The Creole Princess

by Beth White

  “Yes, he’ll be in his office in the administration building. He told me to have supper ready by seven, as he’s bringing a couple of junior officers with him.” Daisy gave a ladylike snort. “He keeps hoping to take my interest away from Simon.”

  “A French Creole fisherman will never be good enough for you, Daisy. Especially one who is the grandson of a slave.” Lyse said it without self-pity. It went without saying that many of the British military and civilian population of Mobile disapproved of the deep friendship between the two young women. The budding romance between Major Redmond’s daughter and Simon Lanier had developed into quite a scandal.

  “But the other side of your family is one of the oldest in the city. And Simon is my best friend’s brother.” Daisy hooked her arm through Lyse’s and marched her toward the gate. “Papa will just have to get used to the idea that I’m not going to marry a soldier, no matter how many redcoats he makes me cook for.”

  “At least you can cook! I sometimes wonder if part of Simon’s interest isn’t prompted by the prospect of escaping Justine’s fish stew!”

  “Now, Lyse . . .” Daisy gave her a reproachful look. “Poor Justine—”

  “Poor Justine knew what she was getting when she married my papa.” Lyse bit her lip against further criticism. Her young stepmother was a beautiful paper-skull, but she did not deserve the hardships that accompanied life with a charming drunk, two willful adult stepchildren, and three—almost four—children under the age of five.

  As usual, Daisy followed her thoughts. “How much longer, do you think, before . . .”

  “Before the new baby comes?” Daisy’s manners might be too delicate to directly refer to the subject of childbirth, but Lyse had no such qualms. She had helped to deliver her youngest siblings, Geneviève and Denis, and had vivid memories of Luc-Antoine’s squalling arrival into the world.

  Daisy’s cheeks pinkened. “Papa said I might send a pork pie or something else nourishing when the time comes.”

  “I’m sure a pork pie will cheer her right up,” Lyse said with a twinkle. “It shouldn’t be much longer. Lord knows she’s big as a whale. She quite shakes the house when she walks from the kitchen to the back porch.”

  “Lyse!” Daisy burst into a fit of giggles. “That’s very—unkind!”

  “But true.” Lyse mimicked Justine’s waddling gait, one hand at her back for balance, then suddenly twirled on her toes, arms gracefully aloft. “Oh, Daisy! Your pork pie makes me want to dance! How can I ever thank you!”

  Arms about each other’s waists, shaking with laughter, the girls saluted the guard who opened the gate for them and passed into Fort Charlotte—formerly known, under the long French regime, as Fort Condé. The British had rebuilt the crumbling fort and renamed it for their queen eight years ago, but its timbers were already rotting again under the onslaught of hot, moist summers and continuous infestation of bugs. Lyse fully expected the stockade to topple under the next hard rain.

  She would never have dreamed of entering the fort alone, but Daisy had free rein. The two of them often had occasion to run errands which took them to Major Redmond’s office. As they walked toward the headquarters building, situated on the far side of the drill green, Lyse looked for familiar faces. During the past year, a few boys with whom she’d grown up had declared loyalty to the British Crown and enlisted as soldiers.

  She recognized no one today, until a young officer hurried out of the gatehouse and caught up to them.

  “Miss Redmond!” he said breathlessly, falling into step. “Lyse—I mean Miss Lanier! May I escort you to—wherever you’re going?”

  Daisy halted long enough to give him an annoyed look. “Thank you, Niall, but we’re capable of finding our way across the green.”

  Removing his misshapen tricorn, the ensign executed an awkward bow and rose with clanking of sword and sweat dripping off his spotty brow. “I’m sure you are, but your papa told me not to let you—that is, he asked me to look out for you, if you should come this way—”

  “For heaven’s sake, Niall,” Lyse interrupted. “Where is Major Redmond?”

  Niall plopped his hat back onto his rusty curls. “He’s with Colonel Durnford—but you can’t go in there!” He scampered after the girls, who had looked at each other and resumed their walk. “Hey! I said—”

  “I heard you,” Daisy said over her shoulder. She quickly mounted the steps onto the gallery and pushed open the heavy oaken door of the admin office, Lyse and Niall right behind her. Daisy paused at the desk of her father’s subaltern. “Corporal Tully, I would speak with my father.”

  Tully looked up from some task he’d been concentrating on. He sighed. “Miss Daisy, you know you can’t come barging in here without a by-your-leave. Major’ll have my head.” He gave an uneasy look at the closed office door. “He’s got Colonel Durnford with him.”

  Daisy opened her mouth to argue, but Lyse blurted, “We heard. Why?” In her experience, the arrival of the lieutenant governor of West Florida generally preceded some unpleasantness.

  “That would be nothing I could discuss with little girls—even supposing I knew.” Tully scratched his head, disarranging the thinning sandy hair. “They’ve been in there close on two hours and not a peep out of ’em.” He frowned. “So best you two go home and play with your dolls.”

  Daisy’s gentle expression frosted. “Corporal Tully, you overstep—”

  The office door opened, and Daisy’s father stuck his head out, along with a virulent cloud of cigar smoke. “Daisy? I thought that was your voice. Are you all right?”

  “Yes, Papa. But Lyse brings you a message.” Daisy took Lyse by the elbow and tugged her closer. “Tell him, Lyse.”

  Lyse hesitated. She and Daisy had been friends since the day they’d met as small children, but the handsome, bewhiskered major still gave her the shakes.

  And the impatient dip between his thick brows didn’t help. “What is it, girl? I’m in rather an important meeting.”

  Lyse studied the two uniformed men inside the office—a youngish one puffing on a big Havana Special cigar, and the other, a grayer version of Redmond, nursing a snifter of French cognac. She gathered her courage. “Sir, I apologize for the interruption. But I bear a message from a young man I met this morning on the waterfront—Don Rafael Maria Gonzales de Rippardá, merchant of New Orleans.” Reeling off the young Spaniard’s litany of names, she quelled the urge to roll her eyes. The busy major would never take her seriously.

  But Redmond opened the door wider. “Rippardá! In truth?” He grinned. “I’m surprised he didn’t come with you! Where is the young scalawag?”

  Lyse exchanged looks with Daisy. “He—he’s settling in at Burelle’s, sir. He told me to say he wants to entertain you for dinner tonight—or at your earliest convenience.” Well, she added that last bit herself, for courtesy’s sake.

  Major Redmond didn’t seem to notice. He turned to address the officer with the most gold braid on his uniform, the young one with the cigar. “Colonel Durnford, you’ll want to meet this young Spaniard. Protégé of Oliver Pollock—a wealthy Irish merchant with quite a bit of influence among the Spanish military.”

  “It’s the Spanish crown I’m most concerned about,” Durnford growled. “King Carlos tells the military where to go and provides the coin to get it there.” He stuffed the cigar between his teeth and spoke around it. “I’ve heard of Pollock. If you think this boy might connect that coin toward us and away from the rebels, it’s worth the time.”

  Redmond nodded and turned back to Lyse. “Can you find Rippardá and convey another message?”

  Lyse dipped a quick curtsey. “Of course, sir.”

  “Good girl. Tell him . . .” He turned the cigar in his fingers. “Thank him for his invitation, but say it would be more convenient if he would join my family in my home.” He nodded at Daisy. “Daughter, you’ll need to lay six more places at the table this evening. Rippardá, plus the Durnfords.”

  Daisy swallowed. The
Durnford clan included two little girls and a boy, all under the age of six. But she curtseyed obediently. “Yes, sir.” She gave her father a cozening look. “Could Lyse come too? I’ll need help with preparing all that extra food.”

  “Yes, yes, whatever you think, my dear.” He backed away, already disengaging from the conversation. “Run along, we’re very busy here.” He had already shut the door before Lyse and Daisy had time to curtsey again.

  They looked at each other, laughing, and Daisy put a hand over her mouth. “Only six more for dinner!”

  Lyse sobered. “I hope Justine can do without me tonight. She wasn’t feeling well this morning. What if the baby comes early?”

  Daisy shrugged. “You’ll have another little brother or sister, and I’ll manage.”

  “True.” Lyse smiled at Corporal Tully as she and Daisy left headquarters arm in arm. “How about this—you drop a message at the inn for Don Rafael, and I’ll go home and check on Justine, then come back to your house. What are you making for supper? Want me to bring some oysters?”

  “Good idea. They’ll fill out the gumbo. And you can make the cornbread—yours is so much better than mine.”

  “All right.” Lyse grinned. “I can’t wait for you to meet Don Rafael. His accent is so droll!”

  “And yours isn’t?” Daisy laughed and mimicked Lyse’s Creole patois. “Come, my little cabbage, let us dance the night away under the moonlight.”

  “Oh, you English, always so serious. Come on, cher, I’ll race you to the gate.” Lyse dropped her friend’s arm and took off running.

  The French girl was the one to keep in his sights, and not only because she was good to look upon. Behind those golden eyes lurked a dangerous intellect.

  As she ladled Miss Redmond’s excellent gumbo, thick with oysters and shrimp, aromatic and steaming, into his bowl, Rafa gave her his most inane Don Rafael grin. “Mademoiselle, you are kind to notice my great famishment. Will you not be seated, so that I could serve you as well?”

  Her gaze flicked to their host, who was entertaining Colonel Durnford at the far end of the eight-foot table. “Thank you, monsieur, but I am not . . . hungry.” The quirk at the corner of her generous pink mouth deepened.

  Puzzled, he watched her glide to serve one of the Durnford children, her movements unhurried, graceful, but efficient. What had she implied by that hesitation? That she was not welcome at the Redmonds’ table? But why? Clearly she and Miss Redmond were great friends. The dynamics here were very strange. But perhaps it was simple British snobbery at play.

  Do not be distracted, he reminded himself. His mission was not to flirt with a girl who walked like a dancer through places no lady should go. If he hadn’t happened along this morning when he did, she might have found herself dragged into an alley by that sailor.

  But what a surprise—and delight—to find her here, a quasi-guest in the Redmonds’ home.

  Lyse. Her name was Lyse. He deliberately removed his gaze from the curve of her waist, made even more alluring by the glossy black curls that clung to her apron sash. He turned to Daisy Redmond, seated at his left, and found her watching him with a twinkle in her large blue eyes.

  “Caray!” He thumped himself in the forehead. “I have turned my back upon my hostess, when she is so kind to take in a stranger and feed him the most excellent of creole dishes!”

  The twinkle became a dimpling smile. “Lyse taught me to make it, señor.”

  Do not look at the French girl, he told himself again, as he blew across the steaming fish stew and spooned it carefully into his mouth. She was like the spices melding upon his tongue, with her Gallic-accented English and dark gold eyes in that caramel-skinned face. Such Creole girls walked all about New Orleans, as common as flowers, so that one eventually became dulled to their exquisite beauty. But this one was different, and he wanted to know why.

  He swallowed, closing his eyes in ecstasy, then smiled at Miss Redmond. “You are a student to be commended. My nose thanks you. My belly thanks you. Indeed, I am your slave forever. Only tell me your lightest wish, and I shall cross a hundred seas to grant it.”

  She laughed. “Lyse was right. You are droll.”

  He contrived to look hurt. “Droll? My English is not of the best, but I think I would rather be intrepid or gallant—or even irresistible. Droll, Miss Redmond? Really, you wound me.”

  Her mouth pursed even as her blue eyes danced. “I beg your forgiveness, Don Rafael. How may I make it up to you?”

  Rafa placed a finger between his brows and crossed his eyes, as if the act of thinking were painful. “Hmm. Perhaps you might . . . Yes!” He beamed at her. “I will allow you to take me on a tour of the fort and the city on the morrow. Then we shall once more regard one another with mutual respect and admiration, sí?”

  This time she laughed outright. “I’m very sorry to turn down such a wonderful offer, but Thursday is my day to teach the children of the town their letters.”

  “Ah, that is very much too bad.” He gave the French girl a sidelong look, unable to resist teasing. “Then perhaps, if I solemnly promise to refrain from singing or playing my guitar, Señorita Lanier would agree to take your place.”

  Lyse was bending over the littlest Durnford child’s dish, picking the shell off an oyster. Hearing her name, she looked up and gave him her crinkle-nose grin. “Your restraint is admirable, sir. But it seems I have given you the impression that I dislike music—when nothing could be further from the truth.”

  Miss Redmond was looking from her friend to him and back again, clearly perplexed by the conversation’s subtext. “But do you have a guitar with you? You must entertain us this evening!”

  Rafa shrugged. “I was a cantor as a child, so, yes, I have been trained. But I didn’t mean—” He saw Lyse’s satisfaction. “I mean, of course I will sing. Allow me but to fetch my guitar from the antechamber.”

  Miss Redmond caught her father’s attention by clinking her spoon against her goblet. “Papa! When everyone has finished eating, let us adjourn to the salon, where Don Rafael will give us a bit of a concert, shall we? Timbo—” She turned to the elderly slave who had been quietly removing empty dishes and refilling wine glasses. “Will you set up the tea cart in the large salon?”

  “Yes, miss.” The man inclined his grizzled head and backed out of the dining room.

  As he dealt with his dinner and fielded Miss Daisy’s prattling, Rafa covertly watched Lyse Lanier as she took her place at the table, opposite Daisy. He couldn’t quite place her in the social strata. The French of New Orleans, he had noticed, tended to hold a rather inflated view of their importance, despite the fact that they were a conquered people in a Spanish colony. Here in British West Florida, less than two hundred miles away, he had expected the same. But Lyse gazed upon him, not with superiority, but rather as if she found him entertaining—a sort of egalitarian amusement which oddly heated his blood.

  He swallowed a sigh along with the last of his dinner ale. How he wished he could shed Don Rafael’s shallow persona, just long enough to prove to her that he was a man, and not a musical manikin.

  Ah well, he had neither time nor mental energy for serious courting, even had she been so inclined.

  Still. She was very good to look upon, in a wildflower sort of way. He mentally entertained himself by imagining her family. She lacked the polished femininity of Daisy Redmond, whose smooth golden hair, milky skin, and blue eyes proclaimed the aristocratic English lady; indeed, Lyse’s coppery complexion, wild black curls, and exotic mouth bespoke native or African descent, belied by the beautiful gold-shot eyes, which would be an anomaly amongst the dark browns and blacks of the African, mulatto, and mestizo slave culture.

  Parsing that culture was part of his assignment here. As they all adjourned to the salon, the two British officers, Major Redmond and Colonel Durnford, lagged behind the ladies. Daisy took her place behind the tea tray, settling in with a precocious matronliness that was as funny as it was charming. Her lady mother havin
g succumbed to yellow fever shortly after the family’s arrival in Mobile, Daisy had functioned since as mistress of the house.

  The fact that she served the town as schoolmistress only added to her general air of I am in charge, so do not cross me. Rafa kept expecting her to remind him to tuck in his shirttail and not to belch in public—which he wouldn’t have done in any case, as his own dear mama had drilled him endlessly on the etiqueta of a gentleman while he was still in short coats.

  He was pleased to discover that the men and women did not separate in the parlor, as was customary in many places he had visited. Even the children gathered to play Spillikins in a quiet knot at their mother’s feet, while the adults conversed over their heads.

  Rafa sat listening for a moment, taking in his surroundings with the eye to detail his father had taught him long ago. The Redmonds’ home was built in the French fashion, a square two-story construction elevated on stilts above the muddy ground, with a broad front porch facing Conception Street. Inside, it was two rooms across, with a breezeway between—one room for family living space, the other for dining. At the other end of the breezeway, he presumed, one would find the kitchen and another service room, with bedrooms upstairs. Judging by the softening wood and wattle of the walls, the house was about four years old, comfortable without being overly fine.

  Rafa shifted in the sturdy, ugly armchair to which he had been assigned; it was short of back, high of arm, hard and uncomfortable as only a stiff-rumped Englishman could conceive. He thought wistfully of his mama’s elegantly appointed parlor in New Orleans, with its rich jewel-toned rugs and curtains, plush upholstery, and tasteful artwork. She had taught him to appreciate fine architecture, good books, and the French love of cuisine, to complement his father’s head for commonsense military and business practices.