A Cajun Dream (The Cajun Series Book 5)

by Claire, Cherie

  Henry Tanner adjusted his cravat and sleeves, knowing well his attire was as close to perfection as any man would come. His evening clothes had been meticulously chosen, down to the solid gold cufflinks he won in a New Orleans poker game. If he played his cards right tonight, he would soon be a very wealthy man.

  Women were always willing to be on the arm of dapper Henry Tanner, he thought with a smile, and he was more than willing to offer his services. So when that trite Sally Baldwin had explained how poor Amanda Rose, the only daughter of rich Judge Richardson, was slowly entering spinsterhood, he knew his charms would come in handy. For both of them.

  Amanda was hardly a beauty, but not unpleasing to the eye. What feminine attributes she possessed were enough to keep Henry entertained, he was sure. And if he should become bored with her, there were plenty of women to be had in New Orleans.

  Yes, Amanda Rose Richardson would do nicely. Her father owned enough sugar cane to pay off his mounting gambling debts, and then keep him in the manner to which he had been accustomed before losing his family’s estate. Perhaps, he might enter politics. The thought was enticing.

  What had that insipid Baldwin girl said, Amanda wished for romance, perhaps he could be of some assistance and escort her to the ball tonight? He knew what Amanda wanted, and needed, and it certainly wasn’t another ball and a simple kiss in the moonlight. Tonight, he was going to show her what a real man was, and her father would pay handsomely for the lesson.

  A Cajun Dream

  Chapter Two

  Amanda stared at her image in the mirror, but failed to see the beauty in it despite the exquisite gown her father had ordered from New Orleans. Its petite blue flowers against a background of white accented Amanda’s ivory complexion and sea-blue eyes. She carried the fitted garment at medium height, not short and stocky like many of the women in her father’s family, nor tall and Junoesque like her mother. Her bosom filled out the bodice only adequately and her waist diverted in only slightly. The curves her mother boasted had been sadly lost on her daughter.

  Her mother. What a beauty she was, Amanda remembered with both fondness and envy. She had inherited nothing of her mother’s dark, cosmopolitan looks, growing up instead ordinary and mediocre. She certainly didn’t turn heads when she walked the streets of Franklin. Men didn’t lurk outside her door waiting for her to emerge on to the street like they did for her mother when they lived in New Orleans. Amanda recalled how conversations would cease when her mother gracefully entered the room.

  Perhaps her father was being kind when he said there had been no fit suitors. There must have been some Catholic Americans in town her father would have approved of. They just weren’t interested in Plain Jane Richardson.

  The Catholic church in Franklin was still in the planning stage, so Amanda traveled with Virginia every Sunday to Indian Bend to attend services at Immaculate Conception Chapel. From what she could remember, most of the other practitioners were French-speaking residents. She thought of the Wilsons, a prominent family from Pennsylvania, but their men were either too young or too old. The McKinleys had two eligible bachelors, but they were too poor for Father’s approval.

  Amanda sighed and sat down on the chaise lounge. Was she that desperate she had to count out the available men inside her head? Was marriage all that mattered, and not the man involved?

  Of course, the man mattered, she reprimanded herself. She didn’t wish to marry just for the sake of marriage. She desired romance, love, children. Amanda was twenty-one today, and longed for a family of her own. And a house where the sun shone in.

  As if self-reproach and anxiety weren’t enough for one evening, now guilt was showing its familiar head. She hated herself for wanting to leave her father, but she couldn’t help admitting she desperately wanted to rid herself of her suffocating circumstances. If only he would talk to her. If only they could put the scandal behind them. Then maybe, in time, her father would heal his broken heart.

  “Amanda,” Virginia called from the hallway as she did every night before retiring. “Can I get you anything?”

  Amanda forced herself to breathe. “No thank you, Gin,” she answered to the closed door. “I shall turn in myself.”

  “Very good.” Virginia closed the door at the end of the hallway and Amanda thought she would wait ten more minutes and then quietly leave the house.

  Sally had been quite thorough on her instructions. Henry Tanner would meet Amanda at the nearby corner, waiting inconspicuously in his carriage underneath the broken street light. He would escort her to the ball, where Sally assured Amanda he would be attentive, and then drive her home later that evening.

  It seemed harmless — except for the silly part about feigning headaches. Amanda was to flirt with the man during the dances, then announce she had a headache and wished to be driven home early. Sally assured Amanda that Tanner would know this was a code for wanting to be kissed.

  How she knew this was a mystery to Amanda. When did Sally Ann Baldwin learn such things? She was always on the arm of Jeffrey Trowbridge or Peter Rogers, and Amanda doubted either one would dare take advantage. However, in a few months Sally would marry one of the richest sugar planters in the region, so obviously she knew something about courting men.

  Amanda dreaded the pretense, the childish games women played, but she desperately wanted to attend the ball on this night, her birthday, and she supposed a kiss — even from brusque Henry Tanner — might be an adventure she may never have again.

  Checking to make sure Virginia had indeed gone to sleep, Amanda ventured into the hall. Virginia’s light had been extinguished so Amanda continued down the stairs and out to the back porch. Exiting the house to the deserted street, Amanda made out a buggy lingering underneath a darkened area. Her heart beating dramatically in her chest, she fought the desire to return to the safety of her home.

  No, she thought. I can’t live inside this darkened cave any longer.

  “Forgive me, Father,” she said softly to herself. “I will never defy your wishes again, I promise.” Taking a deep breath of the humid, but slightly cooler night air, Amanda forced herself through the back gate and toward the waiting buggy.

  Amanda met Tanner’s carriage, entering cautiously while he gallantly kissed her hand and offered her a seat a bit too close for polite company. The driver bolted the horses to action but they never made it to the Franklin Exchange. While Tanner romanced Amanda with Shakespearian sonnets, distracting her from the scenery, his servant raced the carriage out of town. They were a good mile from Franklin when Amanda became wise to his actions.

  “You didn’t really want to go to the ball,” Tanner said, drawing uncomfortably near. “I know what you want. Your friend told me all about it, and I will be more than happy to be of service. After a quick visit to your father, you and I will have everything we desire.”

  He started kissing her then, the one thing Amanda had hoped for when she secretly left the house. But his kisses were anything but romantic, and they were definitely unwelcome. Tanner thrust his mouth upon hers, and his hands grabbed at her waist, pulling her hard against him. Amanda fought him, pounding his chest with her fists, pushing his advances away. When it became clear to him that she would not relent, he angrily shoved her to the side of the carriage.

  “Damn you woman. Don’t tell me this is not exactly what you had hoped for.”

  Amanda started crying and begged him to turn the carriage around. Instead, Tanner urged the driver on toward Port Cocodrie, where the small seaside town would conceal them until he found her father and demanded a payment in return for their marriage.

  “He’ll never allow it,” Amanda said between sobs. “You’ll never get a penny.”

  Tanner only laughed. “He’ll pay me what I want, even at the thought of his lovely daughter marrying his poor overseer. After all, we don’t want a scandal, do we?”

  Amanda knew then she was trapped. A single woman out of town in the middle of the night was ruined. She could not return
without a husband or risk losing her good reputation forever. Even if she managed to escape from Tanner and get back to Franklin by other means, God only knew how long that would take. Arriving home by morning’s light would be disastrous. Someone was sure to see her.

  As the hours and miles dragged on, Amanda’s hope faded. By the time they reached Port Cocodrie, Amanda lost all consciousness of time and place. Tanner purchased a room at the local inn and left her there while he traveled to Berwick in search of her father.

  Amanda paced the room for what seemed like hours trying to fathom what to do. She prayed endlessly, begging God to send an answer. All she received were drunken shouts from the nearby tavern.

  If only she could reverse time and start the day over, she thought. If only she were standing in the front garden once more, cutting flowers as she did every day waiting for her friend to turn the corner and recount more tales of his Acadian family. Amanda stopped pacing and sat down on the bed defeated. What would René Comeaux think of her now, she wondered, and felt as if her heart would break. She valued their friendship and knew he would no longer respect her.

  Could she blame him? She had wantonly walked into the arms of a gambler against the wishes of her father, secretly meeting him in the middle of the night hoping the awful man would grace her with a kiss.

  She would never forgive herself. And her father would banish her from his life forever.

  Not knowing what else to do, and fearing Tanner’s return, Amanda left the room and wandered down to the docks. She found a quiet spot with a bench and decided that it was as good a place as any for God to grant her a pardon. “Please,” she prayed earnestly, “send me an answer.”

  The dark brown rum left quite a satisfying trail down the back of René’s throat. A good drink was definitely what he needed. He signaled the waiter for another round.

  “Slow down,” Alcée said with a smile. “We just got here.”

  “And it took us two hours to do so. I don’t understand why we had to ride all this way to enjoy a bottle of rum.”

  Alcée shook his head as if the logic was lost on his nephew. “We enjoy ourselves tonight, maybe find a woman or two. Then we pick up the supplies at the port tomorrow morning. Michael promised the supplies would be waiting for us by sunrise.”

  “At sunrise, the horses will need exercise.” René adored his uncle and took his advice to heart, but his lack of business sense irritated him.

  “I told you T-Emile will do it.” Alcée shook his head.

  “The Vaughn horse hasn’t been eating well,” René insisted. “I promised Jack I would look after him myself.”

  “I explained all this to T-Emile and he knows what to feed him.” Alcée slammed his glass a bit too hard on to the table. “It’s all taken care of.”

  “T-Emile is a boy, Alcée. I don’t feel comfortable leaving the horses in his hands.”

  “You don’t feel comfortable leaving anybody with your precious horses.”

  René knew he had insulted his uncle, but Alcée’s constant demands to let others do more of the chores angered him. René and Alcée had built the Franklin horse stables and racetrack years before, but it was René who had turned it into a money-making operation. The area’s horse owners trusted René to take care of their investments and he never disappointed. He exercised the horses daily at sunrise, managed the stables, oversaw the races and meticulously kept the betting books. René was the chief reason Alcée, his cousin Colette and her children were living as well as they were. It was René’s handling of last year’s fall races that brought in enough money to buy the neighboring ranch and house that the family lived in. It was René’s keen business eye that had enabled them to purchase cattle and several acres of sugar cane land.

  Which was precisely why he had moved to Franklin in the first place. He and Alcée had envisioned the racetrack as a source of entertainment for the incoming Americans and their foresight had proven fruitful. The new gregarious residents had eagerly embraced horse racing, and Acadians and French Creoles traveled across the entire Bayou Teche region for a chance at the Comeaux/Dugas racetrack, including a few hardy souls from New Orleans. Even Porter Neese, one of the prominent, wealthy members of Franklin, began breeding English racers to try his luck at the track. René rented stable space to the horse owners, charged entry fees for the races and awarded purses to the winners from the gambling revenues and kept the remaining funds for himself.

  Alcée enjoyed the business at first, and was equally thrilled at its success. After a few years had passed, however, he became restless and talked of returning home to Loreauville, a small town miles up the bayou near the French Creole city of St. Martinville. All the Comeaux and Dugas families lived in Loreauville, and the two planned to make enough money to improve their families’ vacheries, or cattle ranches, then return home.

  Since their arrival in Franklin, each of the family estates had been enlarged and more cattle purchased. But René didn’t wish to return. Making money intoxicated him. Counting out the American dollars after every race was too much a temptation to resist. He had to continue. A few more years and they would be wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. Why couldn’t Alcée see that?

  “Please Alcée, let’s not argue about this again.” René suddenly felt very tired. “Let’s have a few drinks and go home. We can send T-Emile over in the morning to pick up the supplies.”

  “My friend,” Alcée began, his voice already thickening from the effects of the rum. “You’re not listening.”

  René tossed back his glass of rum and slowly counted to five in his head. He didn’t want to have this conversation again, especially tonight, but he didn’t want to further insult his uncle.

  “You work too hard,” Alcée continued, motioning for the waiter to return with another round. “Life is too short to be spent working endlessly. Have we not everything we ever wanted? Isn’t it time to say enough and go home?”

  When René didn’t answer, Alcée leaned forward so his words would only be heard at their table. “There are prettier girls in Loreauville.”

  René slammed the glass on the table causing most of the pub’s visitors to look over. Hastily grabbing his coat, he headed for the door.

  “Where are you going mon ami,” Alcée asked, sounding worried. “Let us talk about it.”

  Pulling the store-bought waistcoat over his cotonnade shirt and decorated carmagnolle, ones his mother had lovingly created with home-grown cotton and hours of spinning and weaving, René silently headed for the bay. As much as he loved his uncle, he couldn’t bear talking about the business another minute. More importantly, he couldn’t bear talking about her.

  He walked pensively down to the waterside, leaving behind the lights and noise of the Port Cocodrie establishments. There, at the water’s edge, sat the fishing boats, pirogues and skifs used daily in collecting the bounty of the Gulf waters and carrying supplies into the heartland of the Louisiana prairie along the sleepy Bayou Teche. The boats sang a rhythmic cadence as the waves brushed against them. The night was absent a moon, but the thousands of stars lit up the sky and their reflection illuminated the bay.

  René pushed his hands inside his trouser pockets and rested his right boot against a cypress knee and his shoulder against the trunk. The solitude of the night comforted him and he felt the rum warming his veins. For the first time that day, he started to relax.

  Gazing down toward the water, he realized he was not alone. A solitary figure sat on a nearby bench, seemingly mesmerized by the water’s repeating motions. René realized the person was a woman by her delicate posture and the sounds of what seemed to be weeping.

  He decided to be of service, in case the woman needed assistance, and headed down to the water’s edge. As he quietly made his way toward the bench, the woman’s features slowly became visible. There, in the soft starlight of the humid Côte Blanche Bay night sat the woman he had been dreaming of relentlessly for the past few weeks.

  Amanda watched the small, co
nstant waves washing up on the shore at her feet, but she comprehended nothing. Paralyzed by fear and the overwhelming feeling of being completely out of control of her situation, all she could do was numbly watch the repetitive motions of the dark, solemn water.

  She didn’t know how long she had been sitting there when the voices inside her mind again urged her to take action. She must think about what happened, what was going to happen. She must find a solution to the horrible circumstances that had befallen her.

  Amanda remembered the optimistic advice Virginia had given her when she came to live with the Richardsons, the week after her mother had left for Paris. “There is never a problem without a solution,” Virginia had told her, gently stroking her hair and wiping away her tears. And until this moment, Amanda found that to always be true.

  She learned to live without a mother’s guidance. She adapted herself to the American settlement of Franklin, doing without the French food and culture of her native home of New Orleans. She comforted her father, helped him with his work and avoided all mention of everything that reminded him of his wife.

  Was that why she was sitting here at Côte Blanche Bay, the dark body of water that emptied into the nearby Gulf of Mexico? Did her desire to move beyond her mother’s scandal and into a family of her own blind her to the kind of man Henry Tanner was?

  “God help me,” she prayed. “I don’t know what to do.”

  For not the first time that day a voice stirred her from her thoughts. A warm friendly voice boasting of its French heritage awakened her from her lethargy.

  “Miss Richardson?” it asked incredibly.

  Turning around Amanda found René Comeaux standing before her.

  “Miss Richardson,” René asked again. “What are you doing in Port Cocodrie?”

  When Amanda didn’t answer, René hurriedly sat down next to her, trying to examine her in the dim light. “Are you ill?” he asked picking up her hand as if to check for life. “Are you hurt in any way?”