Louisiana History Collection - Part 1

by Jennifer Blake

  Her heart leaped, thudding against her ribs. She could feel the hot race of her blood, feel its glow under her skin. She was light-headed with longing and incredulous at the swift ascension of it. His warm caress, so delicate, so relentless, took her breath and sent a rippling shudder through the muscles of her abdomen. Suffused with wild longing, she clenched her hands on his shoulders.

  With a soft exclamation, he lifted his head, breaking her hold as he came erect. He caught her in his arms and surged upward with her close against him as he swung around toward the bed. He placed his knee on the springing softness of the moss-filled mattress and then eased her down upon its surface. The bed ropes creaked as he pushed away, moving to blow out the candles. There came in the darkness lit only by the fire the rustle of linen and broadcloth as he removed his clothing and flung it on a chair. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she could see the sculptured grace of his form made copper and bronze by firelight, the burning promise in his eyes. Then with the taut control of well-used muscles, he joined her on the bed, settling beside her.

  He began at once to undress her. His movements were unhurried but sure, as if her garments were an impediment but not an unusual one. Her open bodice, heavy with embroidery, was stripped away. Her skirts and panniers, under his ministrations, were eased from her hips with quiet, satin whispers. The chemise of finely woven silk wafted cool air over her body as it was drawn upward and off over her head. Naked, gloriously so, she stretched, turning at the same time until her breasts touched René’s chest in delicate enticement.

  None was needed. He drew her to him, molding her to his body so that the hardened peaks of her breasts burrowed into the curling growth of hair on his chest and the hard length of him pressed against the softness at the juncture of her legs. He spread his fingers over her back, testing the satin texture of the skin and the vital structure of bone and tendons, following the slim curve of her waist and the flare of her hips as if the discoveries to be made were beyond value. His chest rose and fell in a difficult sigh. He drew away and, with a hand on her shoulder, gently turned her onto her back.

  For a feverish instant, she thought he meant to leave her and a cry rose in her throat. It was stifled in a gasp as a moment later he nuzzled the hollow between her breasts, his breath ticklish and warm upon the swollen curves of first one then the other. As he gave them closer attention with the warm adhesion of his mouth, the fingertips of one hand settled on her lower abdomen, circling, massaging, trailing downward. His touch was firmly marauding, demanding access to every curve and moist hollow and bringing vivid bliss. And slowly, with warm mouth and abrading tongue, he followed upon the advantage gained.

  The blood in her veins was molten, pounding with the muffled throb of thunder in her ears. Her breath rasped with the quick rise and fall of her chest. The muscles of her thighs and hips were taut, quivering. Inside her, there was a liquid ache of suspended need. With a soft sound of distress, she clutched his shoulder.

  He raised himself, hovering above her. A soft cry left her as he filled her tightness with his sure, sliding entry. He eased deeper, lowering himself upon her. She drew him close, holding him as her being contracted in slow pleasure around him. Long moments later, he entwined his legs with hers and, with the contraction of powerful muscles, turned her with him so that she mounted him with her hair swinging in a powdered curtain around them. With his hands upon her hips, he set the rhythm of their movements, then urged her to take it and make it her own. She assented in swelling joy, plunging upon him, taking him unimaginably deep inside until he was part of her, inseparable. Again and again she surged above him until she was spent and gasping. She paused then, resting her forehead on his. He took her face in his hands and kissed her parted lips, then heaved over, placing her on her back, rising above her to press into her once more.

  She took the driven pressure of his thrusts, letting them send her soaring, higher and higher still. Together they strove, sharing the effort with inflamed senses and intoxicating ardor. Delight burst within her, a tumultuous thing, wondrous and rich with gratification that expanded, spreading, bringing heated glory.

  It was the ultimate freedom, the unguarded secret of deliverance. Lost in its magic, they could not be held, they answered to nothing but the consuming demands of the joining. Snared in rigorous splendor they rode, separate beings bound by the moment yet without fetters, transfigured into one yet whole in themselves, transcending restraint. And the ecstasy that was their portion was likewise free, beyond price though not without cost.

  Afterward, Cyrene lay staring into the darkness. She was human and therefore weak, and the matter of men and women had been arranged so that she and René might find pleasure in each other. Still, it no longer seemed strange that she had been used by René and then betrayed, for she had also betrayed herself.

  Dawn came, rising behind the shutters in streaks of gray light. With it came a pounding on the outside door. René came awake with a soft curse. Flinging back the covers, he rolled from the bed and reached for his breeches. He stepped into them, then moved with swift strides to the armoire where he jerked his dressing gown from its hook. Whipping the velvet garment around him, he glanced at the bed where Cyrene lay.

  “What is it?” She was surprised at how husky her voice sounded, and she cleared her throat, embarrassed by it for some reason.

  “It’s nothing,” he said, his smile brief. “Go back to sleep.”

  When the door closed behind him, Cyrene raised herself to one elbow, listening. There came the sound of the bar being lifted from the door, then the low rumble of a masculine voice. A moment later, the outside door closed again. René did not return, however. A light appeared under the door as he used a tinder box and transferred the flame to a branch of candles. A few moments later Cyrene smelled the smoke and heard the spit and crackle of a newly made fire.

  She lay back down and closed her eyes, but sleep was impossible. She had dozed off and on throughout the night but had not really rested, and now was no better. She had been, if she were truthful with herself, René’s kept woman for some few days, but she had not felt the force of it until now. She tried to think what was going to become of her. He would grow tired of her eventually and set her free, or else he would go back to France and leave her behind. What then? The Bretons would take her back, she supposed. Or there would be another man. But what, then, of her hope to have land and a home, something secure of her own?

  It was quiet in the other room. What was René doing? He had not slept a great deal better than she or perhaps she had disturbed him with her tossing, for he had changed positions each time she had and finally pulled her to him with a request that she be still or suffer the consequences. It had not been such a terrible threat, but the discovery that it was not had held her immobile long enough for sleep to overtake her for a while.

  The memory was so disturbing that it brought her upright. She threw back the covers, combing her hair with her fingers, grimacing at the fall of powder as she pushed the tangled mass out of the way behind her shoulders. Moving to the armoire, she took down the nightshirt she had been wearing and slipped it on over her head. She hesitated for a moment, oddly reluctant to face René in the light of day. The bedchamber was cool, the fire in its fireplace burned away to a heap of cold gray ash. There was no point in her hiding away, and none whatever in catching a chill. Neither would help. She stepped to the door of the salon and pulled it open.

  René glanced up from where he sat at a long, narrow table set at a right angle to the fireplace on the opposite side of the room. Upon its surface was a sheaf of parchment sheets, while before him was an ornate inkwell and sand cellar made of twisted vermeil leaves and a selection of quill pens. A black lacquer box with a hasp from which a stout lock hung sat beside his chair with the lid laid open.

  “What is it?” Cyrene asked.

  “A messenger with papers from France. Le Parham made port this morning.”

  The king’s vessel, Le Parham, with
its sister ship, La Pie, made regular runs between France and its colonies in the New World, taking some six months, sometimes more, to make the voyage and return.

  Cyrene gave a nod of understanding and a small smile. His lips curved in response. “One moment only,” he said, then returned to his writing, finishing the sentence he had begun.

  Cyrene went to stand with her back to the fire and her hands behind her to warm them. There was a faint frown between her eyes as she watched René send the quill slashing across the parchment. She did not think he was penning some simple missive or courtesy note. It was possible that he was addressing himself to his family in France, perhaps to his father, but there was something about the concentration that he brought to the task at hand that seemed to preclude that. She had never seen him employed in such grave industry before. It was as if she were suddenly seeing a side of him that had been kept hidden. It was this aspect, rather than what he was doing, that was most puzzling.

  He came to the end of the page and signed it without any appearance of a flourish. He sat for a moment glancing over it, then sanded it. As he reached to set the sand cellar back in place, his dressing-gown sleeve caught the curling edge of one of the parchment sheets in front of him. The sheet dislodged, shifting. For an instant there was revealed a flash of gold and the dangling ribbons of seals on the sheet underneath. René dropped the sanded sheet on top of the others, then gathered them together in a pile. Only then did he tip the sand from the top sheet into a waiting tray. Without haste, he aligned the edges of the sheets more perfectly, then leaned to place them in the box at his side and close the lid.

  He got to his feet, moving toward her around the end of the table. He lifted a brow as he let his gaze drift down her nightshirt-clad form, resting on the image cast by the fire-glow that shone through the white silk.

  “I seem to recall another time when I saw you like this,” he said, his voice rich with desire. “I wanted nothing so much then as to take you to bed and see if you were as rosy and warm underneath as you looked. I couldn’t do it then. Isn’t it a wonder how things change?”

  As a distraction, the ploy was most effective. All interest in René’s correspondence fled from Cyrene’s mind, nor did it return for some time.

  Armand Moulin came to call the following afternoon. The young man was charming and handsome in a fresh, untried fashion. He was dressed in the latest style, with a finely curled wig and a tall cane with a carved head of gold. In his hand he carried a poem to Cyrene’s eyes. He presented what he insisted on calling his poor effort with a modest bow and such mischief lurking in his eyes that she was warned not to take him too seriously. Not that there was the least danger she might do so. Armand was an entertaining companion with a great deal of sense and an active sense of humor, but after her close acquaintance with René he also seemed rather immature.

  Still, it was nice to have an admirer, to be treated to the gestures and graces of mild flirtation without the need to be constantly on guard. It was interesting, too, as day followed day and Armand’s visits became more frequent, to have someone to question about various happenings: the details of which officer was keeping which woman; who among the upstanding members of the town society was sleeping with whose wife; who really had the important relatives in France that most claimed; and who had been cast off without a piastre. Many of the more flagrant cases Cyrene know about, but there were pitfalls in plenty left in those she did not. It was best to be prepared if she was to move among these people instead of watching them from a distance, as she had the past three years on the flatboat.

  There was a rather pathetic example of an outcast of the political type, an elderly woman known to most simply as Madame H. She had been exiled by a lettre de cachet more than twenty years ago and had come out to the colony to live with a brother. Now the brother was dead, and she had been left a charge on the government. No one seemed to remember the reason for her exile; some said she had displeased the queen, others that her husband had simply desired her absence. Whatever the cause, she was an embarrassment, one which had the governor writing to the king’s minister to know what he must do about her.

  Such a tale held no interest for René when she related it to him. The reason could be that it was too close to his own case, or it may have been just that he had no time and less inclination to mull over the peccadilloes of his fellow men.

  He spent more and more of his time at the writing table in the salon. Since the papers he had received on that first occasion had been delivered to him from the Le Parham, it was to be supposed that those René worked on so assiduously must go with the ship when it sailed again. Cyrene had come to the conclusion that his labors could only be in behalf of his return to France. There was nothing else so certain to engage his attention or to require so much diligence with a pen.

  Armand, on the other hand, simply liked people and was interested in their quirks and foibles as well as their clandestine activities. He stored them up and brought them out to amuse Cyrene during his visits. Not even the governor and his lady were held sacrosanct from his impish humor. He had a tale to tell of them also.

  It seemed that Madame la Marquise had brought before her husband one of their own servants as the marquis sat at the dining table. The man had been discovered stealing wine. The lady of the house accused the servant in no uncertain terms while the poor man stood with bowed head and trembling hands, moaning in fear of being sent to the flogging post or some other horrendous punishment for his crime. The marquis stared at the man with a measuring gaze during Madame Vaudreuil’s diatribe. When it was over, he waved a negligent hand. “You have put the poor man in such a quake, my dear,” he said, “that he deserves a bottle of wine to quiet his fears. Give it to him.”

  “And Madame Vaudreuil, what did she think of that?” Cyrene asked.

  “No one knows. She makes no comments and no one dares ask if the story is even true. To me, it has the right ring, as a rebuke for the lady for making such a to-do over a bottle of wine like some merchant’s wife. However, the governor is a man of great good humor who might also have seen it as a joke on the marquise.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “One never knows; he is most adept at hiding his feelings. Only look at the way he received Rouvilliere at the musicale.”

  “The intendant commissary?”

  “The same. I don’t know why Rouvilliere puts in an appearance at the governor’s house, except perhaps out of defiance and because he considers such affairs public gatherings. Nor do I understand why Madame Vaudreuil invites him, unless it is to pretend that she knows nothing of his complaints.”

  “That’s much too unlikely, isn’t it? Everyone knows the governor and the intendant commissary are always at odds, whoever they may be.”

  It was a weakness of the administration of the colony that the areas of authority of the governor and the intendant commissary, the man responsible for supplying the colony and its soldiers, overlapped. It had caused friction in the past and would do so as long as the situation lasted.

  “Ah, but this is different. Rouvilliere attacks Vaudreuil through his wife, writing to the king’s minister to accuse her of every crime imaginable, with the possible exception of prostitution. Vaudreuil, not to be outdone, files official dispatches charging Rouvilliere with selling the goods destined for Louisiane for his own profit and substituting inferior merchandise and then raising the price of the little that is delivered to astronomical heights.”

  “It’s a feud, in fact.”

  “You might say so, one arising in no small part from the fact that both Madame Vaudreuil and Rouvilliere claim the right to sell the trading concessions and licenses for drinking establishments for the benefit of their own purses.”

  It was the cost in bribes of such trading concessions, as much as for the excitement of smuggling, that had prevented the Bretons from applying for legal trading status in the past.

  “That is the way business is done, I suppose.”

&nb
sp; “Unfortunately.”

  “And how does the thought of a lady being involved in such transactions strike you after your praise the other night of the effect my sex has had on the shaping of our society?”

  He smiled, his soft brown eyes sparkling. “You think you have me, don’t you? But I will admit that though I find the lady’s arrangements less than delicate, I admire her acumen and her hardihood.”

  “You admire strength in a woman?”

  “To a degree only!” he said in haste.

  Cyrene’s lips curved in a smile. She made no reply, however, allowing a small silence to fall as she stared at Armand, trying to decide whether to ask the question that hovered in her mind.

  “What is it, mademoiselle? Do I have snuff on my cravat? The remains of my breakfast on my lapel? Tell me quickly!”

  “No, no, I was only wondering if you know anything about Madame Vaudreuil’s other activities in — in the realm of commerce.”

  “How discreet you are, chère. If you mean her smuggling, it was an open secret in the past, though I believe she has not been so active since the war with the English. If you refer to her traffic in hashish among the soldiery, that isn’t so well known but is still a rumor with great currency.”

  Cyrene was not so sure the marquise’s smuggling had declined, but she said nothing. “You think the governor is aware of these things?”

  “So I should imagine. How could it be otherwise? To be a royal governor is a most expensive undertaking. Vaudreuil may dispense lavish hospitality and make a grand gesture now and then with a bottle of wine, but he has a fine concern for his coffers.”