"Oh, please!" Helio snapped, angry enough to want to seize her and deliver a good shaking. "You debased yourself!"
Charite paused over her light breakfast of melon, strawberries, and rolls, fixing him with an imperious glare, one elegant brow cocked in vexation. "If my good name, and our family's, worries you so much, mon frere, why is it only now that you deplore my nighttime prowlings, when you were more than aware of my nature before?"
"Nom d'un chien, Charite!" Helio barked. "The man is a lowly, a common… Anglo-Saxon. An Anglais! A Protestant Anglais!"
"Ah!" Charite responded, as if her brother had announced a revelation. "So… I am only to 'play' with dashing and proper Creoles of good family, cher? Is that what you demand? I am always the soul of caution and discretion, and so I was with him. Besides, he believes I am a Bonsecour, so no gossip will touch the de Guilleris."
She switched from a frostily arch coo of annoyance to a twinkly merriment the next moment. "I had the courage and skill, and the allure of my sex, to beard him when you never could, and I think him harmless to us. Alain Weelooby," she said, butchering the name, "was a British Navy officer, but he was court-martialed and found guilty of theft, in their Impress Service, now a mere hired hand with Panton, Leslie. He is a widower, an embittered lifelong failure, just scraping by, though he dreams of making a fortune at last in the Americas," she told them, outlining all she had learned from him in the wee hours. It was almost hilarious to her to see the stricken looks on her brothers' faces as she laid out his bleak biography.
"He will go north on the river, leading his company's shalopes, or help guard their pack-trains," Charite blithely informed them. "He has read all about the 'Noble Savages,' the Indians, and is panting to see them! The usual printed lies, and Monsieur Rousseau's idiocy," she sneered between sips of cafe au lait.
"So he says," younger brother Hippolyte objected, a skeptical frown on his face. "But, what is an Anglais Navy officer doing here, just months after we took one of their prize ships? It doesn't sound like coincidence to me! Panton, Leslie is said to have ties to the British government, even if the Spanish let them come and go as they please. Everyone knows that. They might have sent a clever spy."
" Cher Hippolyte," Charite replied with barely patient scorn in her voice. "What sort of man steals from his own Navy? Is that their idea of a trustworthy spy… a thief stupid enough to be caught out? Would they even trust such a man with expense money for his espionage, lest he drink it up or abscond with it? If the British do send a spy to New Orleans, I think they would choose someone more… upstanding. I believe him," she stated, dismissing their qualms. "His arrival is coincidence… and he is harmless. And malleable." She chuckled.
Charite nibbled on a melon slice whilst her male relations sulkily dithered. Men, she had found, were hopelessly easy to manipulate. Her new Alain might be even easier than most… though he was a sweet, gentle, but hungry amour; rather endearing and impressive in his own fashion, she happily recalled. But a man, one too easily distracted by his sensual side, his greed, to ever be a real success at anything; so easily led by his verge wherever she wished.
Yet he did possess nautical knowledge and skills, she thought. Alain was an experienced fighting officer, hard-handed… Oh, but how those hard hands delighted! Could she lead him, one cautious step at a time, into their service, Charite found herself fantasising? He could be just venal enough. With piles of loot, gold, and… her as his reward, which way would he jump?
Charite had planned to go right to bed after a cool bath and a restorative light breakfast, yet here it was well past eight o'clock in the morning, and Helio and Hippolyte were still intent on belabouring her daring, her long, shameful absence.
She'd always thought it so unfair that they were allowed to rut like yowling tomcats, to strut, preen, and stagger, but she had to be cloistered with sewing, music, lessons in grace and wit, and those few books her house would claim? When younger, she'd been the apple of her father's eye and had been allowed to learn riding, fishing, and sword-play… as Papa's condescending jape, his amusing girl toy, with never a thought that she might enjoy such things. She was crushed when, on her thirteenth birthday, Maman had demanded she be corseted, straitened, and reined in, and Papa had so easily agreed that "playtime" was over, and she must become just another limp, pretty, useless… young lady!
As for her brothers' worry about her amours! Despite the pious claims of Society, the bishop and priests, the severe Ursuline nuns, and city fathers, Charite could count the real virgins among her contemporaries on one hand. As for those already showing when led to the altar, pah!
Once inside their family's city maison, Charite had deftly deflected their sullen anger with a concocted tale of fearing she'd been followed home by some determined skulker, even if she'd had the foggy street to herself. She'd hooted with glee to see them clatter off in high dudgeon, swords and pistols at the ready.
By the time they'd clomped back upstairs, having discovered not one whit of her skulker, she'd just been emerging from her bath, which kept them red-faced and at bay 'til she'd taken her own sweet dawdling time getting patted dry, have her hair dried and combed by her maid. She took even more time in choosing a gauzy morning ensemble sure to scandalise them by its sheerness.
Charite knew that she was being unspeakably cruel to them… but damned if they didn't deserve it for being so hypocritically censorous and scolding!
"It might have been that Anglais you spent…" Helio grumbled, censoring himself to name what she'd been doing so bluntly. "Or one of his men."
"It was not my Alain," Charite sweetly whey-face lied.
"We saw that American, El-isson, walking towards his lodgings," Hippolyte pointed out. "He might have been coming from our street."
"I know what he looks like, and it was not him," Charite said, daintily nibbling on a buttered and jammed croissant. "Besides, what would the Americans care of my doings… our doings? Are they not in competition with Panton, Leslie? If the new-come Americans are spies, I would think they were only keeping an eye on Alain."
"Well…"
"Think, mes freres, " Charite insisted, abandoning her breakfast for a moment to look them in the eyes. "The Americans scheme to seize Louisiana, and our dear city. If they suspect that Panton, Leslie is helping the British do the same-you said everyone knows that, but for our dim Spanish masters, it seems!-then the Americans keep an eye on them. My Alain is a strange, new face, leading a band of hard men. To expand their trade advantage, or to scout for an invasion?"
"But someone followed you!" Hippolyte insisted.
"Mere curiosity," Charite dismissed, covering her guilt over her lie by busying herself pouring a fresh cup of coffee. "Would you not be curious to see Alain with an elegant young man who becomes a girl at dawn? Was I Armand the raconteur or Charite, n'est-ce pas ?"
"Stop calling him Alain…your Alain!" Helio shouted.
"Why not, Helio?" she asked with a half-lidded leer, "when we are on such intimate-"
"Gahh! You're immoral, brazen!"
"It runs in our blood," Charite shot back, shutting Helio down, for she'd touched a sore spot on their family's escutcheon. Papa was a devilishly handsome, distinguished-looking roue who enjoyed amours in every quarter, reputedly even comely house slaves. Their elegant Maman, perhaps in spite, spent protracted visits on nearby plantings, ostensibly on a round of "good works" with the poor, but… And Helio and Hippolyte, cousin Jean-Marie, even that hopeful grandee Don Rubio, they were all of a piece!
"Let us be honest about our forebears," Charite soberly intoned. "Our men were never bold Christian adventurer chevaliers obeying King Louis to conquer these lands. Our womenfolk weren't virtuous, virginal bourgeois filles a la cassette, come straight from a convent in France to the Ursulines convent here."
"Charite!" Hippolyte exclaimed, all but covering his ears. "No sweet little 'casket girls,' with their dowry trunk direct from the King for their goodness," Charite scoffed. "Oh la, never the
street whores swept up to be auctioned off as wives. Never dregs from prisons… excess peasant girls turfed off the estates of the great, heavens no!"
"You are so scandalous, so…" Helio spluttered.
"We may be richer, but no better," Charite remorselessly continued. " Louisiana then, as now, is still sans religion, sans justice… sans discipline, sans ordre, et sans police. Sans moralite, too, the lot of us. And nothing the hated Spanish, the Americans if they take us over, or the British will ever be able to change our Creole soul. No matter how long they hold us in bondage."
"If that's so, Charite," Hippolyte gently asked, near a broken heart, "then what is the point of our hoped-for rebellion, if we free ourselves from Spain, yet remain so… if we reunited with beloved France, but-"
"Oh, Hippolyte!" Charite laughed, worldly-wise for her tender years, and rising to go to him and take his hands in hers. "We will he free to be French again. Free to take joy in being sans moralite… of being ourselves… Creoles. Then, laisser les bons temps rouler, and to hell with rest of the world!"
"Even so," Helio, the far more practical brother, said. "You must not see… your Alain again," he somberly decreed, playing the role oi pater familias in their papa's absence. "Even if he doesn't spy on us, he's drawn the Americans' attention, and sooner or later he'll draw the Spaniards'. Our cause, our movement must grow in secret 'til we're strong, well armed, and ready to strike. We can't afford the risk of exposure."
"I told you, Helio, he thinks I'm a Bonsecour," Charite calmly explained, though chafing at being told what to do. "He only knows you two as the Dar-bone brothers. He has no way to find me, or either of you."
"He could spot you, one of us in the markets, and follow one of us here," Helio fretted. "Anyone he asked could steer him right!"
"Then I will cut him off as a passing amusement," Charite was quick to rebuff. "Alain aspired once to be a British officer, one of the gentlemanly class. And we know how mannerly and reticent les Anglais are, n 'est-ce pas?" she said, chuckling. "They do not press themselves where they are not wanted. I snub him in public, deliver a 'cut-sublime,' it would tell him that I am… unattainable. Does he find our address, I do not have to answer his notes. One from me to him at his lodgings, saying that I am affianced and never to be his, well… he had his one glorious night, like a footman with a great lady," Charite affected to sneer, though her heart was not in it, "and he'll know he is much too lowly to ever aspire to-" "Then do it," Helio demanded.
"Only if he becomes tedious," Charite snapped, whirling back to her breakfast table to sit down and spoon sugar into her coffee, pour fresh cream, and stir. She saw that that seemed to satisfy them.
"Though lowly footmen have their uses," she could not help suggesting, twiddling one foot under the table in anxiety.
"What?"
"He is a trained naval officer, or was once. Alain might come cheaper than Capitaine Lanxade, or that buffoon Balfa," she schemed aloud, making it up as she went along. Unwilling to be ordered about, certainly; to give up a pleasureable relationship just because Helio said to. Averse, too, because Alain Weelooby (however one said that!) had amused her, gratified her… touched her heart, and she doubted if she wished to give him up, unless her brothers' fears were proven.
"Non non, mon Dieu, non!" Helio erupted, squawking like a jay. "What are you thinking? If the British didn't trust him, why should we?"
"He has no love for Creole freedom, for us, Charite!" younger brother Hippolyte chimed in, in similar screechy takings. "He'd sell us out in a heartbeat. He might be a spy. What a horrid idea!"
"We're in more danger of being sold out by faint-heart Creoles, Hippolyte," Charite pointed out. "Both of you are illogical. Alain is a spy, or he is not. He is trustworthy, or he is not. He may be useful, or he is not. The only way to discover if he's a danger to us is for me to continue seeing him, sounding him out. You cannot argue both ways," she said, as if the subject was resettled.
"Whether this… Weelooby creature is a British agent or not," Helio gravelled, disgruntled at his sister's refusal to obey his dictates, "perhaps it would be best if we all avoided any involvement with him, before he discovers we're not the Darbone brothers, or that you, sister, aren't Charite Bonsecours, and he becomes suspicious…"
"Even if Alain is really harmless?" Charite asked, smirking over the rim of her coffee cup.
"Capitaine Lanxade has paid our crew from our last cruise, but he said they could spend it in a week and drift away from us without a good chance for more," Helio reminded them. "If we left town, went back to sea on another raiding cruise, made another pile of money…"
"Yes, we could!" Hippolyte enthused, suddenly in better fettle. "If agents look for us here, we could fool them and be where they cannot find us. The Gulf of Mexico is a very big place."
"Before poor Jean loses all his booty money at Boure," brother Helio snickered. "Even if the cruise is fruitless, by the time we get back, M'sieur Bistineau and old Maurepas will have the prize ship sold and there'll be something to show for it!"
"And we can set Aristotle and the other boys to keep an eye on Alain and his party," Charite chimed in. "If he goes upriver or inland with trade goods, doesn't linger in New Orleans and ask after us, then he's harmless. Will that satisfy your worries, Helio… Hippolyte?"
"Mmm," her brothers grudgingly allowed.
"Bon!" Charite chirped. "Then I can continue seeing him after we return. And if we're to leave town, I must give him a reason why. After all, a mysterious, sudden disappearance might spur him to ask too many questions. No, think of it!" she insisted, to their sudden querulous expressions. "If I must go upcountry to the family plantations to… comfort my sick grand-mere, and you two 'Darbones' must tend to farm business or take a hunting trip, a harmless Alain will accept the tale and make no enquiries, you see?"
They may not have liked it, but they could see the sense of it. Charite, both sated and pleased with their surrender, dabbed her lips with her napkin and rose from the table, secretly thrilled to have one more meeting with her entrancing, yet possibly dangerous, Englishman.
"Oh la, dear brothers, but I am going to bed," she said, rising. "If you wish to scheme or plot… or continue to complain about me… then do it quietly. In one of your thoroughly masculine coffeehouses, peut-etre. Bonsoir, chers … bonjour, rather.
"And don't clatter going down the stairs," she added, swirling at her bedchamber door to face them for a moment. "Your chase after my pursuer has already upset poor Madame D'Ablemont once this morning."
"Better safe than sorry," Helio said in a harsh whisper as they gathered up their stylish hats, canes, and gloves to go out for coffee and their own breakfasts. "What did the old buccaneers say… 'Dead men tell no tales'? Not a word to Charite about it, but… before we sail, I think we should eliminate this pesky Anglais. That American, El-isson, too. He was too winded and too hurried, like he had followed her, when we saw him. What do you think, Hippolyte?"
"Both at once," his brother casually, happily agreed. "We get Rubio and Jean to help. They're both excellent shots. And Rubio will love it. Oui. Bon. Let's kill them!"
CHAPTER TWENTY
A nother day, another guided tour, Lewrie thought.
They'd not found Lanxade or Balfa; indeed, they'd been rumoured to have departed New Orleans for parts unknown. Even with Toby Jugg, the only witness they'd dared bring along on the expedition, wandering the port on his own for days on end, they'd not turned up one familiar face from the pirate ship's crew-or recognised a single one of the elegant young sprogs on the buccaneer schooner's deck the morning that Lewrie's prize-ship crew had been marooned.
So this morning involved "that other nonsense" that Lewrie and Pollock were charged to perform, and frankly, though Lewrie thought it a bootless endeavour, he had to admit that it was pleasureable work.
The morning was slightly overcast, but balmy. There was a faint breeze that felt refreshing, and it was not mosquito season, though a goodly tribe of flies were
present round their horses.
He'd been shown the Cabildo and the cathedral their first days on foot, strolled the streets and pretended to shop… round the fort guarding the town centre and the levees, out Rue de l'Arsenal to the garrison barracks and the storehouses to count Spanish noses one day; rode to Lake Pontchartrain's shore through the reclaimed marshes that were now greengrocer produce plots to sniff round decrepit Fort Saint John, and the reeky Bayou St. John that threaded right into the city.
This morning Pollock suggested a brisk canter out to the east, along the Chef Menteur road towards Lake Borgne, across the Plain of Gentilly, near Bayou Bienvenu, with a promised alfresco dinner at the end of it. Lewrie was a good horseman, but it had been a while since he'd spent that much time astride. In point of fact, his thighs were chafing, and his bottom was stiff and sore!
"Damme, Mister Pollock, I didn't think you meant to emulate Alexander's march into Persia!" he griped at last, trying to rub his ass.
"Almost there, no worries," Pollock gaily replied.
"Almost where, the middle of another swamp?" Lewrie carped, as Pollock checked his horse to a slow walk from a canter in the shade of a tall cypress grove.
"What do you make of the country hereabouts, sir?" Pollock asked.
"Well, it's green, frankly," Lewrie said with a scowl as he cast his gaze about. "Hellish lot o' trees, and such. All these fields… the usual marshy sponges, I s'pose, 'neath the prairie grass?"
"Quaking prairie, such as we've seen before? No. Not quite," his guide told him, sounding a tad pleased with himself. "Take note of the variety of the grasses, the sandier nature of the soil. Oh, rainy season will turn the sand and clay into a perfect quagmire, but in the winter, or a warm and dry springtime, it's… passable. Grazeable."
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