Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (63 page)

Cyrene looked at the man who had been more of a father to her for the past three years than her own had ever been. “You must let me make my own way some time.”

“There is no way for you to do that here.”

“I know, there are only whores, wives, and nuns in the colony. I am unsuited, so you say, to be the first or last, but you won’t let a man near me so that I may become a wife.”

“There is no man worthy enough to come near.”

It was a familiar argument. She sighed and turned her head away without answering. She could run away from the Bretons at any time; they had no real hold on her except that of obligation and, perhaps, affection. But what else was there? She might take up with some officer, become his mistress; there were a number of women who held such positions in the town. No, even if such a course were not so distasteful to her personally, she could not. The Bretons would be so disappointed in her, would feel they had failed her. She could not do that to them when they were the only family she had.

“Especially unworthy is this Lemonnier,” Pierre continued, his voice hard.

Cyrene gave a tired shrug. “Since I doubt he would even look at me, you have no worry.”

“Oh, he will look. But no more than that, if there is breath in my body.”

“You’re impossible!”

“I know men as you do not,
petite.
Now go and ask Lemonnier when he leaves us.”

René was awake when Cyrene returned to the cabin. Seeing him lying propped on the bolster, watching the door as she entered, she wondered if he could have heard her exchange with Pierre. It did not seem likely; still, she was uncomfortable under his gaze. She searched her mind for some way of bringing up the subject she had been instructed to broach, but nothing came. Moving to the cook table, she took up her task, which Pierre had interrupted, of crumbling bread for a bread pudding.

“How are you feeling?” she asked over her shoulder when the knowledge that her patient was watching her became too uncomfortable to bear in silence.

“Better. I have been trying to think. I seem to remember —  was it you who pulled me from the river?”

His voice was quiet but strong enough, the words perfectly lucid. It was the first time he had spoken beyond simple and necessary requests. He was truly mending. A smile of triumph and gladness curved her lips, and she sent him a quick look before she answered. “Dragged might be a better word.”

“I would have said you couldn’t do it. You aren’t a large woman.”

“I’m stronger than I look, but I’m afraid you may have a few extra bruises.”

“What of it, compared to what you did for me? The only thing I find unusual is how sore the top of my head is, almost more so than the hole in my back.” He reached up to run his fingers through his hair, grimacing.

Cyrene paused. Her tone compressed, she said, “My fault, also, I’m afraid. It wasn’t easy to find a handhold on you.”

The puzzlement vanished from his face. “Forget I complained, then, if you please. It’s been some time since I owed so much to another. It’s difficult for me to find the words to thank you.”

She was embarrassed, though why it should be so she did not know. She affected a careless air as she threw the breadcrumbs into a pan and reached for a handful of eggs from a bowl, cracking them into the pan one by one. “You need not let it trouble you. I did it for your coat, you know.”

“For my coat?” His expression was completely blank.

“I saw the silver lace. I have no use for such things, but in exchange for a coat with such decoration I could have gotten cloth for three new shirts — one each for Pierre and Jean and Gaston — plus a Sunday bodice for myself, and maybe even a pair of real shoes.”

A slow smile gathered in his eyes, edging their gray with silver like the sun behind a cloud. He gave a soft, amazed laugh as he repeated, “For my coat.”

“I thought you were dead, you see.”

“Yes, I think I do. I value the service you performed somewhat higher, I assure you, but the coat is yours.”

She looked up, her eyes wide. “Oh, I couldn’t take it now.”

“Why not?”

“It wouldn’t be right.”

“I give it to you, a gift of gratitude, along with anything else you fancy that might have been on me. Though it would be nice if I could retain my breeches.”

He was teasing her. She bent to her task once more, pursing her lips. “I suppose I could leave you that much.”

“There is one condition.”

She looked up again. “Yes?”

“You must not tell anyone why you came to my rescue. The blow to my consequence would be too great.”

It was easy to see why he was such a favorite with the ladies. It was not only that he was tall and handsome, with a caressing note in his deep voice that seemed to reach far down inside a woman. Nor was it just his manner — though that was so compelling while he was lying with a hole in his side, wearing a shirt and breeches much wrinkled from where she had tried to wash away the bloodstains, and covered by a moth-eaten bearskin that it must be devastating when he was upright and hale and clothed in brocade and fine linen. His smile was warm, his concentration alarmingly intent, and there was in his eyes a glint of appreciation that could easily go to a female’s head, but there was more still. He had the ultimate grace: the ability to laugh at himself.

Cyrene looked around at the crude flatboat cabin, at the rough log walls pierced by a single shuttered window; at the fireplace of mud plaster; at the beams of the open roof hung with smoked hams, strings of garlic bulbs, onions, peppers, and bunches of dried herbs; at the hooks for the sleeping hammocks preferred by the Bretons that were the result of a past brush with sailing ships. It was a temporary home, rescued by Pierre and Jean after it had served to bring a load of hogs and cattle downriver from the Illinois country. It was also the home of rootless men, men who did not care to be tied to the land with its back-breaking labor. She wondered what Lemonnier, who must be familiar with beautifully appointed townhouses and châteaux, must think of it. Not that it mattered, of course.

Cyrene wiped her fingertips free of egg on the apron at her waist and tilted her head to one side. “I can’t promise not to tell,” she said.

“Now, why?”

“It isn’t to my advantage.”

Wariness moved over his features and then was gone. “I begin to fear for mine.”

“So you should. Only think how many bodices I can buy if I become a charge upon you for my silence?”

He stared at her, and his mood of bonhomie was slowly replaced by cold implacability. It was incredible, that transformation. Cyrene, watching it, felt the rise of anger. His sense of humor was not as broad as she had supposed. She lifted a small pitcher of wild honey and dumped half its contents into the pan of eggs and bread before her, then thumped it back down on the table before she spoke.

“You needn’t look as if you mean to guard your purse. It was only a jest; I would not stoop to blackmail.”

He lay staring at her. “What is there to keep you from it?”

“You have heard of principles, I suppose.”

“The principles,” he said with deliberation, “of a woman who serves as doxy to three men?”

She picked up the pan of bread and eggs and honey, drawing it back to throw. Just in time she remembered that he was an injured man. She set the pan down again and, taking a deep breath, gave him her sweetest smile. “Four.”

“Four?”

“I have also been serving you.”

“You’re no doxy of mine!”

“Or any other man!” she snapped, hard on his words.

There was an interlude during which the only sound was the pouring of milk into the pan and the vicious beat of Cyrene’s spoon stirring the ingredients of her pudding into mush.

“I apologize,” René said.

He had not meant to speak of her circumstances. It was just that they had been exercising his mind in his brief moments of consciousness for what seemed like a long time, and so were in the forefront of his thoughts. His constitution, inherited from his soldier forebears, was not as weak as he pretended, nor had he always been asleep when his eyes were closed. He knew more about the situation around him than was suspected, more, in fact, than he understood. But he must not jeopardize what he had so unexpectedly gained by inconvenient curiosity. That would be more than foolhardy: it would be stupid.

Cyrene did not look at him. “Apologize? Well you may.”

“I am not used to women who wear their hair uncovered or leave their arms exposed.”

“Indeed? I have always thought that a man must be a perfect fool to be thrown into a fit of passion by the sight of a hank of hair or an elbow.”

“Perhaps so. In any case, I beg your pardon abjectly. I have no right to question how you live, or with whom. Forgive me.”

It was too smooth, that request for pardon; she would swear there was no sincerity in it. But there was an opening for the task M’sieur Pierre had set her.

“Since you disapprove of our arrangement here, you must be anxious to leave us. I will ask M’sieur Pierre to see about a litter to take you back to your quarters.”

“I beg you won’t trouble yourself. I can walk the distance if you wish to be rid of me.”

“It isn’t a question of—”

“I have offended you. That was not my intention, but it’s understandable that you should be annoyed. I will, of course, remove myself from your presence.” He raised himself onto his elbows as if he meant to rise.

“Stay where you are!” Cyrene came around the end of the table, then hesitated, confused by her own distress at the successfulness of her ploy.

“No, I insist.” René pushed himself higher, then clamped an arm around his ribs, allowing a grimace of pain to cross his face. “I would not trespass upon your hospitality any longer.”

Remorse assailed Cyrene. She went quickly to him and dropped to one knee, pressing him back down on the pallet. “You will injure yourself again, that’s what you will do. Don’t be so foolishly proud. Of course, you are welcome.”

He lay back, gazing up at her, though he still held his ribs. “Are you certain?”

“Naturally, I’m certain.”

“I am forgiven?”

“Yes, yes! Don’t be ridiculous.”

How had she come to be urging this man to stay when she should be waving him out the door? A vague uneasiness touched Cyrene, but she dismissed it. M’sieur Pierre would have to understand that it had been impossible to send away a man so ill. There was nothing Lemonnier could want from them, no reason for him to linger. And no reason at all to think that she had seen satisfaction flicker like lightning across his face.

She went back to her pudding, dusting the top with cinnamon, placing the pan in an open kettle filled a quarter full with water, swinging the kettle on its hook over the coals on the fire bricks lining the chimney that took up one side of the cabin. With that done, she poured a cup of water for René and carried it to him.

While he drank, she drew up a three-legged stool to the curtained doorway. Her voice abrupt, she asked, “Is there no one who will be concerned about you if you don’t return? No servant brought with you from France, no — no companion?”

“No one.” He paused a moment, glancing at the crude leather footwear on her neat and narrow feet. “Do you really have no shoes?”

“Only the moccasins made by Jean’s Choctaw wife, and sabots, of course.” The last were the wooden shoes of French peasants, worn in the mud and the wet.

“His wife?”

She nodded. “She lives with her people. She says New Orleans is too noisy and the fires with the big pipes in the rooftops don’t give off enough smoke to keep away the mosquitoes. The truth is …”

“Yes?” he said when she did not continue.

“I was going to say, the truth is, she likes variety in men.”

“And Jean, he doesn’t mind?”

“He prefers variety in women.”

“Then everything is all right.”

“Yes, except — except it doesn’t seem much of a way to live.”

“There are a great many marriages in France that are exactly the same.”

“Does that make it right?”

“It makes it human.”