Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (66 page)

“That I beg leave to question! If you were, you would not be lying here on the floor at this moment.”

“Unarguable,” he admitted, his smile all rueful charm, “and cruel of you to remind me.”

“I am never cruel, only candid. And I require the same from others.”

He inclined his head. “You shall have it.”

“I wonder.” The governor’s lady rose to her feet. “I must go. I have your portmanteau from your lodgings in the carriage, plus a few comforts, if you will accept them.”

“With pleasure.”

“Then I will hope to see you soon.”

There were a few more words of farewell, a little more banter. The lackey delivered the portmanteau of clothing, also a basket of wine, cheese, and sweetmeats, and another filled with various comforts. Then at last the marquise was gone and the rattle of her carriage faded away back down the track into town.

Cyrene unpacked the baskets. She tossed René a fluffy down pillow, which he caught and tugged under his head. She then uncorked a bottle of wine and poured a few inches into a fine crystal wineglass that had been included in the basket. Her movements stiff, she carried the wine to him and set it on the floor beside his pallet.

“Won’t you drink with me?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t care for wine just now.”

He picked up the glass and swirled the rich burgundy liquid, inhaling the bouquet as he watched her over the rim. “Are you angry with me?”

“I don’t understand you enough to be angry.”

“You are offended, then?”

She swung to face him. “Why did you do that? Why did you suggest that you are here because of me?”

“Can you deny that you are the cause?” The color across her cheekbones was entrancing. To see if it would deepen was irresistible.

“I’ve seen nothing to suggest it.”

Such self-possession was worthy of something nearer to the truth. He abandoned subterfuge. “You’re right. It was an excuse the marquise would accept with little question, given my reprehensible past. Since I had no wish to be dragged into town and put up at the governor’s house with the lady in constant attendance, I made use of you. If you were embarrassed, I’m sorry.”

“It seems to me that your injuries should have been excuse enough not to move.”

“They might have been, two days ago.”

There was a silver flash of laughter in his eyes. Cyrene moved closer as he spoke, the better to see it. “You mean that you — you are recovered?”

“Not that, no, but I may be a little stronger than it appears.” To illustrate his words, he set the wineglass aside and raised himself without discernible effort to sit braced on one arm with the other resting across his bent knee.

“Why?” she said abruptly. Because it seemed impolite to force him to look up at her, she dropped to one knee in front of him.

He shrugged. “A whim. Maybe I wanted to stay. Maybe I will be a
voyageur
after all.”

A small smile curled her lips. “It isn’t an easy life.”

He matched her smile. “It could be I’m not an easy man.”

She studied the hard, bronze planes of his face, the steady light in his gray eyes. At last she said, “It may well be that you aren’t, at that.”

“Now that is a concession.” His voice soft, he reached with his free hand to take hers, carried it to his lips.

Behind them the cabin door crashed open. Pierre stood in the opening with Jean and Gaston behind him. “Madame Vaudreuil was right,” he growled.

He charged across the cabin and lashed out with a hard kick. Cyrene cried out as the blow caught René on the shoulder, throwing him backward. His breath left him in a soft sound of pain and surprise. The burly
voyageur,
with his brother behind him, reached for the injured man. René twisted out of the way, pulling himself to his feet by one hand, which was tangled in the switching, swaying hammock. With his shoulders wedged into a back corner, he crouched, waiting. Between his hands, stretched so tight that the links sang, was a length of chain he had snatched up with one of the animal traps dangling from it.

“Stop it! Stop it!” Cyrene’s voice was high-pitched as she threw herself at Pierre and Jean, dragging at them with handfuls of their shirts knotted in her fists, pushing in front of them. They had stopped in mid-attack, their faces blank as they saw René’s defense. Relief flooded through Cyrene, mounting to her head in a rush of blood. She felt hot with it, and yet a shiver ran through her as she stepped to place herself between René Lemonnier and the two men.

She rounded on her would-be protectors. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Teaching him manners,
petite
,” Pierre said. “By Madame Vaudreuil’s own admission, he has need of them.”

“But what did she say?”

“That your smiles seemed the medicine he requires.”

“And that’s all?”

“It’s enough.”

“For murder? He may be bleeding again, even now.”

Pierre Breton surveyed the man in the corner. “He seems well enough to me.”

So he did, though he had sunk to one knee and his face was white. Cyrene said, “You would be served as you deserve if his recovery is half again as long.”

It was plain the two men had not considered that possibility. Nor did they intend to consider it now. “A man who can rise to fight, can rise to leave,” Pierre said, his voice ringing like struck iron.

“If he has opened the cut in his back again, he will need at least another week of rest.”

“Another day,
petite,
two at the most. No more.”

She refused to acknowledge such an ultimatum. Swinging away from the older Breton in a whirl of petticoats, she gave her arm to René. He leaned on it hardly at all while the Breton men remained, but when they had gone — except for Gaston, who retreated no farther than a stool before the fire — he allowed her to seat him on the bearskin pallet, the better to see to his wounds.

She knelt in front of him, tugging his shirt from his breeches, gathering the folds in her hands as she lifted it upward. He raised his arms and she whipped it off over his head. As she freed his hands, she met his gaze. It was steady on her face, assessing, vital.

“I’ve been undressed by women before,” he said, “but I’ve never had one defend and shield me.”

Her hands were suddenly clumsy as she sought to turn the shirt right side out again. “A protective instinct only. I’m sorry it was necessary.”

“I’m neither your chick nor child.”

“You are injured.”

“And that’s enough?”

Golden fragments of light moved in her eyes and a corner of her mouth twitched. “I also have the promise of your coat.”

“Yes,” he said. “I was forgetting.”

“I beg you won’t. I depend on your word.”

He was so very close. She could see the individual black hairs of his brows, like small curving wires, that made the strong, silken arches; the indentation of a faint scar above his eye; the chiseled molding of his mouth; and the dark sheen of his beard under the skin. The warmth of his body and the clean male scent of him crept in upon her senses. He was still and yet there was such strength in that stillness, such quiet confidence, that it was like an aura surrounding her.

He shifted to turn his back to her, waiting. It was difficult to force herself to touch him, to trace the wrapping of the bandaging around his chest, smoothing her fingers under the
edges, testing for looseness caused by his violent movements. She leaned closer, delicately touching the thick pad that covered the jagged cut along his ribs.

She drew in her breath. The touch had caused a red stain on the cloth.

“Stupid idiots!” she exclaimed.

“Bleeding?” he asked over his shoulder.

“They might have killed you, had they got their hands on you!” She snatched up a cloth pad and untied the strip of bandaging to press it into place. “And for nothing. Nothing! They are mad, all three of them. They think every man who looks at me is going to take me by force unless they prevent it. They guard my chastity every waking minute as if it were purest gold. It’s unbearable!”

“Your chastity.” The words were tentative, as if he was uncertain of their meaning. They were also quiet, for Gaston was near and the voices of the brothers could be heard out on the levee.

She sent him a scathing look. “What did you think they were protecting? My favors?”

The idea had occurred to him, though it did not seem the time to say so. The only thing against it was the fact that she had been sleeping alone since he came.

“That’s exactly what you thought, isn’t it? I might have guessed as much from a man like you!”

“Like me?”

“Such a notorious libertine can hardly be expected to understand anything else.”

The contempt in her tone stung. “You know nothing about it.”

“I know enough. You are a man experienced in the ways of love and of women. To you it’s all a game, a grand chase full of pretty gestures and clever stratagems, snatched kisses and daring caresses. But even such men as you have their uses. If you were not injured, and weak with it, I would let you teach—”

She stopped, aghast at what she had been about to say.

He swung his head to look at her over his shoulder, and the sudden tightness in his chest had nothing to do with the cloth wrapped around it. “You would what?”

Her wide gaze met his and fiery color swept upward to her hairline, burning in her cheeks. She bent her head to her task, though her fingers trembled. “Nothing.”

“I don’t think I can accept that.”

“I… was annoyed and didn’t stop to think. Let it pass.”

“You were about to suggest some service I might perform for you, if I were able. Were you not?”

“No!” she cried, startled at his acuteness.

“I think you were. It would give me great satisfaction to repay you in some way for what you have done for me. Won’t you tell me how I may do that?”

The bleeding was not dangerous; the pressure of the pad she had applied seemed to have stopped it. She tied the bandaging back again and tucked the ends under, then sat back, preparing to rise.

“There is no need for repayment,” she said.

His fingers closed warm and firm over her wrist. “The need is mine. Tell me.”

The timbre of his voice, low and seductive, seemed to vibrate somewhere deep inside her. The gray light in his eyes was hypnotic, compelling an answer. The firmness of his hold on her sent a flutter of apprehension edged with reluctant excitement along her veins. She wanted to confide in him, she discovered; it seemed important that she should.

She moistened her lips. “I only thought, that is, I am so confined, so endlessly guarded. I sometimes feel desperate to be free of it. It seems that there would be no need for such close watch if I were no longer… chaste.”

To suspect her meaning was one thing, to hear it voiced quite another. For a long moment René could not breathe, could not think. The words compressed, he said finally, “Do you know what you’re saying?”

“Very well. I also realize that it’s not possible.”

“An error. There is no obstacle, at least from my point of view.”

Her heart fluttered in her chest. “You mean that you would be capable of it.”

“It doesn’t,” he said softly, “require a great deal of strength.”

She swallowed against the steel band that seemed to have become clamped about her throat. “I see.”

“What it requires is desire and time and privacy, and also a certain resolve.”

“But if there were those things, you would be willing?”

It was humiliating, this need to ask. Why had she not foreseen how it would be? The reason was because she had never really expected to broach the idea. She could withdraw it now, could say she had changed her mind. Something inside her refused to permit it. The need to know what he would do, what he would say, was too strong.

René watched her in hope and fear and with a faint edge of self-loathing. He could feel the swift and ragged throb of her pulse in the wrist he held, and the tumult of emotions it suggested disturbed him. It also excited him. To refuse this unexpected opportunity was unthinkable; it suited his needs too closely to be forgone, even if the prospect offered had not been tempting beyond belief. It would be the first time that he stood to gain some reward for the notoriety he had so laboriously attained. He was not so without compunction, however, that he could take advantage of his lovely benefactress without some attempt to bring her to a sense of what it might cost her.