Silver-Tongued Devil (Louisiana Plantation Collection) (14 page)

“The husband has returned,” he said. “My absence, you perceive, Clotilde, was not of long duration — and an excellent thing, too. A few more minutes, and the tenor might have been forced to look here for his entire audience.”

A hectic flush rose to Clotilde Petain’s face while mulish irritation twisted her lips. “Are you suggesting that we intrude?”

It was an error in tactics to attempt to force Renold’s hand using the lever of good manners; he discarded such handicaps without compunction when it suited his purpose. “How astute of you,” he said simply.

Clotilde’s bosom swelled with indignation. Michel laughed. Renold ignored them both as he strolled toward Angelica and took her hand. His gaze was steady and a little searching. She met it without evasion. A smile tugged one corner of his mouth as he bent his head and pressed his lips to her bloodless fingers.

Clotilde, her voice strained, said, “I should think you would wish to make your bride known to a few people of influence. She will require some assistance if she is to be accepted by those who matter.”

“I believe,” Renold said without looking at the other woman, “that my standing as a leader of commerce will be more than enough.”

Clotilde’s lashes fluttered nervously. “It may gain a place among the American contingent, but the French are rather more selective.”

“You think so?” he said affably. “Things have changed in the last few years, as you might notice if you cared to look. Money now speaks both languages.”

“Crass,” she said in waspish accusation, “but to be expected.”

“Honest,” he corrected. “To recognize the trait, of course, you first have to be familiar with it.”

Watching them, Angelica felt dizzy with the swirl of undercurrents in the enclosed space. That the three of them, Renold, Michel, and the woman, understood each other out of past experience, past events, could not be doubted. She felt shut out of that communication, though she also knew that she had changed it in some fashion.

Abruptly, the loss of all that was dear and familiar swept in upon her: her room in her aunt’s house, the dull but well-known round of her days, and, most of all, her father’s distracted fondness. That was gone, all gone. What did she have to take its place that was as real and safe?

Clotilde Petain’s laugh was hollow and the glance she sent Angelica virulent before she looked back at Renold. “This is a new turn for you, cher, dancing attendance on an invalid female. What a fierce guard you make, protecting her as if she were made of glass. One might almost suppose it a love match.”

“What else?” The words were gentle.

“Well, but there are all sorts of rumors flying. They make it sound positively medieval, like a romance by Scott full of daring rescues and midnight marriages of convenience.”

“I didn’t know you were a reader, or that you had such an imagination,” Renold said. He retained Angelica’s fingers in his strong grasp in spite of her attempts to remove them.

“Of course,” the other woman went on, “there seems to have been a conspicuous lack of witnesses to this extraordinary union. It crosses the mind to wonder if there was a ceremony at all. In which case, there can be no wonder that you have kept your — paramour hidden away.”

Angelica stared at Clotilde Petain while she thought, incredulously, of how closely her fears matched the suggestion just made. This woman had known Renold as few others had before or since. If she felt he was capable of such shameful conduct, then it must not be beyond the realm of possibility.

“Making comparisons, Clotilde?” Renold said in silken tones. “I don’t recommend it. Angelica is that most paramount of paramours, my soul mate, my solace, my savior when I am not hers — my spouse. You might, if you like, congratulate her. But you can never compare.”

As the other woman stared at him in speechless rage, Michel stepped manfully into the breach. Offering his arm, he said to Clotilde, “They are lowering the lamps and twitching the curtain. Perhaps you will permit me to escort you back to your seat?”

“Yes,” the woman said dazedly. “Yes, you might as well.”

Angelica did not watch them go. She was looking at Renold, snared in the transparent green of his eyes. His face was still, unnervingly so. He was waiting for something, though what she could not tell. There was certainty in his features and, it almost seemed, an intimation of safety in the firm clasp of his hand on hers.

In the pit before the stage, the overture for the next act began to swell. Angelica, hearing the lovely notes of introduction like a benediction, discovered that she had not breathed in some time. Inhaling with care, she said the first thing that came into her head. “The story, how does it end?”

“Happily, with the heroine in the hero’s arms. What else?” The words were quiet, even.

“I meant the story in the opera, the tale of the elixir of love.”

Humor touched his mouth. “So did I. Will you stay until the end?”

“Yes, I think I may,” she answered, her smile strained but her gaze steady. “How could I bear to go before it is over?”

Chapter Eight

“Masks reveal more than they conceal,” Renold said. “People choose costumes for the way they see themselves, or the way they would like to be. That’s why kings and queens, bishops and courtesans always outnumber the paupers and common criminals. It’s also the reason you never come across a common person. No one considers themself ordinary.”

“That’s all very well, but I would still rather not wear a mask.” Angelica’s voice was as firm as she could make it. It wasn’t easy to withstand his arguments, much less resist his beguiling smile or the colorful costumes of silk and velvet and spangled netting spread out around her.

She might as well not have spoken. Lounging in his chair with his feet crossed in front of him, Renold squinted at her. “I don’t see you as a queen, and certainly not a courtesan. No. A gypsy dancer in a dark wig, passionate and wild, free with her favors to the right man. Yes, I like that image.”

“You would,” she said shortly.

“You don’t feel the part? The gypsy is there, inside you, shut up where she can never be seen. But you could let her out if you would.”

Her gaze cool, she said, “You must be thinking of someone else.”

“Well, then, perhaps a marionette: wooden, without emotion, pulled by strings in other people’s hands.” The words were acid.

“Or,” she said with a tight smile, “I could be Lucia di Lammermoor.” The reference was to the heroine of Donizetti’s opera of the same name, a woman who stabs the bridegroom foisted upon her in a marriage of convenience. She had been reading Scott’s Bride of Lammermoor, the story that had been Donizetti’s inspiration.

“Now this is promising.”

“I can’t imagine why you would think so,” she returned.

“There’s scant difference between anger and passion, and it’s at least a sign of some feeling.”

She gave him a vengeful look. “You may get more feeling than you bargain for one day, and then what?”

“Then I will shout hosanna and hope for the strength to survive it.” He leaned his head against the lace antimacassar on the chair’s back.

“I didn’t mean—” she began through tight lips.

“I know that, but please don’t spoil the visions in my head. They are far too diverting.”

“I can imagine,” she said.

“Can you? Then why aren’t you blushing? Or maybe there’s hope for the gypsy yet?”

“For the last time,” she said, her chest swelling with indignation, “I have no intention of getting into a costume and parading through the streets pretending to be something I’m not.”

“You won’t have to get into it,” he said comfortably. “I’ll be delighted to strip off what you have on and dress you in my choice. It’s possible I might come to consider obstinacy a virtue if you put me to that trouble.”

He would do exactly as he said; she had not the least doubt of it. She tried another tack. “I would remind you that I am in mourning.”

“But you aren’t dead. I’m not offering a day of gay dissipation, you know, only a walk through the streets to see what the city is like on the last day of the carnival season. You will feel more of the spirit of it if you are masked, that’s all.”

“And you won’t have to introduce me to your friends,” she said in striated tones.

Stillness closed over his face. When he spoke, the words had the clipped edges of suppressed anger. “Is that what this is all about? You think — you dare think — that I am embarrassed to be seen with you?”

“I think you prefer to keep me hidden away. Why, I have yet to decide.”

“How very magnanimous of you. Did it never occur to you that my care might be for your natural reluctance to be put on display? Or was I wrong to bother? Perhaps I should have turned you into Lady Godiva today and paraded you on horseback clothed in your hair. It would have been exactly what you might expect from someone of my nature.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped.

“Oh, I was never more serious. Only think how much easier it would be to get you into costume.”

There was heat in her brain. It almost seemed she could feel his hands on her, peeling away her gown, unfastening her camisole, loosening the tapes of her petticoats so they fell in a great billowing pile around her feet. His hands on her hair, loosening it, letting it fall around her, the freedom of being unclothed, of having nothing except air and his touch on her skin.

She wondered from the hot look in his eyes if he shared the same visions now. But she did not want to know.

She said, “Next, I suppose you’ll tell me that attending one of the balls will be no entertainment, but a means of providing tone for my constitution.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. There’s nothing wrong with your tone.”

It was an unexpected concession. Just possibly, it deserved some reward. She sighed. “All right, I’ll go walking with you. But only as a nun.”

“Intriguing. You feel the need for a pretense of purity?”

That jibe banished her tenuous sense of accord. “I merely thought,” she said, “that you might see yourself as Christ, my savior.”

“Blasphemy.” His gaze was tinged with irony.

“Isn’t it?” she said in bright retaliation.

Her smile dimmed, however, as he flipped aside a costume complete with train and tiara to reveal a nun’s habit. She had the feeling it might have been his final choice. And that she didn’t like at all.

It was late evening when they left the house to mingle with the crowds that thronged the streets, Angelica in her nun’s garb, Renold dressed like a pirate. Striding beside her in his cavalier’s hat, with seven-league boots and a cutlass swinging at his side, he looked raffish, darkly handsome, and more dangerous than ever.

The night was cool with a rising wind that set the street lamps to swaying on their brackets so that the shadows danced. Carriages rattled past carrying men and women wearing fantastic masks to the many balls being held over the city. Some of the ballgoers went on foot, led by link boys carrying lanterns and followed by servants carrying dancing slippers to be put on at the ballroom door.

Music was in the air, drifting from open ballroom windows, or else played by hopeful street musicians with their caps on the banquette in front of them. Waltzes by Strauss alternated with the latest Stephen Foster ballads and tunes from the operettas of the season. Somewhere, a man whistled, in perfect key and with creative trills, the crying song from L’Elisir d’Amore. The melancholy sound of it followed Angelica and Renold as they strolled in the direction of the river.

They turned a corner and were engulfed in pandemonium. A dozen boys with faces darkened by axle grease and white capes made of flour sacking around their shoulders dodged up and down the street. They threw bags of flour to coat each other and anyone else unlucky enough to be in reach in fogging white powder. Men dressed as Arabs and Indians, wild-eyed with strong drink, capered up and down on horseback. Two women in the uniforms of sailors hung on the arms of a pair of mustachioed barmen. A pack of rivermen brawled up and down the street kicking and gouging in drunken ill-humor. From a carriage rolling past a woman in a pink gown so tight her breasts bulged above the silk slung a stockinged leg out the window and waggled it at a man staring down from a balcony. As one of the boys tossed flour at the woman, she cursed him in words slurred by drink.

It was vulgar and cheap. It was also uninhibited and exultant, free and weirdly beautiful in the half-light.

Watching, Angelica felt a curious struggle taking place inside herself. She was repelled, yet enthralled. She wanted to turn away, but could not help looking. She felt she should leave, still she longed, quite suddenly, to be as wild and abandoned as any gypsy. She wanted to fly down the street with open arms, laughing, gathering up folly and foolishness as she went.

“Look,” Renold said, “here comes the street pageant, one of the things I wanted you to see.”

There had been a low murmur of sound, scarcely noticed, for some minutes. Now it grew louder.

From down the street appeared a man on horseback carrying a banner of silk edged with fringe. Behind him came a dozen more men, a score, a hundred. On they came in increasing numbers, men costumed as Bedouins, as English soldiers, and as camel drivers. They came dressed as camels, as lions and wolves, as roosters and ducks and geese. Some were on foot, some in carriages and wagons. Some carried torches for light, others waved lanterns. They weaved and yelled, drunk as lords and deliriously antic with it. And they ducked a hail of flour bags and thrown bonbons, catching them and flinging them back without pausing in their march.

The last horseman passed by, but that was not the end of it. Behind the marchers came a crowd of maskers, tripping along, bowing to the applause of the people on the banquette, throwing kisses and handfuls of candied almonds known as
dragées
. Behind them came several carriages of women who could only be labeled as ladies of the evening. The women yelled out suggestions to men and thumbed their noses at women while shaking their bosoms and other parts of their anatomies in a fashion calculated to startle and amaze.

The maskers were spread out, overflowing the banquettes, pushing and shoving to make their way through the crowd. The carriages added to the disturbance, forcing an ebb and flow through the milling throng. The people watching edged close, pressing in upon Angelica. She felt herself jostled from behind. Renold placed an arm around her, drawing her closer against his side.

She could feel his hard fingers at her waist, the nudge of her hip against his long thigh as they were pushed this way and that. She did not resist, but nestled into his hold. There was comfort and safety there, and she had a fine excuse for accepting both. He turned his head to look down at her with a smile in his eyes. She sustained it only a moment before returning her attention to the spectacle before her.

The last of the marchers were straggling past. The crowd began to thin as dozens of people surged into the street to join the impromptu parade.

There was a man in front of them dressed in shapeless and dirty trousers and coat that looked as if he had been sleeping in them nightly for some time. He looked around him with a slit-eyed stare. His gaze fastened on Angelica for a brief moment before sliding away. It was an accidental meeting of eyes, yet a shudder ran down her spine as if she had touched something slimy.

It was then that she heard the sound of harsh breathing not far away. She turned her head. There was another man just off to her right, half-hidden behind a Roman emperor. His grin showed blackened teeth and lips misshapen by scars. The pockmarks on his face were filled with greasy dirt, and his ears were mangled stubs projecting from his head. He looked beyond her and he winked.

Yet another man sidled closer on Renold’s far side. Wiry and short, he had a round, brutish face and several teeth missing from his loose grin. His clothes were fairly new, but so tight they might have been taken from some young boy. He licked his lips in a constant motion while pushing his fist into his coat pocket and knotting it as if he gripped something he did not want to be seen.

Menace surrounded the men like the acrid odor from their bodies. Angelica’s gaze was wide as she glanced from one to the other. The word compressed, little more than a whisper, she said, “Renold?”

“I see them,” he answered in low tones. “Stay with me, no matter what happens. Don’t get in the way, but don’t let them get between us.”

“What do they want?”