“There are always these alarms,” Madame Vaudreuil said, “though the firing of the warehouse the other night was more terrifying than most. Of all things to be dreaded, fire to me is the worst.”
Armand clasped his hands together behind his back under the skirt of his coat, his gaze alight. “To think of these men breaking into the king’s warehouse and making off with the stores. It was an intrepid deed, or else a desperate one. I am all admiration.”
“You would be less so if your house had burned down around your ears because of the flames,” the governor’s wife said with asperity. “Fortunately, the building was isolated and the blaze discovered early.”
“There was a great loss of commodities?”
The question came from the back of the group. It was the governor, strolling up to join them, who answered.
“We will not starve,” he said, his smile genial, imparting easy confidence.
“The men responsible should be dealt with harshly when they are caught,” another man commented.
“Of a certainty,” the governor answered, and took out his snuffbox with languid grace.
Armand said, “Rumors say the men were smugglers after their confiscated goods. Most elusive characters, these smugglers.”
“Indeed.” The governor took a pinch of snuff, then sneezed delicately into the lace-edged handkerchief he pulled from his left sleeve. “The only person who seems able to — shall we say? — lay one by the heels is Lemonnier here. He has captured our only lady smuggler, Mademoiselle Cyrene, readily enough. We must be grateful to him, I suppose, though seeing her loveliness we are inclined to think that he has been rewarded enough.”
The observation was gentle, even humorous, but the glance that went with it was neither. Governor Vaudreuil might be married to a woman who dabbled at will in commerce and the affairs of the colony, but he was not a fool. It was apparent, also, that he always knew more than he revealed. Cyrene felt a shiver of fear for the Bretons. She should have known that her part in their activities had not passed unnoticed. It had simply not occurred to her that someone as insignificant as herself could be of interest to the governor, the Marquis de Vaudreuil.
René, behind her, reached to put his hand on her shoulder. It rested there, a warm and intimate weight. It may have been meant to be reassuring, but it seemed to be oppressive to Cyrene, obvious in its possessiveness. Above her, he answered the governor in rich tones, “Amply rewarded.”
The heat of angry chagrin that fear had held at bay swept in upon Cyrene now. She felt branded, and it seemed that every gaze turned upon René and herself with lascivious speculation. More, it was as if René had invited that intrusion upon their privacy.
She lifted her hand to cover his, clasping it lightly before turning her fingers to dig her nails into his palm. She felt his hand twitch slightly as he flinched, but he did not attempt to withdraw from her hold. She could continue to fondle his hand in a parody of affection or let it go and suffer being claimed by his touch. She released him.
At the first opportunity, however, she escaped, rising from her chair and moving away to watch the dancing before strolling into one of the refreshment rooms for a glass of wine. When she turned with it in her hand, Armand Moulin was at her side. He took wine also, then inclined his head in a bow as he introduced himself.
His smile was disarming and his rich brown eyes vivid with interest as they exchanged compliments and comments on the evening. He said then, “Is it true you were a lady smuggler?”
He was, Cyrene realized, some two or three years older than she was herself, but somehow she felt immeasurably more mature. He had a minor repute in the town. He was the only son of a family with three older sisters, the hope of a doting mother and proud father. He had been educated in Paris and was now expected to take up his position as the young seigneur of the Louisiane estates. No doubt there was a marriage being planned for him at that moment, an alliance with some girl barely beginning to blossom, one with a fine dowry of land and excellent family connections. In Paris, he had probably dallied with some pretty grisette or been taken under the wing of an older woman for an introduction to the delights of the flesh, but he had managed somehow to retain his look of idealistic and honorable youth. It sat well with his soft curls and guileless smile.
Cyrene was inclined to be gracious for a number of reasons: because she liked him, because he reminded her of Gaston, because he made her feel less conspicuous there in that gathering, and not least because René was watching their exchange with a faint frown between his brows. She made light of her experience with smuggling, pretending to Armand that it was in the distant past, leading him to talk of himself instead. Soon she forgot that René or anyone else was observing them.
Emboldened by Armand’s example, a pair of his friends joined him as he stood with Cyrene. That pair drew others until gradually she acquired a circle of jostling, bantering admirers. The glances they gave her were bold, assessing, yet respectful and even rather diffident. Cyrene could not decide if the cause was their youth, her status under René’s protection, or her connection with such a daring occupation as smuggling.
It was the governor who rescued her just as she was beginning to feel hemmed in, the center of too much close attention.
“I have been sent,” he said with great amiability as he looked around the group, “to represent to you gentlemen that you are monopolizing the lady, and to the lady that you are detaining too many gentlemen from the dance. It is one of my more enjoyable duties as appointed leader of this colony to correct such inequities. Will you, mademoiselle, favor me with your hand for this musical measure?”
One did not refuse the governor while in Louisiane any more than one would the king in France. Cyrene expressed her pleasure and was paraded ceremoniously out onto the floor and bowed into her place in the forefront of the line of dancers forming for a minuet.
The music began. They moved to its stately cadence. The governor praised the lightness of her dancing. Cyrene thanked him for the politeness, according it little more importance. His next words were surprising, however.
“Do you care for theatricals?”
“Theatricals, Your Excellency?”
He smiled. “It isn’t a common thing here, is it, theaters being rather scarce?”
“Nonexistent, in fact.”
“Just so. But I speak of amateur theatricals. Do you enjoy performing?”
“I hardly know,” she said. “I haven’t tried since convent school.”
“The mother superior permitted such diversions?”
“She was a worldly woman, and in any case we girls entertained only ourselves, out in the open air.”
“The location of the earliest theaters, the open air. Ours is held inside, but we would be delighted to have you take a part. We are in need of fresh faces.”
“You are very kind,” she murmured. This was moving too fast. She could not help wondering how accepted she would be in the governor’s circle if she wore her old clothes and was without the backing of a man like René, someone touched with the glitter of the court. She wondered, too, whether anyone in the that room full of people would acknowledge her on the street tomorrow if she were to run away and return to the flatboat. Cynicism was not an attractive trait; still, it was sometimes hard to avoid.
“And then, of course,” the governor went on, “there is our bal masqué on Mardi Gras evening. Madame Vaudreuil and I will be vastly disappointed if you do not come.”
“It sounds fascinating, but I’m afraid I am… dependent on M’sieur Lemonnier, and I don’t know his wishes in this.”
“Ah? Then I shall have to let him know mine. If he attends to me, you will be very much present, I assure you.”
The minuet came to an end. It was not long afterward that René came for Cyrene. He was perfectly pleasant as he made his adieus to his host and hostess, but his grip on her arm was a little tighter than need be, and his voice as he spoke to her was far too even, too polite. She looked a
t him carefully in the light of the torches beside the front doors of the governor’s house as she passed between them. Very well. If he was annoyed, then so was she. Let him say something, just let him attempt to take her to task. He would regret it. He would, indeed.
14
THE AFRICAN SERVING WOMAN was waiting up for them. She let them into the house, took René’s tricorne and cane, and removed the shawl that Cyrene wore around her shoulders. She followed them into the bedchamber to put the items away in the great armoire, then turned, waiting expectantly.
“That will be all, Martha,” René said.
The woman bobbed a curtsy and left them. A few minutes later, there came the sound of her footsteps on the back pantry stairs and the distant thud of the door closing to her small room beside the kitchen in the raised basement.
Cyrene, holding on to one of the bedposts, had stepped out of one shoe. She slipped off the other also before she spoke with a shading of acerbity. “I don’t like to complain, but you might have asked if I needed Martha’s help.”
“You don’t,” René” answered.
“No? This costume isn’t easy to get out of.”
“I’m aware. Helping you is my privilege.”
His words were too smooth, as well as suggestive. She eyed him with suspicion. “I didn’t say I couldn’t undress myself, only that it was more difficult now.”
“I wouldn’t dream of letting you do it alone.” He shrugged out of his coat as he spoke and tossed it onto a chair. The look in his gray eyes as he began to remove the diamond from his cravat held both anticipation and purpose.
“You really need not trouble yourself.” She turned from him with a bell-like swing of her skirts as she fumbled at the ribbon bows that trimmed her stomacher, covering the fasteners.
“It will be no trouble to me but rather my pleasure.”
He had threatened once before to play the part of her maid. It appeared that he intended to put the threat into action.
“It’s odd to me that you have only just now decided to take this task on yourself,” she said.
His voice was nearer, close behind her as he answered. “My dressing gown, as charming as it was on you, did not present much of an excuse.”
“Nevertheless, I can manage.”
Alarm coursed along her veins. She wanted to face him like an animal who senses danger. She would not give him that satisfaction, however. Instead, she drifted away with a movement as casual as she could make it. Her stomacher finally loosened under her fingers and she placed the handful of detachable ribbons she held on a table. There was a small chair beside it and she sat down, lifting her skirts to reach the garters that held her stockings. Her manner carefully distracted, she went on, “But what of the evening? Did you enjoy it?”
“It was much as expected. I was gratified by the success of my new mistress, of course.” He moved to stand in front of her, then went down on one knee with easy grace. He put his hands on hers at her gaiter, taking the small embroidered strap from her fingers and unhooking it. He tossed it to one side before he slowly drew the silk of her stocking down the calf of her leg.
The touch of his fingers at the sensitive bend of her knee, the glide of them along her leg through the silk, was disturbing. More disquieting still was his calm assumption of the right to perform this service and the practiced ease with which he did it.
“I — I rather thought you were displeased at the attention paid me,” she said. As he dropped her stocking to one side and reached for the other one, she hastened to catch and hold his hand.
René carried the hand that clasped his to his lips, pressing a kiss to its smooth back. The fragrance of damask roses, warmed by Cyrene’s skin and fusing with her own delicate essence, assailed his senses with incalculable pleasure. She wore his perfume. The gift of it had been a gesture of purest sentiment, a token of another moment of intolerable desire. He was a fool, but at this moment he was an uncaring one, a glad one.
He set her hand aside firmly and returned to her garter and her question disguised as a comment. He smiled into her eyes. “It was a momentary twinge of jealousy.”
“Momentary.”
“A small breach of manners, one permitted under the circumstances. I should have known you would attract men like flies to a sugarloaf. They are so starved for a fresh and attractive face.”
“I’m not your mistress.”
“Aren’t you?”
The deep timbre of his voice was caressing. His touch was the same. She watched him, her eyes wide and dark as he loosened her other garter and slowly eased the tube of silk down the slender turning of her leg. There was a curious, aching stillness inside her. She searched for the resentment and pugnacious desire for a confrontation with him she had felt earlier, but it was gone. She grasped, in rising dismay, for a counterfeit as she caught and held his hand once more.
“What,” she said evenly, “do you think you are doing?”
The silver gleam of laughter sprang into René’s eyes. There was no one quite like Cyrene. “I thought it must be obvious,” he said. “I’m seducing you.”
“Are you, now? You might have warned me.”
“That isn’t a part of the game.”
“Forgive me, I don’t seem to know the rules. What am I supposed to do now that I’ve spoiled it? Scream and slap you or swoon with ecstasy?”
He released himself with a quick turn of his wrist and placed the palms of his hands on her knees, sliding them upward over the taut muscles of her upper thighs, spreading his fingers as he reached around to cup her hips. “Whichever you wish. But you might wait to see if anything happens that gives you pleasure.”
“And if it doesn’t?” His grasp seemed to burn her flesh. She kept her voice steady only with the greatest effort.
“If it doesn’t, then you have a choice.”
“Which is?”
“You can be cruel and tell me so or be kind and pretend.”
She swallowed hard as his grasp tightened, pulling her toward him. “Tell me what reason there is for me to be kind.”
“I would be grateful,” he said, and removed one hand from under her skirts to touch her neck, pushing his fingers into her hair. He loosened the pins so that the thick tresses were released in a shower of white hair powder that sifted down upon her shoulders, sliding softly over her breasts. He closed his hand upon the tumbling waves, drawing her toward him until their mouths were inches apart. “I will also be as generous in return as you can bear. And more than that, pretending can sometimes make it so.”
“I won’t pretend,” she said.
His mouth curved in a faint smile. “I thought not. I prefer it that way.”
He was going to have her; she knew that. The decision had been made and he would not ask her permission. There would be no drawing back this time, no retreat from the final intimacy. What made it different, this occasion, she could not begin to guess. Unless it was something within René, some change, some new resolution that had more to do with his image of her as his kept woman than with what lay between them.
It did not matter. She could not remove her gaze from the firm curves of his lips, not even as his hold tightened and the softness of her breasts were against his chest, not until the instant before he took her mouth with his own.
Such incredible sweetness, honeyed, beguiling. How could she have forgotten? Or had she? Her mind might have set it aside, but her body had not. Careless of her will, her lips parted, taking, offering.
His jaw was firm under her questing fingers, the line where their lips joined exquisitely sensitive as she touched it. Against her cheek, the thick length of his lashes tickled, tangling in a loose wave of her hair. She placed the fingers of her other hand upon his shoulder, gently holding, sensing the controlled strength of the muscles beneath his loose shirt, feeling them glide as he smoothed her hip in slow circles.
Desire welled within her, a slow rise of consummate need. It spread, tingling in her veins, creeping over the surf
ace of her skin, invading her heart in a red tide to quicken its beat. A soft, despairing sigh left her. She moved closer to him, molding the firm resilience of her breasts to the hard planes of his chest.
His kiss grew more insistent, deeper. With his tongue, he explored the lush moistness of the inner surfaces of her mouth and the fine edges of her teeth. He twined her tongue with his in sinuous play, encroaching, retreating, inviting her to venture in return. He slid his fingers over the intricate turnings of her ear to the curve of her neck, brushing the sensitive skin with a feather-light stroke of his thumb so that she shivered with reaction. He traced the fragile hollow of her collarbone, easing lower to the swell of her breast. He encircled it, clasping the perfect globe, filling his hand before he sought and found the delicately grained peak. The soft brushing of his fingers there sent a heated sensation spiraling through her to lodge in the lower portion of her body.
Cyrene wanted him. Nothing else mattered beyond that one fact. She had known for some time that he could have this effect on her, but she had refused to acknowledge it. She did so now without restraint. Circumstances had united to bring her to this point, against her will, against her every defense. Then let it be so. Since submit she must, she would wring from it every possible pleasure, every joy, every painful memory.
She pushed his wig from his head and threaded her fingers through the thick waves of his hair, loosening them, clasping her hands in their crispness. Parting her lips, she bent her head to brush his temple, touching the top curve of one brow with her tongue, giving herself to the wonder of the moment. She felt the swell of his chest in triumph before she was caught closer still, then came the warm slide of his hand as he released her hip and pressed it between her thighs under her chemise, which was drawn forward between them also and fastened in front at the waist as protection for the vulnerable and most secret recess of her being. He touched her there in gentle exploration.
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