The Creole Princess

by Beth White

  Scarlet blinked and focused on Luc-Antoine. He had both arms wrapped about his belly. Probably not used to eating so much all at one time. Say what you would about Madame and M’sieur Dussouy—they fed their slaves well. “You ain’t gone be sick, are you?”

  Luc-Antoine shook his head. “No, ma’am. That was sure good.” He glanced at the basket, where one lone biscuit remained. “Could I take that home and split it with my brother and sister? The baby don’t eat nothin’ but Maman’s—”

  “’Course you can,” Cain said with laughter in his voice, tossing the biscuit to the boy. “Now you get on back to school ’fore Miss Daisy comes after you again.”

  Scarlet grabbed his arm. “She knows he comes here? What if Madame finds out?”

  “Finds out what?” The sugary-steel voice drew Scarlet’s attention like a gunshot.

  Her mistress stood outlined in the doorway, kid-gloved hands clasped at her waist, her head tipped to one side with the feather in her hat poking out like a hen’s tail.

  “Madame!” Scarlet slid down from the barrel she’d been perched on. There was nothing else she could say. Nothing was going to make Luc-Antoine disappear.

  “Yes, it’s me,” Madame said coldly. “What do you all think you’re doing? Is this a tea party?”

  “Oh, Madame, I’m so sorry,” Scarlet babbled. “We just stopped for lunch, I finished pegging the wash, Cain is working on your carriage, and it seemed like the Christian thing to do, feeding the little boy—”

  “I was hungry,” Luc-Antoine said, disastrously drawing Madame’s gaze.

  “You’re one of the Lanier children,” she informed him.

  “Yes’m,” he said with no visible sense of self-preservation. “I’m Luc-Antoine.”

  Madame inspected him top to toe. “So I see. You look like your father.” This did not seem to please her. “You also look like a ragpicker. I am all for charity, in moderation, but if I allow one child to leave the school and come to me for food, I’ll soon have hordes here every day.” The sharp gaze suddenly returned to Scarlet. “You knew it was wrong to encourage him—didn’t you?”

  Scarlet stared at her mistress for a long moment. She knew what she ought to say: Yes, ma’am. It was wrong. I’ll never do it again.

  But she would do it again.

  When the silence apparently went on too long for Madame to bear, she took an angry step inside the shop. “You are the most ungrateful little snippet I’ve had the misfortune to be responsible for! I feed you well, give you my clothes—even let you spend Sunday afternoons with Cain, as if you were a married couple. And you repay my generosity by sneaking off from your work and stealing my food for little vagrants like this one.” The wintery blue eyes focused on Cain. “And you—I had thought better of you. Scarlet has obviously bewitched you. Clearly I can no longer trust either of you.” She drew in a pained breath. “Well, I’m sorry to say, there will be consequences. I must pray for guidance on how to handle this . . . this situation.”

  Scarlet had expected to be slapped at the very least. Though Madame didn’t whip her house slaves as many did, her anger sometimes took physical forms.

  She didn’t trust this display of restraint. And Luc-Antoine was involved now. “Please, Madame, let me take the boy back to school. I’ll make sure Miss Daisy doesn’t let him run off again.”

  Madame’s expression was unreadable. “No, I’ll take him myself. You and Cain get back to work. I’ll deal with you later.”

  “No!” Luc-Antoine jumped to his feet. “You ain’t my maman, and you can’t tell me what to do. You—you leave Cain and Scarlet alone. Alls they did was give me a biscuit.”

  Madame gave a disbelieving crack of laughter. “You are right. I certainly am not your mama, and isn’t it a good thing? But you will respect your elders, little man. My pony cart is in front of the house. You will bring it around here to pick me up, and if you disobey again, you will be very sorry. Is that clear?”

  Luc-Antoine stared at her mutinously for a moment. Finally he looked down, muttered “Yes, ma’am,” and scuffed past Madame out of the shop.

  Scarlet exchanged an anxious glance with Cain, then dipped a curtsey and moved to do Madame’s bidding. She wouldn’t help anything with further argument. Please, God, give me grace.

  When the schoolroom door abruptly opened, Daisy looked up from reading Emée Robicheaux’s essay.

  Emée, who shared a desk with Suzanne Boutin, the doctor’s youngest daughter, sucked in a breath and whispered, “I told you he was getting in trouble, Miss Redmond.”

  The clearly prescient Emée referred to Luc-Antoine Lanier, who stood, clamped by the shoulder, at the side of the town’s most terrifying grand-dame, Mrs. Isabelle Dussouy. And Madame did not look pleased to be here.

  There was little for Daisy to say but “Good morning, Mrs. Dussouy. I see you have found Luc-Antoine.”

  The older woman released Simon’s brother with a little shove into the room. “I have indeed. I found him eating food stolen from my larder and socializing with my slaves. I believe he belongs in school with you?”

  The implication being that Daisy had been derelict in her duty. Was she supposed to have left her other students alone while she went on a fruitless search for a little boy who had made a profession out of escaping adult supervision? Even Simon was inclined to shrug his shoulders. Well, that’s Luc for you. He’ll come back when he’s hungry.

  Daisy drew herself up, as she had seen her father do when challenged by an impertinent enlistee, and injected a touch of frost into her tone. “I thank you for your concern, ma’am. I shall make sure he pays for his imposition and works off the meal by helping to muck your stables every morning the rest of this week.” She turned her darkest schoolteacher frown on the miscreant. “Will you not, Luc-Antoine?”

  His mutinous expression folded when she continued to stare with relentless calm. “Yes, ma’am.” He turned to Mrs. Dussouy. “I didn’t mean to steal. And please don’t whip Cain or Scarlet. They was just being nice to me.”

  “Were being nice,” Daisy corrected him.

  “Were.” Luc-Antoine sighed. “Couldn’t I just feed the horses? Or exercise ’em? I’m a good rider.”

  Mrs. Dussouy looked outraged. “I wouldn’t let a little—”

  “No.” Daisy reached to take his dirty little face in her hand, turning it up so that he met her eyes. “And you will go to Mrs. Dussouy’s early so you may be on time for school. You have missed several assignments, and you must work hard to catch up. Emée and Suzanne have quite passed you up today.”

  The challenge of competing for honors with a couple of girls had the expected effect. Luc-Antoine plunked into his seat without another word.

  Which left Daisy facing Mrs. Dussouy. She had never felt so young and unsure of herself. She straightened her spine. “You may depend on me to follow through with the boy’s punishment, ma’am. I don’t think he will try this particular stunt again. Thank you for returning him to me.”

  “Well.” Madame sniffed. “One can hardly expect refined behavior from one of his mongrel pedigree, I suppose. But the damage to my slaves’ discipline is a serious matter. Once they get the idea they can converse on an equal basis with their betters . . .”

  Daisy bit her lip, thinking of the deeply spiritual talk she’d had just this morning over breakfast with the family’s houseman, Timbo. Was she “better” than him? She was his mistress, in the sense that her father owned Timbo’s papers, supplied the food, clothing, and shelter that kept him alive, and demanded his unquestioning obedience. But she depended daily on the wisdom gained from his gentle, slow-spoken answers to her often anxious questions. Timbo was in many ways the grandfather she’d never had.

  She also thought guiltily of the book hidden under her bed, a book which had irrevocably altered her thinking on subjects like freedom and equality. Her father, like Mrs. Dussouy, would be scandalized to know she’d so much as cracked the cover of such subversive literature.

 
“You must do as you see fit, of course,” she said calmly. “As I must do with my students. Again, I’m sorry Luc-Antoine disturbed you. Please forgive me if I return to our lesson.” She dipped a quick curtsey and turned to walk to the chalkboard.

  “Well!” Mrs. Dussouy huffed, but after a moment Daisy heard the door open, then shut with a bang.

  The children tittered. She ignored them and continued with her spelling list. Simon would laugh when she told him about the morning’s kerfuffle. Even the “mongrel pedigree” remark would strike him as funny, as his forbears had been ruling over a large chunk of New France when the Dussouys were still trapping furs in Acadia.

  Not that that mattered. She loved Simon for his humor and good sense and strength of character. And a certain expression when he looked at her that could make her weak in the knees.

  “Miss Redmond, I think you misspelled ‘attention,’” said Emée behind her.

  “Oh, dear, I certainly did.” Red faced, Daisy corrected her mistake and scolded herself not to daydream. She was getting as bad as Lyse.

  8

  NEW ORLEANS

  MAY 1777

  Rafa, dressed in one of his more sober evening suits of black velvet decorated with black satin frogs along the cuffs and tail vents, handed his tricorn to the Pollocks’ butler with a smile. He took a moment to check his appearance in the fine Valencia mirror, which he himself had brought back from Havana in March, then climbed the stairs to the great salon which fronted Chartres Street.

  As he waited in line to greet his host, Rafa reflected that everyone who was anyone must be here tonight. Governor Gálvez held court beside his chosen lady, the beautiful widow María Feliciana de St. Maxent d’Estrehan, near one of the magnificent French windows. The windows stood open to the mild spring breeze, spilling the light of a thousand candles onto the street below. As usual forgoing the finery due his exalted position, Gálvez had favored a uniform even more severe in lines than Rafa’s own, a restraint that served as a deliberate contrast to his lady’s extravagant Gallic beauty.

  With his heart firmly in the possession of a certain other Creole lady, Rafa found himself inspecting the exquisite Doña d’Estrehan with the detached admiration one might accord an expensive painting: wondering how much it cost and how long it had taken to compose. Her dark curls had been piled over some towering contraption and threaded with ribbons and silk flowers, with a few long ringlets allowed to cleverly trail along the low neckline of her golden voile gown. Amber and ruby jewels twinkled from her small, dainty ears and about her throat, and the large, tip-tilted dark eyes had been subtly enhanced by a faint rouging of her high cheekbones.

  Small wonder that Gálvez scarcely took his eyes from the lady’s face.

  “The governor is clearly smitten, is he not?”

  Rafa turned to find Pollock’s wife, Margaret, smiling as she stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. He grinned. “Without doubt. It is but a matter of time before she becomes Doña Gálvez. Wagers say before Christmas.”

  “Oh, well before that,” Pollock said, firmly shaking Rafa’s hand. “And one hopes that she will give him an answer soon, so that his attention may be focused on the business at hand.”

  “I’ve noticed no lack of discipline.” Rafa rubbed his shoulder, just now becoming free of the ache from the scrap-iron wound.

  Pollock leaned in, touching the side of his large nose. “Gálvez may bark, but he’s pleased with the intelligence you brought. In fact, the king has authorized us to send more blankets and gunpowder up the river.”

  Before replying, Rafa looked around. Mrs. Margaret had turned to the next guests in line, an indigo merchant and his well-dressed wife. There were spies everywhere, and he had to believe that if he had been so easily able to infiltrate Pensacola, the likelihood of the British returning the favor was great. Gálvez had sternly warned them all not to speak out of turn.

  With a tilt of his head, he invited Pollock to follow him to a quiet corner where they could converse with their backs to the wall, in no danger of being overheard. Rafa folded his arms and said softly, “Gálvez may have forgiven the loss of the gold, but I’m going to get it back.”

  “The governor is both fair and practical. He will never penalize a man for what is outside his control—and pirates are parasites who unfortunately ride the tails of any coastal political conflict. We’re lucky that’s the first major cargo we’ve lost to this point. And to have escaped with no loss of life—” Pollock shrugged—“that is truly a blessing. How do you plan to recover it?”

  “I’ve thought about it. As I reported, the people of Mobile and Pensacola are not eating well. Their stores of flour are all but depleted, and summertime fevers will soon be setting in.” Rafa met Pollock’s sharp gaze. “What if, as a gesture of goodwill, I take them some of the quinine that just came from Peru and a hundred fifty or so of those barrels of Brazilian wheat? I could also take a fully armed crew, poke around the docks, pretend to carouse a bit.” He grinned at Pollock. “You know. Take it from there.”

  “In other words, everything that young Don Rafael is so good at.” Pollock rolled his eyes. “I think it’s a brilliant idea, and if I were a younger man, I’d go with you. I’ll outfit you, because I think it’s worth trying to get that cache of gold back in our hands. The Americans need every scrap of help we can send their way.” He paused, said in uncharacteristically diffident tones, “What did you think of the Adam Smith treatise?”

  Rafa straightened. “I read it. Compelling stuff, and you add that to Thomas Paine’s work . . . well, I’m not ready to renounce my Spanish citizenship, but I want to see this American experiment work out.” He looked away. “I know people who don’t now have the freedom to make their own choices, and they deserve better.”

  “People?” Pollock, always discerning, had an uncanny knack for prying information out of Rafa. “People in general, or people in particular?”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. The dancers’ rhythmic patterns in the center of the room made him think of Lyse and the way she had anxiously followed the touch of his hands, the direction of his gaze, as he guided her in the minuet. Her guilt that she could enjoy a party when her cousin Scarlet could not—and her valiant efforts to keep her poverty-stricken family afloat. “Rather more specific than not,” he said with an oblique smile.

  Pollock laughed. “I understand the need to be careful, given the present company. Speaking of which, look who has just arrived. I must go speak to your mama—and perhaps, in your father’s absence, you might come with me to fend off the young puppies who’ll be sitting up to beg for your little sister’s favor.”

  Rafa turned just in time to witness the grand entrance of the two most powerful women in his life—Mama, still beautiful, even with her black hair beginning to gray in delicate wings above her ears, and Sofía a younger copy, looking like some exotic little bird in a dress decorated with the lavender lace Lyse had selected for her. They were quickly obscured by the onrush of uniformed men seeking to fill Sofía’s dance card.

  “Ay,” he muttered, gave Pollock a rueful glance, and took off toward the crowd.

  He pushed through to Sofía’s side just as a young adjutant, notable for a prominent Adam’s apple and a nose the approximate size and shape of a mast in full sail, claimed her hand for the next country dance.

  After retrieving her dance card and dismissing the poor adjutant with a careless wave, Sofía seized Rafael in an enthusiastic hug. “Rafa! You must see how beautifully your Mobile lace has made up! Am I not adorable?” She stood back to pirouette for his benefit. “You must go back and find more, only perhaps you might look for that delicious shade of celery that I saw in Fashionable Miscellany.”

  Trying not to wince at the clench of pain in his shoulder—or her unfortunate use of the word delicious in the same sentence with celery—he took her hand, tucked it into his elbow, and whisked her away from her disappointed cadre of admirers. He guided her toward the refreshment table. “You are of course a
dorable, little sister, and naturally I exist to provide your modiste with dress materials. I hesitate to remind you, however, that further travels must wait until I have enough merchandise to fill another ship.”

  Sofía pouted, then giggled and leaned in to whisper, “Oh, I have missed you! Where have you been keeping yourself the last few weeks? Mama said Mr. Pollock undoubtedly had business matters for you to attend, but I can hardly believe you wouldn’t at least come by and take me driving of an afternoon. And Rafa, you haven’t been to mass at all! Padre Juan wouldn’t tell me if you’d been to confession, he says it is none of my concern, but truly it is my concern for your spiritual—”

  “Take a breath, Sofi,” Rafa said, laughing. “I promise I have not put myself beyond redemption. In fact—” He stopped himself abruptly. How to explain the overwhelming urge he’d had, ever since returning to New Orleans, to pray about everything? His family would think him mad. And anyone who knew Don Rafael, merchant and man about town, would certainly not credit him with any serious engagement of the spirit. He let out another laughing breath as he picked up a glass of lemonade and handed it to Sofía. “In fact, I have tied up some loose ends which leave me free to join you and the parents for services tomorrow evening.”

  “Really? Oh, Rafa, that is excellent! Mama will be so happy, and maybe Papa will stop growling about your selfish absences.”

  Rafa suddenly regretted that lemonade seemed to be the strongest libation available at the party. He bit his tongue, then after a moment blurted, “If I were wearing a uniform as Papa wished, he would not see me even every three to six months as I manage now. I’d be serving in Peru or Dominica or some other godforsaken outpost, unable to do more than write the occasional letter.”

  “I have hurt your feelings,” Sofía said, tears in her big brown eyes. “I don’t understand why you and Papa cannot forgive one another and cease this interminable sniping through me. I’m glad you’re not military! I don’t want you in danger of being shot at or—or run through with a bayonet or—Because it’s bad enough that Cristián and Danilo—” With a strangled sob, she crammed her gloved fist against her mouth and turned away.