Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (151 page)

He did not. Leaving her vain challenge unanswered, he said, “I never suggested that I would harm your father.”

“Not in so many words, but the threat was there, the threat that his continued good health depended on my conduct. Deny, if you can, that you took advantage of that dread.”

“I can’t, nor do I intend to. How else could I come near you, after what had passed between us? Out of bloodlust and rage and disappointment that, as I thought, you had led me into a trap, showing yourself to be less the woman I had dreamed and more the treacherous, betraying jade, I forced myself upon you. Could I expect you to forgive me and accept my amends, I the enemy?”

“Why should it matter?” she demanded. “Why should you care what I thought?”

“Oh, come, Félicité! What do you want? Declarations to fling back into my teeth? Never mind, it’s over.”

“It isn’t over, not so long as you are here, arranging my life for me once more.”

One corner of his mouth curved in a dry smile as he put his hands on his hips. “If it bothers you so much, this arranging of your life by men, why did you leave New Orleans? Whatever possessed you to go running like a hare before the hounds into this nest of ocean-bound thieves and murderers?”

“If you really want to know, I will tell you,” she said, and irritated by his amusement, launched into a concise account of Valcour’s promise to take her to France, of their departure from the city with herself in the guise of a young man, the turbulent voyage, and finally the arrival of the ship at Grand Cayman.

“So you wanted to go to France, and wound up instead on the high seas. That must have been a shock.”

“It was, nearly as great a one as discovering you had taken the same path. How does it come about that you followed so quickly?”

“What makes you think I did?”

A frown drew her winged brows together. “I don’t, but it seems stretching coincidence a bit far that you happened to arrive so soon.”

“I suppose it must. All right, I did follow you. There had been information concerning Valcour’s activities, his flirtation with a pirate band, the name of the ship, her captain, her favorite port of call.”

“But isn’t the outfitting of a ship under a pirate flag, the hiring of a crew, and the detailing of a highly valued officer a little extravagant, even for the Spanish, for the apprehending of a traitor’s daughter and adopted son?”

He moved to stand leaning with one shoulder against the bunk. “You missed the point, my dear Félicité. I am no longer a Spanish officer, valued or otherwise.”

She stared at him, unable to believe she had heard aright. “What are you saying?”

“It’s true.”

“But why?”

“Several reasons. To begin with, I was not happy with O’Reilly’s decision to have your countrymen shot. While there was every justification for it, there was also ample justification for leniency. In addition, he and I had words concerning the land grant he had promised. He claimed it was to be awarded only after a year of service in the colony, while I maintained then, and still do, that he implied it would be parceled out immediately after the inhabitants of Louisiana had accepted Spanish rule. The end of the matter was that the governor-general hinted strongly there would be no land grant at all if I did not mend my ways. On top of that, when I requested permission to leave New Orleans, to take ship to find you, my request was denied. My duty, O’Reilly said, was to the army and the crown, not to some French girl who had left me, be she ever so beautiful.”

“So you threw away everything you had worked for, your position as an officer, your hope of advancement, your plans for the future?”

“I did. And with Bast and a few other men of like mind I recruited, I stole a ship and reverted to my old habits.”

“You chose well. The Black Stallion is a beautiful ship,” Félicité said, lowering her lashes. “I am sorry that because of me you had to lose her.”

“You were not, I think, a willing accomplice, not unless your brother has a strange idea of the way his confederates should be treated.”

“That would not be an impossibility,” she answered, her voice stiff, “but no, I was not willing.”

His green eyes held a curious light as he stared at her. “Why not, if you knew I was the captain of the ship, and especially since I had accused you of something similar once before?”

“I prefer my revenge straightforward, and without trickery.” It was as good an excuse as any, since she was uncertain just what exactly had made her so stubborn in her refusal to play the part Valcour had appointed for her.

“I will try,” he said slowly, “to remember that. It should not be hard, especially if I bring to mind the way you stopped Valcour before he got started with his cat. I think that may have had something to do with your — disagreement with him just now.”

“It did,” she answered, her voice shaded with grimness, “though it was not the only one.” She recounted for him the tale of how Valcour had attacked her aboard the Raven, and of how he had been prevented from repeating the experience by Ashanti, of the death of the maid and her brother’s acknowledgment of guilt. Her voice tight, she told also of his attempt to intimidate her, and of the poisonous fancies and memories he had paraded before his final assault. As she spoke it was as if some old injury or neglected wound had been lanced, allowing the suppurating putrescence of years to drain away. With it went something of her bitterness also, and her grief.

There was a dull flush of rage under Morgan’s skin when she finished. His voice was grating as he spoke. “If I had known,” he said, “I would have spitted him like a pig for roasting.”

“I did that myself,” she said.

“So you did,” he answered, and suddenly smiled.

Reluctantly, against her will, Félicité felt her own lips curving upward. Her brown eyes met his emerald gaze, and for a brief instant she felt the constriction around her heart ease. He pushed away from the bunk, stepping toward her, lifting the backs of his fingers to touch the purple shadow that lay along her cheekbone.

“It is getting late,” he said, “and I will warrant this isn’t the only bruise you have after this day’s work. I will admit, too, that I am not as fit as I might be. We might as well go to bed.”

She jerked away from him. “We? I told you how it was going to be, and there has been nothing in what we have said to make me reconsider!”

“A slip of the tongue,” he said, moving his broad shoulders in the hint of a shrug as he let his hand drop. “Don’t upset yourself. I followed you, yes, out of conscience and compassion, and offered you the use of my cabin for the same reasons. But if you will recall, I have not asked you to change your mind. Nor, Félicité, have I asked you to share my bed.”

15

HIS WORDS WERE WELCOME, of course they were, Félicité told herself as she prepared for the night. Taking a rough coverlet from the chest, she spread it over the straw-stuffed bunk mattress with a frown on her face. She had no liking for being regarded as an object of pity; still, why should she complain as long as she was left undisturbed? She could sleep deeply and long for the first time in months. There would be little awkwardness in such confined closeness with Morgan; she and he had seen each other unclothed times without number, and were long past the stage of shrinking modesty. There would be no need to worry overmuch tonight about the bundle left behind this time in the captain’s cabin.

While Morgan sat down to pull off his boots, Félicité stripped her shirt from her breeches and, crossing her arms, drew it off over her head. Naked to the waist, with her golden-blond hair swirling around her, now concealing, now revealing her firm breasts, she kicked off her shoes and began to unbutton her breeches. Becoming aware of Morgan’s stillness, she looked up. He hastily dropped the boot he held suspended. Lowering his gaze, he bent to tug at the other.

The frown faded from her eyes, to be replaced by a considering expression. Perhaps Morgan was not so indifferent to her as he wanted to appear. It might have been male pride or some form of recompense for past sins that had made him deny his interest. Such a thing could be put to the test.

Turning her back, Félicité began with slow care to slip her breeches downward. The firm, slender curves of her hips were uncovered inch by inch, undulating gently as she swayed with the rise and fall of the ship. With one hand braced on the bulkhead wall to support herself, she eased the breeches from one finely turned calf and ankle, then swung half around, clinging with the other hand, to repeat the process. Completely nude, she straightened, flinging back her hair as she shook out her breeches and hung them with her shirt from a hook at the end of the bunk. Morgan’s second boot crashed against the wall. He came to his feet with a rush, flung open the cabin door, and bellowed down the companionway, calling for the cabinboy to bring a hot bath.

Félicité dived into the bunk. She snatched at the coverlet, pulling it over herself. Anyone might be passing outside, she fumed. Turning her back, she closed her eyes. A moment later, she opened them again, smiled to herself, then let her lashes fall once more.

She might have slept if the commotion of the arrival of Morgan’s bath had not roused her. When the cabinboy, grumbling about queer folks knicked in the knob over bathing all their parts, had gone, she turned with a pretense of restless shifting. Through slitted eyes, she watched as Morgan pulled off his blood-stiffened clothing and, lean, impressively male, stepped into the hot, steaming water.

He slipped downward until his knees were under his chin and a large portion of his broad back was submerged. He winced as the hot water reached the welts and cuts, then allowed a soft sigh to escape him. He had reason to be tired and sore, Félicité thought.

After a time, he sat up and began to rub soap through his cropped hair, a frown drawing his brows together as he touched the matted spot at the back of his head. He splashed water over it anyway until it ran in red streams down the back of his neck.

The tops of his shoulders where the whip had bitten deepest he could not get underwater because of the smallness of the tub. Dried ridges of caked blood still lay across them, slowly reddening as he scooped water over them. It was because of her, Félicité told herself, that he had those sickening gouges that would later turn to more scars. If she had not been used to distract him and his men, he might have noticed the attack of the crew from the Raven, might have repelled them, and thus would not have fallen into Valcour’s hands.

Holding the coverlet to her, she slipped from the bed, then wrapped the length of material around her and tucked the end into the hollow between her breasts. She bunched the excess material into one hand as she moved to stand beside the tub.

“Shall I wash your back?”

He tilted his head to glance up at her, the look in his eyes wary. “Why?”

“It looks as if it is going to be a little-difficult for you.”

He stared at her a long moment, his emerald gaze flicking from the cascade of her hair to her draped costume just covering the swells of her breasts. Without a word, he surrendered the cloth he held.

She knelt beside the tub, soaking the linen cloth in the hot water, laying it across his shoulders. An involuntary shudder ran over him as the hot water seeped into the raw scourge marks, then he was still, uttering not a sound of either pain or protest.

Slowly the clotted wounds were uncovered. In one or two places they began to bleed again, turning the bath pink. The sight of his flayed flesh sent sickness over her. At the same time the feel of his warm skin with the muscles slipping under the wet surface gave her an odd sense of pleasure. With great reluctance but a knowledge of the necessity, Félicité used the soap then, cleansing thoroughly to prevent infection. While she was about it, she finished the job he had begun on his scalp, and for good measure, washed the blood from around the place where Valcour’s musket ball had torn his ear. He would have a scar there also, an indentation in the lobe, but nothing more serious.

Done at last, she handed back the cloth and got to her feet, drying her hands on the coverlet. “You should have something to go on your back.”

“Captain Bonhomme gave me a box of some sort of Far Eastern salve that he recommended, something used by the Lascar from his crew who tends the wounded. I’m not sure it wouldn’t be just as well without.”

While Félicité searched through his breeches for the salve, Morgan finished his bath, stepped from the tub, and dried himself. She turned with the box in her hand and, with lowered lashes, indicated that he sit on the only chair the cabin provided. Stepping behind him, she opened the salve. Since she had no place to put the lid, she handed it to him, then dipped her fingers into the salve, beginning to spread it over his back.