Louisiana History Collection - Part 1

by Jennifer Blake

  “I realize that, too,” he said shortly. From the ground near her head, he picked up the knife he had taken from her and presented it with the hilt forward in a gesture of studied politeness. “Your weapon, if you are still determined to use it.”

  She brought her hand from under the coat and snatched the knife from him. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  “There was always the possibility.” When she gave him a dark look without answering, he went on abruptly, “I’m sorry I struck you. It seemed necessary, and I just… did it before I thought.”

  “Never mind.” It was embarrassment that made her words so short. She tried again. “There’s no harm done. What about — what about the others?”

  “The last I saw of them, they were pulling ahead, going around the bend. The savages were having to bail.”

  “Pierre and Jean will come back for us.”

  “Yes, when they can.”

  And if they were able. Neither spoke the words, but both acknowledged them with a long glance. In the meantime, they did not dare light a fire to warm themselves and to dry their clothing. They had no weapon beyond Cyrene’s knife, no shelter, nothing to eat. To move from where they were might be to run into the Indians, either in their retreat or, if they had been victorious, in their search for them. For the moment, there was nothing they could do but lie still and wait.

  It was not a comfortable situation by any means. It was not just the wind that whispered through the leaves above them, chilling damp flesh and turning wet cloth icy cold, nor was it the uneven ground under them with its litter of leaves covering sticks that grew sharper as the minutes passed. It was the enforced closeness, the touch of thigh against thigh, breast against breast. As a reminder of things better forgotten, it was nearly intolerable.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Well enough,” Cyrene answered, her eyes closed. She thought René was watching her as he lay with his head propped on his hand, but she did not care to make certain.

  “Are you sure?”

  She lifted her lashes, caught by something in his voice. “Yes, why?”

  “I hardly expected you to take this part of it so calmly.”

  “You mean lying here with you?” She could feel heat in her face.

  “In a word, yes.”

  “We are both cold, unless you are immune to the weather. It would be a ridiculous martyrdom to deny it or to try to keep you at a distance. We need each other, need the little warmth we can find between us.”

  “A very practical view.”

  “Here in the wilderness you learn to be practical, to cooperate with each other in spite of — of differences. Those who don’t have a way of dying.”

  “I have no intention of dying.” He meant it, he found, with a fervor he had applied to few things in his life. His intention was to discover in what other ways this woman was different from all others.

  He could think of no other female of his acquaintance who would accept his presence after what he had done without screaming in rage or shrinking from him in abject fright, none who would be resigned to the discomfort of their position without complaints and demands that he do something, and certainly none with the courage and knowledge to lend her aid to the repulsion of the Indian attack in the first place. Such a paragon he had never seen, most particularly one who could appear delectable, in the fashion of a half-drowned mermaid, through it all.

  Somewhere a bird called, a faint, plaintive sound. A limb fell from a tree behind them, clattering through the branches, snapping in two as it thudded to the ground. Cyrene became aware of the steady beat of René’s heart against her shoulder and the rise and fall of his breathing. Her own pulse was ragged, throbbing against her ribs. A sense of emptiness began in the lower part of her body and slowly spread upward. As an added danger in their situation began to make itself known, she hurried into whispered speech.

  “Why — why did you come after me? Why did you leave the boat?”

  “I was the one who told you to fire, else you wouldn’t have gone overboard. On top of that, if you will remember, I thought you needed saving.”

  “I would have fired, anyway.”

  “Would you? But the fault was still mine.”

  “Not at all,” she insisted. “Anyway, I’m surprised Pierre, or Jean either, let you do it.”

  “Instead of one of them? They had no choice; their hands were full at the time.”

  “But you must have been quick to beat them to it.”

  He raised a brow. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “What?”

  “You are under my protection.”

  “Surely it doesn’t extend to this?”

  “Why would you think otherwise?”

  “It isn’t the same thing at all!” Her tone was cross, mainly because she suspected him of baiting her.

  “What is it, then?”

  “You have no obligation to save my life, for one thing.”

  “What about the right?”

  “That either! You make it sound as if you think I belong to you.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I do not!” She raised herself up on one elbow, her eyes hard with anger and her voice sibilant in its quietness. “I don’t care what Pierre and Jean said, I belong to me. I’m grateful that you dived in after me, but that doesn’t mean I accept any part of this bargain you made with them.”

  “What happened,” he drawled, a smile rising in his gray eyes, “to cooperation? To needing each other?”

  Their faces were only inches apart. Cyrene’s gaze dropped to his lips. She could feel the magnetic force of the attraction between them, sense its slow pull. It would take only a little, a slight swaying, the parting of her lips, and their mouths would be joined. She knew it.

  She took a deep, slow breath and eased slowly back down to the ground.

  She stared up into the myrtle branches. Her voice was flat as she spoke again. “What is it you want?”

  “You, of course.”

  The answer was flippant, without thought, because René could not think. He felt as if he were standing on the edge of a precipice with the earth falling from under his feet. He must learn not to underestimate this woman. He would learn, or else.

  “Oh, please,” she said, the look in her brown eyes scathing. “You don’t care about me, and you don’t care about trading. You’re just like all the others. You’ll stay in Louisiane as long as you have to, but the minute they give you leave, you’ll take ship back to France and kiss the stony wharf there when you go ashore. You’ll hie yourself to Paris and dine out for years on tales of what a barbarous land this is and what strange creatures and uncouth people live here.”

  “You don’t think much of such men, do you?”

  “Why should I? They aren’t suited to this new country, and so it’s better they leave. We don’t need them.”

  “What makes you so sure I’m one of them?”

  “Next you will tell me you intend to take up a concession of land here and make it your life’s work.”

  Something in her tone, as of judgment passed, stung René. “Who knows? I might enjoy that. I just might like being far away from authority, might prefer carving my own estate out of virgin land.”

  “Living in a house of logs, fighting the gales and floods and the scorching sun? The fevers and agues and fluxes? The mosquitoes and snakes, the chiggers and ticks and every kind of stinging, biting bug?”

  “You think I couldn’t?”

  “Oh, you could, if you really wanted it. The trouble is, so few men do.”

  It was an odd thing, but for an idea that had never crossed his mind until this moment, this one had a marvelously strong appeal. He knew beyond doubting that he could enjoy the challenge of this new land. He could take great pleasure in wresting a living, and perhaps a fortune, from it under the circumstances she had described. That was, of course, if the challenge was his to accept, if it were allowed. It was not.

  “And what of you
?” he asked with considerable irony. “Are you content as you are, trading with the Bretons? Do you never think of helping build an estate?”

  She gave him a defiant look. “I think of making money enough to buy land of my own.”

  “And who will work it?”

  “I will!” she said fiercely. “Or I will buy an African or two to help.”

  “You should have no trouble finding a husband to do the labor or to oversee the slaves.”

  “Yes, and to sell everything when my back is turned or to drink away the profits. I’ve seen it all before.”

  “How does it come about that you have so little opinion of marriage? Or men?” His curiosity was genuine, though the question had a purpose.

  “Let’s say the examples I’ve seen haven’t been impressive.”

  “Thank you,” he said, his tone dry.

  She slanted him a quick glance through her lashes, then looked away again. “I didn’t mean you.”

  “I wish I could believe that. What of your parents’ marriage? That couldn’t have been so bad if it produced you.”

  The implied compliment was disturbing; she decided to ignore it. “My father managed to gamble away my mother’s dowry, her inheritance, and a great deal more before being banished to the colony in disgrace. My mother died of the privations he brought upon her, and the shame.”

  It occurred to Cyrene as she spoke that there was not so much difference between René” Lemonnier and her father. Not only was René an outcast, but he had something of the same rakish manner. There were other similarities: their fine clothing, the taint of the fleshpots of Paris, the hint of less than saintly principles.

  “What of the Bretons? Are they such paragons that you stay with them?”

  “They took us in, my mother and father and I, when we had no place to go. They’ve been good to me, almost like family. If I left them, I’d have no one.”

  “You could have me, if you would abandon yourself to my care.” He put the suggestion, then waited in some trepidation.

  “Indeed? And for how long? Until you grow tired of me? Until you go back to France? No, I thank you.”

  “At least you’re polite.”

  It would be all right, his pose of the ardent lover intent on winning a further taste of her charms. As long as she remained adamant, he would be safe in using his pursuit of her — the constant besieging of the citadel — as the excuse for his sudden interest in trade. What he would do if she capitulated, he did not know. A woman at close quarters would be a major hindrance. Not that he thought there was cause for worry. He obviously had little attraction for Cyrene. There were those, he did not doubt, who would rejoice if they ever learned of the constant rejection he was enduring. No doubt it was a suitable penance, one good for his soul regardless of the effect on his vanity.

  Cyrene studied his face from under her lashes. Was he like her father, in truth? There was no outward sign; it was only in the repute both men had gained for themselves, in the faint swagger about them, and in the penalty imposed upon them by their government that the similarity lay.

  Or did it? What, actually, did she know about René? The answer was next to nothing other than the whispers of the gossips. During his time on the flatboat he had said little about himself, and the conventions operating in the colony concerning a person’s past had prevented too many questions. Was it possible that the distrust she felt toward René was rooted in her memory of the failings of her father? She did not like to think that she had been so unfair.

  But had she? The way to discover the right of the matter lay open. By inquiring into her affairs he had given her the opportunity to do the same.

  She shifted a little, drawing back to better see his face. “What about you? It seems that if I care for men too little, you like women far too much.”

  “Impossible,” he declared with a flamboyant gesture of one hand as he lay with his head propped on the other.

  “Even if it makes you an exile?”

  “An inconvenience that is beginning to reveal compensations.”

  She held his glinting gaze for a long moment. “I take it you don’t mean to give a straight answer.”

  “I have yet to hear a straight question.”

  “Is that what’s required?” she inquired with astringency. “Straight out, then: Are you here because you could not forebear to set up a flirtation with La Pompadour?”

  “Alas, I was the soul of discretion.”

  “But you were caught in spite of it?”

  “I played the part of loyal subject to my king and left the lady’s favors unsought and unsavored. I should have at least worshiped from afar.”

  He might have changed his style of coat and hair, but he was still the courtier, using ten words to say what one would do. “I wish you would not speak in that affected way.”

  “How would you have me speak?”

  “Plainly.”

  “Plainly, then, the lady was incensed at my lack of attention. In common with some other women, she craved the pleasure of refusing it.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “If you are suggesting that I am one of those women—”

  “You wrong me,” he said with a wounded air.

  “I doubt it.”

  He leaned forward until his mouth just brushed her cheek. “What did you say? I didn’t quite catch it.”

  “Never mind. Are you sure that was all?”

  “All? Do you realize I was very nearly left to rot in the darkest corner of the Bastille? The lettre de cachet was signed, the cell door firmly closed. Only the intervention of my friend Maurepas saved me.”

  “The minister? But I thought he and La Pompadour were sworn enemies?”

  “They are. It needed only for Maurepas to say in the presence of Louis’s mistress that he was sure I preferred the Bastille, where my disappearance was providing the final stroke to a legend to equal that of Don Juan himself, to being banished to Louisiane where all the women were either old or ugly. The deed was done in an instant.”

  “Old? Ugly?”

  “An error for which Maurepas must be forgiven. But one concocted in a good cause, or so I thought.”

  “I can see how you might.” She didn’t believe him. There was something he was hiding behind his glib pose of the sensualist. What it was, she didn’t know, but she meant to find out.

  “An error,” he added, “that gives me great pleasure.”

  René could see that she was not convinced. He wished that he could tell her the truth, but he knew with grim certainty that it would not make her think better of him.

  “Tell me,” she said, her tone brittle. “What did you do in France? Besides seduce susceptible females, of course.”

  “Do? Why I paid my court at Versailles. I also hunted, attended levees, routs, and balls, gambled a little — the usual things.” There was no harm in admitting to that much of the truth.

  “You have estates?”

  “It would be more proper to say that my father has them, though I have an income produced by a portion of them.”

  “What does he think of your banishment, your father?”

  “I had no time to ask before I was hustled onto a ship and locked in my cabin. I’m sure he would say, if asked, that he hoped it would be the making of me, though he would wager little on the chance.”

  There was an edge to his tone that told her she had struck a nerve. “He is making an effort to have you pardoned and recalled, I suppose?”

  “Now, why should you suppose any such thing? I’m not his only son or even the eldest. There were five of us, but one died in infancy and another is an invalid.” He watched her closely as he spoke. “Still, there are sufficient to carry on the line without me.”

  “The only consideration to move him?”

  It was a moment before René could bring his attention to bear on what she had said. The possibility of a reaction had been remote. The lack of one proved nothing.

  He said, “You are thinking, maybe, of parental
affection? But I have besmirched the family honor and so have forfeited such sentiment. Would you care to replace the loss?”

  He moved his hand at her waist in a caressing motion, sliding it upward as if to cup the fullness of her breast.

  “I would not!” Cyrene caught his hand and flung it from her body as if it were a bothersome insect. “Does everything lead to this with you?”

  “Most everything,” he admitted, his gaze hooded as he watched the quick rise and fall of her bodice. The cheap cloth had dried to semi-dampness as they talked. It no longer clung with such distracting fidelity, molding every feature. That was a blessing, for in his last answer, at least as it pertained to Cyrene Nolté he had not lied.

  Before Cyrene could speak, there came a faint splash from the bayou. The sound was repeated, drawing nearer; it was the steady dipping of paddles. René threw back his coat, which covered them, and raised himself into a sitting position with the careful contraction of hard muscles. He nudged aside the crisp green foliage of the myrtle with one finger, then peered out. He went still.

  “The renegades?” she whispered, a breath of sound.

  He gave a brief nod in answer. “Only three left. No prisoners.”

  Cyrene released a trembling breath. The Bretons had not been taken prisoner.

  The renegade Choctaw did not pause, gave no sign they remembered where she and René had entered the water. Either they had wounded among them who needed attention that could only be provided at their camp, wherever that might be, or else they had lost their enthusiasm for harassing voyageurs. Within minutes they were out of sight and the quiet sounds of their passage had died away among the trees and waving marsh grass.

  When it was safe, René rose to his feet. “Can you walk if you lean on me?”

  “I could, yes,” she said doubtfully, “but if you mean to move from here, I don’t think we should do that.”

  “It will help to warm us, besides shortening the time before we meet with the others.”

  “Pierre and Jean will have taken careful note of the place where they left us and will expect to find us here if… when they return. If we move downstream, we may not be able to follow the bayou for the undergrowth and dead water sloughs. We could miss them.”