Louisiana History Collection - Part 1

by Jennifer Blake

  It caught her, the sudden glory, in such surprise that it brought a strangled cry to her lips. He released her breast to seek her lips and she pressed her mouth, slanting, searching, to his, tasting the faint salt of his blood, lost in the wondrous rapture of the senses. She thrust her full breasts against him, wanting to be held tightly, needing his hardness, his power.

  He released her after a moment, but only long enough to strip off his breeches. He levered himself above her, placing his thigh between hers, rolling so that she was beneath him. The heated and pulsating force of him rested against her, gently probing.

  “Elise, ma chère?”

  Her face was flushed with the same delicate color that made her breasts an opalescent rose and dark coral. She refused to look at him, refused to think, could not in the lovely ravishment that held her. She understood the demand and the plea in his voice, however. Understood and felt its vibration deep within. There were more things in the world to fear than this, many more. Above her head the dark limbs of the trees made a fragile cross-hatching against the gray porcelain bowl of the winter sky. Warm beside this man, she felt none of its chill, none of its terror.

  “Please,” she said.

  He might not have heard if he had not been waiting. Still, faint though it was, he needed no more. With straining sinews and delicate perception, he eased into her liquid warmth. Her breath of wonder fanned his cheek. She made a soft sound, then pressed herself to him with her hands clutching his shoulders and trembling arms, gripping tighter and tighter, rubbing, grasping, urging him to the turbulent vigor that must surely bring the return of glory and an ultimate surcease.

  “Ah, love,” he said the words thick, ragged, shadowed with laughter, “I should not have swum so long.”

  He plunged into her as if unable to resist any longer that perilous temptation. Stalwart, powerful, he held her, thrusting past old memories, banishing them and bringing new peace, seeking and finding joy. The surcease, golden and beckoning, touched them. It came.

  It was completely dark by the time they reached the house. Candlelight glowed from the windows, casting yellow beams into the night to welcome them. They did not hurry, but strolled with their arms about each other, stopping often to kiss with unappeased hunger. Elise rested her head against Reynaud’s shoulder, though now and then she turned to peer into the encroaching blackness of the woods.

  “What are you looking for? The panther?”

  “Nothing really, only to see if there is anything to be afraid of.”

  “You think there might be?”

  “Not as long as you are here,” she answered and was disturbed to discover how true those impulsive words were. She went on, her tone tentative. “It seems strange to have nothing to fear.”

  “Nothing?”

  “At least not at this moment.”

  “There will be other times, other things. We need fear to encourage caution.”

  “I don’t want to be cautious!” she said with sudden heat.

  He smiled down at her. “I hope that in one thing you won’t be.”

  She reached up to draw his mouth down to hers. It was some time before they walked on.

  There was only Madeleine and Henri in the salon when they stepped inside it. Reynaud’s cousin looked up and saw their rumpled state. Her mouth tightened, but she said nothing, only transferring her gaze to a point just above their heads as she spoke.

  “Dinner will be served in half an hour.”

  “We will take it in our bedchamber.” Reynaud’s voice was calm, faintly mocking.

  The woman lifted her brows. “If you wish it.”

  “We do. We will now bid you good night. Make our excuses to the others, if you please.”

  “I will do that.”

  “Elise?” he prompted.

  “Good night,” she said, inclining her head to Madeleine and nodding with a quick smile at Henri.

  Without waiting for a reply, they whisked themselves from the room and into the bedchamber they had shared without intimacy until this moment. Quietly they closed the door behind them.

  The candles had been lighted in the crystal-and-gilt candelabra on the mantel. Reynaud moved to take a taper from one, using it to light those on the dressing table. Elise turned to face him, suddenly ill at ease with him here in the house in the brightness of the candlelight. A momentary shame for the fervor of her response to him made her movements stiff.

  The candle flames were reflected in his eyes as he smiled at her. “I wish I had thought to refuse dinner.”

  “What?”

  “I would like to undress you now, this minute, and begin all over again.”

  The words seemed to touch some vulnerable place just under her heart. “Would you?”

  “I am like a man long thirsty; I can never have enough of you.”

  When had she last thought of him as unfeeling, without emotion? The idea seemed laughable now. A slow smile curved her mouth. “I’m as bland as water, am I?”

  “As necessary.”

  She heaved a mock sigh. “It is too bad.”

  He tilted his head, lifting a questioning brow.

  “That you didn’t refuse dinner, of course!”

  He reached her in a bounding stride and picked her up, turning and swinging her so that her skirts flew out around them. Their mouths met as his momentum slowed and finally he set her on her feet.

  He bent his neck to rest his forehead on hers. “Ah, but perhaps it’s as well. We had better keep up our strength.”

  “Yes,” she murmured, “especially you, after all that swimming.”

  “Witch,” he said, laughing. “It was your fault, you know.”

  “Mine?” She tried to draw back in umbrage, but he would not let her.

  “How else was I to keep a hold on myself unless I was exhausted when I fell into bed with you?”

  She played with the opening of his shirt, slipping her fingers inside and rubbing their backs over the smooth hardness of his chest. “Well, in that case—”

  He caught her questing hand, lifting it to his lips. “Behave if you want to eat.”

  “Reynaud?”

  “Yes, love?”

  She felt the vibration of the word in his chest and she almost let the question forming in her mind go unspoken. She looked up at him, the rust flecks in her amber-brown eyes brilliant. She looked down again. “Would you really have left us behind if I had not agreed to your bargain?”

  “The others possibly, never you.”

  “You would have left them to die?”

  Her body stiffened by degrees. Feeling it, his hold tightened. “They would have been no worse off than if I had never seen them. By my offices they escaped; why could they not have done the same thing alone?”

  “Some tried and failed, like the four men killed on the river. But you well know that if they had gone on alone, I would have been with them.”

  “Not if I had kidnapped you.”

  “You would have done that?”

  “Without a qualm, rather than let you risk the mercy of Pascal, who might well have abandoned you if you became a burden, or rather than see you become a slave to someone else if the attempt failed.”

  “You would have brought me here by force — or perhaps you thought to enslave me yourself at the village of the Natchez?”

  He frowned at her rising tone, but answered without evasion. “The village would have done. Except for our bargain and my theft of you and the others who were enemies of the Natchez, I had no need to escape.”

  “But you said … I thought you were going to the Natchitoches country anyway.”

  He shrugged. “There was no urgency.”

  She pushed away from him and was momentarily surprised when he let her go. She swung away. “I can’t believe what you are saying. You would actually have made me your slave?”

  “The idea had a certain appeal.”

  “I’m sure!” she said with a flashing glance over her shoulder. “But what of Madame Douc
et? If I would have been a liability to Pascal and the others, how much more would she have been? Would you have taken her, too?”

  “Can you honestly say that she is better here than with her daughter and grandson? Are you sure her tasks as a slave would have been any more draining on her physical strength than the overland journey here?”

  “I couldn’t say, never having been a slave,” she answered harshly. “But to think that you would abandon your own countrymen — Henri, St. Amant, Pascal — sickens me.”

  He answered with deliberate quietness. “This is the wilderness. Men are expected to be able to take care of themselves and those who depend on them. Those who can’t do that have no business here. As for the men, they came with me, not out of despair at their own chances, but because they recognized that I could give them a better one.”

  There was a certain truth to his argument. She moved to the candle, cupping her hands around the flame to warm them against the chill that had begun to creep along her veins. “You may be right, I don’t know. Still, what of me? If you could so easily have taken me, why the effort of rowing across the river? Why make the journey at all?”

  “I had no desire to humble your pride or to have you set yourself forever in opposition to me for possessing you by force.”

  “Are you sure? I had insulted you.”

  “And intrigued me with your complexity. You still do.”

  “How marvelous for you that it wasn’t a wasted trip.”

  Ignoring her brittle sarcasm, he said softly, “And for you.”

  She turned, her eyes brilliant with accusation. He came toward her with lithe steps, taking her hands and resting them against his chest. When she did not resist, he drew her into his arms.

  “Why do this to yourself, ma chère?” he said against her hair. “Is it guilt that you gave yourself to me? Do you despise me because I urged your surrender? If it is neither of these, what does the rest matter? I did bring the others here with you. They are alive and well because of you. It is useless to talk of what might have been unless you are content to let doubt rule your life as surely as fear.”

  She drew back to look up at him with lingering anger on her face. “Must you be so reasonable?”

  “Forgive me. It’s only my nature.”

  She sighed, laying her cheek against his chin and closing her eyes. He rocked her gently. Presently she started to speak, stopped, then went on anyway. “What of Fort Saint Jean Baptiste, what of when we get there?”

  “We will talk about it soon, in a day or two, when Pierre goes.”

  She gave a slow nod. The answer told her little, but still she was satisfied. She did not want to think of leaving this place, but neither was she anxious at this moment to delve too deeply into her own desires, her own wishes. They were far too confused.

  9

  THE BLOWS ON the door were thunderous in the morning quiet. They jerked Elise awake and she sat straight up in the bed. Reynaud, alert, grim, already had his feet on the floor when the panel burst open and the men poured into the room.

  Elise’s nightgown had been discarded the night before. She snatched the sheet and comforter up to cover herself, embarrassed anger rising in her eyes as she stared at Pascal, St. Amant, and Henri.

  “What the devil do you mean by this?” The rage in Reynaud’s voice was dangerously quiet.

  “You bastard, you half-breed bastard!” Pascal shouted, shaking a fist. “I could kill you with my bare hands!”

  “And I!” St. Amant’s face was stern.

  Elise stared from one to the other, her gaze coming to rest on Henri’s flushed features and clenched hands, seeing their outrage with a sinking feeling inside. Her first thought was to wonder how they could know. Then it came to her that they could not, that they considered her fall from virtue assured long before. It was something more serious than the long hours of the night she had spent locked in passion with Reynaud that had incensed them.

  It had turned colder. Their breaths fogged in the chill air of the room. Reynaud moved to put on his breeches, then stepped to the fireplace where he picked up a tinder box and prepared to kindle the wood left stacked ready to hand. He spoke over his shoulder.

  “If one of you could tell me to what I owe the honor of this dawn visit, it might help me to understand your — displeasure?”

  “We’ve found you out.”

  ‘‘Indeed?”

  “We know, because we heard it from your friend, that this house sits less than ten leagues from Fort Saint Jean Baptiste. Ten leagues! That’s little more than a good day’s journey for us all, less without the women.”

  There was a movement at the door. Pierre, holding a cup of chocolate as if he had been at the breakfast table, stepped into view. I’m sorry, Reynaud, mon ami. I didn’t know it was a secret.”

  “You kept us cooped up here like geese in a pen,” Pascal went on. “We could have been at the fort long ago, even in New Orleans by now. Why did you do it? Damn you, why?”

  The words were echoed by St. Amant and even by Henri. The younger boy looked at Elise, then quickly away again while the color in his face spread to the tops of his ears.

  “Why do you think?”

  “I think the reason is right there in bed with you.”

  “We believe,” St. Amant said, “that it was Madame Laffont you were keeping with you; that the rest of us were included willy-nilly.”

  Elise sat gazing at Reynaud’s broad back. Was it true? Had he deliberately misled them? If so, it was not for the sake of enjoying her favors a while longer, as the others seemed to think, but for the express purpose of seducing her to gain those favors at all. She waited for him to deny the accusation. She waited in vain.

  The fire caught, crackling as it flared up the chimney, filling the room with the smell of the pine kindling and fresh burning oak. Reynaud turned and set his hands on his hips. “I gave you the option of going on.”

  St. Amant stepped forward. “But you left us completely in the dark about the distance we must travel because you knew Elise, Madame Laffont, would have gone with us if we had set out. No, you wanted us all here and saw to it that we came. You kept us kicking our heels like fools, dependent on your hospitality while you dallied longer with the woman you had forced to share your bed. By your ruse you had condemned us before our friends as heartless wretches careless of the tragedy at Fort Rosalie and the feelings of those who must want news from there, as sybarites lounging here while everyone thinks we surely perished with our neighbors.”

  “No, no, for the last at least I refuse responsibility. I told Commandant St. Denis that all of you were very much alive and were recuperating here with me from your ordeal.”

  “You told—” Pascal began, then drew a deep breath to calm himself before rapping out, “When?”

  “The afternoon of our arrival here I rode to the fort on a fast horse and returned by midafternoon of the next day.” His tone grave, Reynaud went on to explain. “It was necessary, you see, to provide Elise with something to wear and I know well a lady there who is near her size, one who enjoys a considerable wardrobe.”

  As the magnitude of the perfidy of the half-breed struck them, they were stunned into silence. It lasted only a moment before Pascal began to curse and St. Amant’s eyes narrowed to a hard glitter.

  Pierre looked from Reynaud to Elise, his gaze lingering with interest on her pale face and white shoulders, on the flowing mane of her honey-brown hair, which spilled over the covers around her. The trader turned to Reynaud, lifting a brow, smiling a little as he wagged his head back and forth in comic disbelief at the predicament of his friend. Reynaud, scowling, merely shrugged.

  “Is it true?” Elise demanded, finding her voice before the others. “We could have reached the fort in the Natchitoches in a matter of hours if you had loaned us horses and set us on our way?”

  There was pain in his eyes as Reynaud looked at her; still, he made no attempt to evade her question. “It’s true.”

  Henr
i had stood, rigid, staring from Elise to Reynaud with as much adolescent jealousy and disillusionment as anger over what had been done. Now he burst into speech. “Mon D-Dieu, if no one else will p-punish this b-blackguard, then I w-will!”

  St. Amant put his forearm out to block the boy’s way. “Softly, softly. Let us hear this out.”

  Elise looked only at Reynaud as if they had not spoken. “But you must have known we would discover it?”

  “Only when it no longer mattered, at least to you.”

  “Such as after last evening?”

  He made a swift, repudiating gesture. “No. In a few days, another week.”

  When he had tired of her, Elise thought as she stared at him with features turned to stone. He had expected the pleasure of having her to last no longer than that. When it had gone, it would no longer matter what she thought, what any of them thought.

  Pascal made a growling sound in his throat. “I say we take it out of his hide.”

  “No violence before I’ve finished breakfast, I beg you,” Pierre said, waving his cup. “I cannot allow it.”

  It was a reminder that Reynaud was not without someone to come to his aid, should they decide to trounce him together.

  “There is no point,” St. Amant agreed. “All that we require is that he take us at once, by the fastest possible means, to our destination.”

  “You may take yourselves, with my compliments,” Reynaud answered, inclining his head.

  “You refuse—”

  “As you pointed out, it’s only ten leagues. It happens there is a cart track right up to the gate of the fort.”

  “Let me guess,” Pascal said with heavy, swaggering sarcasm. “You lied about the road out there, too.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t think to follow it while out hunting.”

  “We did, for a way. You told us it only went to the edge of your land. Does that mean your land extends to the fort?”

  Reynaud smiled. “Not quite.”

  “We will leave within the hour,” St. Amant said and, with scant civility, bowed and left the room.