy-five million francs or fifteen million dollars. French and Spanish merchant ships were granted the advantages of most favored nations status, but that was the only concession to former ownership. It was also noted that King Carlos IV of Spain had at last, that past May, put his name to the document officially granting Louisiana to France. Matters were finally beginning to take on a semblance of solidity.

  The official transfers of governmental power, both that from Spain to France and from France to the United States, could not be made, however, until the actual dispatches authorizing them were received from Paris by way of Washington City. Life proceeded, therefore, at the same slow pace as before, with the Spanish exercising nominal power and the French colonial prefect chafing at his forced inactivity.

  Laussat, according to Ryan, was somewhat bitter at the time and effort he had wasted in this fruitless trip to Louisiana. He had thought to build a rich colony for France, had been full of plans and ideas, but now they were for nothing. Great sums of money had been expended in closing his home in France and moving his family to what was supposed to be a prestigious and influential post. He had endangered his health, not to mention that of his family, and also his future career for what had proven to be a useless cause. Now he was held here while the wheels of the petty bureaucracy ground out the necessary papers, in all their many laboriously copied versions with appended seals and ribbons, that would make everything correct and legal. He was growing impatient. A part of his testiness could b
e attributed to the summer heat, but another was because his wife had proven the claim made by local residents concerning the fecundity of the waters of the Mississippi. Madame Laussat was pregnant. The prefect and his wife had three, perhaps four, months of grace before a sea voyage would become too dangerous; then they must leave the colony if they were not to be stuck there until after the lady’s confinement.

  It was sometime near the beginning of September that Ryan broached the possibility of his traveling to Washington City. The suggestion had been made by Laussat. He had expected the all-important dispatches permitting the double transfer to follow soon after the letter confirming the sale of the colony. Their failure to appear made him fear there had been an accident somewhere along the dangerous overland trail between Washington City and New Orleans. The list of things that might have befallen the messenger bearing the dispatches was endless, from attack by Indians or wild animals, to being swept away during one of the numerous river crossings. One of the first reforms of the United States, so the Americans claimed, was going to be the stationing of outposts along this trail with changes of horses so that the whereabouts of the post riders would be known at all times. The time usually required for the journey, forty days one way, would be cut to something more reasonable, such as twenty or twenty-five.

  “But why should Laussat expect you to go?” Elene asked. “You are no post rider.”

  Ryan leaned back in his chair as they sat over their dessert and coffee after a light dinner. His smile was rueful as he replied. “Laussat seems to think I have a knack for staying alive.”

  What he meant, of course, was that Laussat needed a man of daring and enterprise who could not only handle a weapon, be it knife, sword, or pistol, but who also knew something about getting out of tight positions. “Yes, but why you? He must know you have favored the cession from the beginning.”

  “All the more reason to suppose that I will do everything in my power to return with the dispatches.”

  “You have agreed, then?”

  Ryan shrugged. “It seems a worthwhile jaunt.”

  “It’s no jaunt,” Elene said, her voice low and intense as her fingers curled around the arms of her chair. “You could be killed.”

  “That would, of course, be inconvenient.”

  “It’s no joking matter!”

  “Why, chère, one would almost think you cared.” His voice was light, but the look in his eyes was somber as he watched her.

  She looked away from him. “I have no wish to see you dead.”

  “I’m comforted. I’ve thought once or twice lately that it might be otherwise.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, sending him a quick frown.

  It was a moment before he spoke, then he only said, “You don’t seem very happy.”

  “I’m … not unhappy. It’s just that so much has happened. It’s taken so long for me to regain my strength, and in the meantime I’m a charge upon you.”

  “Have I complained?”

  Her lips tightened. “No, but I don’t like it.”

  “It seems a natural enough arrangement.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s right. I prefer to make my own way.”

  Ryan knew that very well, and respected her for it. He had prevented her from leaving him on the evening she told him about the perfume by main force, logic, and caresses; still, he knew he could not hold her forever by such tactics. He wished sometimes that she was like other women, full of tears and helpless appeal, but then she would not be his Elene.

  They had been close since her illness, closer than he had ever come to a woman. And yet there was a wariness between them. It was caused in part by her refusal to resign herself to her role as his mistress, but also by something he recognized within himself as a growing distrust.

  He did not trust himself where she was concerned.

  When she had first told him of the perfume, he had laughed. The more he thought about it, the less comical it seemed. He had always known his desire for her was excessive, beyond anything he had ever experienced. It came upon him at the most inappropriate times, while he was discussing business or inspecting his warehouses. It took less than nothing to make him ready for her when they were together: the trill of a laugh, the shift of her hair as she turned her head, a whiff of her fragrance.

  Her fragrance, that was the problem. Its appeal to him was not reasonable. He tried to tell himself that it was because she had been drenched in it on the night they first made love, but that fact should not make him turn homeward two or three times a day just to discover if she was still there. It should not make his heart jar against his backbone when he found her bedchamber empty. It should not bring to mind a picture of her face whenever he saw a fetching bonnet on a woman on the street, or when he heard a snatch of lovely melody. He had thought, for a time, that he was only falling in love, but the sensations were so consuming he could not help wondering if there was not some magic to it, some bewitchment.

  Elene sensed the withdrawal in Ryan. The cause was not hard to guess. According to Devota, she was a fool for telling him of the perfume. That was entirely possible. He had, it seemed, begun to question his feelings for her. She should be glad; she had been so uncomfortable with the knowledge that whatever affection he might have felt for her was caused by something outside himself. What she had not taken into account was the possibility that without the perfume he might feel nothing more than the compassion he would accord any female in need of a place to stay.

  Oh, he still turned to her in the night with desire, even since she had ceased to use the perfume. She was there, after all, a convenient outlet for his male needs. Why should he not make use of her since he was paying for the food she ate and the roof over her head. But there had been no more words of love, no more trysts in the darkened courtyard. It was as if she had removed a protective garment with her perfume, and was now vulnerable to pain and loss. The idea that he might find another woman, take another mistress, haunted her. If that should happen, she did not know what she would do, where she would go. Her choices were so few.

  She had cudgeled her brain for a way to find more money to buy perfume ingredients, this time for a scent that was truly no more than a delicious smell. She was sure there was profit in it even yet, and all the benefits that went with it. Moreover, she had discovered within herself great satisfaction in working with essences, measuring and mixing and sampling the results, breathing perpetually fragrant air. So far, however, the means to continue eluded her. She might sell her gold earrings, but they would bring little in a market already flooded with the jewelry of the refugees still pouring in from Saint-Domingue as the British and French with their various black factions fought back and forth over the island. This state of affairs also made the prospect of ever gaining a penny from her father’s estate appear dimmer every day. The only possibility she could see was to ask Ryan for the money, and this she refused to do.

  “Anyway,” Ryan said finally, “it’s likely the papers Laussat expects will arrive any day and there will be no need for a special courier. He’s a good enough man in his way, but too much of a European to realize the distance, or the difficulties, involved in traveling across this vast land. We must all be patient.”

  They were patient indeed, but still there was no sign of the courier from Washington. The hot, wet days continued. The fever raged through the city so that public entertainments were canceled and there were few parties or visits for fear of the contagion. Funeral corteges became regular sights as they wound their way through the streets with coffins on carts followed by hatless male mourners. Black became the most common color seen on the streets as people in the intricately interrelated families went into mourning for aunts and uncles and cousins of several degrees, as well as for closer kin. The scarlet uniforms of the Spanish soldiers, as faded and worn as most were, became jarring notes of color among such melancholy vestments.

  Elene seldom left the house. The daily shopping for food had become Ben
edict’s responsibility once more, though sometimes Devota went with him to make some special purchase for Elene’s use or to tempt her appetite. Now and again, however, Elene and Ryan would join the few hardy souls who braved the threat of illness to stroll along the river levee in the coolness of the evening.

  On an evening toward the middle of the month, the two of them circled once around the promenade of the Place d’Armes, then turned toward the river. The day had not been so terribly hot; it seemed that the grip of summer might be loosening. There were more people moving about than had been seen in some time.

  The breeze off the water was pleasantly refreshing. The surface of the river made a rippling, opalescent mirror for the sunset that faded from orange and blue and gold to pink and lavender-purple. There was a quality of stillness about the long twilight that caused movements to slow and voices to hush to quiet murmurs. Buzzards drifted in slow sweeping circles overhead and pigeons from the pigeoniers around the city wheeled in precisely aligned flocks before dropping to the ground like a handful of carelessly thrown pebbles. Now and then a dog barked or a horse neighed. The sound of the southward flowing water was like soft music, an intriguing and soothing refrain.

  Ahead of them, coming from the opposite direction, Elene saw Flora Mazent with Germaine, like a gray shadow, behind her. The girl nodded and spoke without quite meeting Elene’s eyes as they came abreast; certainly she showed no sign of stopping. She and her maid moved on out of hearing distance.

  Ryan sent a glance over his shoulder after them. The pain of the rebuff rose up inside Elene along with something waspish. “What is it?” she asked. “Aren’t you used to being slighted by a woman?”