“Nothing.”
“Nothing? But, m’sieur, it is the fashion!”
“There are no blemishes to be covered. Why embellish perfection?” He stopped in front of Cyrene, his gaze direct, searching.
“There is that, of course,” the seamstress allowed.
“You may leave us, madame.”
“Certainly. Yes. At once.” Smiling hugely to herself, Madame Adèle whisked up her various implements, brushes, and containers and took herself away.
When the woman had gone, Cyrene moistened her lips. “You — you are pleased?” she asked.
“I am pleased, in part.”
She sent him a startled glance. “Only in part?”
“I think I preferred the nightshirt.”
“You must learn to know your mind.”
His lips curved slightly. “So I must. I bought you a gift, but now I’m not so sure I should give it to you.”
“Because you think I am too fine already?” she asked, her eyes dark.
“Because you have no need of it and will undoubtedly find some way to make me feel a knave.”
“That seems unlikely,” she said, her tone tart, “unless of course you are—”
“Unless I am a knave? Thank you, I now have nothing to fear.”
He removed a small velvet bag from the pocket of his waistcoat. Reaching to take her hand, he placed the bag in it. Her fingers were not quite steady as she took it and drew it open. She caught the glitter and glimmer of jewels, then tipped the bag with one hand to pour a pair of eardrops made of pear-shaped baroque pearls attached to flower rosettes set with diamonds into the other.
It was a long moment before she could speak. Finally she said, “You are too generous.”
“Not at all.”
The politeness of his tone was a goad. “I see. You will expect payment in return.”
Did he? René could not tell. “Are you offering it?” he said.
“You know I’m not!” she snapped, her eyes suddenly glittering as brightly as the diamonds. “I cannot be so easily bought.”
“There was always the possibility.”
“Your mistake, an expensive one.”
When she was angry, she was much more like the Cyrene he knew, as tempestuous and without artifice as the elements. “Perhaps not. Will you wear them?”
“Why not?” She would show him she had no intention of being made to feel indebted by so underhanded a means. Reaching up, she removed from her ears the small gold hoops that had been her confirmation gift when she was twelve.
“Allow me,” he said, and, taking one of the eardrops, began to screw it carefully into her ear. She could feel the hard metal pressing into the softness of her lobe, thrusting relentlessly into the opening pierced in her ear. It sank into the hole, the shaft, larger than that of her hoops, stretching the delicate skin. He fastened on the cunning back that held the shaft in place, then began on the other eardrop. As if compelled, she lifted her gaze to his. He smiled down at her as he inserted the second earring gently into her ear, and the feel of his knuckles against her cheek was like a caress.
He was not done. From his other pocket he took a small vial. “Humor me in this also, if you will. You need it not at all, but it’s something no lady of fashion should be without.”
It was perfume. Cyrene took the beautifully wrought cut-glass bottle in her hand, feeling its ridges in her palm. She removed the tiny stopper wedged into the top. The scent of damask roses wafted on the air, bringing memories of a beach and a night she would just as soon forget. In defiance of them, she wet the stopper and touched it to the pulse point in her neck and the bends of her arms, and also to the gentle valley between her breasts.
René said nothing, but the look in his eyes as he inclined his head was disturbing, compounded of gratification and promise.
While René dressed for the evening’s entertainment, Cyrene spent the time shaping her nails, buffing away the rough spots on her fingers with a piece of pumice stone and rubbing goose fat provided by the serving woman into her hands. The ministrations were inadequate to give her skin the smoothness required in a lady of idle pleasures, but might save her from total disgrace. Her nails, kept short by cooking and scrubbing, would doubtless grow if she remained in her present position. If.
René when he emerged, was splendid in a purple velvet coat so deep in color that it was nearly black and lavender satin breeches. There was lace at his throat and wrists, and amethyst buttons on his coat. His wig was neat, tied with a black bow and powdered to a blinding white, and in his hand he carried an ebony cane. He was every inch the courtier, aloof, watchful. As he took Cyrene’s hand and placed it on his arm before leading her from the house, a small frisson ran through her.
It was no more than a short walk from René’s lodgings to the governor’s residence where the soirée would be held. The marquis’s house was located on the corner of the street that ran before the Place Royale and the second street up from it, with Government House itself, where the affairs of the colony were conducted, being just beyond, also fronting on the same street as the Place Royale. The streets of the town, laid out with military precision in a grid of neat squares, had names on maps that collected dust in the government’s bins, but they were not posted and few used them. The thoroughfares were, for the most part, known by the surnames of the most important men who dwelled on them.
The official Government House, a two-story building with dormer windows let into the roof and walls of plaster over brick, was falling into such disrepair that already there was talk of building a new one farther up the river. Regardless, it was here that most of the larger functions were held, in the upstairs meeting chamber that also served as a ballroom. For more intimate gatherings, however, the governor’s wife preferred to welcome her guests into the rarefied air of the home she shared with her husband. Such was the case for the evening.
It was impossible to tell who was responsible for the furnishing of the governor’s house, whether it was the marquis himself or his wife, but to all appearances their aim had been to duplicate in so far as they were able the luxury of Versailles. One wall of the main salon was lined with windows, while opposite them was a row of reflecting mirrors. The wood interstices were painted to appear marble-like in shades of green and rose. Chandeliers gleamed icy with crystal luster and ropes of crystal medallions. Beside the entrance doors were a pair of massive six-feet-tall candelabra of bronze holding branches of tall, guttering candles, all of which, both in chandeliers and candelabra, were of the purest beeswax. The floor was of parquet polished to a high gloss that reflected the dancing flames in the great fireplaces of faux marbre at either end of the room. Overhead, the ceiling was painted with voluptuous goddesses and fat cherubs, while on either side of the fireplaces were wall panels of painted silk from Tours. Both the harpsichord on which the singer was to accompany herself and the chairs standing ready for the audience were carved and gilded and inset with sections of scenic tapestry.
The rococo splendor was overwhelming, not the least reason being the thought of how much care and thought and money had been expended on transporting it to the colony. It might have been more impressive, however, if Cyrene had not also known, through the grumblings of Jean and Pierre, of how much food and clothing for the colonial army and how much valuable merchandise consigned to Louisiane merchants had been left rotting on the wharves while space in ships’ holds were filled with these items, which the governor and his wife felt were necessary for them to sustain what their friends in Paris no doubt considered their exile at the end of the world.
Cyrene and René were formally received by the governor and his lady just inside the salon. If the marquise, resplendent in gold lace over black velvet, remembered seeing Cyrene on her visit to the flatboat, she gave no sign. Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil, equally grand in gray satin decorated by the order of a Knight of Saint Louis, declared himself enchanted. A man of grace and exquisite manners, he was not only much younger than his
wife but more attractive, with a broad forehead, firm features, and compelling eyes. Fully aware of his exalted position, pleasure-loving, he was yet a fine administrator with a firm grasp of the problems of the far-flung colony and total confidence in his ability to solve them given time.
The smile he gave Cyrene as she made her curtsy was appreciative, his grasp upon her fingers warm and lingering. The marquise, noticing from the corner of her eye, waved a languid signal to a lackey in livery and a white wig, one of a dozen or more standing at intervals along the walls. The man leaped to place chairs for Cyrene and René. The governor released Cyrene with a faint air of regret nicely calculated as a tribute to her beauty, allowing them to move on into the room.
“Take care,” René said, leaning to speak in soft tones near her ear as they strolled away, “the governor’s wife is most unfashionably jealous.”
“I thought she had a fondness for younger men?”
“One thing does not preclude the other. She is sometimes forced to console herself, like most wives.”
Women had been so scarce in the colony for so long that marriage due to mutual attraction and mutual sentiments had become the common thing. There were arranged marriages among those with property, a trend that was increasing as more large concessions of land changed hands and more people arrived, but it was sometimes difficult to remember that things were very different in France. There, particularly among the landed nobility, marriages were contracted in the cradle with no pretense of anything more than a careful alliance of family and fortune. Adultery on the part of the husband was not only condoned but expected, and following the birth of an heir, wives could with proper discretion enjoy the company and embraces of lovers. To Cyrene, used to marriages where husband and wife worked side by side to feed and clothe themselves and supported each other through illness and pain and misfortune, the aristocratic idea of married union seemed cold and barren.
Not that she troubled to say so to René. Rather, she smiled and made pleasant remarks to the men and women to whom he presented her, then took her place for the musical evening.
The young woman who entertained them, the daughter of a planter, had a clear, sweet voice but made no pretension to professionalism. Supported by the meltingly approving looks of a plump woman who was obviously her mother, she was spritely and vivacious as she gave them light country airs with delicately risqué allusions to shepherds and milkmaids or else trilled her way through the pieces that had been popular the winter before at the Opera-Comique.
It soon became obvious, however, that music was simply an excuse for the gathering. When the singer was done, a trio of musicians came forward and the chairs were pushed back against the wall to clear the floor for dancing. Those who were not inclined to take part in such strenuous activity were directed to a small connecting room where tables for cards were arranged. To sustain everyone in these proposed exertions, there was a supper laid out, with each of the various courses served in a different room, from seafood to fowl, meat to dessert.
Everyone who was anyone was there: the planters from their concessions along the Mississippi and the Bayou St. John; the town merchants, lawyers, notaries, and physicians; the officers of the king’s army; and the town officials, from the guardian of the king’s stores, the contractor of buildings and fortifications, and the attorney general to the intendant commissary Michel la Rouvilliere himself, who was the most influential man in the colony after the governor. With their wives and sons and daughters, they ate, they drank, they struck poses in their finery and indulged in flirtations and general merriment, but most of all they talked.
The sound of voices was a constant flow, rising and falling in repartee, in quick quips and droll asides, in superficial gossip but also in learned discourse and passionate dispute. Those who wanted to make their opinions known had to be swift in order to find an opening, and to the point if they hoped to hold the attention of their audience; the laggard of wit or tongue was soon left behind.
Some dozen guests had gathered at one end of the long main room, grouped around a settee placed before the fireplace. Madame Vaudreuil held court on the settee, skillfully directing the current of conversation, drawing out those who were shy, curbing those who would monopolize the floor. Cyrene, with René standing behind her, sat to one side enjoying the swift ebb and flow of ideas. She was greatly taken with a young man named Armand Moulin. This gentleman, with softly curling wig, sensitive features, and diamonds among the lace at his throat, appeared to be a firm supporter of the fair sex. He had much to say that made excellent sense as he paced up and down before the fire, declaiming in impassioned tones and with extravagant gestures about the place of women in current society.
“We live in a glorious age, an age of beauty and refinement. And why is this so? It’s because in la belle France we have the felicity to worship women! Their grace, their charm, their love of the pure and delicate; their tender emotions pervade our art, our music, even the ordinary furnishings of our lives. Never before has there been such an attempt to make common objects things of beauty. To whom do we owe this influence? To women! They make us more sensitive and persuade us to greater tact so that manners and customs are closely observed. They teach us the rudiments of courtship and the tenderness of the boudoir. If we find triumph on the battlefield, are we satisfied? No, we must be rewarded by the appreciation of the women in the salons. Our greatest feats on the field of honor are carried out for the sake of a fair woman’s name. Our poetry and philosophy are as nothing if there is not some feminine soul to applaud, to discuss, to encourage. Lacking clear power, their influence reaches everywhere, even into the innermost councils of the king. How very dull it would be without them, how drab and how brutish.”
“Ah, but would you be ruled, in truth, by a woman?”
The question was asked by a richly dressed lady, with an arch smile and the fine lines of approaching middle age about her eyes, who had been introduced as Madame Pradel. Younger by some years than her husband, she was alone. The Chevalier de Pradel did not care for society, preferring to spend his time and energy on his plans for a grand residence to be built across the river from New Orleans. Like Madame Vaudreuil, Madame Pradel was known for having a well-developed appreciation for younger men, particularly if they were idealistic as well as handsome.
Armand Moulin said with a sweeping gesture, “Why not, if she is educated to her position?”
“So speaks enraptured youth. Older men are more chary of sharing their honors.”
Several men protested, and Armand ran a hand over his soft wig curls before saying in earnest perplexity, “But women are seldom educated toward high estate or position.”
“Why should they bother with such things,” a man said sotto voce, “when there are easier ways to achieve them, as with La Pompadour?”
Madame Pradel ignored the comment, smiling at Armand with a bright, warm look in her fine eyes. “What you say is true, but whose fault is it that we are so ill-prepared, I pray you? First we are put away with governesses or in convents for the early years of our lives, then blamed for our unworldliness. Then once we taste society, we are accused of being far too worldly for our own good.”
“It’s a mistake to think that because women are taught only a little reading and writing and embroidery that they are uneducated,” Cyrene said.
The words fell into a brief pause and so were plainly heard. She had not meant to make so definite a statement. She felt the slow rise of embarrassment as her voice overrode the distant hum of conversation.
“What do you mean?” Madame Pradel asked, diverted.
“Education is a matter of pursuing learning. Learning is to be had from books. A woman who can read, like a man who is apprenticed to read law or medicine, can grasp the important ideas of our time.”
“Very true,” Armand declared. “Only look at women such as Madame Tencin and Madame du Deffand. People flock to their salons in Paris because they are women of wit and intellect and immense underst
anding.”
The older woman stared at Cyrene, a shrewd look in her eyes. “What of you, chère? You were not educated in the colony, I think. Where did you come upon such a novel approach to learning?”
“I was sent to the convent of the Ursulines at Quimperle, but the idea of learning by reading came from a man I know.”
“A man,” the other woman said, as if that explained all.
“My — my guardian,” Cyrene said, for want of another word. She spoke of Pierre, who read with difficulty but had strong ideas on the subject, though it would not be wise to mention his name here.
“I see. I will keep this place you mention in mind for my daughters. My oldest must go to be educated soon or marry, and her father doesn’t wish to see her wed so young. And after her we have two others who will have to be placed.”
The whispers had come even to Cyrene’s ears that it was Madame Pradel who was encouraging the eldest Pradel girl toward a vocation as a nun because she could not face the thought of her marrying and almost certainly making a grandmother of her within a year. It might be true. Cyrene said only, “I’m sure your daughters will enjoy it.”
“It’s a great distance to send a young girl,” the marquise said to the other woman. “Of course, you have Pradel connections, I believe, who can look after her interests, make profitable introductions.”
“Indeed.”
Armand Moulin spoke again. “We must hope that the seas will be safe from the English privateers since the signing of the treaty.”
“We must hope we will all be safe,” Madame Pradel said with a shudder. “I have never been so relieved in my life. Since the attack last winter and the death of poor Babi, I must have leaped from my bed in terror at least twice per night for every week since.”
She spoke of the attack of the renegade Choctaw under the leadership of their chief Red Shoe. Rumors had run wild then of casualties in the hundreds, and the army had rallied to fight off a full-scale attack on the city before it was discovered that the band had numbered no more than thirteen or fourteen. Red Shoe had been executed by the Choctaw allies of the French the autumn before in a minor betrayal that had been expected to calm the general anxiety. The effect, so far, had been minimal. The death of the dancing master Babi, a dapper man of indeterminate age who was a general favorite of the ladies and a fixture at the governor’s house, was, in typical New Orleans fashion, thought to be a greater loss than most. It had been Babi as much as the marquise who had brought the Parisian touch to the town and encouraged the formation of what was becoming its haute société.
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