BLUE BAYOU ~ Book I (historical): Fleur de Lis (30 page)
Read BLUE BAYOU ~ Book I (historical): Fleur de Lis Online
Authors: Parris Afton Bonds
The wild peaches were in bright, casual bloom, and the soft spring breeze played with the fuzzy puffs of dandelions. Gently, Quin-Quin blew on the dandelion held between her fingers, and the laughing eighteen-month-old Reinette toddled on dimpled legs to catch the floating puffs.
From the cool shadows of the gallery, Natalie watched the two playing. An affectionate smile nudged at the corners of her lips. Quin-Quin was as handsome as her mother. Natalie thought it strange that the young woman carried herself with the same regal command her mother had, yet the twenty-two-year-old Quin-Quin had never really known Jasmine and thus had no example to follow.
It never occurred to Natalie that she also moved with that same stately grace peculiar to aristocracy or royalty.
Her gaze drifted to Reinette, and a deep surge of love tugged at her heartstrings. Nature had been contrary, leaving her infertile that night in New Orleans she had been so certain she would conceive. Instead of giving life, nature had taken that of their old friend, St. Denis. For nearly two years, she remained barren, until a night when Nicolas had roused her from her sleep and she barely recalled the coupling the next morning. So unfair. Yet looking at the results, that adorable mite of humanity, she forgave nature the trickery.
She thought, If only I can hold this moment in my memory, my daughter’s pudgy little han
ds grasping for the elusive dandelion puffs.
Late in life had come Natalie’s
greatest blessings. First Nicolas—or, at last, Nicolas, she rephrased her musing—and then their daughter. After all the heartache of her earlier years, she realized that a person could only appreciate the miracle of a sunrise when he has waited in darkness.
She wanted to tell that to Nicolas. He would understand, after wandering through the darkness of his childhood. As always, at the thought of her
sauvage
, she felt the urgent welling of love and wanting deep within her.
“Quin-Quin,” she called out joyously, “I’m going down to the river. Keep an eye on Reinette.”
“
Oui, madame
,” the pretty black girl called out, and waved.
Concern wrinkled Natalie’s brow with lines as faint as those crow’s-feet at the corner of her eyes. Quin-Quin’s future was uncertain. The girl was neither fish nor fowl. As a
gens de couleur libre
, she had the right to put the initials F. W.C. after her name— free woman of color—but she wasn’t accepted by the rest of her race, enslaved there in Louisiana’s wooded wilderness. The few Negro males of her own age who managed to obtain manumission early in life were usually sent off to France by their benefactors for further education. Such a step was unheard of for a female.
Natalie shook her head. She would not let the slight shadow of worry invade her jubilant mood. Picking up her crepe skirts, she strolled across the well-manicured lawn toward the dock, out of sight below the roll of the wisteria-wooded hills. Beyond, the pink tailfeathers of the day were fluttering at the western horizon.
Through the fragile wands of cattails, she glimpsed the dock and knew that Nicolas was somewhere close by fishing. She had practically pushed him out the door that morning, insisting that he take the day off. Between the demands of the export-import-business empire they had created and that “other activity,” as she uneasily referred to his subterfuge work with the English colonies, he had little time for relaxation.
Rustling among the crepe myrtle brought her spinning around. It would be just like the Indian in Nicolas to sneak up on her. She saw not Nicolas, however, but a stooped, bony man. The upper half of his face was a colorless membrane stretched over the skull. He looked old and young at the same time, like a hundred-year-old newborn infant. A scraggly beard concealed
the lower half of his face. A stained red cravat drooped about his scrawny neck like a noose about a skeleton.
“Natalie.” His voice was a croak.
A small frown creased two vertical lines between her brows. Something about the man was familiar.
Bon Dieu
! She felt as if she were wading through a nightmare. Distance and fog rushed in on her.
“What do you want?” she rasped.
“My wife. I’ve come for my wife.”
She saw in his eyes the insanity, turned down like a lamp wick but ready to ignite. She was looking at a man who, after years in prison, was twisted in body as well as soul. “Philippe .
. .” A silence trembled with her whisper. “I’m not the same Natalie you married. I’m no longer your wife. Forgive me.”
His eyes glowed in the sockets cratered by time and torture. “I know. I know about your bigamous marriage!”
She shrank back from his windmilling arms. “And that half-breed you’re living with.” From somewhere, the wildly flinging hands produced two pocket pistols.
“Philippe,” she said shakily, “let’s talk about this.”
“I didn’t spend a quarter of a century in prison waiting to talk! Fabreville died before I could take my revenge, but did you know his son has been granted my title of Marquis de Marchesseau— and my estates of Maison Bellecour?”
“No, I didn’t.” If she could keep him talking . . .
“I have nothing left but you, and you—even you have deserted me!” He backed away from her, walking jerkily like a puppet moved by unseen strings.
For an eternal moment, she stood rooted, staring past him, past the present moment toward the dark future that tapped insistently on her temples, begging to be let in.
Reaching the line of cattails, Philippe turned and lurched toward the dock with a celerity surprising for the rickety frame.
Nicolas! He was going to kill Nicolas! “No!” she screamed as she hurtled down the slope after him.
For years, Philippe had apat
hetically accepted his imprisonment in the Bastille’s almost luxurious cells, those reserved for victims of
lettres de cachet
. He had been allowed to shave and bathe regularly and was served good food.
One day, he had always told himself, one day he would be free. One day he and Natalie would return to his beloved Maison Bellecour, once again they would be the Golden Couple . . . one day. That thought had been his lifeline. Something he could cling to. One day the political situation would change. Nothing ever remained status quo. Things could be much worse, he had told himself. For instance, if he forced a prison break and was caught.
One day. Be patient. One day.
Then word had filtered through the fortress walls of the Bastille that Louis XV had at last been crowned king. Philippe’s joy was short-lived. He had learned
the Duc d’Orleans had merely exchanged the powerful position of regent for that of minister.
The days slipped into weeks and months and on into years. Always he worried: What had happened to Natalie? Had she escaped Fabreville’s talons? Often he had awakened in the night, her name on his lips, his sheets
soiled like those during his puberty.
Rumor came that the du
c had died of apoplexy some time before in his mistress’s arms. In truth, he had died of excesses—too much liquor, too much food, too many and too varied bed partners.
Philippe had learned that the opposition, the
Duc de Burgogne had taken d’Orleans’s place as minister and advisor to Louis XV. For a while, Philippe had held out hope that
his lettre de cachet
would be rescinded. Then he had learned that his arch foe, Fabreville, had inveigled himself into the intimate confidence of the Duc de Burgogne.
Someday became forever.
He knew then that his period of apathy had ended. Someday, somehow he would escape or die trying—just as the half-breed who now called himself Natalie’s husband would die.
Philippe pushed Natalie’s grappling hands away and shoved through the undergrowth toward the riverbank. If he had hoped to take the half-breed by surprise, Natalie’s scream, as well as his own noisy approach, brought the Indian spinning where he knelt on one knee.
“She’s mine, not yours,” he told the man called Nicolas. It was all he could do to control the fury that palsied his hands so that the two pistol barrels waved erratically.
The half-breed merely watched him with steady eyes, but prison
life had taught Philippe enough about cornered men to know that this one looked like a caged cat about to spring. At once, his thumbs cocked both pistols—at the same time that Natalie thrust herself between him and the savage.
The pistol shot that blew a hole in her breast took the breath from his own. Stunned, he watched his beloved slide to the ground—and the damned savage cradle her against him with a cry that curdled the blood.
Red and gold sparks went off behind Philippe’s eyes, eyes that gave false witness to a soundness of mind that wasn’t there. He aimed the other pistol at the great Indian and finished what he had come for. No, not everything. There remained one more thing to do.
From the lush lawn above the river, Quin-Quin paused in the game of puffing on the dandelions. She thought she had heard gunfire. The old man who had talked to her and Reinette and told them he was looking for his wife—he looked crazy enough to shoot himself. But, no, listening, she heard only the river’s wind rustling in the trees. Her imagination, nothing more.
She turned back to Reinette’s chubby, inquiring face and blew softly on the dandelion, watching it vanish in the wind just as if it had never existed.
T H E E N D
If you enjoyed reading BLUE BAYOU, Book I
~
Fleur de Lis
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Blue Bayou ~ Book I: Fleu de Lis
Blue Bayou ~ Book II: Lions and Ramparts