Passion's Joy (13 page)

Yet Joy stopped, for she could not write the things she had been imagining of late.

The sun began its long descent as Ram and Sean turned their mounts back to the ship. The cool twilight felt pleasant, momentarily peaceful with its quiet, and they kept their mounts to a slow pace, as much to enjoy the dusk as to discuss their business. Ram was explaining what his agent

discovered of their five victims' finances: "It's a good deal better than I expected; three of the families are living on the edge of their wealth already, depending on the season's cotton price to see them through. I'll be buying their debts this week. The fourth is only slightly better off, but the congressman—well, he presents a slight problem."

"How's that?" Sean asked with a pretense of shock. "Don't tell me the good congressman has used his position to increase his fortune?"

"Actually, the deals rising from his status are petty compared to the tricks he's used in the dark of night. About five years ago, fires were set to both Mississippi's and Louisiana's cotton warehouses simultaneously; no one discovered the arsonists. A number of people died in the blaze; still more families were ruined with the loss. Oddly," he dryly drawled, "Simone made his fortune that year as the market adjusted and the cotton price soared. He has a good deal of money; not enough to stand up to my concerted attack of course, except that I'll probably have to extend my stay here, traveling back and forth between here and England until things are settled over there."

Sean of course knew what Ram referred to—the problem Ram's immense fortune presented to the crown. It was a blooming intrigue, one with danger woven into ever increasingly complex twists. When Ram was younger, he had thought he could keep it from society, but nothing excited English society more than an unmarried lordship with a sizeable and magnificently growing fortune. They never knew how it happened, only that it did; and so everyone from the crown prince to the lowest chambermaid knew that Lord Ramsey Edward Barrington III would not take a wife; there would be no heir to his title or his fortune.

Soon afterward, Ram learned through his infinite web of connections that the crown had drawn a document to be implemented on the day he died. Based on outdated church law and neatly added on to an attractive tax measure, it fled through the House of Commons with no dissent. The Barrington estates—including Barrington Hall—and his fortune were to be divided among certain select members of the aristocracy by default. This could not be borne, and Sean, as long as he lived, would never forget the weeks of Ram's sustained rage that had followed this discovery.

Drastic measures had to be taken. Ram had to disown the country of generations of his ancestors and adopt this new young republic as his own. It was the only country where law superseded the will of individuals, the only country that would recognize his own will and testament. His fortune and properties had to be liquidated and transferred to the states piece meal, and ever so slowly to avoid discovery.

Here lay the danger. As soon as the crown and the named personages discovered he was leaving his country and taking everything except the Barrington estates, Ram's own life would be worth less than a farthing. One of them, probably all of them, would see him assassinated.

Sean would have gladly shot the crown prince. Sean was Irish after all, and despite the prince's catholic princess, the crown prince was even worse than his father, the ailing King George

III. The tyrannical northern protestant rule was nothing but a puppet government for the prince. Between the threat to Ram and his much loved country, he certainly had good reason to shoot him. Yet Ram protested, "Violence begets violence and it would take more than one assassination to see me out of this. What good is all that killing Sean? Let us work the other way."

So Ram lived on the razor's edge, they all did, waiting for the day when so little would be gained by his death that they'd leave him be. Of course, the situation led to many intrigues, lines separating those who knew and those who didn't; there were numerous bribes and payoffs. It was a bloody mess; no other man could even begin to pull it off.

More than Ram knew, Sean questioned if even Ram could succeed.

Sean lived with this fear, and as Ram was as dear to him as his own life, he could not passively sit and watch. He had his own plan, and though he had waited for years to meet the lady who would play the crucial part, it occurred to him that he might have met her the day of a picnic beneath an old oak tree. Now with these amusing book meetings, his intuition— and his was great

—told him the young lady had finally been found, though it would take many interviews to know for certain. It was with this thought that Sean pursued the rest of the conversation.

"Well, I don't mind staying here awhile," Sean first said. "I rather like Orleans, though I'm aware of your trouble. Two months and you've already been through the entire stock of wenches in the place, and by the way, my men tell me you've made quite a spectacle of yourself."

"Are you referring to last night?" Ram asked with some small interest.

"Yes, and every other night since we made port. Honestly, I wonder how your mistresses survive your homecoming," he laughed. "I think it must be all this running you do; it must somehow stimulate the appetite."

Ram sighed in sudden irritation. Just as weary of the turn in conversation as he was tired of managing the half-wild stallion that needed a good long run. "Sean," he said, dismounting and taking the playful stallion by the reins, "I don't recall you ever being a candidate for celibacy."

"It's a matter of degree, my lord," Sean explained, and following Ram's lead, he dismounted to fall in stride alongside his friend. "And speaking of extremes, what book has our young lady read this week?'

Instantly the reference softened Ram's features with amusement. "Machiavelli." He laughed. "Needless to say, she failed to comprehend his brilliance."

Ram proceeded to amuse Sean with a brief retelling of his rendezvous in the library. He had never meant for these meetings to continue. His connection with Joshua was bad enough, a connection that so often put him in her house, though he arranged the visits for those times when she was out or late at night when she slept. Yet somehow he could not seem to resist the library meetings.

What he could not resist was the play with that mind of hers, so fresh and lively, sparkling with rare intelligence, yet in desperate need of guidance and direction, which her guardian refused to give. Joshua feared she was already too different, her education already too excessive for what anyone thought decent for a young lady. Joshua was right of course—even women of society were taught to read and write only well enough to follow scripture during family bible readings. Then too, his own Greek scholarship and his mechanical work, being separated from his library at Barrington Hall, made him a frequent visitor to the library. At first it was chance, then clearly not, he was enjoying the encounters with Joy tremendously.

Admittedly it was a sad fact that this was the first time he had ever been attracted to a woman's mind. He could hardly reconcile that such a mind existed in a girl: a girl with the infuriatingly naive passion for the word freedom, a girl he had first seen perched in a tree, wearing boys' breeches and aiming a pistol at him, a girl with long brown hair and lovely sky-blue eyes, a girl with a maddening innocence in her every manner and gesture. "Aye," he finished the telling, as he thought of those things. "I am courting disaster. That will be the last time I meet her."

"Surely you don't imagine resisting that temptation?" "Ah, but I do."

"And I've yet to see you resist anything you've wanted for less reason. After all," Sean smiled, unalarmed at Ram's reservations. "The dolls must come down sometime, and a maidenhead is such a small obstruction really."

Ram chuckled but rejoined with: "For such a small thing, it brings a man a good deal of trouble."

"The only good is in the taking." Sean pursued as if explaining to a young child. “The trouble comes only if virtue remains too long, and then, it's considered a woman's greatest misfortune."

"Somehow," Ram sighed with a boyish grin, "I don’t think Joy is in the risk of suffering that particular misfortune."

"Which is my exact point. The girl is far too lovely and far too poor. She will no doubt be married by the year's end; indeed, I'm surprised it has not already happened. Why not spare her the inevitable wedding night, when her clumsy fool of a husband—so overwhelmed by what his fortune bought him—embarrasses himself before he has taken her clothes off? Why not bed her good and proper?"

To Ram's amusement, this was asked in all seriousness.

"At the very least"—Sean's grin widened—"she'd have a few things to show the poor fellow."

Why Sean's picture of Joy's inevitable future bothered him, he couldn't say. It was all too true; precious few men were good lovers, lacking either the experience or inclination, usually both, and it was no mystery why many women never learned to enjoy the pleasure to be had from love. He supposed this was the trouble. There was more sensuality hidden in that girl's innocence, her misguided passions and ridiculous wildness, than he knew wise to contemplate, and while he never took Sean seriously on the subject of women, it was indeed true. If any woman was made for a man's love, it was Joy Claret.

For these very reasons he would resist the temptation. He knew with inexplicable certainty she would give her love only once; her passion would be final and complete. This seemed as obvious as the very promise hidden in her innocence; perhaps it was part of it. No doubt it was a lucky man indeed who came to share her love, but he'd be damned if it would be him. The tragedy of her love not returned would match any Greek tale, and though he was capable of many nefarious things, that would not be one of them.

Sean studied Ram with incredulity, humor and mischief, knowing him better than anyone and seeing the thoughts even through the near complete darkness. "I see you will try to resist the temptation of our, ah, unthumbed fruit?"

"Sean," Ram said with plain regret, "I would ruin her; it might be a good deal easier to put a bullet to her head. So yes, unlike Adam, I will resist."

Sean laughed, and the very devil shined in his eyes as he stopped to draw Ram's full attention. "And I, my lord, wager you don't succeed. My Vermeer for your Rembrandt."

Sean referred to their paintings, for both their fortunes were of a size that made money meaningless. For a number of years now they wagered with their art collections.

Ram met the challenge directly with his laughter. “I’ll warn you now, Sean, you'll lose." "Not if you'll be seeing her again. With the connection between you and her guardian and

with your prolonged stay, you will be forced to at least occasionally move in her circles."

Ram shook his head, chuckling still as he removed his shirt and then his boots, for like his mount, he suddenly needed a good long run. He packed these into his saddle bag and said, "Time can’t be unlimited; name the date I hang your picture."

"Eight months or until she's married, whichever comes first."

"Sean, I've seen you capable of a good deal of foolhardiness, but never until now have I seen you play the fool." With this, Ram handed Sean the reins and ran off, quickly disappearing into the darkness with a song on his lips.

Sean laughed loud and long, too. If he was right about Joy Claret, he would not be playing the fool but rather the serpent. It would not even be hard; he need only to present the forbidden fruit in a different light. Though Ram's bite would indeed be sweet, the benefits he imagined went much further than hanging Ram's coveted Rembrandt.

* * * * *

Joy needed to escape the sickness threatening their house, the sickness in the Negro infirmary she usually visited on the Sabbath, to escape her family's financial troubles and the frantic pace of the city growing too large, too fast, to escape everything, if only for a couple of hours. Cory and she worked all week to have their chores done by Sunday—the house cleaning, the wood gathering, the privy dump—so that the only thing left was the marketing.

The night was broken by two cats fighting in the alley, incessant howls indistinguishable from the screeching cries of babies. Still, Cory and she had risen by the fourth bell to fix a meal and see the Reverend and Sammy off to their day of sermonizing at Garden Court, one of the largest

plantations in Louisiana. Cory went back to bed, promising to take care of Joshua and meet her later. Joy went out the door, heading for the stables.

Moving south, Joy turned Libertine out of the city. Dawn spread in a violet light, shading everything with an enchanting color, and she let her thoughts rest peacefully on the awakening of the day. She found her way onto the back road, then lead Libertine onto the old, Indian hunting path, winding to the lake. Of course, there was an unlikely chance of meeting him on one of his queer runs but this, she told herself, was not the reason she chose the old hunting path. No one woke at this early hour, certainly not when Ram's burgeoning reputation put him in Orleans' finest houses- -reputable and not, at all hours of the night.

"One doesn't have to be a mental genius," she told Libertine as she brushed away the overhanging Spanish moss and vines, "to know the odds are astronomically against a chance encounter."

The narrow path wound through the bayous and eventually led to an open tree-shaded clearing, opening out from the shady banks of a small lake—a lake many less imaginative people would call a pond. A stream ran in and out of it, keeping the water fairly clear and clean. Libertine pranced into the open space, and Joy stopped her, momentarily dazzled by the splendid colors of the water hyacinths and lilies, blooming in magnificent profusion in the first light of day. A recent rain had washed the land, and the sweet scents of wild flowers filled the fragrant air. In the early morning light, within the shade of tall oaks, the colors appeared darker and muted, painted with an enchanting mysterious air.