Queen For A Night (3 page)

“No? Not even a little bit?”

“I don't think so, though I'll admit that when Murielle and I were kids, we were forever playing at being both brides and Mardi Gras queens.” She gazed into her wine as she gathered her thoughts. “It's just that—I think all young girls dream a little about wearing the jeweled crown and dragging the long train behind them, getting to tell everybody what to do and be above them all. It’s probably the female equivalent of boys playing King of the Mountain.”

“But for every queen there has to be a king.”

She gave a derisive snort. “Not when little girls play!”

The glance he gave her over his shoulder held surprised consideration in its depths. She returned it for an instant before lifting a shoulder. “Anyway, most of them grow out of it.”

“Some do, some don't,” he said, and swung the wheel hard left to avoid something in the water. A moment later, she spied a half-submerged log floating past as she looked out through the glass door.

They were quiet while he found the sweet spot in the bayou’s channel again, and sent the boat on a steady course along it. Thinking about what he’d said, Caroline couldn’t help wondering if he’d had Murielle in mind. Her cousin had always demanded to be the bride or the queen when they played as kids, and screamed until she got her way. The few times Caroline had worn the veil or the crown was when Uncle Tony forced his daughter to give them up.

Murielle was not exactly happy about losing her crown now, and who could blame her? Yet she had sent her to persuade Ross to take her dad’s place for this year’s ball while knowing Caroline would, in all likelihood, reign at his side.

“I still love Mardi Gras,” she went on after a moment. “It's a special time, a few short days when people have whole-hearted permission to laugh and dance or act like idiots if that's what they want. It's supposed to be a farewell to things of the flesh before Lent and Easter, but it's always been more than that. Everybody needs escape, whether we realize it or not. We need to let everything go, to forget our worries and feel nothing except the absolute joy of being alive. If we don't, we risk—as a wise old Greek once put it—going mad without knowing it.”

“I doubt you're in any danger.” The words were dry.

She smiled. “You never can tell. But what I want, I think, if I can say it without sounding silly, is to be in the big, wide middle of all the fun of Mardi Gras. To be, for just one night, the queen of the revel.”

Ross was silent as he gave the woman on the sofa his full attention. Not that he’d been exactly ignoring her before; he should have seen that half-drowned log sooner. It was a wonder it hadn’t ripped the bottom out of the boat.

But Caroline Saucier here on
L’escapade
with him—who’d have believed it. He’d thought he was seeing things when he looked up and saw her standing there, fresh and bright as the early spring sunshine with her gold-streaked hair, coffee-brown eyes and slender shape outlined by an ankle-length cotton knit T-shirt dress in sunshine yellow. The last had molded her shape with downright sinful perfection, especially as she faced the wind off the water.

Tony’s sweet Caro. The old man had warned Ross away from her years ago. But then he’d warned most of the guys in Bacardville to keep their hands to themselves around her. Yes, and around his daughter, too, of course.

They’d been quite a pair, Caroline and Murielle. Tony’s daughter had been polished, trendy, outgoing, a ringleader in the popular crowd. Caroline had been quieter, with a more natural brand of attraction. The softness in her eyes and tenderness in her smile made a guy feel as if he had her full attention, was maybe the only person on earth that mattered to her. She’d been a forever or nothing kind of girl, even back then. One look at her, and the most randy idiot in town knew a quickie on the back seat wasn’t happening.

No wonder her Uncle Tony had stood guard like a pit bull. Ross understood that a lot better now than he had back then.

“I have a daughter,” he said, the words abrupt as he narrowed his eyes to shield his expression.

Caroline gave a quick nod. “I saw her earlier. She was having a tea party with your housekeeper and a little friend.”

“Tess is five now. I don't know if she ever plays at being a Mardi Gras queen. Guess I should ask her.”

“You’re raising her alone now, I think Uncle Tony said.”

“Have been since she was a few weeks old.” He gave her his back as he returned his attention to the winding bayou. “Her mother was from New Orleans, thought Bacardville was the-back-of-beyond. Sheila went to the city at least once a week to have her hair done and so on. She left Tess with the housekeeper and took off early one foggy morning. She rear-ended a sugar cane truck.”

“I’m sorry.”

The words, so quiet yet sincere, rippled down his spine like a caress. “Yeah, so am I.” He paused, went on before he could think better of it. “Tony thinks Tess needs a mother.”

“She seemed happy enough when I saw her.”

“Can’t miss what she never really had, right? That’s what I told Tony, but he doesn’t think it works that way. As a matter of fact, he showed me your latest picture last week, said I ought to call you.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“As a heart attack—if you’ll excuse the expression.” He shook his head at that slip of the tongue. “I could almost see him fabricating a problem to get us together, if not for Murielle's part in all this.”

Caroline said nothing for a long moment. When she spoke her voice had a hollow sound. “I’m not sure I follow.”

He flashed a quick, sardonic look in her direction. “I don't think her reasons for wanting to be queen are quite as high-minded as yours. And you'll have to excuse me, but I have trouble with the idea of Murielle willingly giving up her crown to hover at Tony's bedside.”

“She loves her dad!”

“Sure she does, but the person she loves most is Murielle, and she can't wait much longer for her chance to be queen. If she misses this one, Tony will have to pull some hefty strings to have her name put up again next year.”

“That’s not fair.”

Caroline smoothed a wrinkle in her dress as she spoke. He wasn’t surprised that she lacked the nerve to look him in the face while she defended her cousin.

“Isn’t it?”

“I don’t say she won’t be disappointed, but she has other things going on in her life.”

“Yeah.” Ross didn’t doubt that part for a minute. Nor did he doubt Murielle would be compensated for the loss of her crown, one way or another. Whatever Tony might have done for his niece over the years had been multiplied ten times over for his only daughter. Nothing was too good for her, nothing too expensive. Not that the last was a problem; Tony had made his fortune in oil during the boom years, and held on to it when the good times were over.

Murielle had wanted to be Mardi Gras queen the year she graduated from high school, Ross knew. Tony insisted she attend university, and had used the crown as a bribe. Murielle had majored in art, just like Caroline, though more because she thought it an easy out than because she had talent. Once she graduated, she hadn’t bothered looking for a job.

“All that aside,” Caroline said with a last flick at the wrinkle in the dress fabric that stretched over her thigh, “I don't think Uncle Tony would go so far as to fake a heart attack to arrange my love life for me. He must know it wouldn't work. Besides, I'm perfectly capable of taking care of that myself.”

“So I hear. And you do such a fine job of it, too, a different guy for every outing.”

“There aren't that many,” she protested.

“One for regular Friday night dinner, another for Little Theater productions, a third for morning runs? Sounds to me you think there's safety in numbers.”

“Uncle Tony,” she said with precision, “talks too much.”

“He's concerned about you.”

“Besides, I don't believe your philosophy is too different,” she went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “The way I hear it, you have a new woman every day and two on Sunday.”

Ross shook his head.” Tony does run off at the mouth, now you mention it. He’s also been known to exaggerate.”

“Exactly.”

“Anyway, I'm not looking for a mother for Tess. That’s not a crime.” He was protesting too much, he thought, especially as he realized how touched he’d been that Caroline had noticed Tess when she must have had so much else on her mind.

“It's none of my business,” she answered. “But keep it up and, first thing you know, your Tess will be ready for a boyfriend instead of a mother.”

“Then maybe everybody will leave me alone. Then I can look around for the one woman, wherever in the world she may be, who can stand me first thing in the morning, and whose cold feet I won't mind in my bed.”

As an example of romantic yearning, his words lacked poetry and Ross knew it. Yet they said exactly what he meant. Hearing their echo in the cabin gave him a strange feeling around the heart.

“Meanwhile, you take advantage of what's offered.”

Anger surged up inside him. “Unlike you, who are so afraid of making a mistake again that you take nothing, give nothing, no matter how hard a man tries to make you happy.”

“I don't jump the bones of every man who takes me out for a meal and a movie, if that's what you mean,” she said with irritation flashing in the darkness of her eyes. “Though I might have known you were the kind of man who would expect it.”

“You don't know a thing about me.” His voice was etched with acid as he spoke, but it was more in reaction to the image she’d just planted in his brain than from anger.

“And I don't want to find out any more!”

“Fine. Now that’s out of the way, maybe we can enjoy our trip.”

“Enjoy?”

He turned to meet her scowl of disbelief while anticipation suddenly welled up inside him. “Why not? It isn't every day a man and woman start out anywhere together knowing exactly where they stand.”

It was less than a half hour later that they left the bayou, emerging among the ancient shell banks overgrown with stunted scrubs oaks that were known as
chenieres
, passing the spread-out mud flats and sand banks near the bayou's mouth. Soon afterward, they cruised into open water. In the fading light, the gulf had a milky, yellow-brown opaqueness caused by silt. There was only a slight roll to the boat due to the continued shelter of the land.

Caroline sat with her head propped on one hand, fingers threading through her hair as she watched the water turn slowly from brown to blue. The upset and stress of the day, of discovering Uncle Tony’s heart problems and being designated to arrange his replacement as king, slowly eased away. She could do nothing about any of it for the next few hours, so might as well find what serenity she could in being on the water.

Ross didn’t head straight out to sea, but turned southwest, following the coast line. Pulling up a tall captain's chair to the wheel, he sat back with one leg extended for balance while he fine-tuned the engines to the new strain. Afterward, he spent several minutes on the marine radio, giving his course, position, and destination, and also checking in with other boats in the area.

A voice with a Mexican accent came on the air, warning about high winds and rain down toward the Brownsville area. When Ross signed off from that conversation, he clicked the dial over to listen to the weather service. He frowned a little as he listened to the description and location of a fast moving line of squalls.

“Aren’t we headed toward that rough weather?” Caroline asked above the static of the report.

“More or less, though we should make our turn-around ahead of it.”

She didn’t much care for the excess cheer in his voice or his failure to meet her eyes. “Deliver the part and start back, you mean.”

“You’ve got it.”

She thought of pinning him down, making him tell her their chances of meeting that storm, but decided against it. Some things it was just as well not to know.

A look of something like wry approval flashed across his face, then was gone. Switching off the radio, he slipped a CD into the instrument console.

The rippling sound of a George Winston instrumental removed the need for conversation. Caroline sat listening, lulled once more by the music and steady rise and fall of the boat. Beyond the wide door glass, the light was turning blue and purple, touching the water with an opalescent sheen. A gull swooped ahead of them now and then, crying into the wind, banking, and turning with lavender reflections under its wings. From the landward side could be heard, faint above the rumble of the engines, the shrilling of insects and peeper frogs calling for rain, for the early Louisiana spring, or from something more powerful and primitive.