Louisiana History Collection - Part 1

by Jennifer Blake

  “Stop it! Stop it!” Cyrene’s voice was high-pitched as she threw herself at Pierre and Jean, dragging at them with handfuls of their shirts knotted in her fists, pushing in front of them. They had stopped in mid-attack, their faces blank as they saw René’s defense. Relief flooded through Cyrene, mounting to her head in a rush of blood. She felt hot with it, and yet a shiver ran through her as she stepped to place herself between René Lemonnier and the two men.

  She rounded on her would-be protectors. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Teaching him manners, petite,” Pierre said. “By Madame Vaudreuil’s own admission, he has need of them.”

  “But what did she say?”

  “That your smiles seemed the medicine he requires.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “It’s enough.”

  “For murder? He may be bleeding again, even now.”

  Pierre Breton surveyed the man in the corner. “He seems well enough to me.”

  So he did, though he had sunk to one knee and his face was white. Cyrene said, “You would be served as you deserve if his recovery is half again as long.”

  It was plain the two men had not considered that possibility. Nor did they intend to consider it now. “A man who can rise to fight, can rise to leave,” Pierre said, his voice ringing like struck iron.

  “If he has opened the cut in his back again, he will need at least another week of rest.”

  “Another day, petite, two at the most. No more.”

  She refused to acknowledge such an ultimatum. Swinging away from the older Breton in a whirl of petticoats, she gave her arm to René. He leaned on it hardly at all while the Breton men remained, but when they had gone — except for Gaston, who retreated no farther than a stool before the fire — he allowed her to seat him on the bearskin pallet, the better to see to his wounds.

  She knelt in front of him, tugging his shirt from his breeches, gathering the folds in her hands as she lifted it upward. He raised his arms and she whipped it off over his head. As she freed his hands, she met his gaze. It was steady on her face, assessing, vital.

  “I’ve been undressed by women before,” he said, “but I’ve never had one defend and shield me.”

  Her hands were suddenly clumsy as she sought to turn the shirt right side out again. “A protective instinct only. I’m sorry it was necessary.”

  “I’m neither your chick nor child.”

  “You are injured.”

  “And that’s enough?”

  Golden fragments of light moved in her eyes and a corner of her mouth twitched. “I also have the promise of your coat.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I was forgetting.”

  “I beg you won’t. I depend on your word.”

  He was so very close. She could see the individual black hairs of his brows, like small curving wires, that made the strong, silken arches; the indentation of a faint scar above his eye; the chiseled molding of his mouth; and the dark sheen of his beard under the skin. The warmth of his body and the clean male scent of him crept in upon her senses. He was still and yet there was such strength in that stillness, such quiet confidence, that it was like an aura surrounding her.

  He shifted to turn his back to her, waiting. It was difficult to force herself to touch him, to trace the wrapping of the bandaging around his chest, smoothing her fingers under the edges, testing for looseness caused by his violent movements. She leaned closer, delicately touching the thick pad that covered the jagged cut along his ribs.

  She drew in her breath. The touch had caused a red stain on the cloth.

  “Stupid idiots!” she exclaimed.

  “Bleeding?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “They might have killed you, had they got their hands on you!” She snatched up a cloth pad and untied the strip of bandaging to press it into place. “And for nothing. Nothing! They are mad, all three of them. They think every man who looks at me is going to take me by force unless they prevent it. They guard my chastity every waking minute as if it were purest gold. It’s unbearable!”

  “Your chastity.” The words were tentative, as if he was uncertain of their meaning. They were also quiet, for Gaston was near and the voices of the brothers could be heard out on the levee.

  She sent him a scathing look. “What did you think they were protecting? My favors?”

  The idea had occurred to him, though it did not seem the time to say so. The only thing against it was the fact that she had been sleeping alone since he came.

  “That’s exactly what you thought, isn’t it? I might have guessed as much from a man like you!”

  “Like me?”

  “Such a notorious libertine can hardly be expected to understand anything else.”

  The contempt in her tone stung. “You know nothing about it.”

  “I know enough. You are a man experienced in the ways of love and of women. To you it’s all a game, a grand chase full of pretty gestures and clever stratagems, snatched kisses and daring caresses. But even such men as you have their uses. If you were not injured, and weak with it, I would let you teach—”

  She stopped, aghast at what she had been about to say.

  He swung his head to look at her over his shoulder, and the sudden tightness in his chest had nothing to do with the cloth wrapped around it. “You would what?”

  Her wide gaze met his and fiery color swept upward to her hairline, burning in her cheeks. She bent her head to her task, though her fingers trembled. “Nothing.”

  “I don’t think I can accept that.”

  “I… was annoyed and didn’t stop to think. Let it pass.”

  “You were about to suggest some service I might perform for you, if I were able. Were you not?”

  “No!” she cried, startled at his acuteness.

  “I think you were. It would give me great satisfaction to repay you in some way for what you have done for me. Won’t you tell me how I may do that?”

  The bleeding was not dangerous; the pressure of the pad she had applied seemed to have stopped it. She tied the bandaging back again and tucked the ends under, then sat back, preparing to rise.

  “There is no need for repayment,” she said.

  His fingers closed warm and firm over her wrist. “The need is mine. Tell me.”

  The timbre of his voice, low and seductive, seemed to vibrate somewhere deep inside her. The gray light in his eyes was hypnotic, compelling an answer. The firmness of his hold on her sent a flutter of apprehension edged with reluctant excitement along her veins. She wanted to confide in him, she discovered; it seemed important that she should.

  She moistened her lips. “I only thought, that is, I am so confined, so endlessly guarded. I sometimes feel desperate to be free of it. It seems that there would be no need for such close watch if I were no longer… chaste.”

  To suspect her meaning was one thing, to hear it voiced quite another. For a long moment René could not breathe, could not think. The words compressed, he said finally, “Do you know what you’re saying?”

  “Very well. I also realize that it’s not possible.”

  “An error. There is no obstacle, at least from my point of view.”

  Her heart fluttered in her chest. “You mean that you would be capable of it.”

  “It doesn’t,” he said softly, “require a great deal of strength.”

  She swallowed against the steel band that seemed to have become clamped about her throat. “I see.”

  “What it requires is desire and time and privacy, and also a certain resolve.”

  “But if there were those things, you would be willing?”

  It was humiliating, this need to ask. Why had she not foreseen how it would be? The reason was because she had never really expected to broach the idea. She could withdraw it now, could say she had changed her mind. Something inside her refused to permit it. The need to know what he would do, what he would say, was too strong.

  René watched her in hope and fear and with
a faint edge of self-loathing. He could feel the swift and ragged throb of her pulse in the wrist he held, and the tumult of emotions it suggested disturbed him. It also excited him. To refuse this unexpected opportunity was unthinkable; it suited his needs too closely to be forgone, even if the prospect offered had not been tempting beyond belief. It would be the first time that he stood to gain some reward for the notoriety he had so laboriously attained. He was not so without compunction, however, that he could take advantage of his lovely benefactress without some attempt to bring her to a sense of what it might cost her.

  “You are sure it’s what you want?”

  Irritation rose in her at the doubt she heard in his voice, especially since it mirrored what she felt. “Of course I’m not sure,” she snapped. “What woman ever can be at a time like this? But the Bretons have gone too far. They can’t attack every man who smiles at me. Something has to be done.”

  “So it would seem.”

  She forced conviction she did not feel into her voice. “I’m not a simpering convent miss, ready to tease and run away; this is entirely different. But if you would rather have nothing to do with it, that is, of course, your privilege.”

  He made a swift arresting gesture. “I didn’t say that.”

  “If — if we should reach an agreement, there would be no obligation involved. I would require nothing more of you, I assure you. You need not fear I would hold you responsible for the consequences or attempt to constrain you in any way.”

  “Would you not?” The implication that she had no other use for him other than the one outlined gave him pause. Always before, it had been he who had made it plain that he would not be held by his actions. This reversal of roles might have been a blow to his ego if it had not been for the humor of it.

  “This isn’t funny,” she said between her teeth as she saw the wry amusement rise in his eyes.

  “No. No,” he agreed, his voice rich with promise. “It is altogether intriguing. I can’t think when I have been so enthralled or so honored. I am, chérie, indisputably at your service. Use me as you will.”

  It was a munificent offer; she was well aware of it, and not a little startled by the generosity. She stared at him, her eyes clouded with doubt. “I… would not like to take advantage of your weakness.”

  “I beg you to do so.”

  “Nor would I like to think that I might hurt you.”

  The gravity of his features was controlled by the hard, clamped muscles of his jaw. “Be assured, I do not flinch from it.”

  The timbre of her voice became softer, dropping even lower in tone. “They say there is some pain for the woman.”

  “There are also ways to make it less, and I will pledge myself to use them and to show you the way to joy.”

  Inside the other room, Gaston stirred. “What are you two whispering about?”

  The intrusion of his call was a reminder. Cyrene lifted her chin in sudden decision, “I will accept your pledge then, since I cannot think that I will ever be offered more.”

  René met her clear gaze with something like remorse lying deep in his gray eyes. All desire to laugh was gone. “It’s little enough,” he said, “less than you deserve. I would that it was more, indeed.”

  The problem that faced them was how to find a way to achieve their object in the time allowed. Two days. In two days René Lemonnier must be gone. It would be of no use to appeal to Pierre and Jean, to plead Lemonnier’s desire to learn their trade, to become a voyageur, even if his mention of it was a true aim, something of which Cyrene was by no means certain. The Bretons’ suspicions of him, uneasy from the start, had been brought to fever heat by the attentions they had seen. For the remainder of the day, mere was always one or more of them moving in and out of the cabin, cleaning and oiling traps on the front deck or else congregating with their friends at the end of the gangplank.

  Late in the afternoon, they also accepted delivery of twenty casks of indigo. The sight of the fat, blue-stained containers marked conspicuously with the word flour did much to explain the late hours the brothers had been keeping during the last week at the pothouse. They must have been meeting with the planter who had grown the crop, haggling over the price. Its value had increased of late. News had been received that there was to be a subsidy paid on the delivery of indigo to English ports, the purpose of which was to promote production of the dye in the English colony of Carolina. The result, however, would be to increase the value of that grown in Louisiane as well.

  The reasons, or at least one of them, for the increased nervousness and irascibility of the Bretons that Cyrene had noticed in the past few days also became obvious. So long as Lemonnier remained with them, they could not plan the trading expedition the casks signaled, could not even speak of it, much less leave upon it. As a crowning irritation, due to Lemonnier’s presence they were forced to smuggle the dye onto their own flatboat and conceal it under canvases.

  The arrival of the indigo, on top of their distrust of Lemonnier, meant that when evening fell the brothers made no move toward the pothouse but instead lolled about the cabin, exchanging jokes and bits of news and gossip and getting in Cyrene’s way as she stirred a dish of fish and shrimp and herbs in a brown sauce that would be served over the rice that steamed gently in its black iron pot.

  When the meal was eaten and the men had brought their wooden bowls and spoons to her to be washed, Cyrene said to them, “Aren’t you thirsty? I hear music, I think, from the pothouse.”

  “Water will suffice tonight, chère” Pierre answered.

  Jean chuckled from where he lay on a bearskin before the fire, coaxing a tune from a concertina. “It always suffices when a man’s pockets are empty.”

  She might have been able to send Gaston on some errand, but it was not possible to find excuses to be rid of all three without arousing suspicion. Cyrene, exchanging a glance with René Lemonnier where he lay propped on his elbow on his pallet, gave him a rueful smile and an infinitesimal shrug.

  There would be no opportunity that night for her seduction. She did not know whether to be glad or sorry.

  4

  THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, Cyrene walked into town to the market. Her reasons for going were many. She needed to replenish her supplies, yes, but she also felt on her mettle with her cooking now that René was able to appreciate her efforts. In addition, she needed to check the available foodstuffs and begin stocking up for the trading expedition the Bretons would make to the English. But more than these things, she needed to escape for an hour or so from the flatboat cabin.

  She had hardly left it since she had fished René Lemonnier from the river and the confinement was becoming oppressive. That was not the main cause, however. Since her agreement with the rake, she had become self-conscious beyond belief around him. She could feel his gaze on her with every step she made; there was no way to avoid it in the small cabin. It might have been her overwrought imagination, but the look in his eyes seemed possessive, impatient, as if he were eager to claim her. Her movements under such surveillance had become increasingly clumsy as her usual smooth coordination deserted her. She was suddenly tongue-tied and stupid, with nothing to say. Moreover, since daybreak this morning she had developed a disconcerting tendency to flush when her eyes met his. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all.

  Gaston sauntered beside Cyrene, carrying her basket and whistling between the small gap in his teeth. Their sabots made dull, slapping sounds in the mud of the track. The afternoon was overcast, with a cold wind that flipped the ends of Gaston’s neckerchief and ruffled the edges of Cyrene’s plain linen coif, which she had donned for the outing. The sound of the wind in the trees along the track they walked was like a weary sighing, while farther on the tree limbs were loaded with blackbirds that squawked and squabbled, dropping to the ground and rising back up again so that they looked like swirls of autumn leaves in glossy black. Overhead, a flight of ducks, too numerous to count, winged their way in a ragged vee. Watching from the fores
t’s edge was a wildcat with a bobbed tail that hissed and fled at the approach of humans.

  There was no danger in the cat so long as he was running away. Cyrene and Gaston hardly noticed it.

  Cyrene glanced at the square young man beside her. “Do you ever think, Gaston, about leaving your father and your uncle, about going off on your own?”

  He stopped whistling to give her an incredulous stare. “Why should I do that?”

  “You’re of age. You could be your own man, do what you wanted.”

  “I do what I want now.”

  That was certainly true. “But don’t you ever think of building something for yourself, for your future?”

  “You mean like a house?”

  “A house, land, an estate.”

  “When I marry, maybe; I don’t know. I like being a trader, living on the flatboat. Having land means you have to clear it and plant it and look after the crop, and that’s hard work. Why do it when there are easier ways to make money?”

  “Dangerous ways.”

  “You think planting isn’t dangerous when there are storms and floods, snakes and wild beasts in the woods, not to mention Indian raids?” He lifted his shoulders, his tone taking on deliberate insouciance. “Just living is a danger. Our only choice is which chance we will take.”

  It was plain he did not feel her dissatisfaction, did not understand her discontent. Cyrene said no more on the subject but inquired instead about his latest conquest, a certain distraction.

  New Orleans, built on the closest high ground to where the Mississippi River met the Gulf of Mexico, was carved out of the swamp and marsh well over a hundred miles distant from deep salt water. Occupying a narrow strip perhaps a league and a half long that followed a wide curve in the river, crowded at the rear by the dense forest, the town was growing again after years of stagnation and even decline. The cause was, in part, the influence of the brides sent out by the crown, but it was also the presence of the Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal, who made the colony seem less of a backwater, thereby arousing interest in investment.