Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (22 page)

The day wore on. The men returned in a great swirling of dogs and dust without a trophy to display, though with a fine plan for setting a trap for the panther with a tethered sheep in a day or two. The men disappeared around the side of the house to put away the dogs. The sun began to drop down in the sky, turning the low-lying clouds to swaths of lavender and rose. The weather had been so warm that there was a shrilling of frogs coming from the bayou, a plaintive sound on the cool softness of the air. A moist wind from the south rustled the few leaves remaining on the trees. The delicious smell of baking ham, coming from the outdoor kitchen, perfumed the air. Elise stepped out onto the loggia to watch the arrival of the men and stood for a time, breathing deeply, enjoying the gentle feel of the air on her skin and steeping in a tenuous peace. What a lovely place this was, the house Reynaud had built. She had come perilously close in the last few days to loving it for its beauty and serenity, for the imagined safety of its seclusion.

As she leaned on the railing, she heard a door slam somewhere. Moments later, she saw Reynaud and Pierre walking along the track in the direction of the bayou with lengths of toweling thrown over their shoulders. It made sense that Pierre, living so long among the Natchez, would have the same habit of bathing as Reynaud. She watched them, two men of excellent physical condition and the upright bearing instilled by the Indians. They swung their legs in ground-covering strides, moving in perfect coordination without wasted motion. Their shoulders were wide, tapering to narrow hips. Their hair, drawn back and caught by thongs, shone with health and vigor, glinting in the last of the sunlight. They were talking quietly, earnestly, making swift gestures of the kind she had noticed between them the night before. It was some form of sign language, she supposed, one they were scarcely aware of using.

For so long she had thought of men, with few exceptions, as cruel, overbearing, conniving, undependable creatures concerned only with their own ravening appetites. They had seemed ugly to her, with ungainly bodies affixed with obscene appendages. It came as something of a shock to find that she could enjoy watching the two before her. They seemed unusual in that moment, touched with a kind of heroic splendor. It was only as she realized that she had begun to undress them mentally that she gasped, swung her back to them, and, picking up her skirts, hurried into the house.

She was in her bedchamber when Pierre returned. She heard Madeleine scolding him about the mud he had tracked in on his shoes; heard, too, his laughing apologies; heard the woman ask about Reynaud only to be told that he was still at the bayou but would be along shortly. Their voices ceased and the door of the bedchamber allotted to Pierre slammed shut.

Elise got to her feet and moved into the salon. It was empty once more. She walked out onto the loggia and looked in the direction of the bayou. There was no sign of Reynaud. At the head of the stairs that led to the ground, she paused. It was a beautiful evening, the last there might be for some time if the weather changed. Perhaps she would stroll a little. She had been in the house all day and felt the need of exercise. If she went toward the bayou, she might meet Reynaud. Trailing her hand down the handrail, she descended the stairs with slow, idle steps.

The sun was dropping behind the trees as she left the cart track and started down the winding path that led to the bayou. The light was dim beneath the high cypresses with their drapings of gray Capuchin’s beard and she strained her eyes looking ahead of her for some sign of Reynaud. With a little shiver, she thought of the panther they had been tracking. The men had said it would not come again for several days, not after its meal of mutton. She was by no means certain she wanted to rely on their word.

It was possible that she had missed Reynaud, that he had left the bayou close behind Pierre. Perhaps he had not come into the house, but had rounded it instead to attend to some chore among the outbuildings. If she walked on down to the water’s edge to see, then she would be sure, but she might also blunder upon him while he was bathing. She had done that once before by accident and he had thought nothing of it. If it happened again, he could be forgiven for thinking that, this time, it was on purpose.

She came to a halt in indecision. Was that likely or was it the prompting of her own guilty conscience? Of course she had no real desire to see him naked — that brief vision earlier had been nothing more than a mental misalignment with no meaning — and he should understand that well enough. The urge to turn back was strong, but, having come this far, it seemed foolish not to go on. Anyway, even if he was still there, she could make certain that he did not see her, couldn’t she?

He was there.

He swam up and down, his long arms cleaving the water, his powerful body driving through the sluggish current dark with silt and the constant dripping of tree sap. At the farthest limits of each end of the wide pool made by the bend of the bayou, he turned, traversing the width again and again. There was something dogged about his efforts as if he meant to use the last ounce of his strength, tiring himself completely. His hair, slicked back with water from his forehead, trailed around his shoulders. His face was stern, uncompromising. In his turns, she caught a glimpse of his long length and knew that somewhere on the bank were his clothes, though she stood so far back in the woods that she could not see them.

She backed away, turning slowly. Dry leaves lay in a thick brown coating over the forest floor, drifting into the dim pathway, and she placed her feet with the utmost care to prevent the crunch of them underfoot or perhaps the snapping of twigs hidden under them. She breathed a sigh of relief when she passed behind a large tree that hid her from the bayou, but did not relax her vigilance. With her head down, she picked her way, increasing her pace only when she thought she was half the distance back to the track and well out of hearing.

“Where are you going?”

Her head snapped up. She saw the pulled-back hair, the dark skin, the tattoos. In some recess of her mind she knew him, yet for that instant shock and fear ruled her. Her control broke, and whirling from the man she had been avoiding, the last one she expected to see, a man in the guise of a terrible enemy, she ran.

Surprise held him immobile for an instant, then he came thudding behind her, catching her in a few strides. She tripped, breaking his grasp, then stumbled headlong to fall, rolling in the leaves. Instantly he was beside her. His hands were hard, rough as he pulled her around to face him. There was a frown of concern between his gray eyes as he glanced over her, searching for injury. With gritted teeth, she struck out at him, catching him in the mouth, though he turned his head at the last moment. She felt his lip split under her knuckles and suddenly she felt sick. With a gasping cry, she flung herself into his arms.

A soft sound like a grunt left him as he lost balance, toppling to the side under her unexpected assault. He did not try to catch himself, but held her to him, dragging her across him to lie upon his chest. She buried her face in the hollow of his throat, breathing in his freshness, feeling his still-wet skin warm under her cheek, sensing the water that beaded him soaking into the bodice of her gown. By slow degrees, the thudding of her heart eased. She knew she should get up, but there was something so right in her position that she could not bring herself to move. And then she became aware that he was wearing his breeches. He had not only circled around to scare her to death, but he had had the leisure to preserve his modesty as well.

She pushed against him, half rising, though the grasp of his hands on her arms prevented her from going too far. With a martial light in her eyes, she demanded, “Where did you come from?”

“You know very well.”

“I wasn’t spying on you, if that’s what you think!”

“Then why are you blushing?”

“I’m not!” she cried. “I’m furious because you sneaked around like the savage you are and tried to frighten me out of my skin!”

“And very nearly succeeded.”

“You did not. I was only—”

“Embarrassed?”

“Yes, if you must know. I was coming to meet you.”

“I’m touched.”

Stung by his irony, she tried to wrest herself free. “You’re … going to be hard, if you don’t let me go.”

“How interesting,” he said, a smile curving his mouth as he surveyed her tousled hair and the hectic rose color that gave such a luminous look to her skin. “Is it a threat or a promise?”

“Neither,” she answered, her tone a little breathless as she heard the soft note in his voice, saw the slumberous expression in his gray eyes.

“Kiss me, Elise.”

“No.”

She tried to draw back against the increasing pressure of his hold, but he would not let her. “Yes.”

She was drawn nearer, harder upon him. Her gaze went to the firm contours of his mouth. She could not look away. She tried to shake her head in negation, but as she was brought closer the movement made her lips brush his. That brief, sensitive contact sent a tingling along her nerves that she felt in the lowest reaches of her body. The resistance went out of her muscles. She made a soft sound in her throat that might have been of protest or pleasure as she allowed her mouth to conform to his, felt the curves of her breasts melt into the firmness of his chest. By degrees, she increased the pressure until, suddenly, he winced.

His lip was cut. Remorse gathered with tenderness inside her and she drew back; then, with the tip of her tongue, she soothed that small injury, at the same time moving her mouth back and forth upon his. His lips parted and she followed that lead blindly, tasting the moist sweetness of their underside, the smooth edges of his teeth, touching with hesitant shyness the grainy firmness of his tongue. It moved with gentle twining about hers, then his grasp upon her arms tightened and his tongue stopped.

He had remembered that he must be passive.

Disappointment flooded her, rising to her brain with the intensity caused by weeks of unknowing frustration. She lifted her head, staring down at him. She moistened her lips. “If I asked you, Reynaud, to kiss me — and touch me — just a little — only touch — would you?”

He watched her, his breathing deep. Suspended inside himself with the ache of longing, he, too, felt a desperate need to banish the trace of fear he sensed in her, to give her delight and to find in her slender body and mind his own fierce joy. Finally he said, “If this is a trick, I warn you it’s a dangerous one.”

“No, no,” she murmured, shaking her head, hurt in some strange way by the wariness in his eyes.

“Then I will try. More than that I can’t promise.”

Once more she lowered her head, but even as their mouths flowed together, his arms crossed behind her back, holding her to him. His hard muscles contracted as he raised himself and turned, placing her gently on her back among the leaves of yellow and gold, red and dry, crackling brown. His hard hand cradled her cheek, his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth as he kissed her chin, the tip of her nose, her forehead. His fingers trailed down the gentle turn of her jaw to the curve of her neck, slipping behind her head where he pushed off her muslin cap and began to hunt for the pins that held the knot of her hair.

“Wait,” she whispered in sudden doubt, “this is a mistake.”

“No, no,” he said, his breath warm on her mouth. “It’s only an experiment. If I hurt you, or you are afraid, only tell me.”

Her hair loosened as he dropped her pins among the leaves. That freedom from confinement, or perhaps it was his words, affected her with an odd expansion of the spirit. She lifted her hand to his side, spreading the palm on his warm skin and sliding it upward to his neck.

“Beautiful, beautiful,” he said as he drew the length of her hair over her shoulder, spreading it so that its honey-brown strands caught the last prismatic shimmering of the twilight. His mouth took hers once more, his tongue stroking the sensitive line where her lips came together until she opened for him, entering to test the fragile inner surface and join with hers in a sinuous twining. Rich and warm was the gratification that welled inside her. With a small, incoherent murmur, she pushed her fingers into the wet, thick vitality of his hair as she moved her lips upon his. She offered her mouth, desire and vulnerability warring in her mind even as she felt a poignant craving for deeper penetration.

She shivered a little as his fingers touched her throat, gliding lower to the neckline of her gown, lingering delicately on the soft swell of her breast just beneath the edge of her fichu. Her breathing quickened as he followed the pointed bodice, bending his head to trace his path with the smooth heat of his lips. He found the fichu’s knot and unraveled it with dexterity, spreading the ends to expose the deep décolletage of her gown and the pale rise of her bosom. With closed eyes, he pressed his face to her, inhaling her scent, tasting her skin with the hot tip of his tongue.

Sweet, sweet, as potent as strong wine was the excitement that raced in her veins. Intoxicating. Her limbs were boneless, weightless, and she could not think for the languor that had invaded her brain. She must be drunk or mad to be so affected. Bemused, bewitched with an ancient magic, she allowed him to turn her against him, to release the row of tiny buttons that fastened her gown in the back, to untie her stays and spread them wide. His breath wafted warmly across her shoulder as he drew the sleeve of her gown slowly downward. Her skin glowed with internal heat, pliant, firm, and her body, slipping the bonds of her will, rose slightly toward him as he uncovered one breast. It swelled toward his mouth with arousal, and as he captured the throbbing peak, she caught her breath with the sudden, aching pleasure of it.