Arms of a Stranger (5 page)

Lucien recognized a broad hint when he heard one. She was dismissing him. But it was time he got on with the business of pretending to soothe Bodine’s battered pride, anyway, and proving himself an excellent friend to the blackguard. His false friendship with Bodine was the most repugnant of his deceptions in the masquerade he played.

“How right you are, mademoiselle,” conceded Lucien with a courtly bow. “I will advise Monsieur Bodine to order a plate of beignets immediately.
Au revoir
, ladies.
Au revoir
, Monsieur Weston. I hope we meet frequently in town.”

Anne’s responding look assured him that she’d probably much prefer meeting the devil to meeting a wretch like him. He ought to be pleased that his wastrel act was convincing enough to make her dislike him so intensely. But instead he found it damned irritating. He returned to the table and Bodine, determined to put the saucy baggage out of his mind and keep his thoughts on the pressing matters at hand.

As Lucien sat down, Bodine lifted his head from his hands. “Doing the pretty, Delacroix?”

Lucien dispassionately observed Bodine’s bloated face. He looked as though he’d just walked through a sandstorm. His eyes were red and runny, his face unnaturally flushed. No one would think he was suffering from anything worse than a hangover, but Lucien knew differently. The sleeping herbs Armande had given him had done the job wonderfully. “Chirped a little too merry last night, eh, Bodine?”

“No merrier than I have done on numerous other occasions,” he rasped. “You drank as much as I did, and I’d like to think I can throw down as many goblets of Madeira as the next man. I don’t know why I feel worse than usual after a little brew tipping.” Bodine rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “My head is throbbing.”

“I had the sorry task of waking you this morning with that damnable news. Learning you were robbed by Renard again must surely contribute to your feelings of misery,
n’est-ce pas?
”

Bodine dropped his hands to the tabletop, where they formed into fists. A look of hatred radiated from his bleary, bloodshot eyes. “If I ever manage to get hold of that bastard, I’ll strangle him with my bare hands!”

Lucien pretended to look slightly awestruck by Bodine’s vehemence. “
Mon Dieu
, I can only thank the saints that I’m not the man who inspires so much anger in you, Bodine.” Lucien casually crossed his legs. “Pray tell me, just how many times
has
the Fox crept into your henhouse?”

Bodine looked truculent and did not reply. Smoothly, mercilessly, Lucien rubbed salt into the adeptly inflicted wound. “I think the henhouse a most apt metaphor, don’t you? He frequently absconds with females you’re interested in. Too bad you weren’t able to have your way with that fetching little wench before Renard took her.”

Bodine bristled. “What makes you think I didn’t?”

Lucien shook his head. “Ah,
mon ami
, you forget. I helped you to your cabin last night. I assisted your manservant in pulling off your boots and tucking you snugly into bed. You are a large man, and last night you were—how shall I say?—less than graceful? You were snoring long before your head hit the pillow.”

Bodine hadn’t the energy to dispute what was indisputable. His head sunk into his hands again. Lucien pretended to be instantly contrite. He reached over and clasped Bodine’s hulking shoulder, ignoring the revulsion he felt at merely touching the man. “But what kind of friend am I to remind you of such frustrations? I wonder that you do not take a mistress and save yourself the trouble of seeking your … er … comfort in the inexpert arms of child slaves. Settle some beauty in her own
petite maison
on Rampart Street and come and go at your leisure.”

Bodine shrugged out of Lucien’s light hold and started rubbing his eyes again. “I won’t buy a whore her own house. Once I’d grown tired of her—as I surely would before a year was out—she’d expect me to leave the place to her, just as our damned chivalrous custom demands. That doesn’t sound very money-wise to me. The slaves I already own cost me nothing when I bed them. Besides, I like variety, and I like them young and virginal, if possible.”

“I see. Your tastes run to the pure and innocent,” Lucien remarked agreeably, hiding his disgust, strangling his urge to spit in Bodine’s face. “You must eat. Mademoiselle Weston assures me that the beignets are divine today.”

“Coffee. All I want is black coffee,” Bodine mumbled, laying his balding head on his folded arms on the table.

Lucien waved for the server. When the uniformed black man hurried over, Lucien ordered coffee for Bodine and a substantial breakfast for himself. Last night’s escapade had left him ravenous. If the smell of eggs made Bodine nauseous, well, that was regrettable.

“Oh, one more thing, boy,” said Lucien, purposely using the denigrating form of address, “send a plate of beignets to that table, with my compliments.” He gestured toward Anne’s table and in so doing, caught her eye. Her look was scathing. He smiled and winked. She turned away, pretending not to have noticed him at all. He chuckled to himself. Pretending. Everyone was always pretending.

Compared to the reserved elegance of London, New Orleans was an eclectic paradise, Anne thought. From the bustling port to Katherine’s house across Canal Street, they traveled by carriage through the Vieux Carre, the oldest section of New Orleans, which had been rebuilt after a fire in 1788. The pastel stucco houses were generally two and a half stories high with flat roofs, built flush with the sidewalks, or banquettes.

Ornamental iron surrounded the balconies overlooking streets that were fluid with masses of people of every imaginable variation in skin color. There were Creole women protecting their delicate white skin under parasols, amber-skinned quadroons in bright scarves called tignons, and ebony slaves who looked as though they’d just been imported from Guinea.

Women on the streetcorners sold candy and fruit and flowers. Some had even set up copper charcoal heaters and cooked rice cakes called calas and sold mugs of frothy
café au lait
to eager customers. The rich aroma of coffee, along with the stench of gutters, wafted through the open carriage windows. It was late September, but the heat was stifling. Anne could feel the perspiration trickle down her neck from beneath her bonnet.

Reggie, sitting next to Anne and facing forward, took out his handkerchief and held it to his nose. “Do you still think we’re in heaven, Anne?”

“As a matter of fact, I was just mentally comparing all this to a sort of hodgepodge paradise.” She waved a hand outside the window, indicating with one sweeping gesture all of New Orleans.

Reggie sniffed, then—judging by his grimace—wished he hadn’t. “I never imagined heaven having such a pungent odor about it. I don’t know how people can tolerate living here. Do you … er … live
near
here?” Reggie ventured to ask Katherine.

“No, I live in an area predominately inhabited by Americans. It’s called the Faubourg St. Mary. The houses stand much farther back from the road there. I’ve all sorts of trees in my yard, too. Oaks, magnolias, palm, and even a banana tree. It makes it cooler in the house, you know. I can’t wait to get there! I hope Theresa has everything ready for us.” She suddenly clutched Anne’s wrist. “Look there, Anne, it’s St. Louis Cathedral.”

Anne looked. And looked. And looked. She was enthralled with everything she saw, eager to know all she could about the history and culture of her temporary home.

Eventually they passed Canal Street and into the so-called American part of town. Here was where the non-Creole society built their own churches, theaters, hotels, and elegant homes. The Americans spurned the simple lines of the Creole homes and built large houses with more elaborate facades in the Greek Revival mode. Bougainvillaea, rosa-de-montana, wisteria, and roses adorned the yards with color. The houses were brick and painted pale muted tones. Everything was neat and lovely.

Katherine’s house was on a street called Prytania. As they turned onto the gravel lane that led to the carriage house in the back, Anne stared up at an ivory-brick mansion that was as impressive as anything she’d seen thus far in New Orleans. She thought perhaps she’d underestimated her aunt’s wealth. Even Reggie looked a bit awed. At least it kept him from talking, and that kept him and Katherine from arguing.

Once inside the house, Reggie was still silent. Anne supposed he had never expected to be so comfortable in any house that belonged to Katherine Grimms. But despite the grandeur of the place, with its plaster ceiling medallions, cornices, and carved marble mantels, it had a homey feeling about it, as well as an exotic atmosphere.

Katherine had managed this mix of welcoming impressions by combining artifacts and items from her many travels with plush cushioned sofas and ottomans and convenient tables covered with books. And there were flowers everywhere. Anne loved it. And she suspected that Reggie, though he didn’t say so, loved it, too.

Theresa, the housekeeper, was a free black. Although many Americans had slaves, Katherine was not one of them. Theresa was a tall, large-boned woman of indeterminate age. Her mahogany skin looked as smooth as the inside of a kitten’s ear, but her springy hair beneath the white tignon she wore was gray.

She showed Anne to her room, which was decorated in cabbage roses from the bed canopy, to the silk wallpaper, to the Aubusson rug on the gleaming wood floor. Gauzy curtains hung at the windows, shuttered now against the bright noon sun, and mosquito netting draped the large bed. Just off Anne’s room was a huge dressing “closet” with a deep porcelain tub Anne immediately made use of.

After her bath, Anne decided to rest and acclimate to the hot weather before attempting to eat lunch. Lying on the bed, luxuriating in a slight breeze that blew in through the louvered shutters, Anne thought about the year ahead. What would happen to her in New Orleans? Would she see Renard again? Of all her hopes for the future, that one—silly though it seemed—dominated her scattered, presleep images. She drifted off, remembering how wonderful and safe and excited she’d felt in the embrace of a dangerous outlaw.

L
ike an unhinged gate, the three-quarter moon hung crooked on the horizon of a black, cloudless sky. Standing on the balcony attached to his apartments at the Hotel St. Louis, Lucien loosely gripped the top rail of the wrought-iron balustrade and looked out over Royal Street below. A low-creeping fog hovered over the gutters, and steam hazed the few closed windows of the adjacent building where the Blue Ribbon Ball was in full swing.

A steady stream of Creole gentlemen trod back and forth along the wooden walkway between the two buildings, judiciously allocating their time between their quadroon mistresses at the Blue Ribbon Ball and their wives, who sat in regal martyrdom at the King’s Ball, taking place inside the Hotel St. Louis’s grandest ballroom. On the periphery of the dancing, the deserted wives gossiped in little groups—like coveys of chattering fowl—and waited for their husbands to return from a “smoking break.”

Cheroots smoldered bright orange in the dark as the men passed between the buildings, the pinpoint of burning embers brightening, then fading like indecisive fireflies. But everyone knew that saving their wives the annoyance of a little smell and smoke from a cheroot was only an excuse for the men to absent themselves from the King’s Ball for the more titillating companionship of their mistresses.

It was a sultry night for early October, and the muddy tang of the Mississippi, mixed with the smell of aromatic tobacco and gutter swill, permeated the turbid atmosphere, making Lucien’s attempt to fill his lungs with fresh air an exercise in futility. A raucous laugh drifted up from a nearby alley, followed by scuffling feet and muted exclamations—another fight.

The social season was in full swing, and everyone from aristocrat to demirep was in high gig. Almost all the “best” families had returned to town from the outlying plantations, where they routinely escaped from the sweltering, disease-infested summer months in the city. Lucien’s family had taken up residence in the Delacroix mansion on Esplanade Avenue just that morning, and he’d received a curtly phrased summons from his father to pay a courtesy call on his mother. Lucien had begged off, promising to meet his mother at the opera that night for the season-opening performance of
The Barber of Seville
.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see his mother. He loved her, despite her blind devotion to Lucien’s dictatorial father. He loved his father, too, but with reservations.

As a child, Lucien had not readily grasped his importance as heir to Bocage, an honor Jean-Luc Delacroix considered above everything else. Lucien had been an active, sociable child and had a wide circle of playmates, but his best friend was a slave child named Roy.

Up to the age of ten or so, sons of white plantation owners were allowed to play with the slave children when the slaves weren’t busy in the fields or doing some other chore about the estate. Then, when the plantation owner’s son went away to school, the friendships diminished naturally and were eventually forgotten or, if not forgotten, relegated to the past.

Lucien, a fiercely loyal young man, did not forget his friendship with Roy, even when they were both in their early teens and obviously destined for very different futures. His father disapproved of this continuing relationship, although Lucien thought it rather ironic that his father wouldn’t have minded if he were bedding down with some of the female slaves. It was an odd set of rules that Lucien never really understood.

Lucien wasn’t sure he wanted the lifestyle his father was proud to pass on to his eldest son. He questioned Creole tradition and the social protocol of the South. He couldn’t understand why things had to continue being the way they were simply because they’d always been that way.

Infuriated by Lucien’s rebellion against all he held near and dear, Jean-Luc decided to teach his son a lesson. He gave Lucien a final warning to stay away from Roy at the risk of punishment, knowing full well the two young men would disobey him. They went fishing, were caught, then were brought, unrepentant, before Jean-Luc to receive their punishment.

Jean-Luc ordered his son to give Roy twenty lashes with a whip. Horrified, Lucien refused. Jean-Luc explained to his son that if he didn’t mete out the punishment, his friend, Charles Bodine, who happened to be visiting that afternoon, would be glad to do it for him.

Knowing Bodine’s taste for blood, Lucien was forced to whip his friend. When Lucien didn’t put enough twist in his wrist to execute the most painful blow, Bodine stepped in and showed him how to do it right. Lucien was in agony throughout the ordeal, trying to hurt his friend as little as possible, but knowing if he didn’t hurt him quite enough, Bodine would take up the slack with relish.

That afternoon was a turning point for Lucien. He and Roy never spoke to each other again. Lucien learned to hate Bodine and to pity and despise his father. He also learned that he could never be a slave owner.

He stayed away at school, even on holidays, then went to Europe when he graduated and remained till he was thirty. Two years ago, Lucien had returned to New Orleans a changed man. But now he was another kind of embarrassment to his father. True, he no longer questioned slavery and other firmly entrenched ideas Jean-Luc held near and dear to his old-fashioned heart, but his son had turned into a worthless cad. He had no interest in the estate he was going to inherit, and no ambitions beyond wenching and gambling.

Lucien had planned the masquerade months before returning to the States. He knew that nothing had changed in the South, and he knew he couldn’t go back home without trying to make some sort of a difference when he got there. His travels abroad hadn’t changed his views about slavery; they reinforced what he already believed and had learned most painfully that summer day nearly twenty years before. Slavery was wrong. Thus Dandy Delacroix and Le Renard came into being.

Visiting his mother frequently put Lucien in his father’s company as well, and that was always painful. And there was another disadvantage to his mother’s return to town. Now that the frenetic social season had begun, Madame Delacroix would once again belabor the point that he’d let another year pass without selecting a wife from the cream of Creole aristocracy. This year Lucien’s mother was hinting that the virtuous sixteen-year-old Liliane Chevalier would suit her perfectly as a daughter-in-law.

Lucien thought of the doe-eyed, raven-haired Mademoiselle Chevalier, seventeen years his junior—so proper, so passive, her untainted French bloodlines so well-documented in the ancient records kept safe and sound in the guarded vaults of St. Louis Cathedral.

Mademoiselle Chevalier, like so many well-born Creole girls, had been educated by the Ursuline nuns in the morally correct, tight-kneed frigidity of all marriageable women. And it would be her husband’s singular honor to pry apart those maidenly knees to expose his properly unresponsive bride to the shocking sounds and movements attached to matrimonial consummation, all done in the modesty-preserving pitch-black of an unlit bedchamber. Almost never motivated by love, these awkward alliances seemed necessary to produce the requisite pure-blooded heir to a Creole dynasty.

Lucien refused to compromise his life’s happiness by shackling himself in such a sham union. As well, marriage to him would not be fair to any woman—whether or not she was Creole. His subversive activities were far too dangerous to allow him the freedom to commit to a long-term relationship.

He thought of Anne Weston. He hadn’t seen her since the
Belvedere
docked in New Orleans, but he’d thought about her every day, every night. He’d tried to obliterate her golden image from his mind by paying more frequent visits to his mistress, Micaela, trying to lose himself in an orgy of undiluted sex. But it hadn’t worked. He only wanted Anne more and more.

Sometimes he whiled away an hour or two making up excuses to visit Katherine Grimms. Common sense always prevailed, and the visits were never paid; at least no acknowledged visits. But late at night he sometimes drove his carriage down the street where she lived, pausing across the way and watching Anne’s bedroom window.

Twice he was lucky enough to see her lean out of the opened window, her hair loose and falling over her shoulders. A tree near her window looked as though it could be easily climbed. As each day passed, that tree seemed more and more tempting. Someday he would climb it and enter Anne’s bedroom while she slept. And then…

He dared not imagine further. It would be enough just to look at her. Or perhaps just to kiss her once…

Unexpectedly a cool breeze blew softly against Lucien’s heated skin. He arched his neck and closed his eyes, relishing the freshness, the crispness of it. It reminded him of the mountain wind that blew through Switzerland’s snowy vales into northern France, and of the bracing river wind on the banks of the Thames. It was a taunting whisper of another time, another place.

How he wished he could be himself, as he had been in Europe! How he longed to talk to Anne with nothing between them but the truth! This masquerade was crushing his soul…

There was a knock at the door. Lucien had dismissed his small staff of servants for the night, and he wasn’t expecting anyone. He moved across the shadowy room with the confidence of familiarity and the soundless grace of an athletic man used to maneuvering in the dark. He opened the door a crack.

“Lucien, I know I shouldn’t be here, but—”

Lucien grabbed the man and pulled him into the room, darting his head through the doorway to scan the hall before shutting the door behind him and locking it.

“Christ, Armande, you’re damned right you shouldn’t be here!”

“No one saw me.”

“Are you sure?”

Armande nodded his head. “I was very careful.” He swallowed hard and threw Lucien a beseeching look. “I had to come.”

Lucien observed his friend by the weak light of a single-candle wall sconce just inside the door. Tall and lean with copper-brown skin, dark hair, and hazel eyes, Armande was a free black of mixed blood. He was dressed in a neatly tailored gray suit, as if he’d just come from one of the ticketed balls being held in the public rooms. Sweat trickled down his temples, more from agitation than from the heat, Lucien surmised.

Armande was obviously very upset. Lucien was ready to believe whatever he told him, because Armande was the best spy and, more importantly, the most trusted friend a man could hope for. They’d met in the intellectual society that orbited the university in Paris, where Armande had studied to be a physician. Armande was the son of a quadroon and a wealthy American banker in New Orleans.

In Paris, he and Lucien had become instant comrades, finding their views on slavery to be identical. When Lucien confided his plan to begin underground abolitionist activities when he returned to the United States, Armande wanted to be included.

Armande’s several years in Paris made him seem more French than American, and his accent and the sometimes poetic brevity of his English reflected this Parisian influence.

“What has happened?”

“Bodine. He’s done it again.”

Lucien’s jaw clenched. “What? Rape?”

“Worse. He’s killed all three of the men we’d arranged to transport next week. One of them confided in another slave—trying to convince her to come along, I suspect—a mulatto girl Bodine gives special privileges for tattling on the others.”

Lucien kneaded the tight cords at the back of his neck. “The fool! He knew the terms of our agreement! Didn’t he know the risk he was taking, the danger he was placing himself and the other two men in?”

“He may have been a fool, but he was a brave fool. They all were. Our connection at Belle Fleur saw it all and reported this bad news to me not more than an hour ago. Bodine beat them. He wanted them to tell him where you were planning to rendezvous. He was going to surprise you with a posse of hangmen in place of the slaves. Ever since we took the family of slaves from the
Belvedere
he has a vendetta against you, Lucien. They wouldn’t tell him where the meeting place was.” Armande’s voice quivered with suppressed anger and emotion. “We can be grateful for that.”

“Gratitude is the least of what I’m feeling right now! I’d like to take Bodine’s whip and layer a few welts on his worthless hide, then string him up with it! Now there will be rampant fear at Belle Fleur. There won’t be another man or woman who’ll dare try for freedom, though that plantation of Bodine’s is the worst hellhole for slaves in the South, I’d wager.”

Armande wiped his brow with a handkerchief he’d pulled from a waistcoat pocket, “Time will dull some of the fear. Because of the cruelty at Belle Fleur, there will be others brave enough to take the chance of escape. So far, you’ve been amazingly adept at moving them out of the state. This is the first … mishap.”

“One too many, Armande.” Lucien sighed deeply and moved to the French doors leading to the balcony, wishing again for the whisper of cool air on his face. Armande stayed behind in the shadows. Silent, pain-filled moments passed.

“Maybe it was a premonition,” Lucien said at last, more to himself than to Armande.

“What,
mon ami?
”

Lucien turned slightly, throwing Armande a self-derisive and grim smile. “The weather has been hotter than usual for this time of year. I’ve felt smothered all day. I was thinking about … things, when suddenly I imagined I felt a cool breeze. I could smell the mountain air of Switzerland, Armande. I could feel the brisk wind from the Thames. It was eerie. Now I begin to think it was a premonition, a chilling precursor to your grisly news.”

“The Creole, the blacks, we are all superstitious. Probably it was a premonition, but maybe not a bad one.”

Lucien made a scornful noise at the back of his throat. “It sure as hell appears that way to me!”

“No, Lucien. The beatings, they were done yesterday. Maybe this cool breeze—this spiritual transportation to a place where you were happy and serene—maybe it was a good omen. Maybe something good is coming to you, something from the continent.”

Lucien immediately thought of Anne, and his heart lifted, but he ruthlessly dismissed the wistful, foolish surge of hope and made a wry face. “A broad interpretation for the whimsy of river breezes, my friend.”