Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (105 page)

“I wish,” he said with measured slowness, “that we could start all over. I wish I had met you in France four years ago when we were both innocent — or, in my case, reasonably so. Failing that, I wish I could take you far away from here, to a place where there was no one except the two of us and no past.”

There was such pain in his voice. It sent a tremor of foreboding through her. Then, as she heard the echo of his words, felt their meaning seep into her mind, it was as if she assimilated with them a sense of the same longing to start afresh, to meet on some neutral ground, to meet as a man and a woman without ties or mixed loyalties, without doubts.

“Very well,” she said. “I will be anything and anyone you choose. A milkmaid? A merchant’s daughter? A seller of sweets and candied violets? What would you have me?”

A smile curved the smooth contours of his mouth. “If you were the merchant’s daughter, you would not be where you are now or doing what you are doing.”

She was not sure he was taking notice of the delicate slide of her hands toward the apex of his legs. “You are still left with a choice.”

“The seller of sweets would, I fear, have long ago lost her innocence in some back tenement.”

She gave him a limpid look. “Then it’s to be the milkmaid?”

He reached for her just as she reached her goal, drawing her up to sit on his lap and the hard length she had created there. “The idea of innocence has begun to pall after all. I think I will have you as you are, Cyrene, my siren, and where we are.”

The play on her name pleased her fancy, even as she saw that her second attempt at seduction, like her first, was going to succeed, and she threw back her head to laugh with a curious triumphant joy tinged with the taste of tears. He bent his head to press his face into the soft curves of her bosom exposed by her gown, holding her tightly as if he meant never to let her go.

They undressed each other with deliberate care and soft wordless sounds of pleasure. Naked and languid with the engulfing arousal, they eased down from the discomfort of the chair to the hearth rug. At first Cyrene was aware, thinking of the weight of the key in René’s coat pocket as the garment fell to the floor, hearing its dull clink. Then she ceased to reason or to plan. She joined René as together they cavorted in the fire’s glow, letting it heat their blood to boiling as, mindless and uncaring, they found in each other the antidote to pain that rose always from its own source.

It was long moments before Cyrene, lying in the curve of René’s body, with his arm over her waist, could bring herself to realize that what had just transpired was not her sole object. She swallowed, breathing deep, then jerked erect suddenly, holding her head as if listening.

“Martha,” she whispered, “coming for the tray!”

She scrambled to her feet and dived for the heaped clothing around the chair. Scooping it up — petticoats, coat, bodice, breeches, shirt, and chemise — all in a wad, she made a dash for the bedchamber.

René was more alert and faster than she had expected. He was right behind her with their shoes and stockings in his arms. There would be no time to take the key from his pocket, though she could feel the shape of it under her hand. With a despairing mental curse, she flung the garments down on a chair, then arranged her face in an expression of impish glee, spun around, and caught René around the waist before going still. She pretended to listen. There was nothing, of course; there never had been.

She shrugged with a light laugh. “I must have been mistaken. But so long as we are here, and the bed is there…”

There was a glint of humor in his eyes. It disturbed her for an instant, making her feel transparent. He could not know, however. She held his gaze with her face lifted to his until he bent slowly to take her lips and turned with her toward the high mattress that awaited.

It was easier this time than the last to become lost in the vortex of desire, easier for her bodily responses to be tapped. And yet she could not quite reach the same degree of nothingness, the same careless splendor. The image of the coat and the key remained at the back of her mind, a taunt and a threat. It was a passionate relief when at last René subsided against her, when his soothing caresses of repletion and gratitude ceased and she heard his deep and even breathing.

There was a brief, uncomfortable feeling inside her as she considered her actions of the past few hours. She dismissed it. Some things were necessary; to be too nice in one’s habits could be a weakness.

Still, she waited, staring up into the darkness and counting the slowly passing seconds off one by one. When a good half hour had passed, she eased away from René a few inches. He did not move. She waited again. She could hear her pulse like a soft, feathery drumbeat in her ears. The hard jar of her heart shook her left breast. She forced herself to breathe with a regular, even motion, in and out, again and again.

She shifted, easing over the mattress a few more inches. The filling of moss made a quiet snapping sound like a buried twig. A section of the bed ropes gave with a soft creak. She stopped once again.

She hated this creeping about, this need for subterfuge. It was foreign to her nature, abhorrent to everything she had ever been taught. She despised the circumstances that had brought her to it, the man who had caused them, and herself for instigating the entire chain of events in the first place. The only good thing she could see about what she was about to do was that it would end the entire degrading episode. It must, or she could not bear it.

What seemed like eons later, she pushed herself up on the mattress and swung her legs off, sliding slowly to the floor. The wood planking was cold to her bare feet, but she expected it and made no sound. Standing erect, she began to drift with infinite caution around the side of the bed that lay between her and the chair where the clothes were piled. She touched it lightly with her fingertips, barely grazing it, so that she would not bump into it in the dark.

“Where are you going?”

She gasped, her nerves leaping under the skin, as he spoke. Damn a man who slept so lightly! It was a moment before she could find her voice. “Nowhere. Go back to sleep.”

“Were you looking for something?”

“No…” she began, then realized before the syllable was out that some explanation was required. Her mind raced, searching for the most plausible excuse, the one furthest from the truth. “No, not really, only Martha must have moved the chamber pot.”

“Here on my side.”

There was nothing else to be done. She found the pot. After a moment, she moved away again.

“Now what?”

“Nightshirt,” she murmured.

“Never mind, I’ll warm you.”

She was only two steps from the chair. “Really, I—”

She was caught from behind and lifted in strong arms. René swung around with her. The bed ropes jounced as she landed on the mattress, then he was beside her, drawing her into the prison of his arms. The warmth of his body, the male smell of him, washed over her. She felt ill with the defeat and the thwarted rage it engendered. She wanted to lash out, to kick and scream.

None of that would help. She lay unmoving, but the effort to remain so sent a shudder through her.

“You really are cold,” René said, and held her closer, drawing the bedclothes higher and tucking them around her shoulders.

What did he mean by that? Did he suspect? Had the things he had said and done been as much playacting as hers had been?

The possibility cooled her ire and left her staring morose and afraid into the dark.

René did not leave the house the next day. He worked at the table in the salon, covering sheet after sheet with his slashing script, the lacquer box sitting open at his feet. The sight of it lacerated Cyrene’s sensibilities; it was a flagrant reminder of the events of the night before and the swift passage of time. The reason René was so intent on his task had nothing to do with the seemingly perpetual wet weather but was, she could guess without too much trouble, the proposed sailing of
Le Parham
on the following day.

Schemes for getting a look at the documents on the table, each wilder than the last, occupied Cyrene’s mind. There was something in the way René watched her, something in his apparent consciousness at all times of where she was and what she was doing, that prevented her from putting them into action. She sat before the fire, pretending to write a letter in emulation of René’s industry, even penning a few lines to one of the good sisters at the convent of Quimperle. She spent most of her time thinking, however, thinking until she began to fear she would go mad.

Then in late afternoon, as the gray light of dusk was gathering, the messenger came.

Cyrene answered the door to him. He was tall and vaguely military in bearing, though dressed in the striped jersey of a sailor and with a stocking cap on his head. From his shoulder swung a cloth bag from which he took a leather pouch. He had come for the dispatches, if M’sieur Lemonnier had them ready. The captain was making ready to weigh anchor at first light.

René nodded. “A moment only,” he said, and continued writing.

She must do something. Now. At once. But what? Cyrene moved to the settee and picked up her letter and her pen from the nearby table, then put them down again. She looked at René at his writing table with its litter of papers, then glanced at the seaman.

The man was watching her as he stood with his hands behind his back, and a smile of appreciation hovered about his lips. As she caught his gaze, his smile widened and he narrowed one eye in the slightest suggestion of a wink.

The idea came full-blown, simple, but complete in detail. She caught her breath, wondering if she dared, knowing all the while that she had no choice. She returned the seaman’s smile, then holding his gaze for an instant longer than necessary, she picked up her letter once more and turned and went from the room into her bedchamber.

When the door was closed behind her, she moved fast, striding to the armoire and jerking down her cloak. It whirled around her as she crossed the bedchamber and moved into the dressing room, then plunged through it and across the small dining room to the pantry. She hurried down the stairs, moving as silently as possible, folding her letter as she moved.

In the kitchen, Martha looked up. Cyrene clenched her teeth in grim exasperation; she had hoped the woman would be in her room.

“Mam’zelle Cyrene? What is it?”

Cyrene had no need to feign urgency. “Did you catch the spice man? I particularly wanted a bit of cinnamon to dust on my chocolate.”

“I didn’t hear him, mam’zelle. But cinnamon in chocolate? You must be
enceinte!”

“No, no,” she said over her shoulder with a forced laugh. “I’ll see if I can catch him.”

She was gone from the kitchen in an instant, closing the door softly behind her, then running from the rear garden and around the end wall of the house toward the street. The seaman would be returning to his ship in the direction of the river. She swung that way at once, keeping close to the house so that she could not be seen from the salon should anyone chance to look out the window. With her head down, she walked quickly away, hoping that René would write just a little longer, a few more sentences, that he would take his time sanding and sealing his pages.

At the first cross street, three houses down, she turned left. Her pace slowed at once. She stepped into the doorway of a milliner’s shop that was closed for the day and, pretending to be searching for something in her pockets, prepared to wait.

It seemed that hours beyond counting passed before the seaman came along the street she had left, though it was only a matter of a few moments. She stood in the shadows, watching his quick, carefree stride. He passed the cross street with barely a glance, continuing on his way along the muddy planking that was laid in front of the houses. Cyrene counted his receding footsteps, letting him get well ahead of her. When he was half a block away, she emerged from the doorway, moving quickly back toward the main street.

The seaman was still in view. The only other people to be seen on such a damp and dreary evening were a laundress balancing a basket of freshly pressed shirts on her head and an elderly gentleman who leaned on his cane with every step. Cyrene picked up her skirts and began to run after the seaman.

“M’sieur!” Her call was light, almost playful, certainly not loud. “M’sieur, wait!”

The seaman swung around, alert, wary, his hand going to the cloth bag at his side. When he saw her, he relaxed and even came back a few steps.

“Well met, mademoiselle,” he said, his teeth flashing in a smile.

“We are not met at all, as you well know,” she said with exaggerated breathlessness. “I have been chasing after you for miles.”