Dancers whirled around the floor clad in silk and velvet and lace, and with their eyes gleaming with pleasure through the slits of the masks covering their faces. Here a girl garbed as Medieval Lady with pointed, veil-draped headpiece was partnered by a Bedouin in flowing robes. There a Monk with a cross swinging about his knees was paired with a lady in the guise of a Vestal Virgin. Promenading on the arm of one of Iberville’s Dragoons was a lady with a powdered coiffure and a red ribbon about her neck denoting an aristocrat of the French Revolution. Cloth of gold shimmered. Feathers floated and drifted from headdresses. Stones of paste vied in sparkle with the restrained glint of real jewels. The air smelled of perfume, with also a faint hint of camphor in which many of the costumes had been packed away until this Mardi Gras season. There was the subdued roar of merriment and conversation in voices lifted to carry above the music. Over the gathering hung a faint air of daring, a sense of risqué pleasure, as discreet flirtations were conducted behind the anonymity of concealing disguises.
Anya Hamilton, watching the crowd from where she stood against one of the great columns that supported the dress circle boxes, smothered a yawn. She allowed her dark lashes with their auburn tips to close. The smoke and the smell of partially burned gas from the lights were giving her a headache, or perhaps it was the tightness of the tie of her ecru satin demi-mask. The music was too loud, though the hollow shuffle of feet on the temporary wood floor, combined with the chattering of voices, nearly drowned it out. It was still early in the evening, but there had been too many late nights for Anya in the past weeks. This was her fifth bal masqué since coming to New Orleans shortly after Christmas, and she did not care if it was her last, though she well knew there were nearly two weeks more of them to go before the blessed respite of Ash Wednesday.
Mardi Gras had once been a pagan festival celebrating fertility and the rites of spring. Named in those early days the Lupercalia for the cave where had been held the celebrations surrounding the worship of the god Pan, deity of the land of lovers called Arcadia, it had evolved into an excuse for debauchery and licentious conduct during the time of the Romans. The early Christian fathers had tried to stamp it out but, failing abysmally, had incorporated it into the rituals of the Resurrection. Mardi Gras then was decreed to be the last day of feasting before the arrival of Ash Wednesday, which heralded the forty days of Lenten fasting preceding Easter. The priests had called their festival in Latin carnelevare, a word that could be loosely translated to mean “farewell to the flesh.”
It was the French who had named it Mardi Gras, literally Fat Tuesday, for their practice of parading a boeuf gras, or “enormous bull,” through the streets as a symbol of the day. It was also the French, under Louis XV, who had popularized the weeks of opulent festivities in advance of the final holiday, and the tradition of the bal masqué.
Anya had a grudge against the Gallic race for the last. It wasn’t that she disliked the masked balls, not at all. She always enjoyed the first one or two of the winter season, the saison des visites as it was known in New Orleans. But she saw no reason why Madame Rosa and Celestine had to go to every such affair to which they received an invitation. It must have been her Anglo-Saxon heritage that deplored such prolonged merriment; to her it was expensive, it was boring, but most of all, it was exhausting.
“Anya, wake up! People are staring!”
Anya lifted her lashes with irony behind the warmth in her eyes that were the ink blue of northern seas, turned her head to look at her half-sister Celestine. “I thought they had already been staring all night at my ankles, at least according to you.”
“So they have been and still are! How you can stand there with every man that passes ogling your lower limbs, I don’t understand.”
Anya flicked a glance over the other girl, dressed as a deliciously voluptuous shepherdess with a great deal of her softly rounded bosom showing, then looked down at her form that was completely covered except for her bare ankles that were a scant two inches below the hem of the doeskin costume that turned her into an Indian Princess. She picked up one of her thick braids that had the rich golden russet brown hue and patina of polished rosewood. Flipping the end in a derisive gesture, she said, “Scandalous, isn’t it?”
“It is indeed. I wonder Maman allows it.”
“I am masked.”
Celestine gave a ladylike sniff. “A demi-mask, scant disguise or protection.”
“An Indian woman with her skirt down to the floor would be ridiculous, and well you know it. Since I had to wear a costume, I prefer it to be authentic. As for Madame Rosa, she is much too good-natured to try to constrain me.”
“What you mean is you haven’t the least regard for her wishes, or for those of anyone else!”
Anya smiled at her half-sister, her manner coaxing. “Dear Celestine, I’m here, aren’t I? Don’t be cross, it will give you wrinkles.”
Instantly the younger girl’s frown smoothed. She went on, however. “I’m only concerned for what the old ladies will say about you.”
“It’s sweet of you, chère,” Anya said, giving the other girl the endearment heard a thousand times a day among the Creoles, “but I fear it’s too late. They have been exercising the ends of their tongues on me for so long, it would be a pity to deprive them of the diversion.”
Celestine looked at her elder half-sister, at the smooth oval of her face, the sparkle of her eyes through her mask, her straight nose, and the warmth of the smile that curved her perfectly molded mouth. With worry in her brown eyes, she looked away, glancing around the room. “So far they only call you eccentric. So far.” Abruptly she stiffened. “There, that man. You see how he stares? That’s what I mean!”
Anya turned her head to follow the direction of her half-sister’s narrow gaze. The man Celestine spoke of stood on the first balcony tier across the room, with one hand braced on a Corinthian column and the other on his hip. He was tall and broad, an impression heightened by his costume of black and silver representing the Black Knight, complete with floor-length cloak and visored helmet covering his head and shoulders. He was a powerful figure and a romantic one in a rather dangerous way. So complete was his disguise that there was no hint of his identity; still, the glinting silver crossbars of his helmet were turned in her direction.
It was unnerving, that steady, faceless appraisal, almost as if it held a threat. Anya felt a ripple of unease that was allied to an odd awareness of herself as a woman. Her pulse quickened and she felt a singing tension along her nerves. It grew until, with a swift indrawn breath, she tore her gaze away. “Is he staring? I can’t tell,” she said mendaciously.
“He has been watching you for the past half hour.”
“Smitten, no doubt, by my dainty ankles?” Anya thrust out her foot, displaying an ankle that, though slender and well turned, had too much strength to give the proper appearance of fragility. “Oh, come, Celestine, you are imagining things. Or else, you like the looks of the knight, since you must have been watching him while he was watching me. Shocking! I should tell Murray.”
“Don’t you dare!”
“You know I wouldn’t, though the timing is perfect. Here he is.”
Beyond Celestine, Anya had caught sight of a fresh-faced young man. He was dressed as Cyrano de Bergerac, but had removed his long-nosed mask and left it dangling around his neck. Of medium height, he had thick and curly light brown hair, ingenuous hazel eyes, and a smile that creased his tanned cheeks into dimples of consummate charm. At the moment, he was making his way along the edge of the dance floor carrying, somewhat precariously, two cups of lemonade.
“Sorry to be so long,” he said as he relinquished his burdens, one to each lady. “There was a crush you wouldn’t believe around the lemonade bowl. It’s this heat. I can tell you we never had anything like it in February in Illinois.”
Anya tasted her lemonade. She refused to look toward the balcony where the Black Knight had stood, fastening her attention instead on the couple beside her.
Murray Nicholls was Celestine’s fiancé. Their courtship had not been a long one, but the betrothal period had been protracted. For once Madame Rosa had risen above her natural indolence to put her foot down. She did not believe in marriage between strangers. Love was an emotion that took time to be recognized and firmly established. It was not a storm of feeling that came like the one of the hurricanes of autumn, leveling everything in its path. They must be patient.
Patient they had certainly been. It was over eight months since Celestine had received her betrothal bracelet, and still there was no talk of a wedding date, though the trousseau, with its dozens of everything from sheets to nightgowns, was almost ready.
To Anya’s eyes, the young pair were well suited. Celestine, like her mother, was dark haired and dark eyed, with a smooth white complexion improved at the moment with white pearl powder, a rounded form and face, and a gentle expression — when she was not concerned for Anya’s good name. She was sweet and sentimental, and required in a husband a man who was soft-spoken and kind, one with a sense of humor to tease her out of her occasional crotchets and gloomy moods. Murray Nicholls appeared to have the proper qualifications, in addition to being the possessor of a good degree of intelligence and reasonable prospects as a clerk in a law office where he was preparing for his own entry into the profession. It was difficult to understand why Madame Rosa was so insistent on delay.
Anya recognized with wry self-knowledge that her own approval stemmed from the fact that Murray reminded her of Jean François Girod. Jean, her own fiancé until his death, had been just that open and fresh of countenance, just that charming and sunny of manner, and he would have been about the same age Murray was now, in his late twenties. Jean might have been a tiny bit slimmer, a bit shorter; he had been scarcely an inch taller than she was herself, though she could not be called petite as she towered nearly three good inches above Celestine, who was of average height. The eyes of the two men were different also; Jean’s had been a deep, velvety brown. Still, the hair was the same, as well as the quick manner and the suppressed air of high spirits.
It has been those same high spirits that had killed Jean. His death had been so senseless; that was the one thing that Anya could not forgive. It had been in a duel, but not some grandiose meeting for the sake of honor. Instead, he had died because of a maudlin and drunken jest.
Jean and five of his friends had been returning from a card game out near Lake Pontchartrain late one night. They had spent long hours sitting around a gaming table in a smoke-filled room, wagering with bored abandon, drinking deep. It had been a night with a full moon and, as they passed by the field with the pair of live oak trees known as the dueling oaks, the moonlight had made such dancing patterns of light and shadow across the grass under the trees that they were entranced. Someone suggested that they match swords, since the stage was so beautifully set for a duel. They piled out of their carriage and drew their weapons in reckless gaity. When the fight was over, two of their number lay dead with their blood staining the grass. One of them had been Jean.
The waltz that was playing came to an end and a contredanse began. Celestine drank the last of her lemonade and glanced at Murray, one slippered toe tapping the floor. Anya reached out to lift the girls’ cup from her hand. “I’ll take care of that; you two enjoy yourselves.”
“Will you be all right?” Murray asked.
“I’ll probably go and doze with Madame Rosa and the rest of the chaperones.”
“Such a waste,” he said with a flashing grin.
“You’re too kind,” she mocked gently. “Go along with you.”
A waiter in uniform appeared with a tray to take the cups. Anya smiled her thanks and he moved silently away again. Still she stood where she was, watching her half-sister and Murray Nicholls dancing among the other gaudily costumed couples. At twenty-five, she was only seven years older than Celestine, but sometimes she felt immeasurably more ancient. Sometimes she even felt older than Madame Rosa.
She glanced over her shoulder toward where her stepmother sat in her box that, with the raised floor, was nearly on a level with the dancers. Attending the older woman was her faithful cavalier servente Gaspard Freret. A dapper little man as thin as his chosen lady was stout; a writer of theater and opera reviews and fountainhead of the latest on-dits, Gaspard had been looked upon with tolerant amusement by Anya and Celestine for the past several years.
Anya had come to think, however, that he was something more than a nonentity. For one thing, he was a master swordsman and excellent shot, necessary skills for a gentleman in a city where the duello was an institution and a man might receive a challenge at any moment. For another, he seemed to have considerable standing among the city officials and business institutions, and had given Anya excellent counsel on a number of occasions concerning investments. Lately Anya had also begun to suspect that it was on Gaspard’s advice and with his support that Madame Rosa had decreed the delay in the nuptials between her daughter and Murray.
The older pair were dressed as Anthony and Cleopatra, though Madame Rosa as the Egyptian Queen wore the deep black of mourning, doubtless, Anya thought with wry humor, for the death of Caesar. Madame Rosa had not left off her black for as long as Anya could remember, not since the deaths of her twin sons, Anya’s half-brothers, in infancy, certainly not since Anya’s father had died seven years before.
Madame Rosa had been her father’s second wife. Nathan Hamilton’s first, Anya’s mother, had been a planter’s daughter from Virginia. He had met her while traveling from his home in Boston into the South, searching for land on which to establish himself as a businessman-planter. He had found Virginia a closed enclave of proud families living on depleted acreage, but he discovered there the woman he wanted to marry. After the wedding, he tried to make a go of managing a section of land given to the couple by the bride’s father. It had not been profitable. After several years of effort, he finally, against the wishes of his in-laws, sold out and moved on to New Orleans with his wife and five-year-old daughter.
The land along the Mississippi River and its tributaries was rich due to frequent flooding that left the topsoil of the nation’s heartland behind it, but the choicest plots had long ago been taken. While on a tour of the countryside by steamboat, however, Nathan chanced to sit in on a poker game. When he rose from the table, he was the owner of six hundred acres of prime delta land less than three hours’ traveling time from New Orleans, along with 173 slaves and a house named Beau Refuge. His pleasure was short-lived. By the time he took possession of his land, his wife was ill with a fever, and died soon afterward.
Being a practical man and a sensual one, Anya’s father had, when his period of mourning was over, looked about him for a woman who would make a home for him and be a mother to his young daughter. He settled on Marie-Rose Hautrive, whom he called Rosa, a young woman past the freshness of first youth at twenty-two and still unmarried. He courted her in the teeth of the opposition of her family: he had wealth, but to the French Creoles la famille was all-important, and what could one know of the family of a blue-eyed Américain from so barbarous a place as Boston?
Plump and placid, too placid to attract suitors less determined, Madame Rosa had been a perfect stepmother. She gave Anya love and warmth and wrapped her in the luxurious comfort of her massive bosom and the home she made for Anya and her father. She sometimes complained gently of Anya’s conduct as she was growing up, but never scolded, and certainly never attempted to discipline her. Her tactics stemmed from indolence in part, but also from an innate shrewdness. Anya’s loss of her mother and doting grandparents at the same time that she was uprooted from her familiar home in Virginia had left her prey to violent nightmares. The indulgence she received because of them, combined with being treated like a small princess by the slaves who had come with the plantation her father had won, had make her willful and wild. Madame Rosa soothed her fears and gave her security. She did her best to make her a biddable young lady, and had suc
ceeded well enough until the deaths of the two men closest to Anya, those of Jean and of her father.
Nathan Hamilton died of injuries after a fall from a horse just two months after the death of Anya’s fiancé. The double tragedy propelled Anya into a fierce rebellion. She was only eighteen, and it seemed that her life was over. If living and loving could come to an end so soon and for so slight a reason, then it would be as well to use the hours allowed precisely as one pleased. If such terrible things could happen to people who followed all the stifling rules dictated by the church and society, while men like Ravel Duralde, who had killed her Jean, went blithely on their way flouting every canon of decency, then what good was conforming? She would do so no longer.
And so she had discarded her petticoats and sidesaddle to ride astride over her father’s plantation in a long, divided skirt of soft leather worn with a man’s shirt and broad-brimmed hat. She read books and periodicals on farming methods and, when she found her father’s overseer unwilling to listen to her ideas for improvements, fired him and took on the job of running the plantation herself. Sometimes she argued with the men who were her neighbors about the theories of breeding horses and swine, a subject a lady should know nothing of, much less speak about in mixed company. She learned to swim with the slave children, braving the treacherous currents of the river, and could not understand why drowning was thought preferable for a female to engaging in such an activity. She tended the ills of the plantation slaves, male as well as female, helping the elderly woman who served as nurse to set limbs and sew up cuts, as well as deliver babies and aid the women who had attempted to rid themselves of unwanted children. And she listened to the hair-raising tales of the shifts of love and desire, hate and assault that took place in the slave quarters after dark. The female slaves taught her a number of interesting facts, in addition to several tricks of self-preservation.
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