Lifting a brow as he gave her his attention, Ryan said, “It’s happened a few times. I thought the Mazent girl looked upset.”
“The strain of being forced to acknowledge me, no doubt.”
He was silent a long, considering moment. “Does it hurt so much, being a fallen woman?”
“I am not a fallen woman!” she snapped.
“Being my woman then, or however you want to put it.” The impatience was plain in his voice.
“I don’t regard it.”
“Yes, if you fail to regard it any more, you’re going to give yourself another fever.”
She gave him a cold look. “It’s just that I dislike discourtesy. If it wasn’t for you and your ship, that girl would most likely be dead.”
“That doesn’t mean she has to like me, or that I care a fiddler’s damn whether she does or not.”
“It’s a question of manners, of suitable gratitude.”
“I don’t want her gratitude.”
“Neither do I,” she said in exasperation, “but that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t feel some obligation to be civil, perhaps to pass the time of day.”
Elene didn’t know why she was allowing herself to become overwrought. It wasn’t as if any of it mattered. It was simply that she was on edge of late, her usual calm worn thin by the things that had taken place along with the debilitating effects of her fever.
“I agree,” Ryan said.
Elene, ready to defend her position further, stopped and stared at him. “You do?”
“Naturally. She should have been more cordial. But since she was not, there is nothing to be gained by blaming yourself for it. For whatever reason, it was her discourtesy, therefore it reflects on her. It’s nothing to do with you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t patronize me. I know it wasn’t my fault, but that doesn’t mean I can ignore it.”
“By no means,” he countered in abrupt anger. “Pay attention to this, too. Since nothing I say can please you, I will leave you to your own company.”
She watched his straight back, the swing of his broad shoulders and narrow hips, as he walked away. Desolation crowded in upon her. She opened her mouth to call him back, then shut it again. What good would it do? There was nothing she had said for which she wanted or needed to apologize. If he could not understand how trying she found her position with him, then there was no possible way she could explain it.
Elene swung around, walking back along the levee the way she and Ryan had come. Despite the aspect given by the tall embankment, she looked neither toward the river, at the houses of New Orleans within the palisade that was open on the levee side, nor even along the thoroughfare that led toward Bayou St. John and the Marigny plantations. Her gaze was on the dried mud and sun-bleached grass of the track on which she walked, while her thoughts ran in circles.
“Elene? Mademoiselle Larpent? Could I please speak to you?”
She looked up, startled. It was Flora Mazent who stood in front of her. The girl’s pale, red-rimmed eyes were anxious and she looked over her shoulder like a hunted rabbit before turning back to Elene.
“Is something wrong?” Elene said.
“I only have a moment. I sent Germaine on an errand, but she will soon be back.”
“Perhaps you would like to come to the house?”
“No, no. Germaine would scold; you know how maids are. She thinks I should not be talking to you at all.”
Elene knew indeed how maids could be from her years with Devota. So closely did they identify with the affairs of those they served that they sometimes tended to forget who was mistress and who was maid. When the relationship was one of long duration, it could be difficult to reestablish authority without unpleasantness.
“What may I do for you?” she asked.
“It’s about the perfume. I wonder if I could get some.”
Elene blinked. What she had expected, she could not have said, but after her attempt to retrieve the scent that had belonged to Germaine, it was certainly not this. Still, her voice carried equal parts of warmth and reason as she replied. “I don’t think you know what you’re asking.”
“I know very well. I must have the perfume, I must!”
“I’m not making it any more, as I think I told you the other day. There was something that caused a rash—”
“Oh, don’t tell me that! I know what it can do, and that’s what I need. I’ll pay whatever you ask, anything at all. But I have to have it. I have to have it now!”
“It’s impossible—”
The girl’s face twisted and she clenched her fingers together that she clasped before her. “Don’t say that! You don’t know how important it is.”
Elene put her hand on the girl’s arm. “Please calm yourself, Flora. I don’t know what you think the perfume can do, but I assure you, there is no more to be had.”
“You have some of your own, you must have, or you wouldn’t still be with Bayard!”
Elene drew in her breath at the sudden pain the words caused, then lifted her chin as she let it out again. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t say that to me because you aren’t sorry at all. If you don’t give me the perfume, the man I love isn’t going to marry me. He said he would, before my father died, but now he’s trying to get out of it. I can’t bear it if he refuses me. Really I can’t.”
“I’m not sure the perfume would help.”
“I know it would. I wore it before, but now it’s all gone and my fiancé doesn’t want me anymore.”
Flora had worn the scent, not Germaine. How odd. “I would help you if I could, really I would.”
“I don’t believe you. I know you have more of the perfume. I know it.”
“No, really.”
“You’re lying. You’re—” Flora Mazent’s words stumbled to a halt as she glanced beyond Elene. Her face changed. She turned to look back down the levee to where Germaine had detached herself from the crowd around a seller of candied violets. Abruptly she said, “Never mind. Forget I spoke to you. Forget all of it. I … I’m a trifle upset. The shock, you know, on top of Papa’s … Just forget it.”
Whirling around, she walked quickly away. Elene stared after her until the girl caught up with her maid and the two women descended from the levee to disappear among the streets.
Ryan spoke from just behind Elene. “What was the matter with her?”
Elene had no wish to hear him laugh about her perfume again. “Nothing,” she answered distractedly. “She was just a little upset. Her father, you know.”
There was more to it than that, Ryan knew, but he did not question her. He must realize that he did not own her, could not control her, had no right to make demands. If he wanted to keep her with him, he was going to have to remember these things. The problem was that the need to possess was new to him, something he had never felt for any other woman. It might also be, he was aware, a symptom of the spell she had cast around him.
Perfume or no, he was under a spell. He had thought to leave her there on the levee to make her way back to the house alone. That had been until it occurred to him that she might choose not to return. The idea was insupportable. Because of it, here he was, Bayard the privateer, playing escort to a female, allowing himself to be led like a prize ship in tow instead of capturing his prey and making away with it. His only consolation was that she did not seem to know her own power, or at least had the scruples not to use it. For that mercy he was not sure whether to be glad or sorry.
Madame Tusard was one of those women who counted the calls she made on her friends and acquaintances and balanced them against those made to her in return. If the two were unequal, she was piqued and hurt. If the balance failed to be redressed for any length of time, her miffed feelings turned to outrage, and she was prone to retaliate with none too subtle slander against the culprit that she passed out on her visits to those who were still on terms with her.
Elene owed Madame Tusard a visit. She could not quit
e like her, but she did pity her for her lost children and vanished dreams, for her altered circumstances and limited social circle in New Orleans. She could also sympathize with her plight as the wronged wife, whether Madame Tusard knew of her betrayal or not. Moreover, because Elene had been Josie’s confidante concerning the adultery, she felt a shadow of guilt herself for keeping it secret. And Elene did not have so many social contacts herself that she could afford to despise friendship of any kind. For these reasons, she set out some days after the meeting with Flora to pay Madame Tusard a visit.
She found the woman with her head tied up in a turban and a duster in her hand as she cleaned the small room that passed as a salon in the cottage she and her husband had taken on Dumaine Street. The woman started at Elene’s knock and turned to where the front door leading directly into the salon stood open to catch the morning breeze. She met Elene’s gaze for no more than an instant, then tore off her turban and flung her duster down upon a table. Her manner flustered and her cheeks scarlet, she came to the door.
“Forgive my dirt,” she said, her voice unnaturally high. “I had sent my girl to the market this morning before I noticed the layer of dust she has permitted to accumulate in this room. Such a careless creature! I don’t know why I keep her.”
Elene murmured something soothing in reply as she stepped inside. She wished she had not come, but it was too late to retreat now. It was plain there was no girl. Françoise Tusard had been served by slaves for so many years in her husband’s island post that to be forced to do her own work was a greater humiliation to her than the loss of their livelihood.
Madame Tusard moved to seat herself on a chair which, though covered in rich blue velvet and edged with gold fringe, had crocodile feet for legs and arms made of the reptile’s head and tail. Elene subsided into a matching chair on the other side of a small table near the room’s single window. An exchange of compliments and pleasant nothings followed. Elene responded with only half her attention while she looked around her.
The cottage had six rooms, all opening into each other. The walls, set directly on the ground, were of bousillage, a plaster of mud and moss or deer hair filling in the interstices between a framework of log timbers. The windows were closed with shutters, the floors were of rough planking on which had been laid carpets of faded colors and dubious quality. The interior walls and ceilings were plastered and washed white with lime.
Nevertheless, there was a chandelier of crystal and brass filled with expensive beeswax candles hanging in the salon, figurines of Sevres china on the mantle, and a mirror over the fireplace of rococo design covered in gold leaf. The other furniture, in keeping with the chairs in which they were seated, was of the latest style inspired by Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign. It was possible to guess that Madame Tusard’s preoccupation with appearances had dictated the attempt at modish furnishings here in this public room. It seemed likely, however, that it did not extend to their private quarters.
The decided air in the house of making do with the least possible expenditure did not sit well with Josie’s claim that M’sieur Tusard was her present lover and protector. It was not to be expected that Josie would rush to the man’s embraces for the sake of his beaux yeux; it must be assumed that he was expending fair sums of money for the pleasure of her company. It also made no sense that Madame Tusard would permit her Claude to spend money on a mistress while she herself did her own cleaning and cooking. There was the possibility that M’sieur Tusard had means of which his wife was unaware, but if so, what could they be? And how had he managed to keep the fact hidden?
Aloud, she said, “Your husband, I hope he is well?”
“Splendid. He has a new position, you know, with the colonial prefect. It is regrettable that it cannot be permanent — word of the cession was naturally a blow to us. We have hopes, however, that Claude will be able to go with Prefect Laussat when he is assigned to his next post.”
“That would be something indeed.”
“It can’t happen soon enough for me. I despise this place.”
“Do you? I rather like it myself.”
“How you can after your dreadful bout with the fever I cannot imagine. I live in terror that either Claude or I will fall ill with it. I would not care to be buried here. They say the gravediggers cut holes in the coffins with an ax so they will not float out of the graves, or else the coffins are sealed up in brick walls until they disintegrate, at which time the bones are removed and another coffin takes the place of the first. Horrible, quite horrible. I do grieve for poor Flora Mazent that she has to think of her father’s remains being placed in such conditions.”
To change the subject, Elene said, “Flora doesn’t look well lately.”
“No. One hears that the betrothal has come to nothing, too. I’m by no means certain that it isn’t just a vicious rumor started by some incorrigible gossip though, for I saw Flora at the dressmaker’s shop just yesterday looking at the sort of linen and batiste that’s most suitable for a trousseau.”
Relief touched Elene. “Perhaps the problem, if there was one, has been solved. Have you heard yet who the lucky man is to be?”
Madame Tusard looked conscious. “I rather thought it might be Gambier, you know, but he was seen no more than three days ago with that harlot of an actress, Josephine Jocelyn, on his arm. Then my Claude let fall an interesting tidbit about a meeting he witnessed between Mazent and another man before the death of Flora’s father.”
“You mean a meeting to discuss the terms of the nuptial agreement?”
“Claude would not tell me! You know what men are when they think they have revealed too much. Still, one assumes that was the purpose.”
“Who was the man?”
“My dear, I hesitate to say, since you seem to have no inkling of it.”
There did seem to be a certain apprehension in the woman’s small eyes, but mingled with it was avid anticipation. The closeness with which Madame Tusard watched her, the heavy-handed tact with which she spoke, were signals for alertness. Elene remembered suddenly the meeting between Ryan and Mazent on the night of the party. There had been something of a private nature between them all right, but surely it could not be what Madame Tusard was hinting at so strongly?
“Inkling of what?” she asked bluntly.
“Why, that Mazent was bent on persuading Bayard to wed his daughter.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“As you please, chère, but Claude certainly heard it being discussed. I am sorry if it distressed you; that was not at all my intention. Regardless, I could not let it pass without giving you a warning. Men can be so unkind to females in your position.”
The sympathy was so perfunctory that it crossed Elene’s mind to wonder if the disturbing possibility Françoise Tusard had handed her was not a form of revenge. Elene had embarrassed the woman, and she had struck at Elene where she was most vulnerable in retaliation.
Surely she could not be so petty? Elene’s gaffe had been purest accident, after all. Oh, but human beings were capable of being very petty indeed when it came to matters of pride.
They could also be stubborn. Elene did not get up and leave at once as she most fervently desired. In order to prove that she was not in the least disturbed, she sat talking for a good half hour longer. She stayed, in fact, until it became a near social solecism that she had not been offered refreshment, a lack all too obviously caused by the want of a servant to prepare and bring it. Only when Madame Tusard in desperation offered to pour her a glass of orange flower water and cut her a slice of cake with her own hands did Elene, with all graciousness, decline and depart.
That small victory did nothing for her spirits. Her footsteps dragged as she made her way back to Ryan’s house. She went over and over the evening when Mazent and Ryan had been closeted together, but could come to no conclusion. That had been the night she had come down with fever, and nothing about it was clear.
She could ask Ryan, of course. She might have, if there wa
s not so much distance between them. But what was the point? At the time of the discussion, supposing it had taken place, she had been wearing her perfume, and it was impossible that he could have agreed then to a marriage. Soon after, Mazent had died. If the option had still been open, which she doubted, Ryan would have mentioned it had he decided to take it.
Or would he?
Ryan and Flora.
No, it could not be. There had been nothing whatever to indicate such a thing. Nothing, except, perhaps, that he felt sorry for the girl, except that he had a liking for easily obtained riches, and Flora was apparently quite an heiress.
Surely Flora would not have importuned Elene for perfume to entice the very man with whom she was living. That would take effrontery beyond imagining, or else a colossal ego, so that no one’s feelings and needs mattered except her own.
No. It just was not possible. It was not.
In late September, there came a gale. The sky grew yellow and roiling. The wind high among the clouds sent them chasing along. The trees thrashed and groaned. The seabirds appeared from the marshlands to the south, but did not tarry on their way inland. The river rose and also the lake. The wind veered to come from the north, chasing away the heavy heat that had smothered them all summer, turning the day unnaturally cool. Slowly the sky grew dark, and darker still.
The rain began as a fine mist that tasted of salt. With every hour, it grew harder, drumming on the roofs, pelting from the eaves, gathering in the streets until they were full from banquette to banquette. Still it fell.
The wind rose, whipping the sheets of water, snapping them into curling spray like wash on a line. Shutters rattled under the impact, and roofing shingles and tiles were torn free and sent tumbling to the ground yards away. Bits of bark and leaves filled the air. Tree limbs smashed into the sides of houses or fell with thundering crashes into courtyards. The rain grew harder, falling as heavy and thick as warm lead from a sky the color of steel.
In the height of the storm’s fury, Elene lay in Ryan’s arms, replete with loving that had somehow partaken of the wild and elemental nature of the gale. She listened to the rain and to the heartbeat under her cheek, and felt safe, content. Ryan stroked her hair and the curves of her shoulders, cupped her breasts to taste them one after the other, and clasped her hips in his hands to draw her against his reviving male hardness. Secure in the return of his desire and her own, awash with sated and insatiable love, she was aghast that she had ever doubted him.
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