The Creole Princess

by Beth White

  “Yes—when she was Mademoiselle Isabelle Hayot, and Papa was very young and ignorant. The match was arranged by their parents. You must know that my family has not always been so down on the luck.” She gave him a quick sideways glance, as though daring him to contradict her. “The Laniers came from Canada to Louisiana with Iberville and Bienville, before even the Hayots. Their family is in the transport business as well.”

  “But—”

  “Be patient, m’sieur, and I will explain. There are two branches of the Lanier family—one being descendants of Tristan Lanier, who settled his family at Mobile Point, near the mouth of the bay; the other, those of his younger brother Marc-Antoine, a soldier of the French Marine. The two lines came together when Marc-Antoine’s son Charles—Chaz, as he is sometimes called—married Tristan’s adopted daughter Madeleine. My grandpére Chaz founded the shipping business and had two sons, my papa being the younger. He was, perhaps, more handsome and impulsive than wise, as things turned out . . .”

  Rafa waited while she gathered her thoughts, her expression far away in a distant past. A deep love of story and a natural curiosity fueled his sense that there was more to this lovely young woman than met the eye.

  After a moment, she blinked and went on. “As I said, the Hayot and Lanier family businesses were about to be joined by the marriage of Isabelle to Antoine. As a wedding gift, Grandpére Chaz sent my papa to New Orleans with money to buy a ship. But as you know, the slave market is located near the waterfront.” She paused, as if this non sequitur might explain everything.

  He made a noncommittal sound. “Yes. I have seen it.”

  “Well, Antoine stopped to observe the proceedings, as he had not seen it before. As it happened, there was a beautiful young woman for sale that day, a mulatto with café-au-lait skin and lips like ripe berries.”

  He glanced at Lyse’s lush mouth. “So he bought her instead of the ship.”

  “Yes.” She made a face. “But my papa was not content to bring home the beautiful slave instead of a ship. He must set her free and have the priest say words over them, so that she is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh!”

  “He married a slave? Your mother was a slave?” He should have made the connection before, and not just in the honeyed pigment of her skin, the springing curl of her hair. Not that her manners were coarse, for they were not—but there was something of-the-earth, something as fresh and natural as seawater, in her expression. And he knew with sudden clarity that, when the time came, Lyse would deeply feel and understand the ideal of freedom.

  She shook her head. “She was a freewoman when I was born. But she and Papa didn’t have an easy time of it. Grandpére Chaz wouldn’t disown his son, but he was enraged that he lost the money for the ship and refused to give him more. The Hayots, of course, were insulted beyond redemption, and there has been bad blood between the families ever since.”

  “Ah. And thus the shrilling of the Harpy.”

  She sighed. “Yes.”

  “But what has this to do with the girl named Scarlet?”

  She stopped walking, turned to face him. “Look at me, m’sieur. Can you not see it? Our mothers were sisters.”

  He did as she invited, for a long moment. He saw the rarity of a soul who dared take on someone else’s battles, housed in a woman unaware of her own translucent beauty. Dangerous words trembled on his tongue. To keep them from spilling, he looked away. Finally, he managed lightly, “I see that you feel guilty for something that is not your fault.”

  “But that’s just it! How could I be so wretchedly cruel as to come here with you—dressed this way, to flaunt my freedom in front of Scarlet—” Her voice wobbled. “Whose fault is that but my own?”

  “Señorita—Lyse, listen to me.” He leaned close and spoke quietly, urgently. “You will not help your cousin by raising these sorts of questions in such company as this.”

  “Then where am I to raise them? In church?” She laughed. “The people in this room are all good Catholics who attend mass regularly. And if they don’t own slaves, it’s only because they can’t afford them.”

  “I agree that there is much injustice all around, and I understand and admire your compassion and love for Scarlet. But we are all buffeted by circumstances that can either shape us into people of strength and character—or make us bitter and vindictive.”

  The thick, heavy lashes slowly lifted until she met his eyes. “You would have liked my grandmére Madeleine. She said something like that to me once.”

  “She sounds like a woman of great good sense.” He smiled. “And remember, little cousin, things are not always what they seem.” Praying he had not just unwrapped a carefully laid cover, he took her gloved hand and pulled her toward the center of the room, where a cotillion was beginning to form. “Now let us dance away these sober cobwebs before Cinderella must return to her stepmother’s clutches.”

  Through the black lace oak trees lining Conception Street, Lyse caught glimpses of the moon, a bright white crescent in a star-spangled sky, as Rafa drew the horse up in front of the Redmonds’ cottage. She should have been exhausted after such an emotionally and physically taxing day. Yet the nerves pinged along her skin, and she found herself reluctant to bid her escort good night.

  She waited while he jumped out and wrapped the reins around the hitching post at the end of the carriageway, then she leaned forward so he could take her hand and help her to the ground. Instead he reached up, grasped her waist, and swung her down directly in front of him. Caught by surprise, she stood in the shadowy yard, looking up at him.

  “You’re sure Miss Daisy knew you were coming back here?” His voice was quiet, deep, lending an air of conspiracy to the fact that they were alone in the darkness.

  “Yes.” She should have stepped back, should have run for the side door of the house. But as she’d told him, she wasn’t a proper society maiden. And she wasn’t ready for him to leave.

  But he seemed to be aware of the proprieties. “Good, then I’ll walk you to the door.” He tucked her hand through his elbow. “Are you glad you came?”

  What a question! Her first time to attend a party in the wealthy part of the city. Her first time to dress like a young lady. Her first dance with a gentleman who wasn’t a relative. Those three things might never happen again, but like Cinderella she’d be able to tell stories to her children about it all. She stopped, hugging Rafa’s arm.

  He looked down at her in surprise. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, I—” She cleared her throat, suddenly embarrassed. “I just wanted to say thank you. For—for making me go, for making me feel like a princess just for one night.” Before she lost her nerve, she stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “No one has ever treated me this way before.”

  She was about to run, but he caught her hand and stepped in front of her. “Wait. I think there is a misunderstanding.”

  “What do you mean?” A huge magnolia tree blocked the moonlight and shadowed his face. She wasn’t exactly afraid, but there was an odd timbre to his voice, something that lit more little pinpricks of excitement under her rib cage.

  “You think I feel sorry for you?”

  “Well, of course you do,” she said stoutly. “You are a very wealthy man, a very kind man, and I—”

  “I am not kind. And I don’t feel sorry for you.” He stepped closer, as he had when the minuet brought them palm to palm, only this time the force of his personality seemed to wrap all the way around her, softening all night sounds, absorbing and focusing all light so that she could look nowhere except his eyes. “Eres bella, mi corazón.”

  The words might have been breathed on the wind, except she felt them against her lips just before . . . oh! Nothing, nothing in the poverty of her hardscrabble young life, had prepared her for the lush, full-blown kiss of a true courtier. He kissed and kissed her, then after a moment cupped her face with one big hand, pressing the pad of his thumb beneath her lower lip, breaking the kiss only to slant his head
the other way and start again. This soldado of amor held her prisoner with nothing but sweet words and honeyed mouth, and if she didn’t get away from him now, this very minute, she was going to break every promise she had ever made to her dear departed Grandmére, and there would be no going back to the before.

  She jerked her mouth away with a little squeal, shoving against his chest.

  He instantly let her go, stood there breathing hard, as if he’d just run a long distance.

  There was a long, humming silence, during which they stared at one another like combatants in a war.

  “Lyse!” he finally burst out. “I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t.” She put both hands to her cheeks. She felt feverish as with some illness. “I brought it on myself. I—I threw myself at you, like a—but I only meant friendship, though it mustn’t go any further because my brother would kill you and then I would have to—”

  “Lyse! Stop it!” Now he was laughing at her, reaching out one of those beautiful seductive hands for hers.

  Humiliated, she took another step back. “Yes, I’ll stop it. So, good night, Don Rafael.” She bobbed a curtsey. “I thank you for the treat of the party, and I wish you safe travels, for I won’t be seeing you again. I have to go home in the morning, and please give my kind regards to your maman and your sister—”

  “I said stop it!” This time he reached her in one long stride, seized her face in both hands, and branded her with one more brief, searing kiss. He laid his forehead against hers and muttered, “The only way to shut you up.”

  She closed her eyes and stood in his embrace, defeated. “I don’t know what you want,” she whispered.

  “I don’t want anything, you crazy infant. I’m only astonished you haven’t pulled your knife on me. Except . . . perhaps you like me a little?”

  “I like you more than a little,” she admitted. “I think that is the problem. But even a barefoot Creole like me knows a lady doesn’t kiss a man who is not her husband upon the lips.”

  He sighed. “Well . . . perhaps it was a little outside the pale, but let us blame it on the moonlight and the scent of honeysuckle and begin again. Sí?”

  She peeped up at him but saw only apparent sincerity along with gentle humor in his face. “All right.”

  He looked relieved. “Bueno. You are perfectly safe with me, I promise. We are friends again, si?”

  “Yes. But I really have to go inside. Daisy will be worried.”

  “I have a few more days in Mobile before I must return to New Orleans. Will you take me fishing before I go?”

  “You like to fish?” Somehow she found that surprising.

  “I adore fishing almost as much as dancing, though not as much as kissing.”

  She laughed. “Perhaps I might teach you a thing or two.”

  He gave her that charming, raffish grin and kissed her hand. “You may teach me anything you wish, my princess. Now run away to your friend before I forget I am a gentleman who always keeps his promises.”

  She ran, but couldn’t resist one more look over her shoulder as she reached the door. He had climbed into the carriage and sat looking at her in the moonlight. When he lifted a hand, she hurried inside.

  She stood with her back against the kitchen door, one hand pressed to her lips. Dear Lord in heaven, what had just happened?

  “Lyse? Is that you?”

  The scared whisper startled Lyse away from the door. A single candle flared, illuminating Daisy’s yawning face and nightgowned figure halfway down the back stairs.

  “It’s me,” Lyse said. “I’m sorry to wake you. I was just coming up.”

  “What time is it?”

  “I’m not sure. Midnight maybe?”

  “I should have come with you.” Daisy peered at her as if expecting some injury. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right.” Lyse touched her hair, hoping there was no overt evidence of Rafael’s embrace. “It was a lovely party.”

  Daisy looked doubtful for a moment, then suddenly smiled. “I’m glad. You deserve to have a good time now and then.” She held out the hand that wasn’t holding the candle. “Come up to my room and tell me about it.”

  Lyse took her hand and followed her friend up the stairs, carefully holding the skirt up so she wouldn’t tread on it. “Is your papa asleep?” she whispered. Daisy’s father’s room was on the other side of the large house, but she didn’t want to disturb him.

  “I think so. He was working late, writing a letter to Colonel Durnford and Governor Chester. He’s worried about what the French will do now that they’ve joined the rebels. It’s getting harder to get supplies into the ports.”

  “I know. There was talk about that at the party.” She didn’t mention Monsieur Dussouy’s fear of the Spanish joining the war. There was no need to frighten Daisy with rumors.

  They reached the landing and turned right, where the door of Daisy’s bedroom stood open. They went in, and Daisy shut the door behind them. She set the candle on the bedside table and turned Lyse around to help her undress. “I’m amazed you stayed dressed up for so long,” she said, unhooking the heavy capelike train while Lyse worked on unfastening the bodice front. “I remember the first time I wore this dress, I had a headache nearly the whole time!”

  Lyse peeled out of the bodice and let it fall, then untied the tapes of the skirt and petticoat. With a little shimmy, she let both drop to the rug and stepped out of the pile of fabric. “I’m glad you made me practice moving around your room and walking up and down the stairs, or I never would have managed!” Laughing softly, she removed the padded bum roll from around her hips and tossed it in a corner. “Some man must have invented that contraption!”

  “No doubt.” Giggling, Daisy steered Lyse to the stool at her vanity table. “Here, sit down. I’ll take your hair down while you come out of the corset.” With a quick yank, she untied the bow of the corset tapes at Lyse’s back waist.

  “Oof!” Lyse let out a relieved breath, then sucked in another one to the bottom of her lungs. “Oh my, that feels good!” She closed her eyes and relaxed while Daisy began to pluck out hairpins and toss them onto the vanity. “I don’t know how you dress this way nearly every day.”

  “You get used to it.” Daisy fished the toque from the thick mass of Lyse’s hair and dropped it into her lap. “But I don’t dress up this much all the time. The children don’t expect the latest fashion.”

  “Neither do the dock workers. And I know my brother would love you if you wore a sack and pigtails.”

  Daisy smiled, and both girls fell silent. It occurred to Lyse that the Harpy, as Rafa had dubbed Madame Dussouy, would be scandalized to see the commander’s daughter thus serving the offspring of a former slave. If Daisy’s mother had lived to train and mentor her, Daisy would undoubtedly have been less likely to straddle the social boundaries that separated her and Lyse. As it was, the girls’ mutual state of motherlessness allowed them to move seamlessly in and out of each other’s worlds.

  Finally, attired in a borrowed nightgown, hair combed and braided for the night, Lyse climbed into the bed beside Daisy, who blew out the candle and lay back as well.

  “I wish you could stay here all the time,” Daisy said on a yawn. “I always wanted a sister.”

  “Mmm.”

  It was a sentiment Daisy had repeated often over the years, the first time a summer afternoon shortly after Lyse’s mother died. Lyse had been sitting on the steps outside her grandfather’s office, a book in her lap, tears dripping off her chin onto the page. Daisy, walking past with her governess, stopped to ask what was wrong. Unable to articulate the depth of her misery, Lyse simply shook her head.

  Daisy, ignoring the fact that her governess had already turned the corner of the street, sat down beside Lyse. “I’m sorry,” she whispered and sat there quietly until the frantic governess returned for her nearly an hour later.

  The girls had become fast friends that day.

  But Lyse’s family needed he
r now, and that was that. She lay on her back, listening to the settling of the old Creole cottage, the chirring of tree frogs outside, Daisy’s soft breathing beside her. The question she’d been dying to ask finally burst out. “Daisy, has Simon ever kissed you? On the mouth, I mean.”

  There was a long silence. “That’s a peculiar question,” Daisy said slowly. “Why do you ask?”

  “I won’t think badly of you if he has. I just . . . wondered how it happened. If it happened.”

  Daisy sighed. “Just once. I told him he mustn’t do it again until . . . well, until we are betrothed.” The bed bounced as she turned on her side and said anxiously, “It was almost an accident. He had come to bring fresh water to the schoolhouse, and I got there early too, so there was only him and me. I dropped my satchel and reached to pick it up at the same time he did, and—and . . .” Finally she said, “So,” as if that explained everything.

  Lyse lay quietly for a moment, frustrated. That didn’t sound at all like the cataclysmic event that had just happened between her and Rafael. She put her hand against the fluttering under her ribs. Perhaps it was nothing to be upset about anyway, for Rafa was going back to New Orleans in just a few days, and she would likely never see him again. What was one kiss in the grand scheme of things anyway? As he had said, moonlight and honeysuckle.

  “Well,” she said, “thank you for telling me. I just wondered.”

  “Lyse.” Daisy suddenly sat up. “You won’t ask Simon about it, will you?”

  She was going to be so full of secrets, she would pop. “Of course not. I never talk to Simon anymore, anyway. He’s far too busy.”

  “Good.” Daisy lay back down again. “Good night, then, my sister. I’m glad you had a good time.”

  “Good night, Daisy. I hope your papa will let you and Simon marry one day. Then we’ll be sisters for real.”

  They hugged each other, then turned back to back. Lyse closed her eyes. But it was a long time before she fell asleep.

  Shoving his chair back, Rafa laid his napkin across his empty plate and rose. The food and service in the dining room of Burelle’s inn had been extraordinary, on a par with any establishment in New Orleans. But his own company was beginning to pall.