Tainted Lilies (7 page)
Nicolette wasn’t sure what she had imagined in the way of a marriage ceremony here in this desolate part of Louisiana, but certainly the flower- and ribbon-bedecked broomstick that Xavier offered for her inspection and approval had never entered her mind.
By the orange glow of the bonfires on the beach, Laffite saw the look of disconcertion on her face and bent toward her to whisper, “This is only for the moment, darling. When the time is right, I’ll take you back to New Orleans and we’ll find a priest to sanction our marriage properly.”
The urgency in his voice, as if he was pleading with her to accept rather than only explaining to her, melted Nicolette’s misgivings. She was as impatient as he to form a solid bond between them, as anxious as she had been a few short weeks ago to get back to New Orleans. Surely, her father would realize that his ship was now past its arrival date and come searching for his missing daughter. When he did, she wanted to be bound fast to Jean Laffite so that no man, not even her father, could separate them.
The savory tang of sea salt and hickory smoke flavored the warm night air and mingled with the mouth-watering aromas of roasted suckling pig and thick, spicy gumbo laden with bayou crayfish and plump red Gulf shrimp.
The Baratarians, Jean’s men, formed bright-colored tableaux about the beach—their boisterous laughter and booming sea chanties obliterating all other sounds except for the eternal pulse of the waves.
As Laffite led Nicolette from group to group in a sort of informal introduction of the bride-to-be, she marveled at the flamboyant holiday garb of the wedding guests—brightly striped shirts, kerchiefs on their heads, rough canvas britches disappearing into thigh boots made of cowhide, calfskin, alligator, and rattlesnake skin. Flashes of gold cast back the reflection of the flames from earlobes, necks, belts, and teeth. Many of the men wore hibiscus blossoms behind their ears.
“To let the gals all know that ole Tom here ain’t been spoke for yet, ma’am,” a sailor told Nicolette with a gap-toothed grin as he shifted his black eyes toward one of the women near him and tucked a red flower behind his right ear.
Nicolette, too, looked at the well-used lady of the evening, who had joined the festivities with the other women from the island’s brothels. She wondered where the woman hailed from and what misery she had left behind that could make her content to service this band of rough misfits.
Had she been in New Orleans, Nicolette would have shied away from any close association with such females, sweeping her skirts aside when she happened to pass a “fallen woman” in the street. She would have ignored totally the fact that she even knew of the existence of such creatures.
She smiled at her own hypocrisy. Hadn’t she fought her great-grandmother’s battles all her life? Though her family denied the rumors, even to the point of death under the dueling oaks, the fact that the story might be true could not be wholly denied.
The tale persisted that her great-grandmother had come to the Louisiana Territory to find a husband shortly after New Orleans was born. But two kinds of women came to the French settlement at about the same time—the casket girls and the correction girls.
The filles à la cassette,
so called because of the coffin-shaped clothing chest each was given by the Mississippi Company, which brought them from France, were poor, but very proper. The correction girls were quite another matter. To ease overcrowding in the jails of Paris, the French government shipped women from
La Salpetriere,
one of the city’s correction houses, to the New World. These prospective brides were all of highly questionable character.
Both groups brought with them a woman of the same name as Nicolette’s ancestor. But early records were destroyed in the fire of 1788, and thus the question could not be answered. Still, Nicolette’s family had always held that their clan sprang from a casket girl’s womb.
Nicolette laughed softly, remembering an incident from her school days in which her ancestor and Jean Laffite were both involved and caused her no end of trouble.
“What’s so funny, sweetheart?” Laffite asked, leading her to a palm trunk seat away from the others.
She covered her smile with her fingers, then looked up at him, her eyes sparkling wickedly.
“I was just thinking back to when I was eleven years old and you caused me to be punished severely. I swore then that some day I’d get even. But I never guessed I’d have to marry you to do it!”
Laffite’s mind flipped back through the pages of time, trying to remember his Nikki as a young girl. No, he decided, he had never laid eyes on her until the night he first kissed her, two years ago.
“Don’t look so baffled, Jean. You knew nothing about it. It was a lovely spring day in 1805. Sukey told me secretly that a new shipment of contraband goods had arrived at the Laffite showroom in Royal Street. She begged me to go along with her in pleading with Maman to let us walk to the Ursuline convent rather than having Pluto drive us. Her plan was to stop off at your place of business and have a peek at the new merchandise. We didn’t go in, but stood in the doorway long enough for Sukey to get a quick look around and for me to see you for the first time and commit to memory a colorful epithet you bestowed on one of your workers.
“Later, during history class, Sister discussed the subject, delicate to my family, of the difference between the
filles à la cassette
and the correction girls. Always proud of my ancestry and, like the other members of my family, quick to defend our honor, I announced to the class that my mother’s original ancestor was a casket girl. Micaela Almonester y Roxas, at that time my mortal enemy, piped up, saying with Spanish-accented sarcasm, ‘Sister Madeleine, is it true that every casket girl had at least a hundred children and that all the correction girls were barren and that’s why every Creole claims to be of noble birth?’
“Before the good gray nun could answer, I called Micaela the name I’d learned from you. I was immediately hauled by the ear to the Mother Superior’s office, my father was sent for, and I spent a miserable two weeks secluded in my room, most of the time on my knees at my
prie-dieu,
praying for forgiveness for my sins! I swore my vengeance on you every hour of those days!”
Though Laffite had not known Nicolette at the time of her misfortune, he was acquainted with her nemesis, the fiery-haired and fiery-tempered Senorita Micaela. He could imagine the two meeting in pitched battle inside the sacred walls of the old convent. The very thought sent him into fits of laughter. He tightened his arm around Nicolette and kissed the top of her head.
“I don’t see what’s so funny!” she hissed. “That was a terrible time for me!”
He forced composure and said with some measure of solemnity, “I’m sorry, truly I am. Tell me the words you learned from me and I’ll swear by all that’s good and holy never to utter the offensive syllables again.”
Nicolette drew in her breath. “Oh! I couldn’t… not out loud!”
“Whisper?” He offered an attentive ear.
Nicolette hesitated, looked about to make sure no one else was listening, then mumbled, “Whoremonger!”
Laffite roared again, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Oh, Nikki! My innocent darling! You didn’t call Micaela
that
in front of a nun? Why, you didn’t even have the right gender for your blasphemy!”
She pouted at him, saying nothing.
“I promise you, darling, that I will never use that word again as long as I live. So help me God or strike me dead!” He paused and gave her a teasing, sidelong glance. “Am I forgiven? Will you still jump the broomstick with me?”
A laugh soon trembled from his lips. Nicolette found his mirth contagious.
“If you also promise to explain to me-in private—what it means. But not until after we’re married,” she added quickly.
Like a cloud passing over the sun, his expression changed from laughter to earnestness. He took Nicolette in his arms and held her so close that she could feel his heart beating against her breasts.
“I plan to explain many things to you, Nikki, after we’re married. There’s a whole world of feelings and emotions that I don’t think you know about yet. Together we’ll explore the unknown.”
As he held her, Nicolette became acutely aware of one of the unknowns in her life. His nearness, his touch, caused a queer aching heat in parts of her body that had no names to her. She guessed that these intimate regions had much to do with the mysteries of relations between a man and a woman. Beyond that, she only knew, instinctively, that she longed for her lover to caress these throbbing, nameless places.
Gabrielle DelaCroix, finding them entwined like a grapevine about a sturdy oak when she arrived on the beach, interrupted their passionate interlude, saying, “I assume she gave you the answer you hoped for, Jean.”
“We gave each other the answers, Aunt Gabi.”
Nicolette beamed up at the tall woman, who looked much younger than her thirty-eight years. She wore a simple blouse with a swirling skirt of mingled reds and yellows.
“I’m happy for you, Nikki,” Gabrielle said warmly, clinging to Reyne Beluche’s arm.
“The same goes for me,” her escort added, clearing his throat to hide any traces of sentiment that might have crept into his voice.
“Since we’re all agreed,” Laffite said, “let’s get on with it!”
“Just like that?” Nicolette asked, a bit breathless, realizing her blissful period of anticipation was about to be rudely interrupted by the sudden advent of reality.
No one in the group answered her with words, but Laffite took her hand, while Gabrielle and Beluche looked on smiling.
As if they sensed the time of the ceremony approaching, the Baratarians and their women rose from the sand and shuffled into a ragged horseshoe formation on the far side of the largest bonfire. A humming rose from their midst, and Nicolette realized they were forcing their voices into the proper key to provide wedding music. She offered them a faint, shy smile of thanks as the first words of “Eternal Father” drifted to her. The sailors’ sweet prayer brought tears brimming to her eyes.
Such an unlikely group of choirboys, she thought, knowing no other music would ever sound this beautiful.
“Shall we, darling?” Laffite whispered, leading her forward.
The sand near the edge of the roaring fire blazed with the intensity and beauty of an opal. Through Nicolette’s tear-blurred eyes, the pink, gold, and orange haze of light danced like some dreamed-of fairyland, bits of mica on the beach sparkling like tiny diamonds.
Laffite and Nicolette walked slowly, hand in hand, toward Xavier, who stood before the blaze presiding over the sacred broomstick. His broad grin was evident as they neared.
When they were only a yard from the instrument which would make them man and wife, Laffite dropped to his knees in the sand before Nicolette. She stared down, not knowing what to expect, but feeling her whole body sing with excitement and anticipation.
He raised the ruffled hem of her gown and slipped his hands around her ankle. Lifting her foot, he carefully removed one slipper and then the other. Nicolette wriggled her bare toes in the warm sand, enjoying the unexpected pleasure of this newfound freedom.
“It’s part of the tradition,” Laffite whispered when he had taken his place at her side once more. “The bride must be barefoot to show her innocence.”
She nodded and stood waiting for him to take the lead. He seemed to be listening for something. She cocked her ear, too.
Abrupdy, the sailors’ voices changed from their solemn hymn to a boisterous chanty.
“Me and my wife, we don’t agree… Whiskey… Johnny… She puts whiskey in her tea… Whiskey for my John-ny.”
“Now!” Laffite signaled.
The next instant, with both hands clasped and their eyes on each other’s smiling, flamelit faces, Jean Laffite and Nicolette Vernet jumped the ornamented broomstick, landing between it and the fire in a tangled, giggling heap on the hot sand.
“Is it over?” Nicolette asked breathlessly.
Jean caught her in his arms and rolled her onto her back, his lips poised only a hair’s breadth from hers as he answered, “Not by a long shot, darling! It’s only beginning!”
The singing and laughter seemed far, far away when he found her lips. She felt the hunger of her own mouth and somewhere she heard: “A girl asleep with a blue dress on… Shake her, Johnny, shake her… An unsafe couch she’s restin’ on… Shake her up and wake her.”
Laffite’s body pressed hers deeper into the sand and her breasts rose to meet his hard chest. One of his hands slipped up and fondled the fabric of her bodice and what lay beneath, making Nikki suck more breath into her lungs while the serenade continued. “Oh, when we get to the Black-Wall Docks, them pretty young gals come down in flocks, with short-leg drawers and long-tail frocks, Come and get your oats, me son…”
Nicolette had no idea how long their passionate spectacle lasted. It seemed to be the expected thing that the bride and groom put on a show for the wedding guests.
When Laffite released her at last and she looked up into the circle of appreciative faces and lust-bright eyes, her whole body trembled with embarrassment. Applause resounded through the darkness when Laffite helped her to her feet. She shyly hid her face against his chest.
Then a cheer went up: “Madame Boss! Hip-hip-hooray! Hip-hip-hooray! Hip-hip-hooray!”
“Come on, darling. Show the men how much you appreciate this fine wedding they’ve thrown for us. They mean well, and it won’t be long now until we can be alone,” he whispered.
Nicolette raised her face slowly from the linen folds of her husband’s shirt. She managed only a quivering smile at first, but that soon blossomed to fullness when she saw the genuine pleasure all about her. She waved to the mob and curtsied. They howled their approval.
A skyrocket hissed overhead, then exploded into red, white, and blue stars. The chorus sang out “Yankee Doodle” in a half-dozen different languages.
Xavier, his decorated broomstick held on high, paraded before them waving the staff. He capered and strutted his way to the place of honor, which had been prepared for the bridal couple. Grass mats had been spread on the beach and over these a down-filled quilt made a soft place for them to lie. A low table sat nearby, set with the best of the banquet the men had prepared.